Morally bankrupt, my good man?

Occasionally someone will post a comment on a blog entry that deserves a more prominent response than simply adding a further comment. A few hours ago, Alec commented on my criticism of Thomas Friedman:

“Morally bankrupt” – that’s one of the phrases that even scientifically hip biology-teaching evangelical Christians use on me when I deny the existence of God and generally toast their tootsies with atheist rejection of their belief.

Does it actually mean anything to you, or have you too succumbed to subjective mudslinging as a means of argument, however odious the target, my good man?

The belief that morality is impossible without a belief in God, and that to be an atheist “shows a recklessness of moral character and utter want of moral sensibility” [1] is widespread; indeed it used to be the law of the land. One would expect those theists for whom the existence of [some kind of] God is an “objective fact” to argue from this that morality has an objective basis. What is curious is that some atheist philosophers have historically conceded the consequent of the argument, and have argued that, in the absence of a God, morality is necessarily “subjective” or “invented”. (See, for instance, Mackie [2].)

Yet the notion that morality and ethics are God-given is hard to sustain these days. Indeed it is under attack from both science and theistic philosophy! For philosophers and theologians such as Swinburne, the notion of “goodness” must be independent of God, otherwise the assertion that “God is good” is simply a tautology. On the scientific front, we are developing better and better models of how creatures develop social behaviours, including cooperation and altruism: Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue [4] provides an excellent high-level account of this work, though geeks should also dive into Axelrod’s fundamental work. [5] The key insight of researchers such as Kagen, Wilson, and Frank is that morality derives not from reason, but from instinct:

Wilson chides philosophers for not taking seriously the notion that morality resides in the senses as a purposive set of instincts. They mostly view morality as merely a set of utilitarian or arbitrary preferences and conventions laid upon people by society. Wilson argues that morality is no more a convention than other sentiments such as lust or greed. When a person is disgusted by injustice or cruelty he is drawing upon an instinct, not rationally considering the utility of the sentiment, let alone simply regurgitating a fashionable convention.
[4, p.143]

So to return to Alec’s charge: when I refer to Thomas Friedman as being “morally bankrupt”, I am inviting the reader to join me in an instinctually-based reaction, which derives from our shared heritage as social animals. These instincts are perfectly objective: the behaviours to which they give rise can, and have, been measured and modelled in a variety of ways. And the source of these instincts is, quite simply, our old friend natural selection. No theistic hypothesis is required.

[1] Odell v. Koppee, 5 Heisk. (Tenn) 91. Quoted in [3].
[2] John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin Books, 1979)
[3] Michael Martin, Atheism, Morality and Meaning (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002)
[4] Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue (London: Penguin Books, 1997)
[5] Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)

Le mot juste on the Miers nomination

Rick Brookhiser in the National Review Online: “It’s not as bad as Caligula putting his horse in the Senate.”

Not quite. And this from a Bush supporter, apparently having a Brownie moment. After all, we’re talking about a woman who has reportedly called George W. Bush “the smartest man she’s ever known”. This immediately disqualifies her, on grounds of judgement or experience – take your pick.

(Via Sully.)

Facilitating genocide as a foreign policy option?

I guess this is what happens when warmongers get tired and impatient. slacktivist quotes Thomas Friedman (whose NYT op-eds really aren’t worth paying for) as arguing that if the Sunnis in Iraq won’t “come around… [we] should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind” Most people who advocate the withdrawal of U.S. troops do so in the (perhaps naive) hope that this will reduce the tension and reduce the level of violence. Friedman is the first pundit that I’ve encountered who seems to advocate civil war and perhaps Rwanda-style genocide as an appropriate way of dealing with recalcitrant Sunnis. Simply amazing.

P.S. Of course with or without Friedman’s morally bankrupt ideas, a civil war is probably inevitable.

A good week

I’m in the middle of packing up before I check out of the hotel and head up 101 to the airport. I thought I’d blog for a moment before putting away my PowerBook. It was a good, productive week here in California. Picking out the highlights, I got my annual performance review out of the way, spent some time with Greg Papadopoulos on my plans for the rest of FY06, visited SeeBeyond in LA, and had the chance to present a status update on my work with StorageTek to Jonathan Schwartz and his staff. One consequence of these meetings is that I’m now putting together plans to visit the UK and India at the end of October.

But now I must unplug my laptop and prepare for another trip on a Song bird….

Visiting SeeBeyond

I’m visiting SeeBeyond in Monrovia, CA* today. SeeBeyond builds enterprise application integration solutions for a wide range of customers using some really cool middleware technology they’ve developed – check out their website for details. They were acquired by Sun last month, and ever since the deal closed I’ve wanted to talk to them. This morning I flew down from San Jose to Burbank** on SouthWest*** and drove down the Foothills Freeway to Monrovia. After introductions, and plugging in to the local network (which is mostly hooked up to SWAN – still some 10.* addresses to worry about), I talked with a group of managers and directors about Sun’s technical grade structures, including the DEs, Fellows, and Technology Directors. Then this afternoon I met with a smaller group of directors to share some of what we’ve been doing at StorageTek and discuss whether any of it could apply to SeeBeyond. I found the exchanges very useful: I think we’re off to a good start.

As with StorageTek, it’s important to avoid the “I’m from the Government; I’m here to help” attitude. The last thing a bunch of engineering managers who are under schedule pressure want to hear is a lecture on the value of horizontal communications or an admonition to send off all their top people for ARC duty. The goal is to learn from each other while keeping the customer satisfied – not a mindless Borg-like assimilation.

—
* Yes, I was confused by the name too – Monrovia sounds like it belongs in Transylvania, not West Africa. However this Monrovia is a suburb of Los Angeles.
** Of course I’m of that generation that automatically prepends Beautiful downtown whenever I hear Burbank. The curse of pop culture….
*** First time on SouthWest for at least ten years. Of course I’d planned to fly jetBlue, but our functionally challenged travel agents couldn’t figure out how to book it….

Jaron Lanier on the structural gotcha for American business

Scanning the HuffPo RSS feeds, I spotted this insightful piece by Jaron Lanier: “I am writing this on a United Airlines flight over the Atlantic. The flight is tense. We had a mechanical delay and United has been having trouble re-routing customers who will miss connections, apparently because it is now understaffed. The major airlines of the richest country in history tend to be bankrupt, and somehow or other that is considered normal.”

That much is familiar. But the analysis is slightly different from what you’d find in the WSJ:

American corporations are increasingly functioning like fashion models. Youth matters most…. The main problem for old companies is that if you’ve had a workforce for a long time, the health care and pension bills pile up…. From them… I always hear complaints about a walloping big “Tax-like expense” they have to pay for health care and pensions, a tax that foreign competitors are excused from…. [C]ompanies facing the Tax that dare not speak its name have a harder time thinking in the long term. Toyota would probably not have been able to fund the development of the Prius if it faced the Tax at home in Japan.

Is this what an America in decline will look like? When Google has been around long enough to have a middle aged staff instead of a gorgeous crowd of healthy young people, will investors dump it for a new Googalike that can hire kids again to get out from under health care and pension costs?

The thing that I’ve always found amazing is that universal health care in the U.S.A. is solidly opposed by the right-wing corporate establishment, even though these are the people who could benefit most from it in the long term through the business efficiencies and flexibility that it would create. But I guess ideology is more powerful than rational self-interest.

Three new travel experiences

I flew out from Boston to San Francisco yesterday evening for a week of meetings. Travel has become pretty routine of late, so I’m glad to have three new experiences to relate.

First, I flew out of the new Terminal A at Boston Logan. This replaced the old Eastern Airlines terminal, which was used by Continental after Eastern’s demise. The new terminal is for the exclusive use of Delta. They only just finished this, and I was curious to see what it was like. Bright, cheery, nicely laid out… and relatively empty. Oops. And the newness extended to some of the facilities: for example, the Fuddrucker’s hamburger place was advertising beer and margaritas, but they haven’t got their liquor license yet. Overall it reminded me of some European terminals, and the density of upscale shopping outlets was reminiscent of Heathrow.

Second, I got puffed. That is to say, at the security checkpoint I was selected to go through one of the new devices that subjects you and your clothing to an intense puff of air, directed upwards to dislodge any particles in your garments or hair; the system then “sniffs” the air for any suspicious chemicals. The process takes about 10 seconds. High “geek interest” factor.

And third, and the reason I was using terminal A, was that I was flying on Song for the first time. This is Delta’s “airline within an airline”, a bit like United’s Ted. One type of aircraft (757-200), one class, and relentless fun. (Yes, they will mix martinis for you in flight – $7 each.) The competition is clearly jetBlue, but the style borrows from Virgin Atlantic. The seats are OK – leather (not necessarily a plus), limited lumbar support, decent pitch. The seat-back video is good, and includes the kind of flight map that you usually find on international flights.

As for the flight: the cabin crew issued dire warnings over the PA about it being a full flight, but there were only 155 seats filled (according to the display outside the gate), and I had the 27 D-E-F row all to myself. We pushed back 30 minutes late because of a minor maintenance issue. The flight was very bumpy: the pilot kept changing altitude between FL320 and FL360 trying to find smooth air. Nonetheless I was able to get plenty of sleep. The verdict: recommended; a good (and frugal) way to deal with the “bus ride” between BOS and SFO.

CD of the… oh, never mind: Tales from Turnpike House by Saint Etienne

turnpikehouse.jpgBack in the early 1990s I was a huge fan of Saint Etienne. Their first two albums Foxbase Alpha and So Tough showed up regularly in my car cassette player; songs like “You’re in a bad way” and “Kiss and make up” had an infectious appeal. (And of course there was their wonderful version of Neil Young’s “Only love can break your heart”.) There were four main influences – Style Council’s jazzy cool pop, Brian Wilson’s songwriting, 1960’s Brit-girl pop such as that of Sandy Shaw and Cilla Black, and South London – woven together by Wiggs’ effortless electronica and Sarah Cracknell’s girl-next-door voice. (Their work remixed really well – check out Casino Classics, with remixes by all the big names of the late 90s.)

I bought almost all of their work (I was a completist – remember?), including the highs (“He’s on the phone“) and the lows (Good Humor), until a few years ago when I thought that they’d lost their way. Now comes Tales from Turnpike House, a lovely concept album about suburban London that makes me want to jump on a plane to Heathrow Gatwick. Gorgeous songs, from the very first tracks “Sun in my morning” and “Milk bottle symphony”. And then track 11, the outstanding “Teenage winter”, which is possibly the best thing they’ve ever done. (See this Stylus review for more thoughts on this.)

(N.b. For some reason, this hasn’t been released in the US; my copy is an imported “Special Edition” from the UK that I found at Tower Records. I’ve been enjoying the album itself so much that I haven’t even had a chance to listen to the bonus disc, Up the Wooden Hill.)