Why tipping is irrational.

Or, the generative effect of the reification of rules of behavior.

1) Tipping after service can be defended on a rational basis if we assume repeated play. That is, if you expect to return to the place and encounter the same service person again, a post-service tip on this occasion could be reasonably expected to induce or maintain good service next time.

2) if it becomes common knowledge that tips are standard behavior, then a post-service tip might become necessary to avoid being the subject of retribution on subsequent visits.

3) But there is more to it than this. People will have an emotional reaction to not leaving a tip, as if they will be shamed or as if they are doing something slightly immoral - physiological signs include nervousness, increased heart rate, etc. Also, others will start to enforce compliance to the standard even when it is irrelevant to their own interests. Claims about tipping are conducted in moral language, using phrases like 's/he deserves it'. Appeals will be made to the potential non-tipper appearing cheap (i.e. not generous) - a status or identity challenge. Worse, these appeals can come from inside the potential non-tipper without needing to be explicit.

4) So, behavior that could have been initially started off on a rational basis is maintained and enforced and perpetuated via completely non-rational mechanisms.

5) In a situation where repeat business is unlikely, tipping is irrational, unless it is done to avoid retribution from one's peers.

Physics Envy?

The social sciences are all supposed to want to be like the natural sciences and especially physics because, variously, they have great data, they can do experiments, they have complicated maths, they can predict with accuracy events in controlled settings, etc. etc. I've read this sort of thing before but here is a quote from a post about Stephen Hawking which brings the emulation of physics into a new light:

"M-theory suffers from the same flaws that string theories did. First is the problem of empirical accessibility. Membranes, like strings, are supposedly very, very tiny—as small compared with a proton as a proton is compared with the solar system. This is the so-called Planck scale, 10^–33 centimeters. Gaining the kind of experimental confirmation of membranes or strings that we have for, say, quarks would require a particle accelerator 1,000 light-years around, scaling up from our current technology. Our entire solar system is only one light-day around, and the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful accelerator, is 27 kilometers in circumference."

So, basically, they have posited (i.e. made up) a bunch of theoretical entities the existence of which it is completely impossible to determine. And this explains everything. But that's alright because it is logical:

Hawking recognized long ago that a final theory—because it would probably involve particles at the Planck scale—might never be experimentally confirmable. "It is not likely that we shall have accelerators powerful enough" to test a unified theory "within the foreseeable future—or indeed, ever," he said in his 1980 speech at Cambridge. He nonetheless hoped that in lieu of empirical evidence physicists would discover a theory so logically inevitable that it excluded all alternatives.

Maybe rational choice should be driving at more becoming more tautologous rather than less. Then it would be more like physics.

Disinterestedness and Charity in Reviewing,

Or Advice to 1st Year Grad Students.
From an old guardian column:

As the novelist Richard Ford has said, "Writing even a bad book is hard work." Nobody who has struggled in front of a screen or paper for three years deserves a pasting written in half a day by a 23-year-old, though the pasting might be justified in terms of what exists on the page.

Hello checks and balances; it's me: Mr. Grey

Unsurprising but depressing news: U.S. courts now agree that they shouldn't have the ability to review the executive's use of power. Yesterday, in a 6-5 decision, the Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit (one below the Supreme Court) ruled that people kidnapped by the CIA and subsequently tortured could not have their day in court because it is too dangerous for the terrists or somesuch. As Judge Fisher put it:

“This case requires us to address the difficult balance the state secrets doctrine strikes between fundamental principles of our liberty, including justice, transparency, accountability and national security... Although as judges we strive to honor all of these principles, there are times when exceptional circumstances create an irreconcilable conflict between them.”

So what exactly does this "state secrets doctrine" mean? It does not just mean that some intelligence or operational details are too sensitive to be revealed to the public in a open court. Indeed, I'd have to agree that it would be mad that ongoing-operations might be jeopardized as part of hearing. But the ruling is far more sinister than that. The state secrets privilege means argues that some information is too sensitive for a day in court and so cases should be dismissed before they are seen. The logic of the doctrine is that even judges should not be allowed to look at information and thus determine whether or not it can be used in court as evidence. Ergo, the case gets shut down.

In other words, these judges agree with the executive branch that they if the President says some information is "too sensitive" then judges should just believe him. Bear in mind, aside from the various illegal detentions, tortures, and disappearances over the years, the executive recently ordered the assassination of an American citizen for national security reasons. Now the Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit agrees that not only should ordinary people have no way of finding out why, nor should the courts - the ostensible check over executive power.

Em, Court of Star Chamber much?

Also remember, this is Obama's DOJ that's arguing this. Imagine how much worse such abuse could be in the future.

Thomas Jefferson must be whizzing in his grave.

The up-is-downism of American political discourse: Special Mosque of Doom edition

Agh, the "Ground Zero Mosque" (not actually at Ground Zero; and a community centre, not a mosque) issue has had me spouting off with such spittle-inflected bile around the house that I thought that I needed to write this down.

Where to begin?

As usual, I am tempted to once more highlight the complete and utter failure of the American journalistic class. It has, as is par for the course, done a bag-up shite job of: (a) do straight reporting without pushing a meme - only yesterday did AP cotton on and ordered a directive not to call it the "Ground Zero Mosque"; (b) acting as gatekeeper/watchdog of civil discourse by allowing the meme's pusher(!)- the disgusting Pam Geller - on telly to push her flavor of patriot-laden bigotry.

Instead on dwelling on the shititude of the journalistic class, I am much more interested in pointing out how the entire crux of this debate - that, to quote Sarah Palin, "is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing" (bleh) - illustrates how Republican behavior is the very type that they claim to be against.

The Republicans (and now some cowardly Dems) claim that because some people feel "sensitive" about certain issues - in this instance the existence of Muslims,apparently - small-government decisions should be overturned.

Right, so let me get this straight. The Republican party, which claims that the government has no right to interfere with private persons and local government decisions, wants to interfere with private persons and local governemtn decisions. And the reason is that a certain segment of the population wants special and distinct consideration, on the grounds of sensitivity. This is from the party that hates affirmitative action because it privileges one group over others. Have I got this right?

Never mind the fact that the dog on the street, never mind most terrorism experts, will tell you that the best way to shore up support for terrorists is to persecute the group they claim to represent.

Wonderful. So in the up-is-down world that is American political discourse, the party that claims to value private property, small government, equal treatment for all groups regardless of race or creed, and national security wants to jepordize national security in order to persecute private individuals and small government so that the will of a distinct identiy group can be met in order to satisfy their sensitivies.

Once more the emperor has no clothes.

And is acting like a wanker.

Indoctrination through fear of failure

A pithy description of the process by which graduate students are convinced to ignore their instincts to critique and instead buy into the intellectual mainstream:

"New inductees into the profession are taught that if they are to invest their scarce human resources wisely, they should believe that the best of the discipline's scientific knowledge is contained in the current main- stream "scientific" literature, and to read the heterodox literature is a foolish waste of human capital."
(Paul Davidson, 2003. 'Is Mathematical Science an Oxymoron?' Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, 25:3)

Presumably there is also a process by which the amount of human capital expended in pursuit of, say, learning formal theory and statistics or Derrida/Heideggerian , makes one loath to confront its limitations.

Intellectual integrity anyone? Anyone?

Aha! I knew it!

I am in the depths of trying to finish an endless re-write of a section of my dissertation so I have still been away.

In lieu of a long post that I have been working on (which is now a bit out-of-date anyway) I want to quickly draw attention to this very unsurprising fact.

According to this study, the four major media outlets in the US have radically altered the way they describe water-boarding since 2004. For most of the last 100 years, this practice was unequivocally referred to as torture. However, once the US started doing it, it was called something else - anything else.

I have been back-and-forthing with a friend of mine about the lackluster, obsequious, and power-shielding/power-worshiping nature of political court-stenography journalism in the US, and I feel this little cherry really supports my point.

Hat tip: Glenn Greenwald