Watch your language

Wow. It has been over a year since my last post. I apologize.

In the last months I have become more sensible towards political correctness. I hope I can persuade you to adapt your language to build a better society, bottom-up. I do not argue we must all go to rallies or post posters. I argue we ought to acknowledge the effects of our language over others, and change it for the better.

I was no fan of political correctness. I thought it to be a typical exaggeration driven by people who took themselves too seriously. I completely underestimated the effect language and our environment has over us. I was unable to comprehend the devastating effects of language, since I never thought of myself as being in the receiving end of political incorrectness. Now I understand. We are systematically undermining many individuals by perpetuating stereotypes and using offensive language. We are systematically destroying self-esteem and opportunities for many individuals. I believe humankind, at least in some parts of the world, has made terrific advances in liberating the human spirit and destroying the shackles of tribal mentality. Our lives are not predestined. We do not have to conform to predefined roles we have no influence over. But it is not enough. We still discriminate. We still perpetuate useless stereotypes. We do so consciously. We do so unconsciously.

To illustrate the effects stereotypes, some researchers gave Asian American women a math test. Some were reminded they were Asian. Some were reminded they were women. Those who were reminded they were Asian performed much better in the math test than those who were reminded they were women; confirming the stereotype that Asians are good at math and women are not. Merely reminding someone of a stereotype increases the likelihood that they act the part. When we talk with friends and draw generalizations we are perpetuating stereotypes. If we continually say that women are bad at math, we can wind up actually lowering their performance in math. We could decrease the probability that some persist after the first failure. There are other times when we think we are using language neutrally, but end up causing real psychological damage to people.

You may think that hilariously politically incorrect comments are ok (e.g. “That music is so black, my speakers just got stolen.”) but they are not. You are putting a huge amount of individuals who may have nothing in common besides their skin color under the same roof. If you say it enough, many will wind up believing their identity is completely and inevitably bounded to a group they did not choose to belong to. You may think that saying “that is so gay” is just a way of expressing something, and that no one would take it seriously; but you would be dead wrong. The way we use language can have devastating effects over someone. It does not cost much changing it. You just have to be aware the real effects it has. You ought to notice something is wrong when someone says something negative; and if possible, point out their mistake.

The worst one, I think, is the systematic repression of women in our society. We talk in a way where the role of women in society is reduced to supporting males. Is there a particular reason women should be the only ones who do groceries, clean, take care of the kids and sacrifice their careers for them? Why is it that women can not talk freely about having sex with different partners? Why are (straight) men able, and even encouraged, to talk about their sexual relations and women not? We say to small girls they look pretty; we say to little boys they are smart. We encourage boys to become leaders. We encourage girls to be ornaments. Very often they end up playing the part society pre-wrote for them. Many will make the weak argument that women are the first ones to promote machismo. I know many who do. But even if that were true, it is not a justification. Many women will rationally make the decision to stay at home, many will make the decision to not pursue a career. That is perfectly fine. It is their call.  However, there is no reason for those roles to be the default ones.

Whenever you say “All + [Insert any group of people]” you are lowering your IQ by 10 points. If mental laziness were a crime, this would be a go to jail directly card. This is worse when you the group you are referring to is comprise of individuals who were born into a group they did not actively choose to be a part of, such as gender, race, sexual orientation, and religious background. Whenever you say a negative comment about a group, think of someone you know who belongs to it and does not fit the stereotype. It can be a friend, it can be a role model, it can be your mother. If you say a xenophobic thing, think of someone great from that nationality. If you use gay as a negative word, think of a friend you appreciate who is gay. If you limit women in the way you talk to and about them, think of a great female. Your comments are hurting them. Sometimes badly. You are limiting their potential. You are reducing them.

Watch your language. It has consequences. Be a better person.

Legalize them, legalize them all

For a series of reasons, drugs are illegal. Some argue that they ought to be illegal because they are harmful (Isn’t everything harmful?) others are moralists who think that drugs are just plain wrong, and if they were legal it would deteriorate the moral fabric of society. By no means am I arguing that drugs are good. Most drugs are very very harmful and have permanent effects (Don’t do drugs.). But they should be legal. 

So I say, Legalize them, legalize them all.

My argument has 2 sides. The first is a more economic one, the second, a moral case.

Whenever prohibition has been tried, it has utterly failed. Take the example of alcohol prohibition in the United States. Complete failure. Support of drug prohibition is based on a false premise that outbaning something will make it disappear. It turns out, it doesn’t. If we pass a law, it does not necessarily mean that this will become reality. For people to respect laws, they have to be respectable. In reality, this sort of policies have a series of unintended consequences that can be much worse than the problem they were supposed to tackle.

The reason that prohibition does not translate into inexistence of drugs is that whenever there is demand for something, there will be supply. Because supplying them becomes risky, drug providers can receive a “Risk-Premium” that makes it much more profitable for them to sell them. That’s the beauty of the market. As drugs are illegal, no other set of rules apply to the suppliers. This means that some constraints that allow private and public incentives to align (‘As by an invisible hand’) in non-black-markets are not available in the drug realm. This makes this underworld a free-for-all where all means are on the table. This is the reason why competition of drug organizations is often led with guns and murder. People who want to maintain drugs illegal because they wish to save lives do not take into account that much more deaths (Innocent ones, to a large extent) are caused by drug wars than they are by drug consumption.

As drugs are already illegal, no additional rules or regulations apply to them. So you cannot forbid the sale of drugs to kids and teenagers, unlike alcohol (At least in countries where the Rule of Law actually works). In the U.S it is way easier for a teenager to get pot (or any other drug for that matter) than it is to get cigarettes or alcohol. It is more common for an average american teenager to smoke pot than it is to drink alcohol on a regular basis. People who want drugs to remain illegal don’t realize that by keeping them illegal, kids and teenagers are more exposed to them. It is also impossible for the government to require minimum quality/health requirement for drugs. As it is hard for consumers to know the quality of drugs before buying them (And having no ways to retaliate if the quality is not what was expected to be), we can expect some drugs to be more harmful than they should have otherwise have been.

The cost of engaging in a war against drugs are huge. And it is an uphill battle. Both because supply and demand always try to meet and because while organizations that try to fight against drugs have borders, drug providers don’t. For all the money, time and effort  that has been spent on the war on drugs, the results are painfully shameful. People still use drugs. People still sell drugs. But a lot of people get hurt in the process of trying to divorce supply and demand. Actively pursuing the prohibition of drugs is a sure money pit.

Drug prohibition is intended to ‘help’ people. But a harmless consumer of recreational drugs that is catched consuming may face serious legal consequences like imprisonment. How is this helping that person? Is it better for him to be in jail than it is to consume (often harmless) drugs? Who gets benefited from drug prohibition?. This in turn increases the jail population with innocent people, who after serving their time are more prone to become criminals, who then harm society even more. The time they (unnecessarily) spend in jail has to be paid by someone, increasing the costs to society even more.

Now the moral case.

There is no such thing as a victimless crime. If people are the owners of their own bodies and live’s, why should someone have the right to forbid them to ingest any substance they want? If people wished to be consequent with their logic, soda, cigarettes, alcohol, most foods and drinks should be banned. Almost all substances we consume are harmful to some extent. This is why we make daily trade-offs: “I know this bottle of Coca-cola is harmful for me, but I like it so much. Should I drink it?”. People have different preferences and this is why they make different decisions. Some like to exercise, eat healthy, and enjoy the extra years they earn in the process. Others would rather increase their risks of diseases and an early death to avoid the pains of living a healthy lifestyle (Who likes jogging anyways?) and enjoy the perks of earthly pleasures (Such as fast-food and partying). None of this decisions is inherently right or wrong. They just reflect differences in preferences, values and world views.

If someone does not do drugs, that’s fine. In fact, that’s great. It is highly encouraged, and they will probably reap off the benefits of longer life and all the ugly consequences of hard drugs. But that does not give them the right to say what someone else ought to do or not do!

The fact that something is legal does not mean people will go frenzy on consuming it. A lot of harmful stuff is legal, yet not everyone buys them.

I wanted to discuss the methodology of legalizing it, the possible regulations and so on. But I have already written enough. Besides I don’t think many people read the blog.

@Corderrosas

El teatro democratico

El teatro democrático.

Como ciudadano responsable que soy, yo también juego mi papel en el teatro democrático donde se perpetúa con cada elección la opresión. Entre aplausos de fin de acto nos felicitamos por nuestra participación... Al menos ese movimiento nos permiten las cadenas con las que salimos del espectáculo. Pero no olvidemos que tenemos la dicha de al menos recibir un poco de pan y circo. Panem et circenses.

Nos vemos permanentemente forzados a elegir entre el menor de los dos males. Tenemos en la cabeza la idea de que existe elección. Con cada voto pavimentamos con una sonrisa el camino a la servidumbre. Esto NO significa que sea mejor no votar. El único ganador de una elección democrática es el candidato que sepa prostituir al precio más bajo algún ideal. El único tipo de persona que se ve en cierta medida representado es el votante medio (Teorema del votante medio), al diablo el resto. Si.. bajo una democracia, y en su peor faceta: la democracia directa, 51% de las personas se pueden servir para cenar al otro 49%. Es inherente a la democracia absoluta las más primitivas nociones tribales.

Por alguna razón, la democracia es el sistema más alabado y muchos usan la palabra intercambiablemente con libertad. Pero asegurar la democracia no significa necesariamente asegurar la libertad. Bajo una democracia absoluta y sin restricciones la mayoría de una población tiene en sus manos la maquinaria política para poner a su disposición a cualquier minoría. En lugar de ser individuos únicos nos vemos separados en grupos y se usa esta aglomeración para denominar un ente abstracto e inexistente llamado “Pueblo”. Después de salir del teatro democrático se pueden escuchar declaraciones como “Se hizo la voluntad del pueblo.” Pero... ¿De verdad podemos reducir la heterogeneidad de miles o millones de personas a un solo ente que abarque y representa a todas las mentes sobre un territorio? ¿No existía diversidad?.

En la dictadura democrática hay un solo voto que verdaderamente afecta la vida del visitante del teatro: El voto con los pies. Es aquel donde las personas deciden emigrar cuando el rumbo que se elige en el teatro democrático difiere muy radicalmente con los valores del espectador. En su mayoría, esperan ir a algún lugar donde haya un poco menos de pan y circo. Sin embargo, este voto no es fácil de ejercer. Existen rigideces como barreras culturales, financieras o de visa. Es necesario tomar en cuenta los factores que hacen la decisión de emigrar aún más difícil como la nostalgia, las costumbres, los lujos, los amigos y la familia. Es de cualquier manera duro que la única solución para el espectador sea escapar.

La democracia sola carece de valor. Lo importante para que las personas puedan coexistir en sociedad es reconocer que hay que proteger a los individuos de otras personas. Un individuo es la minoría más pequeña sobre la faz de la tierra. Sin importar cómo llegue alguien a manejar la maquinaria política es fundamental limitar el poder que tenga una vez que lo maneje. Hay que quitarle el poder a las mayorías y no dárselo a nadie. Para esto se puede usar la división de poderes (Check and balances) y una constitución bien enforzada que proteja los derechos individuales. Una vez que se reconozca que lo importante es limitar al Leviathan, la cuestión de cómo se elige a los conductores de la maquinaria política pasa a un segundo plano (Democracia representativa, aristocracia, democracia directa).

Ya que las cadenas del teatro democrático se van a repartir estés o no ahí, es mejor al menos participar. Así sea un acto simbólico es mejor que nada.

- Y entre estruendosos aplausos el público rugía con furor. Todos celebrando la victoria de Demagogo sobre Honrado, nadie llorando la muerte de Libertad.-

Fin de acto. Feliz Panem et Circenses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_voting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)

Coursera and free education

Coursera and the future of education.

Sorry I have been gone for a while. Even if I had a couple good ideas to write, I didn't find the motivation to sit and write. Ironically, I have learned a couple of things about human motivation this summer.

One of the things that has been keeping me busy has been Coursera.org . This is huge. It is one of the most important things that has happened in a while and has the power to revolutionize the world. My father even goes as far as claiming that this will be the new printing press. My I'm-not-allowed-to-tell-her-age-year-old grandmother is starting tomorrow a course on History of the World since 1300 (http://goo.gl/BPT1i) the best thing is... it's free.


Coursera is an initiative by Standford University to provide top-tier level education for free.
Other top universitiessuch as UPenn, Duke, Princeton and Caltech have joined. The professors give 2 lectures per week.The good thing is that the lectures are divided in videos from about 10 minutes each.
 This is great for most people who's attention-span don't last 1 hour and a half. If you get distracted easily you can always rewind. If you don't have that much time, you can always find a 10 minute break to watch the videos without the need of finding a 1.30 hour time slot you probably don't have. You may just watch the videos or also do the quizzes and assignments for a certificate. They also have deadlines (Without deadlines, it would be harder to motivate people.)


I have been taking a gamification course taught by Kevin Werbach, proffesor at the Wharton School
of University of Pennsylvania. I'm already half-way through the course and it has been awesome.
 (https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification) The best thing is everything that evolves around the course. The facebook group, the sharing, the google docs, the dropbox folder, the forums etc.). There are people from literally all around the world doing this course. What is gamification, you may ask? Gamification is the use of game elements and game design in non-game context. (Do NOT confuse with Game Theory). It is about making activities more fun so that people will be more engaged.

Now, this type of online courses can change the world. I already think that this way of learning is superior to normal classes (at least at a european level) because you can personalize the experience. It removes rigidities that are intrinsic to normal upper level education. But best of all, it's free. There also other initiatives for this only trend. Imagine if you had (easy) access to the créme-de-la-créme of education for free. Normally this elite education was reserved for the elite. As there are only a limited number of places on these colleges, only a limited number of people graduated with this knowledge. This small number of people have still managed to make awesome discoveries and change the world. Imagine that just 1% of the people who did a course made any significant change. Now imagine that it is no longer 1% of say 1000, but 1% of a 1.000.000. Budget restriction will no longer be a barrier for geniuses.

Some might say that this is still too impersonal. That there is no discussion, no debate. Well, this is already true for most (european) institutions. And for that there are Coursera Meetups where people can meet to discuss ideas. There are also study groups that evolve around the course and facebook groups where people ask questions and exchange ideas. I have had more contact with classmates in gamification than I normally have at a normal university course.

Forget college subsidies and student debt. THIS is free education.

How not to be in love with economics?

Oh, but how not to be in love with economics?

Imperfect beings living in an imperfect world, 

Pursuing their self-interest, guided by an invisible hand,

Organized in a process of spontaneous order under the rule of law

Beings who have purposeful action and rational expectations

Who adapt their behavior to the fluctuations of everyday life

And face trade-offs trying to satisfy their endless wants

Never let anyone tell you that economics is about money, inflation or interest rates

Economics is about human action, incentives and humanly devised constraints.

All things held constant, economics is a never-ending debate. 

Incentives matter

Incentives matter.

This is something that seems obvious but people tend to forget. In every society, there is a set of rules (informal or formal) that economists like to call Institutions. Few if any are exempt from the influence these rules have on them. They work as incentives, where they reward some kind of behaviour while punishing other. These rules or institutions shape human interaction.

I do not regard humans as being naturally good or evil. Among other things because these are concepts that change over time, so the one who is regarded as good today might have been considered evil a couple hundred years ago. However, we are human and humans respond to incentives. Human desires and intentions are a complex thing, that vary from each individual to the next. I doubt any one person could fully grasp this. Human nature is hard to change. Conventions change only progressively over time.

To co-exist in the same place harmoniously, the (moral) judgement of human nature is, I believe, irrelevant. The important thing is to have a set of rules that leads to an outcome that is efficient (in the sense that for someone to be better-off no other person has to be worse-off), regardless, of human nature. So for example, If I am a very ambitious person and want to have X, the set of rules should make it possible for me to gain X only by voluntary action instead of say theft.

In the world, we see a lot of things we regard as wrong or immoral. Cronyism, for example. We jump to pass moral judgement on the person doing the action, being the verdict anywhere between **shole and Satan. We even end up thinking: “It is because of people such as him/her, that the world is in such a dismal state.”. It is of course, easier that way. These strong, brief moral judgements do not require much thought. But let us ask ourselves: If that person had not done that, would someone else have?. If the answer is yes, it is not so much that the person is the reincarnation of Satan, but that the incentives are not right. Someone pursuing their self-interest did harm to others. Things are not being rewarded/punished the way they should have been.

Incentives DO matter. Life is complicated. People are not wholly good or evil. Human nature is complex. What you believe as morally right, does not necessarily mean that I regard it as moral. In order to live with such differences in a society it is important that our pursuit of moral goals or self-interest does not lead us to (directly*) harm others, only by respecting others’ rights as we would like ours to be respected may we live in peace.

*I say directly because it is more complicated when the harm is indirect. For example if the success of one person leads to envy by another person ( thus making him worse-off) it would be an indirect harm, but this does not necessarily mean that it is a wrong outcome. Externalities are also a major issue which for simplicity matters and because I have not yet arrived at formed opinion I will not be discussing.

Free Education

There has always been polemic concerning public higher education. Most people would agree that primary and secondary schools ought to be “free” because no one chooses his birthplace, and everyone should have a chance to succeed. But the same argument does not necessarily apply to college. In college, applicants are already “grown-up” and thus should be able to fend for themselves. But is college really that necessary? In the spirit of full-disclosure, I may be hypocritical, for I attend a public university (Germany) which is paid with tax-payers money.

Only a few things in life are free. What we understand as “Free” education is actually just paid by somebody else. In reality public universities are paid for by taxes. Instead of thinking about money, let’s think about time. In order to earn money, people have to work, thus sacrificing their precious time. If we levy a tax of 16.6% on workers in order to pay for the “free” education, you are forcing everyone to work for 2 months every year not for themselves, but for others who they probably don’t even know, or worse, for bureaucrats. Even if it sounds great in theory, and many would think it is a desirable goal, there are some who don’t. The problem is, when universities are free-of-charge, you are forcing everyone to pay for them, even the ones who don’t agree with it.

However, the point of this post is not to handle the moral question lying behind the issue. That would take a post all by itself. What I hope we can agree in, is that it is a controversial issue, which is to say, cannot be answered so easily. But let’s ask ourselves, what are the alternatives? Does no public universities mean ignorant masses, unaffordable education, a life of despair? In the past it might have meant so, even though higher education was not as necessary as it is today.

We live in a new era. The Internet era. We can access all the world’s information with a few clicks. We have the biggest library for free (Google), the most extensive and up-to-date encyclopedia (Wikipedia), exclusive access to the minds of the Crème-de-la-Crème (Twitter), the most extensive video collection (Youtube), unlimited sharing power and the ability to create communities (Facebook) and publish knowledge (Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr). Previously I admitted that I went to a public university in Germany. But I could argue that I actually attend the University of the Internet. Anything I don’t understand immediately (Almost everything) I Google, Youtube, or Wikipedia it. In fact, there are some lectures I don’t even attend and learn it all by myself at the library.

If we have the time and care to, we could study any subject all by ourselves.  Recently I’ve read a tempting argument ( http://goo.gl/fxKbE )that instead of going to college, we should educate ourselves through the internet and then write about it (blogs) and show the world (Youtube videos) what we’ve learned as certificate (Savoir-faire) that we have not lost our time. Our blogs and video pages could be shown to potential employers who would attest that we are hard-working. This method would not only be beneficial for the ones who do it, but for the whole world, who could now access this knowledge.

If you are sceptical of this option, and think you have to have a real degree, then meet the “University of the People”, a fee-free initiative  ( http://www.uopeople.org/ ). There you can study for free, wherever you come from. There are also increasingly new free education projects, some by the most prestigious institutions (Harvard, MIT) ( http://goo.gl/EZo3b , http://goo.gl/iO4fx ).

If the number of self-educated people grew, then so would the supply of materials and options. People could organize themselves and create self-learning communities. They could meet to watch online lectures together and correct each other’s work. Some older students could charge a low price to give private lectures and so on. It could even be argued that this personalized method of learning could potentially be even better that on-campus education. 

I’m not saying that going to college is not worth it, what i’m trying to argue is that it is not the only option to receive higher education knowledge. It would be a mistake to think that if there were no public universities, people would remain uneducated. In this new era, anyone that wants, could do it.  

P.S: Perhaps this does not easily apply to subjects such as Medicine.




@Corderrosas