The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots®, Decepticons® and Otherbots® is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.

While this is an extremely harsh critique, he’s not exactly writing comedy here.  It’s just an honest critique, extreme on the dislike scale.

Consider, as an alternative, a critique that as extreme on the favorable scale:

“Pan’s Labyrinth” is one of the greatest of all fantasy films, even though it is anchored so firmly in the reality of war….The film is visually stunning…What makes Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” so powerful, I think, is that it brings together two kinds of material, obviously not compatible, and insists on playing true to both, right to the end. Because there is no compromise there is no escape route, and the dangers in each world are always present in the other. Del Toro talks of the “rule of three” in fables (three doors, three rules, three fairies, three thrones). I am not sure three viewings of this film would be enough, however.

The extremely critical review seems to be funnier than the glowing one, even if neither is exactly making jokes.

I do recall a few cases where someone was so extreme in their praise that the description itself was entertaining and funny.  But for the most part, that is difficult to accomplish.

Why the asymmetry?

I think this is because we are used to hearing people give extreme praise.  In polite society, you compliment often, even if insincere.  The norm is complimenting more than is warranted.  Thus, it’s hard for praise to catch us off guard.

On the other hand, we are not used to extremely negative comments.  Simon Cowell is entertaining for that reason.  In normal interactions, if you do not like someone’s work, you try to say so in a nice way (soften the blow; give them encouragement).  Thus, the extremely harsh critique is not what we are used to hearing, so there is an incongruity.

He goes on to say:

In the last few years, neuroscience experiments have shown that some “conscious decisions” are actually made in the brain before the actor is conscious of them:  brain-scanning techniques can predict not only when a binary decision will be made, but what it will be (with accuracy between 55-70%)—several seconds before the actor reports being conscious of having made a decision.

We cannot (currently) tell from fMRI data when the brain has made a decision.  The particular study he focuses on is great for illustrating this point. From the abstract of the paper:

Here, we show that the outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and parietal cortex 4 s before the participant reports they are consciously making their choice

“Decoded from neural activity”?  No. What’s really going on there is they know when someone claims to have made a decision (in this case, to either add or subtract numbers), and they use fMRI data that preceded it to try and predict the outcome.  They are able to do this, in some cases, with about 58% accuracy.

In other words, before a final decision is consciously made, there is stuff going on the brain that can (somewhat weakly) predict the outcome (e.g., like we are thinking about it and are leaning one way).  Given that the brain is what is used to make the decision, it would be rather shocking if brain activity was not at least a little prognostic.

These studies aren’t strikes against free will or evidence of determinism (or evidence for or against compatibilism). They show what regions of the brain seem to be involved in the decision making, which could be quite useful, but nothing like the claims are being about them.

When you think about whether something is ____ culture, it seems reasonable to think about both size and directness.   For example, it would be hard to argue that it is unfair to describe a society where violence was common and people openly talked about enjoying it, as ‘violence culture.’   Consider two other societies where it’s less clear whether the violence culture label is appropriate.  Imagine a society where there is indirect support of violence. There, the culture contributes to violence from less visible things (e.g., parenting styles that do not promote empathy). Alternatively, one could imagine a society where there is direct promotion of violence but on a small scale.  An example of this might be if there was some violence as entertainment, but, for the most part, it was not something that received much attention.  Would it be fair to characterize the latter two societies as ‘violence culture?’

I am confident that there are many ways in which american culture leads to a higher incidence of rape than we would see in a more rape-prevention-optimal culture.  I can think of candidate cultural contributors, including the following:   rape trivialization attitudes; overemphasis on the importance of beauty in girls/women; sex-negativity; glorification of alpha-males; alcohol over marijuana as high of choice (drug war)[1];  too many unsupervised people with under-myelinated brains (teens); too many unsupervised people with under-myelinated brains who further render useless their frontal lobes by consuming alcohol; not enough access to porn; too much access to porn[2]; glorification of violence; emphasis on competition; too much religion; not enough religion; the standard narrative of human sexuality; fewer economic opportunities for women; victim blaming; overrepresentation of men in law enforcement and the media; and lack of concern about prison rape. I’m sure I’m missing some obvious ones.

At the same time, the words rape culture have a shock element to them.  Almost everyone is against rape in the sense that they think it’s bad and wish it never happened.  I suspect a very small minority of people would enjoy seeing a rape scene in a movie, and even fewer of them would admit to it (because they would be judged harshly). So, we don’t have a culture that directly encourages rape.  We do, however, live in a society where 15-20% of women have been raped [3].  That number is so alarming/sad/horrific, that that alone might be sufficient reason to call this rape culture.

The Steubenville Ohio case cemented in many people’s mind that this is a rape culture.  Yet, I wonder how much of that perception came from misleading or inaccurate facebook memes.  If it’s so clear that this is rape culture, then why the need to mislead?

Even questioning whether rape culture is a fair term can get you accused of being pro-rape, anti-women, ‘part of the problem’, etc.  If you describe our culture as ‘rape culture,’ you immediately signal to everyone around you that you are strongly against rape.  This reminds me of something I read about pedophilia:

…people gain status by attacking pedophilia. And you gain the most status if you go the furthest attacking pedophilia, if you can separate yourself from the pack by attacking it more, if you can say “My opponents think this marginal case is okay, but I am so against pedophilia that I oppose even the marginal cases” so on even further into the margin. And it’s really hard to say “Okay, you’ve gone too far with the attacks on pedophilia”, because then the other person can just say “I notice my worthy opponent is trying to defend pedophilia” and you lose whatever debate you were having.

Most people are against rape, and there is a lot to gain but showing you are even more strongly against it than most people; there is little-to-nothing to be gained by questioning whether someone is taking their anti-rape arguments a little to far.

‘Rape culture’ efficacy?

All of the above are just some of my thoughts about these types of labels in general.  However, the important question is not whether rape culture is a fair or appropriate label, but whether it is an effective one.  The label ‘rape culture’ is kind of jarring.  I could imagine someone hearing if for the first time and thinking “Rape culture?  Everyone is against rape.  Why would they call it that?  Convicted rapists are some of the most hated people in society (right behind pedophiles and child murderers).”  And then the person might think deeper about the issue.  Perhaps they will think about the ways in which society does contribute to rape.  Perhaps they will start to notice things, like ‘boys will be boys,’ victim blaming, objectifying images of women, etc. Thus, the label, which has a shock element to it, might be very effective at raising awareness of these important issues.

Alternatively, perhaps people will find the rape culture description as too extreme, and want to take a stand against it.  In that case, you’ve just given them motivated cognition in the wrong direction.

_________________________________________________________________________

[1] “In 47% of rapes, both the victim and the perpetrator had been drinking.”  I can’t help but wonder to what degree ‘drinking culture’ is a major factor in ‘rape culture,’ and to what degree that is caused by our stupid marijuana laws (i’m pretty sure someone high from pot is less likely to be aggressive than someone who has been drinking, but I’m not sure about this)

[2] I have heard arguments on both sides (that access to porn leads to more objectification of women and leads to more rape; that access to porn gives people a sexual outlet and makes them less likely to rape;  I think the data are more supportive of the latter theory, but I am not an expert)

[3] Data on rape are not particularly reliable for a variety of reasons, but those are the numbers I found on wikipedia, and they seem pretty consistent with what I’ve seen from other sources.

That seems to be the economic-behavioral relationship in this culture.  Most people accept that that’s how things are, and don’t seem to comment on it. However, I have witnessed the following on several occasions.  Someone who has a lot of money shops at a store (or restaurant) that is known for having very low prices (and not paying their employees much money).  This high status individual complains about how the employees aren’t very friendly or attentive.  For some reason, they are expecting high-end faux friendliness at low-end prices.

One explanation is that this is just standard classist behavior.  However, a wealthy person really wouldn’t gain much by trashing (e.g.) walmart employees — we all already know that the wealthy person makes a lot more money than the employees.  Usually agressive class signaling is reserved for people who are barely below you in SES (the signaling is an attempt at increasing the perceived distance).  I have an alternative explanation.  Perhaps self-important people believe that lower social class folks should be happy to interact with them, even if they aren’t being paid (i.e., that they are so important that it should be a privilege for anyone to interact with them).

Consider some of the extremes we have seen in various cultures.

In the wonderfully titled chapter “Why Women Once Hated Sex,” Roy Baumeister (h/t) argues that during the Victorian period, not only did women not often engage in sex, but they seemed to have a very low sex drive.  This appears to be in contrast to most of human history, where women’s sex drive was regarded as stronger than men’s (see also evidence of sperm competition etc).  Baumeister points out that Victorian women:

protested against the double standard of sexual morality, but not in the modern sense.  By abolishing the double standard, they did not mean to given women the sexual outlets and opportunities that men had, but rather to bring me to the level of sexual restraint and virtue of women.  They wanted equality, but an equality based on chastity.

He explains Victorian passionlessness was a way of obtaining meaning in their lives:

After centuries of oppression, contempt and exploitation…that made women seem almost useless and superfluous, women found a source of meaning in life that offered them respect, influence, efficacy and goals…Given the cultural environment, moral superiority was incompatible with lusty sexualty, and so it was necessary to renounce much of their sexual appetites.

Here we have an example of culture essentially leading to a loss of sexual desire.  We are not talking simply about culture taking away sexual desires for someone of the same sex, but for culture to take away sexual desires for anyone.

Culture can also affect what we find sexually appealing. Ozy Franz gives the following example:

To me– just like to any other modern American– footbinding is less attractive and more incredibly squicky body horror. But men wrote poems about the beauty of lotus feet; for a thousand years families crippled their daughters so they would be beautiful. I mean. That is serious commitment there. Your options here are “sexually is culturally influenced in an enormous way,” “for some reason Chinese people evolved to find footbinding beautiful and no one else did and they’ve mysteriously stopped in the past hundred years,” or “Chinese people spent a thousand years breaking their daughters’ feet for no reason.”

So, culture can shape people’s sexual desires in many ways.

If Hollywood does start producing many sex-positive, same-sex positive, polyamory-positive TV shows and movies,   I find it hard to believe that young people who grow up in that culture will not have, on average, more sexual attraction for people of the same sex than they would have if they had grown up with the hollywood of the 1970s.  If you think same sex relationships (or premarital sex) are bad (for whatever reason), then you should be concerned about pro-gay or sex-positive messages coming from Hollywood.  I see no reason (other than strategic, perhaps) for the sex-positive folks to deny the role of culture, and to insist that sexual preference is innate (or binary (especially binary)).

So, we are not born with fixed sexual preferences, but we are born into a culture and do vary in terms of how culture shapes our passions.  The cultural immune system (cultural conservatives) often do correctly identify the channels that are letting in foreign elements.  There are often valid reasons to suppress an immune system, and I think the case here is quite strong (without resorting to innateness arguments).  I think the libertarian argument is stronger, and is more likely to appeal to conservatives than is an argument based on overstating the role of genetics.

Causal definition

First, I will say that an action A caused an event B if the event B would not have occurred if action A had not been taken.  That is, what actually happened was an action A was taken and at some time later an event B occurred.   We will say that A caused B if, in that same world, you could go back in time and not take action A,  then event B would not occur.

Example

Dan gets up in the morning, eats breakfast, and starts to drive to his father’s house.  On his way there, a car goes through a red light and crashes into the side of Dan’s car.

Later that day Dan tells the story to his dad.  His dad says, “Eating breakfast caused the accident.”  Dan says “What?  Some guy ran through a red light! That’s what caused the accident.”

Many causes, most blameless

Dan’s father is almost certainly correct.  Had Dan decided to skip breakfast, he probably would not have been in that intersection when the other driver drove through the red light.  Thus, action A (eating breakfast) caused the event B (that specific car accident).

For the same reason, it’s also true that the other driver caused the accident by not noticing the red light.  There are many other causes.  For example:  Dan’s decision last year to move to the town where he currently resides; the driver who was in front of Dan who didn’t just sit at the green light, blocking Dan’s path to the intersection; Dan’s father, who called him the night before, asking if he’d come for a visit. Etc.

When someone says that your action caused something, it feels like they are blaming you (‘your action caused it’='it’s your fault’).  That might be what they are implying, but in general, your action causing something does not imply that you should have anticipated the effect.  For the large majority of causes, the effect was not foreseeable.

When should cause imply blame?

To evaluate whether we should anticipate an event B caused from an action A, we need to think about population level causal effects.  On average, if a large number of people (in a similar situation to your own) took action A, would the event B occur more often than if they did not take action A?  If so, and if there was a way for you to know this, then it is fair to assign some blame to you (with the level of play proportional to the size of the causal effect).

For example, if a world where a large number of people eating breakfast results in many more car accidents than in the same world but where no one eats breakfast, and there was a way for Dan to know this, then it might be reasonable to put some blame on him for the accident.  If that is not the case, then while his decision to eat breakfast might have caused the accident, there is no reason to blame him for it.

Science has gradually chipped away at humanism.  Evidence for heliocentrism, evolution, the cognitive map of bees, super organisms, the evolution of culture, and evidence against dualism and free will, to name some examples, have had a big impact.   However, humanism still persists in various ways throughout our culture.

Consider language.  Here are some humanist words/concepts:

• ‘natural‘ – If humans build a skyscraper it’s unnatural, but if bees build a beehive it’s natural.  If humans clean a new environment with antibacterial soap, it’s unnatural, but if Jewel Wasps do it it’s natural (note: ants also make antibiotics).  And so on.
  All living and non-living things affect the environment around them.  Humans have their own niches in that regard (in terms of how we do it), but so does everything else.
  
• ‘humanist’ / ‘humanism’ – Sometimes people use the word ‘humanism’ as a synonym for being nice.  That definition of humanism is itself humanist (the bad kind), because it suggests that humans have some special ability for kindness.
• ‘animals’ – The word ‘animals’ often implies only non-human animals.

Humanist thinking also includes greatly overestimating how many things are uniquely human.

It’s great to see people like Neil Shubin trying to get people to see the evolution of living things as a small part of the evolution of the universe.  Humanism will be difficult to defeat, however, because we have egos interacting with paradigm shift resistance.

First, I’ll quote wikipedia on what the doomsday argument is:

Simply put, it says that supposing the humans alive today are in a random place in the whole human history timeline, chances are we are about halfway through it.

…

Denoting by N the total number of humans who were ever or will ever be born, the Copernican principle suggests that humans are equally likely (along with the other N − 1 humans) to find themselves at any position n, so humans assume that our fractional position f = n/N is uniformly distributed on the interval [0, 1] prior to learning our absolute position.

The problem I have with this argument is that the assumption is bad.  We have plenty of reasons to believe that humans are not randomly placed somewhere in the human history timeline.  In fact, not only is it not true, but it would be hard for me to imagine a process less random than this.  I only exist because the specific humans that came before me existed in exactly the way that they did.  There is a gene-culture co-evolution, with each change being dependent on the previous change.

Why do a bunch of mathematics based on an assumption that we know isn’t even approximately true?

Example 1:  ”your policy did not perform better than anyone expected it to or claimed it would, and therefore it was a failure”

I recently heard someone from the NRA say that the assault weapons ban (AWB) didn’t work because the Columbine shooting occurred during the 10 year period in which the ban was in place.   Picture yourself in September of 1994, arguing in favor of a federal AWB.  You were arguing that we should: do(AWB).  Denote by Y the number of mass shootings in the next 10 years.  If your claim was that there would be no mass shootings if the AWB passed, i.e.,

P{Y=0|do(AWB)}=1,

then the NRA guy was right.    In reality, your claim would probably have been more like this:

E{Y|do(AWB)}<E{Y|do(no AWB)},

i.e., that there will likely be a reduction in mass shootings if there is an AWB.  In that case, neither you nor the NRA guy knows who was right.  It’s possible that there would have been a dozen more mass shootings during that 10 year period, had there been no AWB.  It’s also possible that the AWB increased mass shootings.

Example 2:  the highest risk products should be the most regulated

“Many more kids die per year in a swimming pool than from mass shootings, so why not ban pools?”

Whether it’s rational or not, if a total of 20 kids die in swimming pools in different locations and times, the public will not have as strong of a reaction as they would have 20 kids were shot at a single school on a single day.  Mass shootings, especially when kids are the victims, have a large negative impact on the public.  Millions of people feel sad and scared.  Whether they should or shouldn’t doesn’t seem very important.  More harm is done in mass shootings.  Because of the shooting at the movie theater last year, I’m sure many people are a little worried when they go to a movie theater (again, it doesn’t matter whether that is rational or not).  Many parents now worry every day when they send their kids to school.  With a pool, you have a feeling of security (whether false or not).  You can watch your kids while they swim.  However, if someone with 30 round clips starts firing into a crowd, there isn’t much you can do.

So, you can either base policy on how much harm you think each death should have caused the public, or you can base it on what actually happens.  An alternative, of course, is to try and convince the public and the media to care the same amount about each death.  To be successful, you’d just have to get people to change what they respond to emotionally.  That can’t be too hard, right?

(there are also other reasons why pool deaths differ in important ways from mass shootings, but this example was long enough)

Example 3: exaggerating the differences in opinions

I’ve heard many people say that they are against gun control because of the 2nd amendment.  The debate appears to then be between people who want to ban guns and people who want no restrictions.  However, this is an exaggeration of the differences in opinions.  Everyone** has a weapons control line, and the question should be about where to place it.  For example, I do not think most people would be comfortable if Walmart was selling surface-to-air missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, grenade launchers, or tanks.  So, people agree that there should be a line.  Similarly, I haven’t heard many people say that all weapons should be banned.  Thus, the debate should simply be about where to draw the line.

–

*I’m making the assumption that people are attempting to communicate about actual policy implications, not just cheerleading

**usual caveat about everyone not literally meaning everyone

While you have your bank card out, the nice employee smiles and asks “would you like to donate $3 to feed the hungry?”  They see that you have already spent $200 on groceries, including organic vegetables, alaskan king crab, and speciality cheese.  What kind of a selfish monster would not spend just $3 to feed starving children?  Even if you only bought essential budget items, you cannot spare a few dollars?

A lot of people probably say yes to the donation.  They get to feel good about whatever cause they contributed to and for appearing to be a nice person to the employee (and/or whoever is shopping with them).  The company benefits by being able to brag about how much money they raised for the charity.  The charity wins by getting a big donation.  So win-win-win, right?

Which charity?

Most people have some preferences in terms of which causes they care more about (e.g., cancer, environment) and what qualities the charities possess (e.g., effectiveness, efficiency, visibility of outcomes).  In addition, the amount of money that each person could potentially donate to charity varies and is not unlimited.  Thus, given preferences and finite resources, some people might not be very enthused about having other people try to pressure them into donating to non-preferred charities.  I have my favorites. You have yours.  Why should I try to pressure you into donating to mine or vice versa?

Charity has large social component

If I walked up to you and said “will you give me $20 so that I can donate it to my favorite charity?,” you would probably think that that was a strange and inappropriate request.  But if I make that request more social, it becomes socially acceptable (and even encouraged).  For example, I could say “I’m running in a 10K for Alzheimer’s research.  My father had Alzheimer’s.   It’s such a terrible disease.  I’m looking for people to sponsor me.”   Here it was made personal by citing my father.  By donating, you are showing me that you care about how tough it was for me and my dad.  Also, it is social by participating in a run with many other people.  People getting together to build a house is directly related to charity.  But people getting together to walk or run? Why?  Apparently, the social component greatly increases donations (or these events wouldn’t exist).  We love to get together with other people to feel like we are all in supporting this cause together.  We like to contribute to such activities.  (although I suspect if the charity event was “everyone dig a large hole and then fill it back up again,” it wouldn’t get as much support.  It would feel more pointless than a run for some reason (even though they are both exercise and exercise only))

The end result is you got somebody to donate their money to your preferred charity.  There is an understanding that you might return the favor, which has the feel of reciprocal altruism, but sort of is not (‘not,’ in the sense that person A could have just donated double the money to their own charity and none to person B’s, and vice versa, and the outcome would be the same).  This sort of fake reciprocal altruism really demonstrates the extent to which it’s social.  I donate to yours, you donate to mine, and we both bond with each other over it and feel great.

Summary

With that as background, when an employee asks me if I want to donate to a particular charity, these are the thoughts that flash in my head:

• I don’t know anything about this charity.  Maybe it does more harm than good.  There are plenty of charities that fall into that category (unintended consequences and all that).
• Even if it does more good than harm, I’m sure there are more effective and efficient charities out there.  I could take that (e.g.) $3 and spend it on one of (e.g.) GiveWell’s recommended charities.
• I can’t help but resent the fact that a store is putting me in a position of either donating to their charity of choice (rather than mine), or looking like I want kids to starve.
• I don’t want to encourage this kind of social pressure. I feel bullied.
• Some people can’t afford to donate even a few dollars to charity.  It probably harms them to ask for a donation (they might experience shame or guilt).
• But maybe I’m just rationalizing.  Maybe I won’t take that $3 and donate to my favorite charity.  Maybe I really just want to keep the money for myself and am using these arguments to justify doing so.  I know that if I could push a button and donate to a charity that has been proven effective (at something I care about), I would do it right now.  But realistically, I’ll go home and forget about this and not donate.
• I know that this is mostly just a social thing.  Why can’t I just play along and feel good that I signaled caring?  Maybe if a lot of people say yes to the $3, the employees will feel like there are a lot of caring people in the world, and they will feel better about humanity (that’s worth something).
• It really could be that the policy of stores like these leads to more total charitable donations, and even if the charities aren’t the most efficient, there is a net benefit (over the counterfactual world where no stores try to pressure people to donate)
• But I really don’t think that this is the best way to distribute money to causes.  Is there reason to believe that the people making these decisions for businesses are better than the public at picking out good charities?

(that is a very good summary of my thought process.  my life is endless debates with myself about all kinds of things. is this common I wonder?)

I do not know how to estimate which potential world is better.  There are reasonable arguments on both sides.  I will probably continue to just say no to these requests (primarily because I want to discourage social pressure), but I do not know if I am net helping or harming the world.