Can voters be more stupid than this?

Posted on February 6, 2008 by Ted

Here in California, we had State Proposition 91 on yesterday’s ballot. It’s designed to make sure that gasoline tax revenue is used for transportation funding, as intended, and not something else.

In an unusual turn of events, no one supported this proposition, not even the people responsible for getting it on the ballot.

How can this be?

It’s a timing thing. It turns out that the approval to be on the ballot was given in 2006. However, a separate proposal that accomplished the same goal wound up on the November 2006 ballot and was passed. This made this year’s Proposition 91 irrelevant. So the original supporters said not to vote for it.

Don’t believe me? Check out the Voter Information Guide and see for yourself. The section for arguments in favor of Proposition 91 states: “Proposition 91 is no longer needed. We respectfully urge you to vote NO ON PROPOSITION 91.”

Okay. Here’s the punchline:

It’s still early as I write this (only 14% of precincts are reporting) but the percentage of YES votes for Proposition 91 is 44% (that’s over one million votes and counting). That’s right. A greater percentage (and greater number) of people have so far voted in favor of Proposition 91 than have voted in favor of Proposition 92, 94, 95, 96 or 97. Of all the propositions on the ballot, only Proposition 93 has received more YES votes—with an only slightly larger percentage: 48%.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain (the projected winners in their respective primaries) each have less votes (by several hundred thousand) than the votes in favor of Proposition 91.

The kindest spin that can be put on this is that “yes on 91” voters read the proposal for the first time when in the voting booth and made their decision knowing nothing else about it. Maybe that’s not exactly a stupid way to vote. But it’s sure close.

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Intelligence: Environment vs. Genetics

Posted on December 17, 2007 by Ted

For the record, I have little tolerance for these endless environment vs. genetics debates. Too often, they make it sound like an either-or debate: Either trait X is “determined” by the environment or by genetics. It has to be one or the other. People who actually study this issue have long ago realized that traits are instead “determined” by some combination of the two factors. True, there is a continuum, where some traits may be more influenced by one of these two factors than the other. But it never reaches 100%. It is similarly silly to say that a given trait is “90% genetic” or whatever. This would be like saying that your mother’s apple pie is determined 90% by recipe and 10% by cooking skill. An apple pie is a result of the interplay of these two determinants. You can never completely isolate one factor from the other—or assign a percentage to each one.

That said, it is also my belief that most human characteristics, both physical and behavioral, are significantly influenced by our genes. Just because an apple pie is not 100% determined by its recipe does not mean that its recipe is irrelevant to how the apple pie tastes. The same is true for genes and human behavior.

When it comes to human behaviors and skills, our genes place upper limits on what we can achieve. I doubt that anyone believes they could match Michael Jordan’s basketball abilities simply by practicing harder or getting the “right” training or growing up in a different environment or whatever else might be mentioned here. Most of us will never and could never be as good as Michael Jordan, no matter what. He started off with a genetic advantage that the rest of us don’t have. In a different environment, he might not have realized his potential. But most of us don’t even have the potential to realize.

This reminds me of a more personal example. I took piano lessons for 10 years, from about the age of 8 to 18. For most of that time, I studied under an excellent teacher and studied quite hard. Still, I struggled to move up the ranks and join the teacher’s “advanced students” group. I eventually made it but it was not easy.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine (we weren’t close friends but we were friendly to each other) was taking lessons from the same teacher. We grew up in the same town, were of the same religion and traveled in similar social circles. My friend had a much much easier time advancing. Indeed, he was so good that the teacher wound up giving him his own solo concert when we were seniors in high school. Quite simply, my friend was incredibly talented.

I was not surprised when, several years later, I discovered that my friend had made a career in music. His name is Randy Edelman and he went on to become a noted film composer. I am confident that there is no way that I could have achieved what Randy achieved, no matter how similar our backgrounds and how hard I tried. There was a genetic component to his talent that I did not have.

I was reminded of all of this when I read the recent article in the New York Times by Richard Nisbett, titled “All Brains Are the Same Color.” The main contention of the article is that any racial difference in intelligence “has environmental, not genetic, causes.”

Leaving aside my prior concern about whether such statements are ever meaningful, and leaving aside concerns about the potential bias of I.Q. testing, I would mainly agree with Nisbett’s contention. It is possible that there is a “genetic cause” for some of the difference, just as there may be for any physical trait, such as the color of skin. But, if there is, it is too entangled in other causes for us to clearly define it. At least for the moment, it is more reasonable to assume no difference at all.

But we have to be careful not to overgeneralize here. It is one thing to say that the intelligence differences between two groups have no genetic basis. It is quite another thing to say that there is no genetic basis for intelligence at all. To me this would be the equivalent of saying that we can all be Einsteins, given the right environment. Or that we can all be Michael Jordan. Or that I could have easily been Randy Edelman. It just isn’t so. Pretending it is so or wishing it were so, does not change that fact.

At some level, we all know that some of us are smarter than most of us, and that such differences are not simply a question of environment. Denying this truth, as with the case of any denial of truth, ultimately causes more harm than good.

Sorry for the long gap between this posting and the previous one. I have been busy finishing up my iPhone book. I hope to return to a more frequent posting schedule now.

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The MDJ vs. MacFixIt

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Ted

There exists a rather odd Macintosh-related publication named MDJ.

I say odd because, first of all, unlike almost every other publication on the Web, you cannot actually read the publication from a Web browser. You must subscribe to it (at a fee of $30/month) and then receive the publication via email.

Its name is also a bit odd. The MDJ name originally stood for Macintosh Daily Journal. As I understand it, the publishers were at some point legally barred from using the full name, so they shifted to the abbreviation as its official name.

The publication is also odd because, despite the suggestion that it is a daily publication, its actual publication schedule has been anything but daily. I receive a complimentary subscription to the MDJ. Unless I somehow missed receiving issues, there has only been one issue each for September and October. That’s not even close to weekly.

Further, the MDJ’s Web site may leave you wondering whether they still publish at all. For example, this page states: “Offices were closed for much of the second half of October, 2005. Issue production is scheduled to accelerate in November 2005.” That’s nice to know—except that it is now November 2007! Who is in charge of keeping their Web site current?

All of that said, the MDJ is a worthy publication, at least when it manages to publish. It offers a wealth of technical information about the Mac that is rarely duplicated elsewhere. I still look forward to each issue.

But the MDJ, largely through the voice of its publisher Matt Deatherage, can also be quite vicious. When Matt disagrees with something or somebody, he too often expresses his disagreement by resorting to a level of insult that would make Rush Limbaugh blush.

When I read the MDJ, I attempt to sift the valuable information from the vitriolic rhetoric with which it is intermingled. And I move on. But I could not do so today.

There is an article in the current MDJ regarding MacFixIt, a Web site devoted to providing troubleshooting information about Apple products. The article is so unjustifiably vicious, that I could not let it pass without comment. Actually, at least as of today, the article has not yet been published in an MDJ issue. Instead, the article was extracted from a forthcoming MDJ and posted online, available to anyone for free. The MDJ took this unusual step because of what it claims is “the public importance” of the article and “the requests we’d probably get to send it to other people.” I don’t know how many requests they would have gotten, but a search of Google this morning came up with very few links to this article, suggesting that it may not be as important or in demand as they may have thought.

I also found it odd that, out of all the useful and truly important information that the MDJ publishes, the only article in many many months that the MDJ has deemed important enough to make available for free is one that attacks another Web site. I have to wonder whether their motivations here are truly to provide a public service (I leave it to you to decide).

Before I continue, I need to interject a disclaimer. I am the founder of MacFixIt. Thus, you might suspect that I am biased in my reactions to the MDJ article. I am sure I am. There is no denying this. But that doesn’t mean I am wrong. I would also add that I sold the Web site in 2000 and have had nothing to do with the main content of the site ever since. I do write an occasional column or tutorial (which always includes my byline), but I have no hand in any other part of the site—including the content that the MDJ is criticizing. So I am not feeling personally attacked here.

This at last brings us to the specifics of the article. The MDJ is upset with MacFixIt’s recommendations regarding how best to install Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) as well as related advice regarding possibly incompatible software (such as DiskWarrior). The article contends that MacFixIt is overly alarmist in its concerns and thus makes unwarranted recommendations (such as to avoid the standard Upgrade method for installing Leopard).

Truth be told, if I had to take sides, my position would be closer to the MDJ’s view than to MacFixIt’s view. But there remains room for differences of opinion here. Certainly there is reason for caution in how you upgrade to Leopard. Even Apple points out, in a support article, that a not uncommon situation could result in a persistent blue screen at startup after upgrading to Leopard. Doing an “Archive and Install” rather than a standard Upgrade would likely avoid this. Other sites have expressed similar cautions (here is one example). It’s not just MacFixIt.

In any case, you should be able to disagree on such matters without resorting to name calling, as the MDJ does when it calls MacFixIt “stupid” and “despicable.” The very title of the article is: “The despicable MacFixIt.”

But I don’t want to debate here who is ultimately right or wrong on this installation question (or the related DiskWarrior issue). Nor do I want to linger on the matter of name calling. What I found most scurrilous about the MDJ article is its assertion that MacFixIt is engaged in deliberate deception, offering alarmist information that the site knows to be false or misleading, all in an attempt to increase its revenues. This claim is completely false.

What is true is that MacFixIt’s view of the world can become a bit distorted by all the email it receives. Especially when a new OS version is released, the site is inundated with emails about installations that failed for one reason or another. Such problems can even plague veteran Mac users and experts, as noted in a column by Bob LeVitus. The causes here may often turn out to be something other than the Installer itself. Still, at some point, it is hard for the MacFixIt staff not to take a skeptical view of the installation process. If bypassing the standard Upgrade in favor of alternative methods appears to bypass many of the reported problems, it is understandable that they would recommend these alternatives.

It’s not unlike a policeman who, after years on the beat and seeing one crime after another, becomes increasingly cynical and begins to view almost everything as potentially dangerous. He may wind up recommending safety precautions that others deem unnecessary. But he is not doing so in an attempt to deceive.

This, I am certain, is the worst-case scenario rationale for MacFixIt’s position. They may sometimes be overly alarmist. And they may make mistakes. But they are most often correct and continue to provide a valuable service to the Mac community. In any case, their advice is always honest and genuine. The MDJ should be ashamed of itself for suggesting otherwise. If anyone is despicable in all of this, it is not MacFixIt.

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Friday QuickTakes

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Ted

A semi-random collection of thoughts too brief by themselves for a solo blog entry:

I remain appalled by Turkey’s near complete denial that a mass killing of Armenians even took place almost a century ago. Turkey’s objection to whether or not it is called a genocide is almost beside the point (see this NYT article). It is too reminiscent of Holocaust denials (which sadly also remain in the news thanks to, among others, Iran’s President) and is just as disgusting. Still, doesn’t the U.S. Congress have more important things to worry about than whether or not to call this chapter of history a genocide? Especially so given the political headaches it is causing? This is one of those rare occasions where I actually agree with Bush’s position.

I haven’t yet seen the new documentary “My Kid Could Paint That.” From the reviews I have read, however, it appears to raise some intriguing questions. Is a 4-year-old capable of producing quality abstract art? If so, what does this say about our definition of such art? What really separates the wheat from the chaff in this arena? The film also raises the question of whether or not Marla received help in producing her art. What the film apparently does not address (although it is of interest to me) is: Why should it matter whether or not Marla received help? If it is a great work of art, shouldn’t it remain a great work of art whoever created it? Or has Marla already become like Picasso. A Picasso painting would turn out to be worth a lot less if it were discovered that it was painted by someone else. In such cases, the value of the work is more due to who created it than the merits of the work itself.

On the face of it, the idea that we may bomb Iran before next year’s Presidential election seems too crazy to be true. With support for the President’s war in Iraq at an all-time low and continuing to fall still further, with the public finally aware of how many lies it has been fed to fuel support for this war, how can Bush even think about getting away with starting yet another Mideast war? Yet, people are taking this prospect seriously. Even worse, many Democrats seem unwilling to vigorously oppose the idea. Hillary Clinton is one of these Democrats (see this NYT column). Democrats in Congress are not much better. They now seem poised to give immunity to the telecommunications companies that assisted Bush in his illegal wiretapping program, another component of his “war on terror.” Is it too soon to say “A pox on both their houses”?

Enough already with America’s anti-attitude towards any new tax. It’s time for it to end. To those of you are wealthy enough to pay an increased tax without any financial burden, I say: “What is with you? Isn’t it enough that you can already afford to fly on a private jet, own three multi-million dollar homes, and take vacations that cost more than most people make in a lifetime? How about also supporting a tax increase to pay for some truly valuable government programs?” And to those with a much more moderate income who still resent any additional dollar given to the government, I say: “Not every tax increase is a bad idea. The government pays for all sorts of things that you support, from police to schools to roads. It is underfunded in key areas that you probably favor, including drug oversight by the FDA and telecommunications oversight by the FCC. We could use more money to fight the effects of global warming. And how about better health care? None of this is free. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want the government to do more, at some point you have to pay more.” Now is that point.

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