Standing up to hard science bullies...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilson-social-sciences-20120712,0,4672619.story

As far as defenses against 'hard science' bullies go, this one's pretty soft.  The idea that social sciences are inferior because we can't run randomized experiments is ridiculous.  And it's not just ridiculous because some social scientists do run randomized experiments with successful results.  It's mostly ridiculous because randomized experiments would be generally an inferior way of going about research on the social world.

Biological and physical sciences take as their object of study units of analysis that have no agency.  And by that I mean that they create no meaning.  Cells, organs, atoms, molecules, elements... these things are what scientists say they are.  They mean what scientists say they mean.  So of course it's possible to run repeatable, randomized experiments.  They are examining a physical reality which they have defined in the first place.

Attempting to run experiments on social actors is inherently problematic precisely because social actors are in the business of making meaning.  They interpret the world around them according to culturally prescribed logics, vocabularies, rules, categories, and experiences.  To try to "repeat" an experiment on a social actor would require holding an infinite number of variables constant.  And further, to 'repeat' an experiment on the same actor is literally impossible because that actor has been fundamentally transformed by the initial experimental attempt.

Social actors can also sustain qualitatively different relationships to their involvement in experimental activity.  They can engage a situation ironically, as a joke, as a test, as a competition, as a performance, as a rehearsal, and so on.  To try to control these "frames" of meaning through which actors understand their engagements would be impossible.  The post-experimental questionnaire is rendered useless if one party engaged the experiment as a race and the other as a test.

So if physical and natural scientists find their work more valuable because they can perform repeatable experiments, they shouldn't strain to pat themselves on the back too much.  It's not because they have more rigorous scientific procedures, but because they have objects of study which are without the agency to find and make meaning.  And in that way, their task is simpler.  They study units of the universe which they themselves define, we study the processes through which social actors give their worlds meaning.  And those meanings are always temporary, contingent, and negotiated.

If we can't predict where the next rampage shooting will be, it's not because our procedures our poor.  Rampage shootings are not so passive as to allow themselves to be predicted.  Prediction is simply the wrong goal.  Good social science yields understanding, empathy, and empirical knowledge of how people live meaningful lives.  To stay true to our field of inquiry is to remember that we study subjects, not objects.

The Social Sciences’ ‘Physics Envy’ - NYTimes.com

The Social Sciences’ ‘Physics Envy’ - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

I appreciate the authors' take that social science should not try to emulate natural science, but I'm not sure that I agree with their account for why we need not have "physics envy".  They seem to say that social science is valuable through constructing theories or through analyzing data, but that these tasks need not have the typical natural science organization where theories are tested and then accepted or rejected.  Both theories and data, they say, can be valuable without the other.

This might be true.  But I think that there is a more fundamental reason that social scientists should abandon a natural science model: our objects of study are not the same kind of thing.  Astronomers and Geologists look at different aspects of the natural world, and so use different instruments. But they both look at the natural world and can share a similar way of going about their looking.  When social scientists try to look at the world in this way, they often site the murkiness that they see: so many variables, too many factors to consider, have to reduce the complexity of the social reality.  Sometimes they are tempted to tame the complexity by going into the laboratory.  But I'd argue that at that point, they're no longer really looking at the social world at all.

For me, the fundamental difference between the social and natural world is the presence of meaning in the former.  When a physicist examines how long it takes for a bullet to hit the earth after being shot at velocity v, the answer "is what it means".  That's it.  The natural world is an object to be scrutinized, and when we learn how it works, we've contributed knowledge to natural scientists.  The bullet doesn't have a racial, ethnic, gender identity.  The bullet has no experience or subjectivity.  The gun provides a pure force which causes movement in a straightforward way.  Things in the natural world exhibit behavior but not action.

When we talk about the social world, we talk about meaningful action.  People are not passive behave-ers, they actively create, invoke, reproduce meaning.  We need theories that capture the way this works and these should be overwhelmingly empirical.  If we try to study a people performing meaningful action as if they were molecules or atoms, we miss what is unique about the social world.  If we look for "causes" or "forces" that push people to behave in certain ways, we have already falsified a huge part of how society works.  Culture and Capitalism and Modernity and Gender and Race cannot be studied as forces which cause people to act as if they were the same kind of thing as gravity causing the apple to fall.

My sense is that this is how Latour and Science Studies looks at the practices of natural science.  What natural scientists are up to is creating something like "meaningful science".  Not every scientific experiment is equally meaningful.  You must be integrated into the scientific mode of understanding to appreciate just what the significance of this or that study is.  You have to learn to act and see like a scientist. The same, of course, is true of social science.  We also create meaning. But in that natural science is a realm of active meaning and social science is NOT a realm of passive behavior, perhaps it is they who should have social science envy.

Mitt Romney: It was Bush, not Obama, who averted second Depression - latimes.com

Mitt Romney: It was Bush, not Obama, who averted second Depression - latimes.com:

'via Blog this'

so basically... Romney has decided that now that he's pretty solid for the nomination, he better start his transition to battling Obama.  All of a sudden he's talking support for TARP, creating Republican success story, against Obama, maybe annoying some Tea Party-ers, but leaning back toward the middle.  I see your game Mitt.  I see your game.

Thoughts on the Mike Daisey retraction

Only read if you've followed the retraction of Mike Daisey's story from This American Life.  If you listened to the original episode, I highly recommend the retraction episode that came out this week.  Here are my thoughts....

Mike Daisey's initial episode was very moving.  I sensed it was overly dramatic though.  Daisey is a very dramatic story teller.  That he allowed his story to pass as journalism is unfortunate and, in my mind, his biggest sin.  Clearly Daisey felt bad about this and it was the thing for which he apologized most profusely in the retraction episode. I appreciated that.  But Ira Glass wouldn't let it stop there.  He pushed Daisey to admit that it was a work of fiction.  Daisey didn't want to and Ira became increasingly frustrated.

Ira was interested in calling it "fiction" and Daisey a "liar" so that more of the blame was on Daisey and less on TAL.  While understandable, I don't think that's right.  Stories can have more relationships to reality than non-fiction and fiction.  

Daisey was right to insist that in the context of theater, there may be different conceptions of fact and fiction.  In creative work there is something called "historical fiction" which means that the historical time period is, in various ways, depicted truthfully but the story itself is invented.  Or the book Animal Farm... the specific story, of course, cannot be read as non-fiction.  Animals cannot talk or start a revolution.  On the other hand, taken as a metaphor there is a sense in which the novel is absolutely historically accurate. 

Honestly I felt like Ira was trying to smear Daisey.  When Daisey said that he thought they had different world views about the nature of fiction/non-fiction, Ira pressed and said that he thinks that his own view is the "normal" one.  It just seemed like he wanted Daisey to look like a crazy person who has no respect for the difference between pure imagination and concrete facts.

Daisey certainly lied about what kind of work he did, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the work itself was a lie.  That said, Daisey has to qualify his work differently regardless of where/how he releases it.  When you tell a story that is so close to the standards of journalism without meeting those standards, we have to question whether your intentions are to mislead listeners.  Which means that Daisey should have been extra forthcoming about how his story should be heard by listeners.  I hope this is the lesson he learned, because with the proper qualifications I still think the initial story has great value.  

A final point... TAL is not always journalistic.  David Sideris has told fables on the show which involve forest critters talking and acting like human beings.  I'm sure there are other examples of blatantly fictional stories that have aired.  The point is that Daisey's show needed more transparency.  Calling it "fiction" rather than "journalism" is just a different misrepresentation.

What did that play mean?

People who are connected at all to the sports world, and most people who are not, know that last night something happened that involved two fellas named Blake Griffin and Kendrick Perkins.  It happened at Staples Center last night during the 3^rd quarter of a professional basketball game in which the Oklahoma City Thunder had traveled to play the Los Angeles Clippers.  People who pay attention to twitter will know that the twitterverse started blowing up in response to this happening.  And it hasn’t stopped today.  At some point this afternoon I noticed that Kendrick Perkins was still trending.  Bloggers have been blogging, radio commentators have been commenting, regular people have been talking about it.  In short: people really give a fuck about this happening.  So what happened? Watch:

Blake Griffin jumps really high and throws the ball through the basket while Kendrick Perkins tries to stop him.  Blake makes the basket anyways, A foul is called on Kendrick, and Blake and then gets to shoot an additional free throw. 

First off, to be moved by this play requires that you know what you’re looking at.  Probably by now most of you have witnessed others watching this video.  What’s interesting is how other people’s reaction varies dramatically depending on whether or not they play, watch, or know anything at all about basketball.  Show this video to somebody who never watches basketball (or is occasionally forced to watch but cares not at all) and you are likely to get an enthusiastic, mundane, or even sarcastic “wow.”    So the happening is not naturally, eternally, or objectively amazing.  It requires you have some skill to pull out what’s amazing about it.

Now, for people with that skill, this play is REALLY amazing.  Not just to me.  Kendrick Perkins’ Wikipedia page was alteredafter the play to say that Blake Griffin had “forcibly removed [his] soul from his body.”  What does that even mean??   More mild responses often invoke that strangest of basketball verb-noun hybrids: “posterize”.  So for those who can see the amazingness of the play, it’s really amazing.  Saying why is a tricky thing and I’m not ready to claim I have the full answer, just some directions for the answer which I find productive and counterproductive.

Basketball insiders might try to tell you that this kind of play matters a lot because there is some objective cost-benefit calculation that says making this kind of play helps you win.  In addition to citing the fact that the Clippers’ earned three points on the possession, they’ll say things like “this is a momentum changing play”, “this gives the whole team new energy”, “this demoralizes the other team.”  Some of those things might be true, but they don’t explain why this play matters so much.  There are game winners (shots that put a team ahead at the very end of a game) that don’t receive this much buzz.  There are four point plays that don’t receive this much buzz.  Heck, at this point in the game the Clippers were comfortably in the lead so the play didn’t actually change the course of the game at all.  And I’ve NEVER heard any of those plays be described in reference to “removing souls.”  Anybody who tries to say that the play mattered in relation to winning and losing is missing a lot about the story.

The answer must come from the fact that basketball plays are more than just pieces of a micro-economic story about winning and losing.  It’s not just that this play put the Clips in a better position to win.  It’s that different plays MEAN different things.  Meaning is layered onto or extracted from basketball plays that resonate with other kinds of sensibilities we have about the world (at least for those of us who have learned to read those meanings).

So what does it mean that Blake removed Kendrick’s soul?  Why is that a reasonable interpretation?  Well, it points to the fact that Blake took something from Kendrick.  He turned Kendrick into a victim of theft.  And the thing he stole is something like Kendrick’s metaphysical respectability.  Just look at his face afterward.  With the crowd cheering, Kendrick looks entirely dejected, lost, lifeless, soulless.  This phrasing also implicates Kendrick as part of the story.  What the dunk MEANS is not just that Blake dunked, but that he dunked “on top of” a victim.  Can thieves practice their art without a victim?  No.  Could Blake have made this dunk without Kendrick? No.  Watch closely in slow motion.  Kendrick’s attempt to block Blake is part of what propels Blake up and over.  It’s what makes Blake reach out and extend the ball over him.  The “posters” that will be made of the moment of maximal humiliation would not be possible without Kendrick.  I doubt Blake could physically put his own body in that position. 

So part of the humiliation of the play is the fact that Kendrick was seduced into trying to stop Blake, and in the process of trying actually assisted Blake in making the play. It’s like a victim of a con who voluntarily enters into a gambling circuit only later to realize that he was in “over his head” and would be taken for all he was worth.  (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the phrase “in over his head” works metaphorically in one example and physically in the other)

It’s kind of sad for Kendrick because he was more or less going about the play normally.  The first players to get “beat” on this play were his teammates Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka.  Kendrick then stepped up to help them out like a good teammate should.  His mistake, to the extent that he made one, was coming just a little too late to try to bail out his teammates.  Realizing they were about to lose a hefty pot in the gambling ring, Kendrick went all in to try to save them from their mistake.  Perhaps if he had arrived just one round of betting earlier, he could have diverted Blake's winnings.  In that moment he didn't have time to stop and think that Blake was primed to make him a victim also.  With his mark all in- soul and all- Blake’s play meant a whole lot more than 3 points.

The Bachelorette and Moral Outrage

Recently I’ve been in a number of discussions with well-educated folks on the topic of reality TV.  At least some of these people have taken these discussions as an opportunity to flex their cringe muscles.  The very mention of the genre induced visceral disgust.  Their humanity and intellect was insulted by the mere existence of such programming.

I’m not really so ashamed to admit that I’m a fan of the Bachelor and Bachelorette and have been for some years now.  I find some of the characters on the show endlessly entertaining.  Some have received my sympathy, some my love, some my hatred, but rarely my indifference.  Certain things about the show grind on me and I’m usually glad to be able to fast forward through commercials, but there’s no doubt that I’m sucked in.  Upon saying this to the cringing intellectuals I receive looks of shock and worse- pity.  How could I possibly be so obtuse? 

In this post I’m not so interested in defending the show.  In fact I’m not sure I could.  If pressed far enough I find it difficult to pinpoint the show’s moral contribution to society. What I have to say about The Bachelor/ette is more descriptive than defensive.  I want to make some observations that illuminate some of the particulars of a rather contentious pop cultural battleground.

I think a discussion of the show has to begin with this question: Is The Bachelorette a competition show? In one sense- yes.  25 men are “competing” for the affections of a single woman (in the current season her name is Ashley).  The men are all structurally provided opportunities to impress her.  They go on a slew of individual and group dates in which they have limited time to show her why they are the man worthy to be sliding an engagement ring on her finger by season’s end.  The men are sly: they give Ashley tidbits about what other guys are like when she’s not around, they ask her to chat while she is already mid-conversation with a competitor, and they work to establish a relationship ASAP knowing that they are on the chopping block.  It’s all quite strategic.  When the show’s host Chris Harrison posts blog entries applauding certain men for “rising to the occasion,” the competitive aspect of the show is made rather explicit.

But what of a man who comes on the show and is strictly interested in winning?  Outrage.  “Winning” the competition is not a morally sufficient reason to be there.  We see this over and over again across seasons.  This season it was the oh-so-handsome Bentley who declared his lack of interest in Ashley immediately upon his arrival to the mansion (playing field?).  Nonetheless he stuck around, convinced Ashley he was “there for the right reasons”, poured on the romance, and totally wooed her.  Having full knowledge of Bentley’s intentions, Harrison tried to warn Ashley but failed- she “followed her heart.”  When eventually she learned the full thrust of his gamesmanship, Ashley was furious that somebody could have taken advantage of her attempt to see the good in people. 

So in some ways there’s an irony: on a competition show Bentley became widely seen as the season’s slimeball villain for being a “player” whose sole interest was competing.  The full thrust of the irony is appreciated when we look at a twitter account which celebrates Bentley for turning the show into a “real competition”.  Presumably in attempt to take jabs at Bentley’s many haters, this tweeter misses the point: if you wanted a real competition, then you’d properly hate Bentley for leaving the show right when it seemed he was in a position to take the game over.  It would be like celebrating Kobe Bryant as a competitor after he walked off the court in the midst of a key playoff game.

So where does this leave us? The men are competing, but they had better be doing more than “merely competing”.  The men should be there to “find love”.  Consider how un-gamelike that is.  People don’t “find baskets” on the basketball court or “find points” on the tennis court.  They actively seek them out.  Well love (or bachelorette’s version of it) works differently.  It should be something that just happens.  It’s a connection that two people “just have” or perhaps- build together.  All the strategy in the world should not contribute.  It’s something that Ashley and her suitors need to find, but NOT play games with.

Therein is the tinge of reality in the show.  What they are competing over (love, marriage, romance) has relevance beyond the boundaries of the competition.  In fact, the whole point of the competition is to end up with a partner who will be with you for the rest of your life… a much more “real” victory than outscoring an opponent 75-70. 

But then we have to ask, what’s real about proposing to a girl after 2+ months?  Even the winner has had what- 8 dates with her?  Spent just two nights together? The clock is ticking on all the relationships and if the men don’t move quickly enough (who can drop the “L-bomb” first!?!) they may find themselves heading home prematurely.  There is also a very intense asymmetry in the relationships.  While Ashley is openly dating multiple guys and constantly comparing them, the men are expected to focus on her alone.  This season, even an off-camera allusion to internet dating sent one guy packing.  So the men are supposed to show faith in the process and put everything into the relationship while Ashley gets to pick which guy’s devotion pleases her most.  We expect more equality and symmetry in our romantic lives.

So the show, like much of reality tv, lies at the cross road of competition and real life.  And why might that be so infuriating?  I’d suggest it offends people because they see it as a cheapening of real life, real love, and real marriage.  If love can be found on a game show, then what does that say about the viewer’s own relationships or marriage? 

But people can’t just hate it because it’s a stupid or unrealistic concept.  Sponge Bob Square Pants depicts a sponge and a lobster living together at the bottom of the sea and that show receives no such moral vitriol.  I think people see pieces of themselves in the show- pieces they’d rather not confront.  The truth is that all relationships are built up with some competitive and game-like sensibilities.  Don’t return the text message or phone call too fast, lest you seem desperate.  If you’ve done the inviting three times in a row, you wait for her/him to invite you to the next event.  You hint at your feelings or desires without coming right out with it.  A whole genre of dating-self-help literature has built up around these kinds of strategies.

All the little cat-and-mouse maneuvers are perhaps part of the fun of dating.   But people are often morally attached to an honest, upfront, and forthcoming version of their relationship self: “I don’t play games”.  So when The Bachelorette takes those gamey elements and magnifies them, adds a competitive structure, rules of play, and strict time limits, people are forced to confront versions of themselves they’d rather not look at. 

What kind of story is Abby Wambach telling?

In case you missed US women’s national soccer team defeat Brazil on Sunday here’s what happened:  The US scored in the 2^nd minute.  The 1-0 lead stood until the 68^th minute when Brazil scored on a penalty shot that was riddled with controversy.  The American goalkeeper Hope Solo made an impressive save but the referee called a relatively mysterious encroachment violation that allowed the Brazilians a second chance which they promptly converted.  The Americans faced an uphill battle.  The penalty shot was accompanied by a red card and the US would have to find a way to score while playing the rest of the game shorthanded.  After 90 minutes of regulation the game went to extra time.  Then, just two minutes into overtime Brazilian superstar Marta scored a magical goal.  It looked like the US was done for.  Time ticked down, hope began to slip away.  And then boom.  In the 122nd minute this happened:

Pretty wild.  Just a few moments later the referee blew the final whistle and the game was decided on penalty shots.  Hope Solo came up with a brilliant save and the Americans converted all 5 of their shots.  Incredible comeback victory.

For the last 48 hours I’ve become obsessed with Wambach’s last minute heroics.  I’ve probably watched the highlight video over 20 times.  The perfect cross, the Brazilian goalkeeper’s horrible mis-read, the perfect header, an authentically ecstatic celebration. 

I’m not the only one.  I’ve read a number of columns in which an incredible amount of meaning is taken from Wombach’s goal.  It is part of a “fairy tale” about American “heroes”.  It has been called “one of the toughest, most inspiring displays the sport has ever seen.”  Others have gone as far to say that the goal reveals something about the American spirit through a never-die attitude.  Julie Foudy, an ex-national team player and an ESPN commentator tweeted this soon after the game:

What I luv about sports/soccer. If Abby hadn't scored, 1 min later, the world wud've forgotten the courage displayed 2night. Thank u #uswnt.

Foudy is picking up on what we all intuitively know about sports.  The meaning of a play is drastically different depending on where it happens in the game.  What Foudy is not saying is that if Abby had scored 1 minute earlier, the memory of the game would have been slightly different.  Or if Abby had scored 20 minutes earlier?  Or if Abby had scored first and Marta had scored the last second goal?  Very different.  It’s not just whether you win or lose, it’s how you win or lose.  It’s how the story, or narrative, of the game played out.  In this case the story has a climax at the end that allows us to re-interpret earlier portions of the game.   We extract meaning about country and nation and spirit and heroes because of how and when Abby scored and not just that she scored.

Sports like soccer are a weird beast in this way.  The game marches toward conclusion regardless of what actually happens inside the game.  The clock provides all players and spectators with a definitive sense of “how much is left”.  So the tension that’s built has a unique character.  Not only do we NOT know what will happen, but we DO know precisely when it will have happened.  The knowledge of the precise quantity of game remaining transforms the qualitative meanings of what happens.

Compare this to a sport like baseball which has a slightly different dynamic as the game winds down.  It is the bottom of the 9^th inning, 2 outs, the home team down by a run, 3 balls, 2 strikes, nobody on base.  After the batter fouls off several pitches the pitcher delivers a ball and the batter takes his base.  The tension that built up during the last at bat is momentarily relieved. The game could have ended with the previous at bat but it was extended for at least one more batter.  The same dynamic actually plays out with every pitch.  Because a batter can foul balls into the stands ad nauseum the fans and players can never be positive that the next play is their absolute last chance.

While the difference between baseball and soccer narrative “count downs” are subtle, it points to different experiences of gaming.  Tension is built in different ways.  Baseball builds tension in a herky-jerky style while soccer’s tension builds in a slow and steady hum as the clock marches toward completion.

So when Julie Foudy finds “courage” in the American performance she is doing a reading of just these dynamics.  She makes a curious claim, though.  She says that if Abby hadn’t scored, we would have “forgotten” what was obviously there: the courage.  I actually think that if Abby hadn’t scored we would have taken a different set of meanings from the game altogether.  We would have reinterpreted the overtime as a “coming up short” not a “courageous near miss”.  This sounds close to what Foudy is saying except she wants to believe the courage was there regardless of the goal, I'm saying that we see courage because of the goal.

So things that happen toward the ends of games help us reinterpret the sequence of events that happened up until that point.  Lots of things in social life are like this.  The verdict at a trial, for example.  While we might have thought the defense’s opening statement a bit bizarre, after the not-guilty verdict suddenly it seems rather brilliant.  The climax at the trial is, by definition, the end of the narrative.  And the end tells us what happened in the beginning.  As we come to the end of a great novel we may begin to sense the urgency of the ending coming toward us.  But we also rush to find out what happens on page 300 partly so we can know the full significance of what happened on page 10.

Writers know these dynamics and play with them.  The most obvious example is writer and director M. Night Shyamalan.  Many of his movies give the audience one set of impressions all movie long before he throws in a last minute twist.  In the Sixth Sense we find out that Bruce Willis is actually a dead ghost (and has been all along).  In The Village we find out that this 19^th Century New England village is actually some kind of historical project that exists in a wild life preserve in the 21^st Century (and it has been all along).  Unfortunately for M. Night, his last second heroics are a little too overbearing.  Audiences have started to expect them and they have come to seem corny.  It’s as if Abby Wambach had played cowardly all game long just so she could have the pleasure of making you realize it was actually “courage” that she was doing.