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Could Twitter’s Realtime World Blur Our Moral Compass?

Emotions linked to our moral sense such as admiration and compassion- awaken slowly in the mind, according to a new study from a neuroscience group show that emotions linked to our sense of morality are aroused slowly. The study was led by Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.

This makes three different ways I’ve seen people try to make a cautionary tale out of this study. And this is one of the more subtle consequences of growing older: since I’ve seen this process several times before (the ‘new study of a particular process is abstracted to give a potential overall insight into why we’re fucked up’ process), and I’ve seen the process almost without exception sputter toward final inconsequence, I have become, if not scornful, at least indifferent to it. Is that wisdom? If it is, wisdom blows.

I miss the days when this sort of thing fired my imagination.

This meme is very similar (if not identical) to the one in which a fairly technical discovery in some particular scientific field is immediately seized upon by the media and extrapolated to construct a probable future in which wild, weird, new things become as common and important as the car or air travel or the cellphone. The media delight in telling us these things to the point that they will make one up if a ‘real’ one hasn’t come along for awhile.

Obviously, the fact of cars, air travel and cellphones indicates that, sometimes, the “probable future” actually happens. I’m aware of that. But by the same token, the fact that there are no personal submarines, no cures for cancer, no cold fusion, no teleporters, no huge starships trolling the asteroids for uranium and gold, no robot salad makers squatting inside kitchen cupboards, no cheap solar panels on every home, no healthy cigarettes, no fat pills, no telepathic communication–it makes it hard to pay attention when tidings of “the next greatest thing” worm their way into the popular consciousness.

Another similar if not identical media process is the one in which a particular thing happens (eg: USAir’s plane ditching in the Hudson after a birdstrike) which is so exciting that they are compelled, for awhile, to over-report other happenings that have even the slightest chance of producing the same outcome (eg: any birdstrike on any plane that forces the plane to return to the airport for a landing). Because I’m a pilot (and so through professional channels heard about many birdstrikes that required emergency landings that weren’t considered worthy of mainstream reporting until after the USAir incident) I know that these things happen all the time.

This new study shows that there is a difference in the speed that more and less visceral displays of tragedy matter to people.  That’s interesting: there are differences in the speed at which things matter. For example, seeing someone break an ankle elicits a response of compassion more quickly than seeing someone being told that her mother died. It’s an interesting study. But interesting psychological studies happen all the time. And because I was a psych major (and also because I’m a human being that pays a certain amount of attention to things that may impact my human being-ness), I know this new study should be interpreted narrowly until proven to matter more generally. That’s just the way it is. You can’t go from this study to a pronouncement on the moral effect of Twitter in one go and not sound like a shrieking ass, at least to experts. That’s just the way it isn’t.

The tricky part is knowing the difference between a carefully constructed hypothesis and the shrieking of an ass when the subject is not one you know well.  Years of being led to believe things were important that in the end turned out not to be very important have taught me to delay judgment on anything that isn’t already completely obvious. While that may be wise, it’s hard on optimism.

I know when things that happen in my areas of expertise are being stretched to fill a news vacuum. Birdstrikes and psychological studies happen all the time. They happen all the time. So where was CNN the thousand other times these things happened? I’ll tell you where CNN was: CNN was busy over-reporting some other goddamn thing that, since I’m not a professional sailor or bond-trader, I had no idea that they were over-reporting. So because I’m not an expert on everything, I am potentially duped by the media, day in and day out, to believe things are more consequential than they really are.

I know the media don’t do this on purpose. They don’t get up in the morning and say “Let’s over-report tsunamis today.” I know it’s just the lousy way things work. I know one of the functions of the media is to find whatever excitement there is in the daily crush of happenings in the world and offer it to the public, so that they can make money and continue existing. Or if there’s nothing really inherently exciting that day, to find the hook into something else that was exciting before and offer that. To blur potential and real if real doesn’t look like it will sell. I know all that.

Knowing that doesn’t make me happier. And one of the cardinal attributes of wisdom, I think, is that once you become wise to something, it’s very hard to become un-wise to it. In other words, I can’t go back to being optimistic about such things even if I wanted to. Wisdom is a jealous god.

I used to think that, given the choice, I would choose wisdom over innocence every time. Every time. I used to think that, given the choice, accurate knowledge of the probability that something is true is always preferable to ignorance of it. Do I still think that? It’s hard to say.

I guess I just wish wisdom wouldn’t trash optimism quite as thoroughly as it seems it has to do.

I’m particular impressed with his aim. And while George’s ninja-like duck reflex was impressive too, better still would have been had he actually caught the shoes. Wouldn’t that have been great?

China seeks earthquake aid from Japan – CNN.com

China is having problems with lakes dammed by earthquake debris. The natural dams will eventually burst, causing widespread flooding and death. China is trying to avoid that, of course. As it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around the sheer volume of water involved, a Chinese engineer helpfully provides a comparison for one of the new lakes:

The lake is holding 130 million cubic meters (170 million cubic yards) of water — equal to about 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to Liu Ning, chief engineer of the Ministry of Water Resources.

The main thing to notice about Mr Ning’s comparison is that it doesn’t help at all. 50,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools? I don’t comprehend 50,000 of anything. I don’t care if you stack them to the moon or line them up on the equator; you’re not helping me. 50,000 is just too many. And it’s cute how everything’s so goddamn Olympic over there right now. But the visual didn’t really make it, Mr Ning, I’m sorry.

“Wait, how about a stadium full of people. An Olympic stadium; perhaps a velodrome. That’s 50,000, right? Maybe more? You can see that, right? I mean, if you have a ticket?”

Sure, why not. Let each dot equal one person. Let each person equal one Olympic-sized swimming pool. That’s a shitload of water. I get that. I get that it’s a lot. But I can’t even visualize 50,000 people when I see them in a stadium. It’s just this seething mass of other. If we want to call that seething mass of other ‘50,000,’ that’s fine, just please don’t pretend that you’re really grokking how many people that is, or how many swimming pools they represent. You’re not, either, you know.

Also funny about that quote: the 130,000,000 cubic meters of water = 50,000 Olympic swimming pools equation is attributed to Mr Ning. As if AP or CNN has nobody on staff who could POSSIBLY verify that through the magic of mathematical calculation: “Well, Mr Ning says this equals that, but we really have no way we can think of to back that up. He seems like a very nice young man, though, so we quoted him.”

Is this what news agencies have come to? They have neither the time nor the resources to verify even the smallest, most easily verifiable factoid that crosses their desks?

This doesn’t lead me to fear for humanity, exactly, because humanity has undergone worse trials than overworked fact-checkers in the last couple thousand years. That’s true. But I used to assume things would get better as I got older. I think we all did. And it’s just not the case. There is an absurd number of lazy or dishonest people out there, and that number seems to be growing every day. Probably at least 50,000 of them by now.

Thank you! You’ve been great!

NASA preps fix for space station toilet trouble – CNN.com

The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.

I don’t know what this means. How does being male help an astronaut bypass a malfunctioning toilet? Do they open the airlock and piss out into the void?

I don’t know what this means.

Brown mulls UK oath of allegiance plan – CNN.com

Goldsmith calls for a pledge of allegiance, the establishment of a new national holiday to celebrate Britishness, and expanded ceremonies that would take place when new immigrants become British citizens. He also said schoolchildren should have a citizenship ceremony as well.”We are experiencing changes in our society which may have an impact on the bond that we feel we share as citizens,” Goldsmith said in the report. “I propose a range of measures that may help to promote a shared sense of belonging.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve had occasion to say “at least I don’t live there.” Can you imagine having had to attend a compulsory citizenship ceremony when you turned 18? At 18, when you were old enough to be spooked by the kind of off-handed paranoid power the government would have to invoke to make that happen? Being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at 8 years old was bad enough, in hindsight. Blessed hindsight. But there would be nothing “hindsighted” about this; this would be dumped right on your developmental front porch step just as you step out into the world for good.

There is nothing wrong with having a sense of place and community, which is what the British government is trying to foster here. There is only something wrong with the idea that a dictated sense of place and community has any worth. It does not. It took me years to get over the fact that my government made me stand at attention and chant at a flag when I was little. In some ways I’m still not over it.

It’s a funny thing: there is no faster way to persuade someone to hold a particular attitude than to demand he hold its opposite.

Bush vetoes bill banning waterboarding – CNN.com

“We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland,” Bush said. “If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives.”

George is a colossal ass, of course; King of the short-sighted political decision. “Torture is okay for us to use.” Say that, and you can no longer complain about any god damn thing somebody else does to any of our citizens without exposing yourself as a hypocritical fool.

So that’s true. But something else unsettles me about this article, too. Been annoying and unsettling me for quite some time now: I find the use of the word “homeland” over the past few years very spooky. I don’t remember hearing it used in any kind of official way prior to 9/11. It’s as if George and his pals had wanted to use “fatherland” or “motherland,” but recognized that the nazis and the commies beat them to it.

I’m not comfortable living in a country that has a pet name for itself.

Superjumbo ends historic flight – CNN.com

The airline says its jets will set a “new standard for luxury and comfort,” fitted with 399 economy seats, 60 business seats and 12 Givenchy-designed “suites” featuring a flat bed behind sliding doors.

Thank goodness new standards for luxury and comfort are being set for those who can afford it.

Pirate attacks increase worldwide – CNN.com
Pirate attacks worldwide jumped 14 percent in the first nine months of 2007

There’s a reason for that, senator, as this graph would clearly demonstrate if I cared to photoshop the numbers:

I don’t watch much television. It’s not that I’ve become an unbelievably productive person because I don’t fritter all that time away in front of the tube anymore–I haven’t–it’s just that the bulk of my frittering is done in front of a computer instead. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still pretty smug about it regardless of the fact that I haven’t really benefited from it.

But there are reasons, I think, to feel smug about it, viz: I just finished spending an entire month in Dallas because I had to. I spent the bulk of that time in a hotel room. The bulk of the time I spent in the hotel room, the television was on, because it was sitting there not 3 feet away from the bed. So during the last month, I probably spent more time watching tv than I have in the past 3 years combined. And I noticed several things that one may not have noticed had one been watching television more or less constantly during that time.

One of them is that television news–all of it outside of PBS–uniformly sucks. And when I say it sucks, I mean it’s not actually news anymore; it’s pre-digested opinions about people–personalities–who simply shouldn’t matter. It’s a vanilla milkshake, a naked pandering to the fail, the people who desperately want to be among the winners, who imagine themselves at the head table where nothing real matters anymore.

I saw several Dallas news shows, along with some morning news shows, Fox news (which you might think, and I would have thought a month ago, is kind of unfair of me to use to indict all news shows, but you and I would be wrong), and CNN. I saw Wolf Blitzer and Hardball and Tucker, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours and Face the Nation.

Do you know what I learned after watching all that? I learned that Britney Spears is totally fucked up. I learned that again and again and again. Everyone wanted to weigh in on Britney. Guests were empaneled on news shows so that the reigning talking head could canvas them on their Britney opinions.

Now, I care what Britney Spears does and says as much as the next guy, as long as the next guy doesn’t give a flying fuck what Britney Spears says or does. Me and him, we could not care any less. You could not underbid us on it. We simply don’t care what Wolf’s guests think about this. She’s some kid from Louisiana that got rich somehow; good for her, but that’s all we need to know.

What we do care about is the news. What is going on in the world? What happened in Sri Lanka yesterday? What’s Putin up to? How close we gettin on that frickin cancer cure? That’s what we want to know. But we don’t spend money the way the fail do, in clumps and gobbets that depend on the television for guidance. So (apparently) we don’t get television news aimed at us anymore.

Fox news… Fox news has been an evil tabloid since its inception, spewing vitriol and obnoxiousness 24 hours a day. But CNN? When did CNN become a tabloid? When did CNN begin to spew tawdriness and fail? When did that happen?

Okay, fine. Fine. Television is not aimed at me. I get it. But television is aimed at somebody, and it is huge and relentless. And it shapes people, and that shape is conformity, banality, and failure. I get it. So I’m smug, of course, but it’s not a happy smug.

Not so fast, Christian soldiers – Los Angeles Times

You need a free login (or bugmenot) to access the story, which is a good read that illuminates (again) the cozy relationship between the military and the evangelical Doomsday crowd. A fundamental idea concerning the war and our strained relationship with our Muslim friends is noted and bears repeating: “The Rapture is not a viable exit strategy.”

Chinese ‘trucking’ live rats to southern restaurants – CNN.com

Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported 2 billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.

I recall something happening in Australia like this a few years back.

Rat vendors had been doing a roaring trade thanks to strong supply over the last two weeks, the China News Service quoted vendors as saying.

This is my favorite part:

“Recently there have been a lot of rats… Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good,” it quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province, where people are reputed to eat anything that moves.

I’m not sure I’d like a reputation for eating anything that moves.

Bush taps general to coordinate war efforts – CNN.com

It was a difficult job to fill, given the unpopularity of the war, now in its fifth year, and uncertainty about the clout the war coordinator would have. The search was complicated by demands from Congress to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and scant public support for the war. The White House tried for weeks to fill the position and approached numerous candidates before settling on Lute.

When your military isn’t that thrilled about fighting your war, you might want to rethink your war.

Draft of climate report maps out ‘highway to extinction’ – CNN.com

“The worst stuff is not going to happen because we can’t be that stupid,” said Harvard University oceanographer James McCarthy, who was a top author of the 2001 version of this report. “Not that I think the projections aren’t that good, but because we can’t be that stupid.”

Oh, I beg to differ, perfesser. We can easily be that stupid. The question is whether or not we’ll get lucky.

Coulter under fire for anti-gay slur – CNN.com

… the New York Times reported that she responded, in an e-mail, “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.”

Why is this person still talking to people on television? How is this possible?

The Sun Herald AROUND SOUTH MISSISSIPPI: President Bush Visits Thursday

This story was buried on page A-10 in the paper, above a “boil water” notice for some neighborhood in Gulfport. Apparently ‘W fatigue’ has finally settled in down here.

Gunman kills 2 clowns in Colombian circus – CNN.com

Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday.One of the clowns was killed instantly, and the second died the next day in hospital.

I wonder if those clowns had it coming to them.

Manual lays out rules for Guantanamo trials – CNN.com

Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, a legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, told reporters that the manual provides for a “clear prohibition of evidence obtained by torture” if it was obtained after December 30, 2005.But if it was obtained before that time, and if the judge determines that it is reliable, it may be admitted, he said.

I’ve never seen the fact of torture admitted before by those in control. We live in interesting times.

First phase of Iraq war plan to begin early February – CNN.com

Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois asked Rice:
“What leverage do we have that would provide us some assurance that six months from now, you will not be sitting before us again saying, ‘Well, it didn’t work?’ ”

Rice replied, “The leverage is, we’re not going to stay married to a plan that’s not working in Baghdad.”

First, it’s a little late to have a “first phase of Iraq war plan.” A little tardy. Second, Rice’s reply to Obama is meaningless, in that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s like someone asked her “How can we be sure you won’t eat the meatloaf?” and she said “You can be sure because the meatloaf will be eaten if I do.” It’s nonsensical; it’s a political koan. Third, this escalation is going to happen whether I rant about it or not, whether I think it will be a horrible debacle or not. Given that, I don’t think it’s awful to hope against all evidence and common sense that it will work. It won’t work, it will be a horrible debacle, but W has the authority, the power, and the mindlessly compulsive pig-headedness to do it anyway. So here’s hoping it works.

The end of the Bush era can’t come soon enough.

Living off rats to survive in Zimbabwe – CNN.com

Zimbabwe’s ambassador to United States, Machivenyika Mapuranga, told CNN on Tuesday that reports of people eating rats unfairly represented the situation, adding that at times while he grew up his family ate rodents.“The eating of the field mice — Zimbabweans do that. It is a delicacy,” he said. “It is misleading to portray the eating of field mice as an act of desperation. It is not.”

Other things the ambassador declared his people now consider delicacies: grass, shoe leather, petrified monkey shit, and rocks.

Western journalists aren’t allowed in Zimbabwe.

The Virginia Race

In a news release and list of quotes posted Friday on the Drudge Report Web site, Sen. George Allen accused his opponent, former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, of “demeaning women” and “dehumanizing women, men and even children” through his fiction writings. At least two of the listed passages include children in sexual situations. Allen’s campaign did not include the press release and list of passages on its Web site, where press releases are generally posted. There was, however, a Thursday statement from Chris LaCivita, general consultant for the Allen campaign, saying some references in Webb’s novels are “disturbing” and “portray women as servile, subordinate and promiscuous.

You know, the press has some culpability here. They are the ones responsible for reporting this as actual news that matters, and because they do that, it matters to people who don’t know any better.