Category: Religion
Papers about robot vacuum cleaner personalities
There are some, and they are important:
In this paper we report our study on the user experience of robot vacuum cleaner behavior. How do people want to experience this new type of cleaning appliance? Interviews were conducted to elicit a desired robot vacuum cleaner personality. With this knowledge in mind, behavior was designed for a future robot vacuum cleaner. A video prototype was used to evaluate how people experienced the behavior of this robot vacuum cleaner. The results indicate that people recognized the intended personality in the robot behavior. We recommend using a personality model as a tool for developing robot behavior.
A summary discussion is here, interesting throughout. From this paper you can surmise a bit about the origins of religion, the seen and the unseen, and the demand for conspiracy theories, in addition to robot vacuum cleaners.
Random Thoughts from Jerusalem
The first session of the Shimon Peres Presidential conference I am attending began strangely with a session featuring Dan Ariely, Sir Martin Sorrell, Jimmy Wales, Shakira and Sarah Silverman.
Ariely was fine, he gave his usual talk on self-control and temptation, cleverly labelled the “Adam and Eve” problem. Most interesting thing I had not heard. Just like people, rats and pigeons have a hard time resisting a short-term pleasure even at the expense of a much larger future pleasure. The interesting part is that just like people, rats and pigeons seem to know that they are making a mistake so they will pay to have the short-term choice taken away from them (like people locking their refrigerator.) Ariely,however, kept his insights on the “how to lose weight” level and didn’t attempt to address any larger issues.
Sorrell was a total bore.
Wales talked about Wikipedia, the power of voluntarism, and the Wikipedian assumption of good faith.
Shakira told us about the importance of early education. She was earnest and I’d rather hear it from her than Jim Heckman but it was still boring.
An incompetent interviewer tried to make jolly with Sarah Silverman. She was the only, however, to address real issues and was quite clever although she also told us that she really had to pee.
The opening acts over with, we then had Shimon Peres, Tony Blair, Bernard Henri-Levy and Amos Oz.
Peres at 87 is vigorous, optimistic and pro-science (“science cannot be contained by governments and flourishes most with peace.”) Impressive.
Tony Blair gave a very pro-Israel speech, even more than expected (“the model for the region”).
BHL said nothing wrong–indeed, he discussed a topic I would have discussed, democratic peace theory, albeit presented too strongly. He also noted that for decades the Libyans and Syrians have been taught that Israel is the great Satan but now the veil has been lifted and Satan is found closer to home. I find it difficult to take BHL seriously, however. No doubt the fault is mine.
The highlight of the evening was Israeli novelist Amos Oz. Oz gave a hard-hitting speech full of quotable moments (here are paraphrases but look for the speech online for a real sense). Many will disagree with the conclusions but it was still an excellent speech in delivery, allusion, and insight:
The suppression of the Palestinians is immoral and not in Israel’s genuine self-interest. The building of settlements is immoral and not in Israel’s genuine self-interest. The expansion into East Jerusalem is immoral and not in Israel’s genuine self-interest.
I love Israel even when I don’t like it.
I am not a hippy. I say make peace not love.
Why is it that the same Europeans who hate Hollywood treat the Israel/Palestine conflict with the subtlety of a Hollywood movie with bad guys and goods guys?
It’s going to be an amputation for both sides.
Oz’s speech was mostly well received by this audience of Israel’s secular/liberal elite but there was heckling especially when he said that there would have to be a two-state solution along the 67 lines (with modifications) and that Israel would have to give up biblical lands. Oddly Sarah Silverman had hit on this point earlier, “What do you want,” she asked, “acreage or values?”
Today we have Larry Summers, Dr. Ruth, and a course on game theory from Aumann. Strange but interesting.
P.S. The rugelah at the Marzipan bakery was excellent.
Conceptually, there is a lot at stake here
Motty Rosenzweig is the only remaining kosher slaughterer in the Netherlands and, if a new law goes through, he will be the last.
The Dutch parliament is preparing to pass a law that would end religious slaughterers’ exemption from rules requiring animals be “stunned” or anaesthetised before they are killed. Because Jewish and Muslim rules do not permit animals to be unconscious when they are killed, the law would in effect ban kosher and halal slaughter in the Netherlands.
Here is more.
What I’ve been putting down
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, by David Abulafia.
Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, by Robert Bellah.
These are very good books for large classes of readers, just not for me. They have garnered, or will be garnering, stellar reviews. The former, for my taste, covers too many eras, has too much detail on matters I don’t care about, and ultimately chooses the wrong organizing principle for its material. The Economist, however, loved it. The latter has too much general material and doesn’t get to the cutting edge points in a sufficiently ruthless manner. For many people, though, it may be the best introduction to the general area.
By the way, I just pre-ordered Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, which looks to be an important book.
Star Children: Return to Home
DARPA, believe it or not, has a request for information on what they call the 100 YEAR STARSHIP™ STUDY.
Neither the vagaries of the modern fiscal cycle, nor net-present-value calculations over reasonably foreseeable futures, have lent themselves to the kinds of century-long patronage and persistence needed to definitively transform mankind into a space-faring species.
The 100 Year Starship™ Study is a project seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible….
We are seeking ideas for an organization, business model and approach appropriate for a self-sustaining investment vehicle. The respondent must focus on flexible yet robust mechanisms by which an endowment can be created and sustained, wholly devoid of government subsidy or control, and by which worthwhile undertakings—in the sciences, engineering, humanities, or the arts—may be awarded in pursuit of the vision of interstellar flight….
Responses should describe the:
• Organizational structure;
• Governance mechanism;
• Investment strategy and criteria; and
• Business model for long-term self-sustainment.
The best model we have of such an organization is a religion. Business organizations such as the Hudson’s Bay Company have occasionally lasted hundreds of years but more by accident than by design. Universities have lasted hundreds of years, although often with government support and vague missions. A few foundations have lasted for a long period of time but often with big mission changes.
Many religions, however, have maintained themselves more or less intact for over a thousand years. Even in the modern age, new religions appear to be quite capable of forming and maintaining themselves for long periods of time. Mormonism has been on-going for nearly two centuries, the Unification Church and Scientology (n.b. started by a science-fiction writer) have been on-going for over half a century. A religion with a million or so adherents can easily last for hundreds of years while generating substantial revenues and while maintaining focus.
Humanity was born of the stars, our very atoms forged in the heart of a million suns. It is in the stars that we lost travelers will find our true home and our true destiny. The twinkling lights of the yawning sky gently call to us each night to return to the place of our birth. We must answer that call. Star-children, return to home.
(See what I mean? This could work. )
Hat tip: Daniel Kuehn.
*A Convergence of Civilizations*
That’s the new book by Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd and the subtitle is The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World. I read it as offering three major messages: a) there is no unique pattern for Muslim demographic evolution, b) there is more civilizational convergence than divergence, and c) the demographic data we observe explain a good deal about various Muslim countries. Here are some specific points:
1. In 1998-1999 about 55 percent of married women in Burkina Faso lived in polygamous relationships. In the Muslim parts of Nigeria, rates of polygamy can run forty to fifty percent, as opposed to about thirty percent in the Christian parts of Nigeria.
2. Demographically, Iran is very much a Western country with a 2.08 fertility rate, and the authors strongly hint that Iran has a reasonable chance of modernizing as Turkey has; the authors also worry that Turkey has not made a complete demographic transition and thus is vulnerable to backsliding. In general the authors seem to believe that the modernizing properties of Shiism are underrated.
3. Less than five percent of Uzbek or Tajik women are unmarried at age thirty. In Morocco it is 41 percent unmarried at age thirty, in Tunisia it is 54 percent, 50 percent in Lebanon, and a staggering 58 percent unmarried at age thirty in Algeria.
4. Palestinian birth rates are not as high as they are often made out to be: “If one takes Israel and the occupied territories together, one can grasp the absurdity of the demographic confrontations: The high fertility rate of Israeli Arabs is an internal threat to the Jewish state, whereas the high fertility rate of the Jewish settlers threatens Palestinian predominance in the West Bank.” (p.67)
5. In Shiite Azerbaijan, there are almost twice as many abortions per woman as live births, 3.2 to 1.7.
6. Among the Muslims of Europe, the Kosovars are arguably the least religious but also the most demographically conservative.
7. The Muslim Malays seem to have combined high birth rates with relatively high status for women.
Speculative throughout, as they say, but always interesting. Here is one short but accurate review. For the original pointer to the book I thank Chris F. Masse. Chris also points us to the DSK prediction market.
Sentences to ponder
Majid Movahedi, 30, is scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran’s judiciary hospital at noon on Saturday while Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, drops acid in both his eyes, her lawyer said.
The story is here.
France fact of the day
Before the ban, the Interior Ministry estimated 2,000 women wore facial veils in France.
For all the fuss, that’s not so many. And:
French police have stopped 46 women seen wearing facial veils in public since a ban on such coverings went into effect last month, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
Happy Easter
“The People’s Budget”
It is endorsed by Paul Krugman and also Jeffrey Sachs, so I thought I would give it a look. It is from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. One simple question is to ask how the rich are taxed:
1. There are separate rates in the mid- to high forties for millionaires, with strict limits on itemized deductions.
2. “Raise the taxable maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable maximum on the employer side.” With volatile incomes, it’s tricky to translate that into an expected marginal rate or to figure out how much is infra-marginal. See the technical appendix, p.8, for more details, though I find the entire proposal here poorly explicated. In any case, it’s a big tax increase.
3. Tax capital gains and dividends at the normal income rates. (I am not sure how loss offsets are to be treated, though it could make a big difference and significantly boost the demand for volatile stocks.)
4. I’m not sure what happens with state-level income tax rates but there’s certainly, in the proposal, no talk of them going down. And since they’re probably not free market deregulators at the state and local level, I suppose I expect those taxes to go up, given Medicaid burdens, pension problems, ailing educational systems, and so on.
5. Estate taxes would be raised significantly (sock it to Boy Mankiw!), as would corporate income taxes, there would be new financial transactions taxes, there would be a new bank tax, and tax enforcement would be stiffer.
6. There are, by the way, no proposed cuts in benefits.
What is the final net income and also capital gains rate for wealthy taxpayers? It’s hard to say exactly, but north of seventy percent for income rates (including state and local rates), and near fifty percent for capital gains rates, is not hard to believe.
Quick quiz #1: What are the capital gains tax rates in the European social democracies?
Quick quiz #2: From the climate change debates we learn the value of scientific consensus; what percentage of Democratic public finance economists would favor top income and capital gains rates in the neighborhood of seventy and fifty percent? Some of them have read and digested, for instance, this paper by the impressive Raj Chetty.
Quick quiz #3: Does the technical report offer estimated labor supply and investment elasticities in response to these higher tax rates? (p.s. the answer is “no.”)
I can tell you this: in the technical appendix; the assumption is that the net effect on growth, from investment changes, after all the new public sector investment is called into place, is a positive [sic] 0.3%.
There have been some good criticisms of the funny assumptions behind the Ryan plan, but actually this budget isn’t better, either in terms of its final conclusions, its adherence to best scientific practices, or its transparency in getting to its results. Should we not apply equally high standards to both the Ryan budget and this? There are plenty of good arguments that taxes have to go up, but this particular proposal isn’t one of them. INSERT SNARKY CLOSING OF YOUR CHOICE I WON’T DO IT FOR YOU.
Why are so many Russian Jews Republicans?
I wouldn’t exactly describe my family this way, but here are some data (do read the whole article):
The most recent data, from the 2004 election, show that Russian Jews preferred Bush to Kerry by a margin of 3 to 1. Israel, national security, and the economy topped the list of concerns among Russian Jews, but there was also a cultural component to their preference; they were among the so-called Values Voters who voted Republican based on cultural wedge issues. A month before the election, 81 percent of Russian Jews supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages—nearly the inverse number of Jews nationally. They also expressed heavy opposition to affirmative action and showed less support for on-demand abortion, according to numbers compiled by the Research Institute for New Americans, which tracks the Russian-speaking community.
And here is more evidence. Why might this be? The stronger record of Republicans, in particular Reagan, as anti-communists is one obvious reason, but that doesn’t explain the broader conservative tendency. The Russian Jews are not anti-gay marriage because the U.S. Republicans are. The more hawkish stance of Republicans on Israel is another reason, but again that doesn’t seem to explain why the connection is such a fundamental one. It doesn’t sound as if these Russian Jews are yearning to become Democrats, if only for the Israel issue.
I would suggest that many Russian Jews, compared to American Jews, are much less hesitant to affiliate with the American brand of Christianity found in the Republican Party. Related strains of thought have been prevalent in Russia for a long time, yet for a long while their Christian nature was covered up by communist rule. Furthermore attachment to Israel, rather than a lifelong felt contrast with American Christians, or strict Judaic observance, is the source of Jewish identity for many Russian Jews. So affiliation with a fairly Christian party is not jarring for the Russian Jews and indeed it may be welcomed, especially if it dovetails with pro-Israel attitudes.
The implied prediction is that Russian Jews who assimilate more in American life, and who marry Americans, are less likely to be Republicans.
I found this part of the article interesting:
Theirs is no country-club Republicanism. Russian Jews in New York, the nation’s largest Russian-Jewish community, numbering 350,000, are largely under-employed; a majority earns less than $30,000. (These numbers do not reflect under-education. The average Russian Jewish immigrant has more higher education that his average American Jewish counterpart.)
On related questions, here is Ilya Somin. Here is another opinion:
“Russians respect power,” says Gary Shteyngart, a novelist who emigrated to New York from Leningrad at age 7. “Many immigrants give lip service to democracy but in the end they want some patriarchal white guy to run things with a strong hand. Feelings of oppression that began within the anti-Semitic confines of the Soviet Union are turned from a defensive to an offensive stance under the false perception that the Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Communist Party of the USSR.”
I thank Natasha, a loyal MR reader, for the pointer.
Religious conversion as an anti-poverty strategy
Adam writes to me:
Hypothetical for you: would a massive conversion of low-income people to Mormonism reduce poverty? Utah looks to have some good demographics, which must be somewhat due to to the fact that 60% belong to the LDS church: http://www.adherents.com/largecom/lds_dem.html
They have the lowest child poverty rate in the country, the highest birth rate but the lowest out-of-wedlock birthrate.
Is Mormon conversion a viable development policy?
A viable *policy*, no, but a viable solution *yes*. Many of the costs of poverty are sociological rather than narrowly economic per se. In other words, many of the poor do not have what could be called Mormon lifestyles. This point holds all the more strongly in Latin America, where alcoholism is arguably a larger economic problem than in the United States. It is not uncommon for a rural village to have a male alcoholism rate of up to fifty percent.
A political conservative is more likely to make this point than to simply focus on the lack of money earned by the poor. A political liberal is more likely to assume that the rate of strict religiosity can rise only so high, and take that as a background constraint. Furthermore, under the exogenous thought experiment of many more poor people converting to Mormonism, positive selection bias diminishes and perhaps the religion as a whole becomes less strict.
The truth of the Mormonism insight doesn’t necessarily have strong implications for cash-based social aid policies in the meantime. Mormonism, as a variable, is difficult for political agents to manipulate, although they (possibly) can squash it. Raising this point, however, makes the poor look less like victims and more like a group partially complicit in their own fate. That framing does have “marketing” implications for the politics of how many resources the poor will receive. For this reason, liberals sometimes underrate the conservative point, because they do not like its political implications, and this leads liberals to misunderstand poverty. The conservatives end up misunderstanding poverty policy. Almost everyone ends up a little screwy and off-base on this issue, victims of the fallacy of mood affiliation.
Here is an article about the poorest community in the United States, in terms of measured income, it is mostly Hasidic Jews (1/20). It doesn’t have most of the problems which we usually associate with poor communities.
A new school of regulatory economics the culture that is Georgia
Members of a central Georgia church plan to gather at gas pumps to pray for lower prices.
WMAZ-TV reports the Beacon of Light Christian Center is planning the Saturday prayer gathering at gas pumps outside a Kroger grocery store in Dublin.
Pastor Marshall Mabry said he believes that if church members come together and pray as a community, they can make something happen.
Mabry said that with prices reaching almost $4, he says he plans to ask God for help.
He said it’s the third time members of his congregation have met at gas pumps to pray.
Mabry said he wants to start a movement which spreads from the small town of Dublin to the rest of the nation.
The article is here and I thank Peter Metrinko for the pointer.
China Grave Bubble
I cannot afford to buy a house while I’m alive and now cannot afford to buy a grave for when I’m dead.
The soaring price of land in China is spreading to burial plots which now can cost more per square foot than luxury homes. And here:
Some Chinese call themselves fen nu (grave slaves), derived from fang nu (housing slaves) – those burdened with huge housing mortgages.
Hat tip: Helen Yang.
*Shi’ism*
The author is Hamid Dabashi and the subtitle is A Religion of Protest. This book is excellent in every chapter and on virtually on every page, including in its discussion of cinema and aesthetics. Excerpt:
[In Shi’ism] what we see is the exact opposite of deferred obedience. Instead we witness a permanent state of deferred defiance — a defiance in the making, a defiance to come. What the Shi’is have deferred in the aftermath of the murder of their primordial son is not obedience — it is defiance. Because the central trauma of Shi’ism is the killing of a primordial son and not a primordial father, Shi’ism has remained a quintessentially youthful religion, the religion the young revolutionaries defying the patriarchal order of things.