poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (01/11/85)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA> Poli-Sci Digest Tue 8 Jan 85 Volume 5 Number 2 Contents: Supreme Court & Interpreting the Tax Laws Discrimination etc Designer Genes Robber Barons ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 1985 10:28 EST From: Dean Sutherland <Sutherland@TL-20A.ARPA> Subject: Firth, exhibits A & B One thing which can be done about this is: WRITE YOUR CONGRESSCRITTER!!!!! I know that the Supreme Court is not controlled by Congress (halleluia!), but the IRS could be restrained by Congress if they were motivated to do so. Since there is likely to be a new tax bill on the floor soon, NOW is the time to let your Senators and Representatives know how you feel! They may not listen to you, but they certainly can't represent you if they don't know what you want. Dean F. Sutherland ------------------------------ From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@Berkeley Date: 9 Jan 85 16:18:46 CST (Wed) Subject: Supreme Court vs. Constitution > ... The Supreme Court has shown > that its interpretation of the Law will not necessarily correlate with > the literal meaning of the text of the Law. ... If you want a really obnoxious example, consider that the Court has upheld the legitimacy of conscription, which is a direct violation of the Constitution's absolute prohibition of "involuntary servitude". They couldn't even appeal to the spirit of the law on that one; they had to argue (essentially) that the military constituted an exception. (More specifically, they took the clause of the Consitution that permits Congress to maintain a national army, interpreted it to have an implicit "by any means necessary" clause, and resolved the resulting internal contradiction in favor of conscription. Glad I'm a Canadian...) Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Jan 85 12:28:06 pst From: Rick McGeer (on an aaa-60-s) <mcgeer%ucbkim@Berkeley> Subject: black, female poverty... A recent submission gave the demographic breakdown of poverty in the United States, concluding: >From the above, issues such as what the poverty incidence would be without food stamps, horror stories of people spending all their entitlement money on soft drinks and hard liquor, etc. detract from what I consider to be one of the main issue associated with poverty in this country: The incidence of poverty shows that RACISM and SEXISM is alive and well in the United States! It seems to me that the author of this piece has confused cause and effect. However, there are questions worth asking. Some months ago, Mike Zaleski offered a partial explanation for the feminization of poverty: he suggested that large families (frequent conception) were largely responsible. If the families in question (those headed by single black mothers) are in fact relatively large, then the burdens of child-rearing are a much simpler and more believable explanation than rampant racism and sexism. So the I think, anyway, that the real figure of interest is the size of single-parent female-headed families vs household income. Anybody know? Rick. ------------------------------ From: Laurinda Rohn <rohn@rand-unix> Date: 08 Jan 85 15:33:04 PST (Tue) Subject: Discrimination Statistics From Lauri Rohn, rohn@rand-unix.ARPA > JoSH's rebuttal to Martin Katz: >[A statistical variation in racial representation among employees > is presumptive evidence of guilt of discrimination, a felony under federal > law. By the 95% confidence test used, this makes 5% of employers > felons by definition, even though they be absolutely colorblind. > Much similar foolishness is part of the federal "civil rights" code (and > more is part of the court decisions which interpret it). > . > . > . > --JoSH] Are you sure about the way they use the 95% test? The intelligent way to use this test would be to determine with 95% certainty that an employer is NOT discriminating. This would be done by comparing the employer's proportion of, say, Latino employees versus the proportion of Latinos in the general population. This use of the test would then let off approximately 5% of the employers who ARE in fact discriminating, rather than condemning an innocent 5%. Lauri [I'm not sure of the details of the statistical methods used, but I am sure that the test is taken as presumptive evidence of guilt, not of innocence. --Even though this would seem to contradict "innocent until proven guilty"... statistics are considered "proof". --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: Tue 8 Jan 85 11:14:06-PST From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA> Subject: Designer genes/discrimination Statistics, etc. The first statistics course I ever took was kicked off by the prof in essentially the following way: Most statistics you see are bullshit. The main objective of this course is to teach you to spot the bullshit, and to see how statisitcs can be useful if interpreted correctly. The main problem, of course, is the falacy of equating correlation with causality. Did you know that 99% of all murderers drank milk when they were young? The discrimination discussion misses an important point that I think needs saying: Discrimination is OK!!! (when done by individuals). If someone wants to hire only scantily clad white jewish lesbians for there business, that's there business. Same applies if they only want to hire WASP males. The way to eliminate/reduce discrimination based on some characteristic is to convince people (if you can ) that discriminating on that basis is not in their interest. If that turns out to be true, the free market will eventually demonstrate it to them anyway. This position evolves from my strong belief that that government should simply protect the society (whatever it is, however "good" or "evil" it is), and should not engage in social engineering. Designer genes: Two means of classifyinga being a "sentient" (which is essentially what I meant when I said "human") were suggested in the responses to my question: 1) Some kind of "sentience" test for a species ( I assume "species" was meant when "race" was used) 2) Once a species passes the test, all members are assumed sentient until proven otherwise. It seems to me that once a decent (or, at least, servicable) test is developed, it should be applied to indiviuals. I think a very good case can be made that the brightest chimps are more (sentient/intelligent/"human") than the dumbest humans. If sentience is the test (as I believe it should be) there are some chimps which should have more "rights" than some humans. I think the best solution of all is to get away from the binary view of rights (either you got 'em, or you don't), and develop a spectrum of rights based on various factors. Level of sentience is a good one. Level of contribution to the society may be another. I should mention that I don't believe in "rights" in the conventional sense. When I use the word "rights", I refer to the agreements society makes about how people should interact that are commonly reffered to as rights, *without* the cosmic validity that is usually implied. TCS ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Jan 85 10:16:19 est From: ihnp4!leopard!ron@Berkeley (Ron Bach-25751) Subject: Discussion on genes As another possibility people might want to read some of John Varly's work. He has created a universe where it is possible to change parts at will, clone a body and then be transferred in to it (resulting in essentially eternal life), and some other nice benefits. There is no raceism, or sexism as sex and race can be changed at will. Almost every desease has been eliminated as a result of the genetic engineering. Just some ideas that I thought might be use full, and an attempt to point out some positive things about genetic engineering. ...{allegra|belcore|ihnp4|vax135}!leopard!ron Ron Bach Rumors Mongered here. Bell Communications Research These are my opinions not the management's. 331 Newman Springs Road They have to get their own. Red Bank, NJ 07701 ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jan 85 10:58:42 PST (Wednesday) From: Hoffman.es@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Defining human A favorite passage of mine is copied below. It's been lightly edited. --Rodney Hoffman **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** From Richard Rorty's book, "Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature": Personhood is a matter of decision rather than knowledge, an acceptance of another being into fellowship rather than a recognition of a common essence. Knowledge of what pain is like or what red is like is attributed to beings on the basis of their potential membership in the community. Thus babies and the more attractive sorts of animal are credited with "having feelings" rather than (like machines or spiders) "merely responding to stimuli." To say that babies know what heat is like, but not what the motion of molecules is like is just to say that we can fairly readily imagine them opening their mouths and remarking on the former, but not the latter. To say that a gadget that says "red" appropriately *doesn't* know what red is like is to say that we cannot readily imagine continuing a conversation with the gadget. Attribution of pre-linguistic awareness is merely a courtesy extended to potential or imagined fellow-speakers of our language. Moral prohibitions against hurting babies and the better looking sorts of animals are not based on their possessions of feeling. It is, if anything, the other way around. Rationality about denying civil rights to morons or fetuses or robots or aliens or blacks or gays or trees is a myth. The emotions we have toward borderline cases depend on the liveliness of our imagination, and conversely. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jan 1985 1145-PST From: Richard M. King <DKING@KESTREL.ARPA> Subject: oil's "robber barons"? I understand that the main charge leveled against, Standard Oil is that they pressured railroads with statements like "if you carry anyone else's oil you won't get any of mine". Can someone tell me about some other charges, if any? Can anyone recommend reading that will support or refute this or any other charge? Thanks in advance... Dick ------------------------------ End of POLI-SCI Digest - 30 - -------