Thelonius Monk – born October 10, 1917

October 10, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Happy 100th Birthday!

Musicians often refer to songs by jazzers as “tunes.” Whose tune is that?” one musician might ask another who has just played something that’s not entirely familiar?  Standards (by Porter, Gershwin, Rodgers, Arlen, et al.) can be “songs,” maybe because they come ready-made with lyrics. But  numbers by jazz musicians are usually “tunes” – Bud Powell tunes, Bird tunes.

The works of a few jazz greats are spoken of as not just tunes but also as “compositions.” Ellington, of course, who wrote works that lent themselves to full arrangements for his orchestra.  But also Monk, even though most of his compositions were originally vehicles for a trio or quartet or even just solo piano. Most of these are in the standard 32-bar format, but, for some reason I cannot quite explain, while Dizzy’s “Night in Tunisia” is a tune, “Round Midnight” is a composition.

It’s fairly easy to understand why a tune is a composition when all the notes, not just the single line of notes that are the melody, are essential. “Ruby My Dear,” “Crepuscule With Nellie,” “Monk’s Mood,” and others. But even Monk’s tunes that can be written as a single-line lead-sheet are thought of as compositions. “Well, You Needn’t” is a 32-bar AABA tune, and the A section has only two alternating chords, F and G-flat. Yet it’s a “composition.”

Here’s “Crepuscule With Nellie,” recorded in 1957.

The album is “Monk’s Music” – Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins on tenor, Gigi Gryce alto, Ray Copeland trumpet,Wilbur Ware bass, Shadow Wilson drums. I wish I knew more about this recording date. Except for Coltrane and perhaps Shadow Wilson, these were not people Monk was playing regularly with.

Connie Hawkins — 1943 - 2017

October 8, 2017 
Posted by Jay Livingston

(Click for a larger view. You can’t really tell from this picture, 
but it’s just possible that Clyde made the shot.)

The opening chapter of  Pete Axthelm’s  The City Game (1970) is about the Rucker Tournament in Harlem – playground basketball at its best. Even NBA (or at the time ABA) players would show up. Julius Erving, Nate Archibald, Wilt. The chapter is also about Connie Hawkins

Axthelm was an excellent sports journalist, and it’s a wonderful chapter. At the risk of tl;dr and copyright violation, I’m going to quote a fair amount of it.

Axthelm’s informant is Pat Smith, who had played at Marquette. As they walk by the playground where Rucker used to take place, Smith points to a tree. “When I was a kid, I’d climb up into that tree. I’d stake out one of the branches early in the morning and just sit there all day.”

“It was the kind of game that established citywide reputations. Clinton Robinson was playing. Jackie Jackson was there. So was Wilt Chamberlain, who was in his first or second year of pro ball at the time....” He savored each name as he spoke it; this was a very special honor roll. Some of the names, like Robinson’s and Jackson’s, would be familiar only to the ghetto kids who once worshiped them; others, like Chamberlain’s, would be recognized by every basketball fan. But to Smith and many others they were all gods, and their best games were Olympian clashes. “Chamberlain and Robinson were on the same team along with some other greats, and they were ahead by about 15 points. They looked like easy winners. Then, up in the tree, I heard a strange noise. There were maybe four, five thousand people watching the game, and all of a sudden a hush came over them. All you could hear was a whisper: ‘The Hawk, The Hawk, The Hawk is here.’ Then the crowd parted. And the Hawk walked onto the court.”

Axthelm interweaves Smith’s account of the game with backstory about Rucker and about Hawkins – Brooklyn Boys High, U of Iowa, the scandal and suspension, the Globetrotters (for godssake, the Globetrotters – thanks NBA), the lawsuit against the NBA. You can read about all that in the obits today. (Try Richard Goldstein in the Times.)

Then back to the game.

“The crowd was still hushed as they called time out,” Smith continued. “They surrounded the man. They undressed the man. And finally he finished lacing up his sneakers and walked out into the backcourt. He got the ball, picked up speed, and started his first move. Chamberlain came right out to stop him. The Hawk went up-he was still way out beyond the foul line-and started floating toward the basket. Wilt, taller and stronger, stayed right with him- but then The Hawk hook -dunked the ball right over Chamberlain. He hook -dunked! Nobody had ever done anything like that to Wilt. The crowd went so crazy that they had to stop the game for five minutes. And I almost fell out of the tree.”

But, Smith says, one move, no matter how spectactular does not close out a game. It takes it up a level.. Chamberlain, 7' 1" and strong, stuffs two-handed over Hawkins.

“By then everybody on the court was fired up-and it was time for The Hawk to take charge again. Clinton Robinson came toward him with the ball, throwing those crazy moves on anyone who tried to stop him, and then he tried to loft a lay-up way up onto the board, the way he had done before. Only this time The Hawk was up there waiting for it. He was up so high that he blocked the shot with his chest. Still in midair, he kind of swept his hands down across his chest as if he were wiping his shirt-and slammed the ball down at Robinson’s feet. The play seemed to turn the whole game around, and The Hawk's team came from behind to win. That was The Hawk. Just beautiful. I don’t think anybody who was in that crowd could ever forget that game.”

“Contracts Freely Entered Into” or “An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse”?

October 6, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments about arbitration clauses in the contracts that consumers and employees sign. I don’t know how many times I have clicked on “I agree,” but one of the things I’ve probably agreed to was arbitration.

Imagine that a company is adding a small and almost hidden fee to the bills of all its customers. If I notice it, and if I complain, the company might give me back the few dollars it has scammed me out of over the past several months. But they’ll keep the money that thousands of less vigilant customers have paid. Or maybe they won’t do the right thing. I could file a lawsuit. But even the cheapest lawyer would cost far more than the amount of money I might get back.

The way to stop the scam is for some ambitious lawyer to file a class-action suit on behalf of all the victims. But it turns out that all of us have clicked “I agree.” We will each have to settle the dispute in individual arbitration. No class action. Me vs. Wells Fargo. Guess who’s going to win.
       
It’s the same for workers whose employment contracts have arbitration clauses.

Earlier this year, Susan Fowler sparked an uproar in the technology industry with allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Uber. An internal investigation led to more than 200 employee complaints and at least 20 terminations. But Fowler may not be able to sue Uber in court. When she joined the ridesharing company, Uber required her to resolve any disputes through private arbitration and waive her right to participate in a class action. (Wired)

Sunday night at 10:00 – just a few hours before the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments – “The Deuce,” had a memorable scene about individual arbitration. The show has several interwoven plot lines, all set in the grittier regions of the 1970s New York City ecosystem. In the blue-collar biota, Bobby is in charge of paychecks at a construction site. His brother-in-law, a sleazo named Vinnie who knows some mob guys, suggests that instead of handing out paychecks they become in effect a check-cashing service. The worker signs over his check and receives cash minus a 5% cut. The workers will be OK with it. Pay comes at the end of the day on Friday, the workers want cash for the weekend, and the banks are closed till Monday.

Except one of the workers, Bill Schmidt, wants his check for the full amount. Word of this gets around to the mob guy. He comes to the construction site with his enforcer, has Schmidt called aside, and supervises the mob version of individual arbitration – the goon beats Schmidt brutally.

I doubt that Justices Gorsuch or Roberts or any of the others were watching “The Deuce,” and if they were, I doubt that they saw a connection. After all, there are obvious differences between Uber and the Gambino family. MasterCard is not the Mafia. Wells Fargo didn’t beat up their employees who were reluctant to join in the company scams. Wells Fargo just made it impossible for them to get jobs in banking.

We all know the most famous case of a contract signed under a power imbalance.

The important similarity is the discrepancy in power. At some point, that power difference makes it ludicrous to talk about “contracts freely entered into.”

When there are only one or two providers or credit card companies, and they all have the same provisions in their contracts, how meaningful is “I agree,” especially when these companies have armies of lawyers? They also have the Republican-appointed majority of the Supreme Court.

The Vast Majority of Gun Owners

October 5, 2017 

Posted by Jay Livingston


I heard a guy on the radio arguing against any new gun laws. He said that he himself owns many guns, maybe forty (roughly the number owned by the Las Vegas shooter, though the guy on the radio didn’t phrase it that way).. His personal arsenal includes a few assault rifles. He likes to go out to the shooting range and open fire. That’s what the vast majority of gun owners do, he said. Plus self-protection. 

So I’m reposting what I wrote a few days after the Orlando nightclub massacre. And I may repost it yet again after the next massacre. Of course, it will probably have to be a record breaker to make the news. Your run-of-the-American-mill mass shooting, with its paltry three or four victims – that happens just about every day, so it doesn’t even make the news the way it might in most other countries. 

When Guns Do What Guns Are Designed to Do

An assault rifle is designed to kill – to kill a lot of people, and quickly. That’s why it was created. That’s its primary function. For soldiers in combat, it’s a very good thing to have. If it could not kill lots of people, nobody would want it.

Manufacturing assault rifles in pink and posting pictures of young girls holding them doesn’t alter that basic purpose. Neither does the statistic that nearly all civilians who own them use them for fun. What that statistic means is that we as a nation have decided through our legislators that the fun of those gun owners is more important than the lives of 50 people in Orlando or 20 schoolchildren in Sandy Hook.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose that the military developed small bomb, something like a hand grenade but much more powerful. It easily blows up a building and kills anything within a 50-yard radius. Soldiers find them to be very effective in combat.

The companies that manufacture these bombs also sell them to the public. Lots of people buy these bombs. Bomb stores spring up next to gun stores. They have names like Bombs Away or It’s Da Bomb – all in good fun. And in fact, nearly all of the buyers use them for fun – tossing them into empty fields. People go to bombing ranges that have small buildings put up so that patrons can blow them sky high. Of course, there are accidents. Bomb owners sometimes blow up themselves. Or their own houses with their children inside. 

But occasionally, once a year or so, someone tosses a bomb into a crowd of people or into a real building. Many people are killed. Predictably, liberals say that maybe we ought not allow these bombs to be freely sold. Maybe we ought not let them be sold at all. But the bomb lobby claims that bombs are armaments and therefore are protected by the Constitution from being restricted in any way, and besides, people need the bombs for their own protection. Our legislators, a majority of them, agree. The occasional slaughter is no reason to prevent everyone from getting a bomb.

The bomb lobby and the media will invariably refer to each slaughter as a “tragedy” –  unfortunate but unavoidable. After all, the bomber got his bombs legally. And if he did get them illegally, it just shows that bomb laws don’t work.

Bill O’Reilly on Guns: Six Specious Reasons to Support the Status Quo

October 2, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

I figured that after today’s massacre in Las Vegas, I could count on Bill O’Reilly for some specious arguments about guns. He didn’t let me down. In a post (here) of only 270 words (237 if you leave out his recounting of some of the facts), he manages to make at least a half dozen misleading or false statements.

1. But having covered scores of gun-related crimes over the years, I can tell you that government restrictions will not stop psychopaths from harming people.

They will find a way.

This is the all-or-none fallacy. It implies that since we can’t entirely stop murderous psychopaths, we shouldn’t try.  We can’t “stop” highway deaths either. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to make make roads and cars and even drivers safer?

The killer had a lot of rifles, some of them fully automatic (probably converted from semi-automatic). He also had lots and lots of bullets. Even if he couldn’t have been stoppped, restricting the kinds of guns and ammuntion psychopaths and anyone else can get will reduce the number of victims. 

2. The issue is so polarizing and emotional that little will be accomplished as there is no common ground.

This is a variant on the first argument. Since we might not be able to solve the problem entirely, we shouldn’t bother trying. Civil rights was polarizing. Healthcare, abortion, same-sex marriage, legal weed – all have been (and in some cases still are) polarizing. Should we give up on trying to do something about these issues until we have consensus? If you don’t look for common ground, of course you’re never going to find it.

3. The NRA and its supporters want easy access to weapons, while the left wants them banned.

All-or-nothing and no-common-ground again. O’Reilly implies that there is nothing between unlimited access and a total ban on all firearms. That’s obviously wrong. O’Reilly is also factually incorrect about what NRA members and people on the left want. A majority of NRA members support background checks and some restrictions on firearms. And nobody on the left has proposed a total ban.

4. This is the price of freedom.  Violent nuts are allowed to roam free until they do damage, no matter how threatening they are.

O’Reilly plays the American trump card – Freedom. Almost guaranteed to win any argument here. But he plays it as though there is only one freedom card. Either we have it or we don’t. He’s saying that any restriction on guns will totally eliminate freedom.

Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, and all these other well-functioning democracies – are they substantially less free than the US? Have they sacrificed all their freedom by making weapons of mass slaughter hard to get?

5 and 6. The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection.  Even the loons.

The Second Amendment says nothing about self-protection. If it was so clear, would the Supreme Court have taken over two hundred years to figure it out? (DC v Heller, 2008),  Nor has the Court said that crazy people have the right to buy guns. In fact, two years after Heller, the Court said explicitly that states could prohibit the mentally ill (and felons) from possessing guns.

So there you have it – six specious arguments in favor of not trying to do anything to reduce gun violence and death. O’Reilly didn’t go the “thoughts and prayers” route. He didn’t say, “This is a time for our thoughts and prayers for the victims. It’s not a time for politics.” (It never is.) Instead, he found another way, less sanctimonious but more deceitful, to say, “Let’s not even try to think about policy, about what we can do.”

Hef and Auguste Comte

September 28, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

One tiny fun fact that you probably won’t find in the Hugh Hefner obituaries this week: The brains behind Playboy was a sociologist, A.C. Spectorsky.

Spectorsky did not have a sociology degree. He had a BS in physics from NYU, and he worked in media. But his writing had a sociological bent. His 1955 book The Exurbanites (he coined the term exurbs) was reviewed by C. Wright Mills.

Spectorsky (left) and Hefner, 1956.

In 1956, he became associate publisher of Playboy, and I suspect that it was Spectorsky’s ideas that transformed Playboy, surrounding the photos of bare-breasted women with pages that proclaimed the cultural sophistication of the magazine and its readers. With Hef, he moved Playboy from the nudie-mag periphery to a more central place in the culture, with circulation numbers to match.

His byline was A.C., and most people called him Spec. But the initials stood for Auguste Comte.He was named after the man often credited with coining the term sociology.

Status Politics and the NFL

September 27, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Some issues in status politics have real consequences. Obamacare, for instance. For much of the opposition, Obamacare was less about healthcare than about the status of different groups. The question was not, “Who will have better health insurance?” It was, “Whose country is this anyway?”

In a blog post back in 2009 (here), I quoted a Pennsylvania protestor who shouted at her senator, “This is about the dismantling of the country.” Obamacare became a symbol. It was about how people felt morally, not physically. For the opposition, it symbolized that “their” country had been “taken away” from them. They were going to take it back. (See my post “Repo Men.”)

Republican votes to repeal, up until January 20, 2017, were also symbolic since the GOP representatives  knew there was no chance that Obama would sign the bill into law. But with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, the consequences of repeal would be real, not just symbolic. Even so, they came very close to passing laws that would have had very real and negative consequences for millions of Americans.

There are better vehicles for status politics than issues that have real consequences, especially when the consequences harm the same people that are driving that vehicle. You want issues that are purely symbolic – issues like statues and flags or kneeling and standing. This is not the politics of who gets what and how much it costs; it is the politics of who feels how. In everything that I have read in the last few days about NFL players “taking a knee” during the playing of the national anthem, none of the arguments for or against was based on the effects their behavior might have. The closest anyone came was Jeff Sessions: “It’s a big mistake to protest in that fashion because it weakens the commitment we have to this nation.” Nor could I find any speculation on the effects that Trump’s call for the players to be fired and for the NFL to make a rule requiring players to stand during the song.

Instead, the arguments were about legitimacy and about right and wrong. So the relevant evidence is not about causes and effects but about who thinks what. In many ways the results are predictable. Republicans agree with Trump; Democrats are more likely to support the dissenting players; Independents are somewhere in between. (The data comes from a Reuters/Ipsos survey of people who have at least some interest in pro football.)

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

Overall, fans support the players right to express political opinions (49%-43%), though nearly 60% of Republicans would deny them that right. On the other hand, a majority (58%) also think that the players should be required to stand (among Republicans, 86%).

As for the president’s “You’re fired” suggestion, only the Republican fans agree. Democrats (80%) and Independents (64%) disagree. (Cato survey here )

A majority of the fans also think Trump should have kept his mouth shut on the topic, though again, Republicans sided with Trump.

It’s important to note that these are one-shot polls, at least so far. Subsequent polls, if there are any, with slight difference in wording may get different results. It’s also possible that opinion on this issue may change rapidly, perhaps in the way that attitudes towards same-sex marriage changed in recent years. The sight of several players kneeling during the national anthem may become the new normal.

Sacred Meets Profane in an Ad for Lamb

September 20, 2017Posted by Jay Livingston

It’s always tempting to draw conclusions about culture from successful advertising campaigns. After all, if they’re successful, they must have struck some sympathetic vibrating string in the culture. But which one?  Interpreting these ads is game all can play, but it would be hard to say which interpretation is correct. Among all the harmonious cultural elements, which one is most important?

It’s easier to pick out the note that’s out of tune. So with ads, the cultural interpretation game is easier when an ad is conflict with the culture rather than in harmony. When I came across this Australia Day ad for lamb from Meat and Livestock Australia, my first thought was: Sacrilege. You could never put this on the air in the US. A lot of Americans still take their religion seriously.

You can tell a joke about Jesus and Moses on the golf course, but when you do basically the same thing – putting sacred figures in contemporary profane* situations – as a TV ad, it goes too far, even if the irreverence is equal opportunity. At the table, besides Jesus and Moses, are the Buddha, Kuan Yin (the Buddhist goddess of compassion), Confucius, Dionysus and Aphrodite, Thor, Isis and L. Ron Hubbard. Oh my gods.

The MLA (no, not that MLA. The Meat and Livestock Australia MLA) had obviously been worried about the reactions of some religious people for whom religion is no laughing matter. Note that Mohammed does appear in the ad; he’s just phoning it in. And anyway, you probably don’t need an ad to convince Muslims to eat lamb.

The MLA was apparently less concerned about the reaction of other groups. The Indian Society of Western Australia spoke out against the portrayal of Ganesha (“the elephant in the room”) as being a meat-eater. The MLA apologized, saying it was not their intent to offend.** But as far as I know, they haven’t pull the ad. 
-------------------------

* “Profane” in Durkheim’s sense of “everyday,” as contrasted with “sacred” times and places.

** I’m a tad skeptical about this claim of not intending to offend. The MLA’s previous Australia Day ads have also been criticized for insensitive depiction of Aboriginals and for “inciting violence against vegans.” 

Bloggiversary

September 19, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

After eleven years, I’m finally getting paid for this gig. The publisher of the leading intro sociology textbook e-mailed me asking for permission to use one my blogposts in the next edition (17e) of the book. I asked if they would cross my palm with silver. It turns out they would. I did the math, and it works out that my average weekly income from the blog is now 60¢ a week. Not bad.   

The 2017 turning of the blog year lines up closely with the Jewish high holidays – a time for reflection and repentance. So many blogposts worthy of the latter. But here are a handful I’d post again.
   
1.    Trump did not actually shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. But if he had, his supporters might well have rethought their position on homicide. Witness how conservative Christians changed their views on the importance of a politician’s private life.    
One Question Where Trump Turned Conservatives More Liberal

2.    In Italian, there is no word for “bedtime.”  Bedtime – Construct or Cruelty

3.    “Their early stuff was way better.” The dilemma of music groups – repeat or change?  Chasing the Dragon

4.    Asking who’s happier – liberals or conservatives – without looking at who’s in power is like asking the same question about Redsox fans and Yankee fans without checking the standings in the AL East. Political Baseball – Whose Fans Are Happy?

5.    “It’s your decision,” say the sitcom parents. Yeah, right. “black-ish” – Voluntary Conformism                  

Matching Evidence With Ideas — an Arthur Brooks Fail

September 16, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Linking ideas and evidence – that’s the most important thing I try to teach students. What kind of evidence can we get to see if some idea or assertion is valid? I’m glad Arthur Brooks isn’t in my class. I would have to conclude that I failed at my task.

In his op-ed in the Times yesterday (“Don’t Shun Conservative Professors,” here), Brooks writes about the plight of conservative faculty members. In the academic world, dominated by leftish ideologies, they are second-class citizens.

Generally, these professors fear they have little hope for advancement to leadership roles. Research backs up this fear, suggesting that intellectual conformity is still a key driver of personal success in academic communities. In a study published in 2012 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers asked students to evaluate candidates vying to represent them with the faculty. In some cases, the candidate identified him- or herself as a “typical student at this college”; other subjects were given a candidate who was “a relatively untypical student at this college.” Even though both pledged to represent the students faithfully, in the same language, the untypical student consistently received significantly less support.

Really Arthur? That’s the best you got? One experiment on one campus? That’s your evidence?

And what is it evidence of? Brooks claims that conservative professors get shabby treatment at the hands of their liberal colleagues. The reason is that academic success depends on “intellectual conformity,” and conservatives’ political views  do not conform those of their more numerous and more powerful liberal colleagues.

Does this one study Brooks cites explore the attitudes and actions of faculty? No. Does it measure the rewards faculty receive? No. Does it use variables related to conservatism and liberalism? No. Does it even measure “intellectual conformity”? No.

It asks students who they would prefer to represent them as a student-faculty liaison. And here’s the stunning conclusion of that experiment: students prefer the hypothetical “prototypical” student rep over the “non-prototypical rep.” The typicality did not include political views. The typical student did not say, “I’m politically liberal”; the untypical student did not say, “I’m conservative.”*.

Preferring a student-faculty liaison who is typical rather than untypical – is that, as Brooks would have it, “intellectual conformity”?  Even so, it was only among the students who said they “felt certain right now” that the “typical” candidate won. Students who said they were “uncertain” were equally likely to choose the untypical as the typical.

It may well be that conservative academics are victims of discrimination. But the evidence Brooks offers isn’t just unconvincing. It’s an embarrassment. I certainly hope that other conservative intellectuals do a better job of matching their evidence to their ideas.
-----------------
* Here are the candidates’ statements shown to the student participants in the experiment:

“As a relatively typical student at this college, I feel as though I represent
the interests, values, and opinions of the students very well. I will fit in with the culture and climate of the college because I also share these same interests, values, and opinions. As a student of this college, I have deep ties in the community so I also want the college to make decisions that are the best for the students…”

“As a relatively untypical student at this college, I will try to represent the interests, values, and opinions of the students. While I do not share the same interests, values, and opinions, I will do my best to fit in with the culture and climate of the college. Although I may not have deep ties in the community, I will still try to make decisions that are the best for the students …”

The article is “Leadership under uncertainty: When leaders who are non-prototypical group members can gain support,” by David E. Rast III, Amber M. Gaffney, Michael A. Hogg, Richard J. Crisp. JESP 48.3 (May 2012).

Dreamers and the Trump Base

September 15, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

People whose life is in politics develop a firm ideology. Ordinary voters have no such need for consistency.

“Word of Deal Bewilders and Angers Trump’s Base,” says a subhead in today’s New York Times about DACA.  The deal in question was Trump’s agreement with his new friends Chuck and Nancy to let the Dreamers keep dreaming for at least another half year. Over on the right, the loud voices are getting shrill. The Times story quotes people like Ann Coulter (“At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached?”), Rep. Steve King, and some talk-radio conservatives. 

But the people who voted for Trump are more loyal to him. Also more ideologically flexible. It’s Trump the person they want, not any particular policy. On some matters, their ardor for Trump has led them to change their long-held views. Russia is no longer a terrible villain. A politician’s private peccadilloes now mean little for his performance in office. Obamacare isn’t so terrible after all.

Given Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the “Build the Wall” chant, you might expect his supporters to be more adamant on immigration. But even before Trump’s change of heart on DACA, his base was soft on Dreamers, though the polls on this are not consistent. A YouGov poll taken September 3 -5 asked Trump voters.

Do you favor or oppose DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is a policy that grants temporary legal status to “dreamers,” otherwise law-abiding children and young adults who were brought into the United States at a very young age by parents who were illegal immigrants?

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

The DACA glass is half empty. A third of the Trumpistas are firm opponents. But on the other side a third of the Trump voters actually support DACA, and the rest aren’t sure.

A Morning Consult Poll for Politico taken a few days earlier found Trump voters to be still more accepting of Dreamers and even non-dreamers.
“As you may know, Dreamers are young people who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children, often with their parents. Which of the following do you think is the best way to handle Dreamers?” The poll also about the best way to handle “immigrants currently living in the United States illegally.” The choices were”

• They should beallowed to stay and become citizens if they meet certain requirements 
• They should be allowed to stay and become legal sidents, but NOT citizens, if they meet certain requirements
• They should be removed or deported from the United States
• Don’t Know / No Opinion           

Two-thirds of Trump voters wanted to allow the Dreamers to stay. Slightly more than half were OK with granting residence (22%) or even citizenship (33%) to all immigrants now living in the US illegally.

When Trump took office, his net approval was +4 (45% Approve, 41% Disapprove). Since then, he has managed to drive that figure to – 14 (39 - 55). His recent change on DACA may have cost him cred with Coulter and other people deeply involved in politics. But it seems unlikely that his support with the public at large or even his base will fall any farther.

Algorithms and False Positives

September 13, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Can face-recognition software tell if you’re gay?

Here’s the headline from The Guardian a week ago.

Yilun Wang and Michal Kosinski at Stanford’s School of Business have written an article showing that artificial intelligence – machines that can learn from their experiences – can develop algorithms to distinguish the gay from the straight. Kosinski goes farther. According to Business Insider,

He predicts that self-learning algorithms with human characteristics will also be able to identify:

• a person’s political beliefs
• whether they have high IQs
• whether they are predisposed to criminal behaviour

When I read that last line, something clicked. I remembered that a while ago I had blogged about an Israeli company, Faception, that claimed its face recognition software could pick out the faces of terrorists, professional poker players, and other types. It all reminded me of Cesare Lombroso, the Italian criminologist. Nearly 150 years ago, Lombroso claimed that criminals could be distinguished by the shape of their skulls, ears, noses, chins, etc. (That blog post, complete with pictures from Lombroso’s book, is here.) So I was not surprised to learn that Kosinski had worked with Faception.

For a thorough (3000 word) critique of the Wang-Kosinski paper, see Greggor Mattson’s post at Scatterplot. The part I want to emphasize here is the problem of False Positives.

Wang-Kosinski tested their algorithm by showing a series of paired pictures from a dating site. In each pair, one person was gay, the other straight. The task was to guess which was which. The machine’s accuracy was roughly 80% – much better than guessing randomly and better than the guesses made by actual humans, who got about 60% right. (These are the numbers for photos of men only. The machine and humans were not as good at spotting lesbians. In my hypothetical example that follows, assume that all the photos are of men.)

But does that mean that the face-recognition algorithm can spot the gay person? The trouble with Wang-Kosinki’s gaydar test was that it created a world where half the population was gay. For each trial, people or machine saw one gay person and one straight.

Let’s suppose that the machine had an accuracy rate of 90%. Let’s also present the machine with a 50-50 world. Looking at the 50 gays, the machine will guess correctly on 45. These are “True Positives.” It identified them as gay, and they were gay. But it will also classify 5 of the gay people as not-gay. These are the False Negatives.

It will have the same ratio of true and false for the not-gay population. It will correctly identify 45 of the not-gays (True Negatives), but it will guess incorrectly that 5 of these straight people are gay (False Positive).

It looks pretty good. But how well will this work in the real world, where the gay-straight ratio is nowhere near 50-50? Just what that ratio is depends on definitions. But to make the math easier, I’m going to use 5% as my estimate. In a sample of 1000, only 50 will be gay. The other 950 will be straight.

Again, let’s give the machine an accuracy rate of 90%. For the 50 gays, it will again have 45 True Positives and 5 False Negatives. But what about the 950 not-gays. It will be correct 90% of the time and identify 885 of them as not-gay (True Negatives). But it will also guess incorrectly that 10% are gay. That’s 95 False Positives.

The number of False Positives is more than double the number of True Positives. The overall accuracy may be 90%, but when it comes to picking out gays, the machine is wrong far more often than it’s right.

The rarer the thing that you’re trying to predict, the greater the ratio of False Positives to True Positives. And those False Positives can have bad consequences. In medicine, a false positive diagnosis can lead to unnecessary treatment that is physically and psychologically damaging. As for politics and policy, think of the consequences if the government goes full Lomborso and uses algorithms for predicting “predisposition to criminal behavior.”

Smartphones and Teen Existential Angst

September 12, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

I’ve been wondering about America’s youth, mostly because of the Atlantic article by Jean Twenge: “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”  (Previous posts are here  and here .)
As the title of the article suggests, we’ve got trouble.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs . . . At first I presumed these might be blips, but the trends persisted, across several years and a series of national surveys. The changes weren’t just in degree, but in kind.

Twenge shows how kids differ from those of just a few years ago in how they spend their time – less dating, driving, and hanging out with peers, and more time on their phones, tablets, and computers. These changes in behavior, Twenge claims, have psychological consequences.

The biggest difference between the Millennials and their predecessors was in how they viewed the world. . . . There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives—and making them seriously unhappy.

I went to the archives of Monitoring the Future, the only source of systematic data that Twenge mentions. It surveys kids in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades. I looked only at the data on 12th graders. One of the MTF questions asks kids whether they agree with the statement, “It feels good to be alive.” The choices are Agree, Mostly Agree, Neither, Mostly Disagree, Disagree.” So few kids chose either of the Disagree categories ( 4- 6 %) that I combined them with Neither.

(Click on a graph for a larger view.)

In the most recent year, these depressive categories accounted for only 18% of 12th graders. All the others agreed – 51% gave unqualified agreement, another 20% “mostly” agreed. More important for Twenge’s argument, the graph lines do not fall off a cliff in 2012 or in any other year. There’s a slow decline 2012-2015, but the numbers in the most recent year are very similar to what they were in before smartphones and social media.

Monitoring the Future also asks a question that would seem to tap depression, or at least existential despair*: “Life often seems meaningless.” The levels of agreement are the same ones as for “Good to be alive,” but the distribution of answers is more even.

Again, the sunnier choices carry the day. Those who “Disagree” categorically out number all others, followed by those who disagree but with some reservations. And again, the MTF data shows no dramatic changes.

So, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” As I said in a previous post on this topic,

Whenever the title of a book or article is phrased as a question, two things are almost certain

• The author thinks that the answer to the question is “Yes.”
• The more accurate answer is “No.”

When it comes to finding life meaningful or worth living, teens today are no different from those teens twenty years ago who were sans iPhones, sans Facebook, sans Instagram, sans cyber-everything.
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*

In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Existentialism - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism