For Shame

I came across this over the weekend. It's a survey of MP's ability to do a (very) simple probability calculation. The results are atrocious: only 40% of them could do it. It's slightly positive that Tories are a lot better than Labour, and I note that the general population is even worse, but it's still depressing.

I got very angry about it; Anna just shrugged a bit. But this really really matters. Modern states are complicated: we spend a lot of money, we write a lot of very long laws, a lot of people are affected by both. I would argue almost everything the government does essentially requires you to think about probability. In some areas it won't be that important or won't have concrete numbers attached, but it will always come down to how many people will benefit and how likely any outcome is. This survey rather suggests that our legislators are unable to understand the implications of even the most basic numerical information. That makes them unfit to legislate. They cannot in fact do their jobs.

Amusingly, from the same survey, MPs rated themselves very confident with numbers. They are in fact  deluded, as well as unfit to legislate. 

Anathema.

Bibliography, September 2012

BOTM: C. McCullers, The Heart is a lonely hunter

A. Christie, Three Act Tragedy
G.M. Fraser, Royal Flash
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters*
M. Ondaatje, The English Patient
A. Trollope, The Warden*
E.O. Wilson, Anthill
P.G. Wodehouse, Pigs have wings

I was lazy last month. I pondered reading all the Booker, but couldn't really be bothered. And then I went to France and didn't publish this. Some great stuff too. I was disappointed with Anthill, but the rest were great. BOTM was McCullers. Nicely written, sparse, sad, very Faulkner. Economical too, I thought, with a lot left unsaid. Anna has been banging on about it me reading it for a while. I'm glad she did.

Bibliography, August 2012

Read: 6
BOTM: P. Krugman, End this depression now!

G. Garcia Marquez, Leaf Storm
G. Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera*
M. Frayn, My Father's Fortune
D. Millar, Riding through the Dark

P.G. Wodehouse, Full Moon

Hmmm. I'm not sure what I make of these. I liked all of them, but I'm struggling for an absolute standout (as an aside, I'd not noticed the first time round how unpleasant a lot of Garcia Marquez's heroes are. Yet it's the abiding conclusion to be drawn from his most famous works). Krugman edges it, though I was tempted by Millar's gripping account of his cycling career, especially his doping. It's a strong thesis, well presented, and almost certainly right about the broad causes and solutions to the economic problems. Were you to believe in the value of democracy, the fact that democratic systems have failed to produce leaders who implement something along these lines would be profoundly depressing.

NB. That's not to say Krugman is devoid of fault. It is simplistic about the politics. There's a really annoying bit toward the end where he just goes 'oh, and we should stop China manipulating its exchange rate,' the likelihood of which I am sceptical of. And it doesn't dig down to the country level enough for the UK context. Specifically, the UK is bound more than the US to consider co-ordination with what others are doing - you don't want to be the only person spending in a crash. As an aside, it also steps over the inconvenient truth that while the point about output is true at the global level, it's not true for individual countries. The pre-crash level of output may be quickly restored under this model. The West's share of consumption will not.

A short note on dying

Apropos Euthanasia, I was initially surprised to see them pulling in protagonists from the religion debate  (Here's Andrew Copson, putting it all pretty well) as I'd never really thought about it as a religious thing. I am of course wrong, as I remembered pretty quickly once I spoke to A about it; and even more so one I read the Church of England on it. 

I'm sad that I'm wrong. I'm sad that we (that's the church) seem once again to put ourselves on the wrong side of this debate, and once again in a fairly rubbish way (see end). I'm no expert on this, but I think - and I'll use Andrew's phrase here - we, like the law as it stands - 'fail the test of compassion.' Suicide may be a sin against hope; prolonging a life of pain and misery is a sin against love. 

I think we should note a few things though:

1. It is complicated. I haven't spent any time on the argument because it's tricky. The detail is really going to matter and it's going to get hard: 'we know it when we see it' won't work
2. It is going to be difficult. It requires getting people to kill other people. And they won't be able to refuse to do the killing based on their beliefs. That's going to hurt.
3. It's going to go wrong (I) because it won't be enough. Wherever the line is drawn, there will be some very emotive cases of people who will still be banned. That's going to be depressing.
4. It's also going to go wrong (II) because there are bound to be edge cases where people die who shouldn't, either because they've been pressured (perhaps subtly) into it, or because they make a poor decision. 

None of that means we shouldn't change the law. On the contrary, I think hard, complex things where medical advance has changed the landscape out of all recognition probably could do with some legal revision. I just think that we should acknowledge that some people are going to lose out. But it's a price worth paying for the liberation from misery of others.

As an aside, I really wish the Church would stop making objections based on areas that aren't its competence and make more arguments based on its competence. In this case, its main objections seem to be a concern about human rights legislation and NHS overload - let lawyers and doctors (they have) make those points. Instead, the church's position should be compassionate, pastoral and theological. It might for example want to talk about God, or the church fathers. Instead, their key statement to the latest enquiry doesn't even mention Jesus. Anathema

Bibliography, July 2012

Read: 8
BOTM: P.G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime 

P. Hamilton, Hangover Square
G.Garcia Marquez, In Evil Hour*
G.Garcia Marquez, One hundred years of solitude*
G.Garcia Marquez, Autumn of the Patriarch*
G.R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
M. Smith, Not in my day, Sir
K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

In honour of the fact that Garcia Marquez cannot write any more, I'm rereading his novels. Love in a Time of Cholera coming next month. They are wonderful, though I suspect you get more out of them if you have any kind of passing acquaintance with Colombian history. I don't, and I really felt that lack this time. No such  issue with Wodehouse, not least because there's little history required, but also because I'd know it. I've been waiting to give BOTM to him for over a year now, and I think this one merits it, chiefly because of the disreputable figure of Uncle Fred, who may just be my favourite Wodehousian creation yet, not least because of the terror he induces in the younger generation. The plot - as ever - absurd; the writing - as ever -  perfect.

Principle, pragmatics and honesty (I): cutting bits off babies

I meant to post this last week, but I got distracted, so some of the relevance has gone. Anyway:

I've been sucked into the circumcision debate, despite not really caring. On one side, it's said we can't do this kind of thing without consent, and babies can't give it (put, sensitively and with a title I have stolen, here). On the other, tradition weighs in, with some sidelines about Jews (though really this is about Muslims). Instinctively, I'd side with the latter.

However, apart from alerting me to the fact that Princes Charles, Andrew and Edward are circumcised (who knew?), it's not been a very well argued debate and there are red herrings aplenty. Here are a few:

• Bodily integrity. This won't do: we stab infants with needles, cut off cords and generally do a variety of things for medical benefit. Later in life, we pierce the ears of children too, sometimes not much later, and certainly not for medical benefit. Clearly, benefits need only be trivial or imagined for bodily integrity to be violated (and a jolly good thing too).
• Medical necessity (a). Necessity won't bear the weight its given here - immunisation is not necessary, merely beneficial. Not a reason not to do it, but let's not pretend we can point to medical necessity. Circumcision is necessary in the eyes of Jews and Muslims.
• Medical necessity (b). Did we ask some doctors? Did they put this up the top of child harm? Do we listen when they do raise things? No, no and no. On booze for example, the law explicitly rejects the medical advice about children.
• Racism. Some have claimed that a ban of circumcision is the worst attack on Jewish life since the holocaust. This is obviously not true, but it probably would have been better if it hadn't be a German court.
• Harm. This is a bit of a battleground, with the practitioners claiming it doesn't do any, and others claiming it does. I think the former are being a bit weak here. Clearly, it's not very dangerous, but it's a big deal - it's Abraham's covenant with God. I think reducing the argument to harmlessness rather weakens it.
• Irreversibility. I hesitate to put this down as a red herring, as I think it's the strongest argument for the ban - though of course, it's meant to be irreversible. That's the point. However, although I am open to persuasion, I do think it is a red herring. Firstly, it's a conditional criticism: in the argument irreversibly good is clearly OK, e.g., inoculations. So this is just a subset of the harm discussion. Secondly, I don't think it's unique: some very negative, legal, things are irreversible, for example, damage done by parents smoking in the home. 

So far, so good. But knocking down some messy logic doesn't win arguments. The critical thing for me is that people seem to be arguing about the wrong thing: specifically, they're arguing about whether people should circumcise, whereas they should be arguing about whether there should be a law stopping them. This distinction is important.  The test of a good law is the impact it has: we should be asking if passing a law against circumcision would make the people as a whole better off, and I suspect it won't. Most importantly,  some people will get it done clandestinely, which could be much more dangerous; secondly, it will rip some people away from their roots, which I don't like very much and I think is undesirable socially. One the other hands I think the gains are pretty minimal. That equation may change, but at present I think that's how it stacks up.

I'd also like a bit of honesty about this. The rejection of circumcision is - at essence - one of some people essentially wanting other people to think like them. This is perfectly reasonable, I'd like people to think like me. However, people don't think like them, and they want to do this. In many cases, they really, really want to do it. And this tension is about how genuinely plural we want society to be. I'm not sure I want a very plural society, so I'd force a lot of things down some fairly narrow paths. In principle, this might be one of them (see practical caveat above). I think that would be good for people; I don't think it would be very plural. Those seeking a ban should admit that too.

That was longer than I intended. As an aside, I think the same issues attend Lords reform through a different angle. I'll do that tomorrow.

Bibliography, June 2012

Read: 6
BOTM: T.Penn, Winter King

A. Christie, At Bertram's Hotel
G.R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones
G.R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
M. Robinson, Housekeeping
P. Roth, Goodbye Columbus


That's better, though I feel the glory days of twenty books a month are gone forever. No surprises for BOTM either, though I am going to write about Game of Thrones another time. Henry VII has long been my favourite Henry, even if not the best (I divide the Henrys into good - I,II,V,VII - and bad - III, IV,VI, VIII). Thomas Penn's book is a classic. It's not, as I and others have thought, a biography of the Henry VII, but a meticulous and engrossing documenting of the last 8-9 years of the reign, chronicling his descent into ruthless, grasping paranoia, set against the rise of his son. It's magnificent, and bringing into sharp focus the ever-present spectre of civil war that - but for Henry VII - we would have fought for a lot longer.