Bioethics

We May be Biased Toward Hawks, but We’ve Become Doves

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Pinker’s brief contribution to the Edge‘s year-end treat gives a cheerful & progressive sense of proportion. While acknowledging our historical tendency toward cruelty and barbarism, he describes a world more dovish. But also this week Arts & Letters links to a Foreign Policy article “Why Hawks Win” that argues our reasoning is biased toward war. Both seem flawed but both attempt to understand the elusive “nature of man.” Of course, both also come with their own preconceptions.

Pinker might see this “hawkishness” in terms of the tribal loyalties so central to traditional defense. Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon are, I suspect, finding such tribal perspectives when discovering bias:

Evidence suggests that this bias is a significant stumbling block in negotiations between adversaries. In one experiment, Israeli Jews evaluated an actual Israeli-authored peace plan less favorably when it was attributed to the Palestinians than when it was attributed to their own government. Pro-Israel Americans saw a hypothetical peace proposal as biased in favor of Palestinians when authorship was attributed to Palestinians, but as “evenhanded” when they were told it was authored by Israelis.

What the authors don’t acknowledge is how those biases helped earlier generations protect their own. That we tend not to trust the “other” may at times have to do with the nature of the “other” (Arafat’s reign did little to lead Israelis to find Palestinians trustworthy), but the biological truth remains: we trust our own.

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Do Blondes Have More Fun

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My oldest daughter. whose good looks are a bit Slavic & definitely brunette was quite irritated as she searched for a cake “topper” five years ago: she wanted a brunette bride paired with a groom of the blonde/blue-eyed good looks of her Nordic husband-to-be. (Perfectly sensible people tend toward the sentimental at such times; I figured she figured she would only marry once & why not with marzipan schmalz?) Dark brides were everywhere, but always coupled with dark grooms. And perhaps as many plastic couples were dark grooms with blonde brides. Clearly, these reflected our culture’s vision of a generic “handsome couple.” But, now, I see in AL Daily, “Corrected-Cavegirls were first blondes to have fun”, the ancient path of evolutionary choice, though I’m not sure this is enough evidence. With such ratios, the males chose, but what will women find alluring? If cake ornaments (generally chosen by women) are any indication, blonde men don’t have (or aren’t) more fun.

Another thought, will women become dark & dowdy if the ratios in China & India continue – and perhaps spread? (I’m looking forward to being in fashion myself.) When men died young & hard:

The increase in competition for males led to rapid change as women struggled to evolve the most alluring qualities. Frost believes his theory is supported by studies which show blonde hair is an indicator for high oestrogen levels in women.

Whatever. My daughter’s search says something, but I’m not sure what. I put this under “bioethics” but suspect it’s trivia.

The Good Death – or Not?

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Lehrer reported tonight on the Supreme Court decision on assisted death. I believe most of us have conflicted feelings about end-of-life questions. This may have been the best choice – but the remark by an opponent that suicides are often victims of depression was answered a little too glibly by his opposite, who quickly contended that none euthanized had suffered from depression.

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Let Them Eat Organic Cake!

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Despite the opposition of President Bush to federal subsidies for embryonic stem cell research, the United States isn’t the only jurisdiction that has had problems coming to terms with the implications of the genetic revolution. Ronald Bailey reports on EU intransigence on genetically modified (GM) crops, and how these EU regulations are having dire consequences for the livelihoods of the world’s poor people:

[T]he constituency of anti-biotech environmental groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth is not poor African and Asian farmers and their families, but affluent and easily frightened European consumers. In response to ferocious pressure ginned up by the misleading campaigns of ideological environmentalists, EU politicians and bureaucrats have built an all but impenetrable wall of anti-biotech regulations around themselves. Wielding these onerous crop biotechnology regulations, the EU, on specious safety grounds, has essentially banned the importation of most biotech crops and foods. But these regulations do not only have consequences for European farmer and consumers.

The EU wants to export its regulatory system to the world, and it is offering “capacity building” foreign aid to persuade developing countries to adopt its no-go or go-slow approach to crop biotechnology regulations. Even more tragically, some developing countries are so afraid of the EU’s anti-biotech wrath that they are willing to risk the lives of millions of their hungry by rejecting food aid that contains genetically enhanced crops.

Activists usually blame the inaction of rich countries for killing people in poor countries. However, instead of outrage here, we get Greenpeace geneticist Doreen Stabinsky primly quipping in the Post-Dispatch, “Hunger is not solved by producing more food. We’re the breadbasket of the world, and we have hungry people in the U.S.”

Hunger may not be solved by producing more food, but it sure couldn’t hurt.

There’s a saying, that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a life time. What the anti-biotech groups’ approach boils down to is a refusal to teach their poorer neighbors to fish. This is unsurprising, as such groups are generally anti-liberal (in that they expect government to provide), and dispensing immediate aid doesn’t require teaching anyone how to be self-sufficient. This is of a piece with the anti-liberal hostility toward individual responsibility. (Do not confuse this with the liberal sympathy for the plight of the poor, as true liberals advocate both giving the man a fish and teaching him to fish.)

Rather odd, given the chidings that Americans are usually subjected to from Europeans dismissing our supposedly parochial attitudes toward technology. You’d think they’d know better. Then again, if their own farmers were at least marginally more efficient, they wouldn’t have to import food and thus run the risk of importing GM foods. Try telling that to someone in Brussels.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Europe’s Population Implosion

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Much has been said and written about Europe’s fertility rate, the white portion of which is below replacement levels. Here are some clues why this is happening. Compare those stories with an American one, and you can begin to get a sense of the differing values.

James Taranto addressed this in a way in January:

Medical statistics can be tricky: An excellent hospital may have a higher death rate than a mediocre one because of differences in the patient population, with the former treating much harder cases than the latter. That is what seems to have happened here: Kristof has alighted on a statistical artifact of American excellence and misconstrued it as a sign of America’s shortcomings.

Perhaps America’s much-ballyhooed religiosity is also her saving grace in this context, as, despite Roe v. Wade, we are more likely to try to save perinatal infants instead of dumping the baby in the rubbish. Or, as James Taranto points out in “The Roe Effect“, perhaps our religiosity remains because of Roe v. Wade. Who knows?

It is entirely possible, of course, that the European women who discarded those babies did, in fact, endure much emotional anguish. But in the end, their decision was indubitably made easier by the more cavalier attitudes of their postmodern upbringing. I hope it wasn’t quite so easy, of course. I’d hate to think that some woman decided, after carrying a baby nearly to term, that she’d rather not give up the single life, that she’d rather not give up being able to afford items of haute couture or dinners of haute cuisine. In short, I’d hate to think that women who want to live like the girls of Sex and the City would make a decision to bring a baby to term, then give it up all at the last minute just because it’s “inconvenient”. I’d also hate for Europeans to have to resort to the excuse that these women didn’t know any better; wouldn’t that take away their ability to mock the United States for our (admitted) lack of good sex education?

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]