Category Archives: Life

Should He Be Free? Are Any of Us?

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Some news stories generate more than their share of questions. At least in my mind.

Like this one:

Clifford Jacobson, 55, of Franklin, New Jersey, has been arrested for calling the 911 emergency number when there was no emergency. This is the third time he’s been arrested for the same offense:

In the latest incident, Jacobson called 911 at about 5 p.m. Saturday…. When Franklin police arrived at his house, Jacobson “related that he had no emergency to report and that he had a feeling in his heart to call 911″. Police said they have responded to similar calls from Jacobson on more than 30 occasions. Jacobson continues to call 911, even though he has been given the non-emergency police number in numerous instances… Jacobson has been sent to the Somerset County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail.

I’m wondering what Mr. Jacobson says when he calls 911. Does he make up an emergency or say nothing at all? What compels the police to keep going to his house? Has Mr. Jacobson been treated for what appears to be a symptom of mental illness? Or is he just very lonely? Why was Mr. Jacobson able to call 911 twenty-seven times without being arrested? When Mr. Jacobson is arrested, does he get to make a phone call? Does he call 911? If he spends time in jail, will he have access to a pay phone?

I’m not above making a joke or two at Mr. Jacobson’s expense, but unless he simply enjoys annoying the police department, this is a sad story. It sounds like he is an excellent candidate for treatment, not incarceration. I hope his story has a happy ending.

Coincidentally, I read about Mr. Jacobson after watching a YouTube lecture on free will. The philosopher who delivered the lecture, Derk Pereboom, argues that we don’t have free will — everything we do is fixed by the previous state of the universe, by either deterministic or statistical laws. Looking back at our lives, in the circumstances we found ourselves, we could never have done anything other than what we actually did.

Professor Pereboom concludes that we should take our lack of free will into account when we react to other people’s behavior (or our own). For example, it makes no sense for the police to be angry at Mr. Jacobson – even if they can’t help themselves, since they don’t have free will. It’s fine to stop him from interfering with the 911 number, but the only justification for punishing or treating him is to change his behavior (or the behavior of people like him), not to cause him unnecessary pain or to dehumanize him.

Philosophers and theologians in the West have been thinking and arguing about free will for more than 2000 years. I’ve only been thinking about it for 40 years, so it isn’t surprising that I haven’t written the definitive paper on the topic. (Keep an eye on this space, however!)

For now, I’ll merely say that Professor Pereboom, although a respected authority, is in the minority of academic philosophers on this topic. Most of his fellow professors believe that we do have free will, even if our actions are always determined. But I agree with Pereboom. Our actions aren’t free in an important sense. The standard view of personal responsibility is mistaken.

Nevertheless, I find it almost impossible to behave differently based on this apparent fact. For example, it should be easier for me to excuse myself for past mistakes now that I doubt the existence of free will, but that hasn’t been the case so far. And when I need to make a decision, it’s not as if I can sit quietly, waiting for the universe to tell me what to do. How would I even know when the universe had spoken?

Still, maybe that’s what we do when we make a decision. We wait a second, an hour or a year, considering our options, and then discover what we’re going to end up doing. We think we’re choosing among real alternatives, but it’s really the universe doing the “choosing” for us. After all, we’re made of the same stuff that makes up everything else. Everything in us is subject to the universe’s laws – we’re carried along by the course of events, whether we know it or not. 

If Mr. Jacobson thinks about free will, maybe he’ll reach the same conclusion.

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The story about Mr. Jacobson:  franklin_twp_man_charged_for_third_time

Professor Pereboom’s 45-minute lecture:
youtube.com/watch?v=bObzpWrhH-Q

PS — Was the title of the movie Free Willy an intentional pun? 

Meanwhile, You Don’t Want To Be Poor In America

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The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, has issued a report relating to “welfare reform”, the law that Congress passed and President Clinton signed 17 years ago.

Federal funding for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (what used to be called “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” or “welfare”), hasn’t increased since 1996, so inflation has eaten away at the program’s benefits:

Because TANF benefits have declined substantially in value, they do much less to help families escape deep poverty than they did in 1996.  With the exception of Maryland and Wyoming, a poor family relying solely on TANF to provide the basics for its children (such as during a period of joblessness, illness, or disability) in every state is further below the poverty line today than in 1996.

In fact, the inflation-adjusted value of benefits has decreased by more than 20% in 14 states and by more than 30% in 26 states.

Believe it or not, the monthly cash payment to an unemployed woman with two children in Mississippi is $170. Where I live, in one of the highest income states in the country, it’s $424 for a family of three, exactly what it was in 1996 (that’s a 32% decrease in real value).

Of course, there are other Federal programs for poor people, whether they have jobs or not, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP or “food stamps”). But you can’t pay the rent or buy shoes with food stamps. Next week, by the way, people receiving food stamps will start getting less. A family of four, other things being equal, will receive $36 less per month.

The CPBP report (with charts):

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4034

The food stamp news:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/food-stamp-benefits-going-down-holidays-8C11418632

To B Or Not To B

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That is a question. If Hamlet were with us today, would he ask himself: “To blog or not to blog?”

That’s what I asked myself this morning. Whether I should put this blog on hold.

But how can I save the world (one blog post at a time) or find out what I think if I don’t speak whereof I can?

Especially today, after a respected reader shared this letter to the editor:

When seniors started enrolling in the new Medicare system, hardly anyone touched a computer, there was no internet, or broadband connection. The system worked. Today, the same tools are available to us as were available then: applications, telephone, person-to-person help. The preferred method of access is the Internet, but the Internet is really just a way to get one into the system. The media is spending way too much time complaining about the method by which people sign up. They should be pointing out that millions of people who have not had access to health coverage will now have it. We need more stories about people with sick children who can now get coverage, not how much trouble people are having logging in to a web site. (BTW, just to see how it would work, I went to healthcare.gov and created an account. No problems. Maybe they kick in when you try to actually sign up for something.) 

I hate the media.

Me too, much of the time.

Now, in this autumn of our discontent, everyone with access to a media bullhorn should keep in mind that large information technology projects almost always have problems, especially when a “drop-dead date” is involved. The Republicans will “investigate”, silly people on TV and the radio will say stupid things (except in Afghanistan), columnists will draw the wrong conclusions, but the problems will be fixed, millions of people will benefit and, as someone said the other day, the ACA isn’t just a website.

We should also remember that most people sign up for things as the deadline approaches, and in this case the deadline (March 31, 2014) isn’t “drop-dead” at all – it’s a soft deadline that can be delayed a while, if necessary.

On the even brighter side, healthcare.gov is getting all kinds of free publicity! Let’s hope everyone spells the name right – although that’s not required these days (“did you mean healthcare.gov?”).

For the icing on the cake, take a look at how Republican politicians defended the problem-plagued rollout of the Medicare prescription drug benefit eight years ago, when one of their own was in the White House:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/24/2828261/hearing-post/

“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.” (Henry V, act 4, scene 4)

Talk Radio in Afghanistan Has Pessimists and Critics Too

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I’ve been assisting someone with a little bit of editing work, which has involved reading English transcripts of Afghan talk radio shows. From what I’ve seen so far, their talk radio is more monologue than dialogue and relatively polite. Below is a brief selection: 

Caller: I do not think that anyone will listen to our words on this program, except us. Therefore it is useless to talk. Nobody will solve these problems. Thank you. Bye.

Presenter: Thank you. We have the next caller.

Caller: Based on what the previous caller said, I want to say that no one can tell the truth. There was a program on this radio station and the announcer was threatened many times. Then that program was cancelled. Nowadays all the sources of information, the media, the government and non-government institutions, are puppets of the foreigners who are supporting them. There are major problems in our society, more serious than the subjects you select for this program. I hope you do not mind my words, but I am telling the truth. Thank you. Bye.

Presenter: Thank you. We have the next caller.

The Big Website Foul-Up (It Takes A Village)

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Major problems with the new ACA website healthcare.gov are being reported and criticized throughout the media. It’s a great story, definitely worth reporting and much easier to write about than the complexities of the new law and how it will affect millions of people.

Fortunately, states that chose to create their own websites, like California and New York, are doing better, one likely reason being that their software requirements were easier to implement. It’s states with Republican governors or legislatures that didn’t create their own websites, like Texas, Florida and New Jersey, that are especially suffering. Although there are other ways to sign up for ACA-generated health insurance (by phone, and even in person), it’s still a problem for many people who live in those Republican-governed states.

Still, it’s an especially poignant example of how Republicans often put politics above principle or pragmatism. One would think that politicians who consistently criticize the Federal government (except for the Defense Department, etc.) wouldn’t depend on a Federal website delivering health insurance to their citizens, but go figure.

It’s also a great example of how large computer projects usually fail to meet deadlines, and how corporations that sell things to the government almost always find a way to make a whole lot of money. “We will deliver X by Y for $Z” repeatedly turns into “we will deliver X- by Y+ for $Z++”. Everyone involved usually has an excuse – it’s often the fault of those other guys – but whatever happens always results from a team effort.

For more on the software development aspect of the situation, here’s an honest, accurate appraisal from someone who has clearly been in similar situations:

In fact, we software developers suck at estimating how long it will take to build a web application (it’s time that we admit that). So, if we suck at it, imagine how poorly our managers who have never written a line of code suck at it when they pull estimates out of their asses to impose on their development teams and report to their bosses.

The whole article is worth reading, although I’ll add that these problems aren’t limited to web applications, many people who give optimistic estimates have done plenty of coding, and the people doing the requirements aren’t always the most blameworthy. Software developers frequently slow down the requirements-writing process by failing to give feedback, asking for repeated clarifications, arguing about which features are necessary and failing to move forward when progress could be made. In addition, there may be good reasons to roll out software that isn’t ready (sometimes, something is better than nothing). It really is a team effort.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/17/1248260/-A-software-developer-s-view-on-the-HealthCare-gov-glitches#