Internet Commentator

Tense, moi?

I'm not entirely happy with the Tension quotient suggested by my Philosophical Health Check which examines contradictions, or "tensions" between question pairs. At 20% my score is below the 29% average but I feel that at least two of my question pairings were insufficiently precise, or more accurately, the test draws an incorrect inference from my answers.

Questions 26 and 6: Can I make choices for my own body?

[...]

You agreed that:
Individuals have sole rights over their own bodies
And also that:
Voluntary euthanasia should remain illegal

Why, if individuals have sole rights over their own bodies, should voluntary euthanasia be illegal? This appears to be a straight contradiction. Ways around this might include adding a condition to the first principle, to the effect that 'except when it comes to decisions of life and death'. But what would justify this added condition? You might also think that euthanasia is different because it requires third-party assistance. Yet normally we do not think that the right a person has over their body is forfeited if a third party is involved. If I want a tattoo, I need third party assistance. But this doesn't mean I don't have sole right to decide whether or not I am tattooed.

Ah, but I do have a get-out clause here that I think is philosophically defensible. If one gets a tattoo, it is a trivial matter to reaffirm one's consent to this procedure afterwards. There can be no doubt about that consent. In the case of euthanasia it is not quite so straightforward. In principle, I don't have an objection to voluntary euthanasia. But, in practice, legal and widespread euthanasia is, in my view, likely to lead to an increase in non-voluntary killings passed off as voluntary euthanasia.

Another pairing:

Questions 14 and 25: How do we judge art?

[...]

You agreed that:
Judgements about works of art are purely matters of taste
And also that:
Michaelangelo is one of history's finest artists

The tension here is the result of the fact that you probably don't believe the status of Michaelangelo is seriously in doubt. One can disagree about who is the best artist of all time, but surely Michaelangelo is on the short list. Yet if this is true, how can judgements about works of art be purely matters of taste? If someone unskilled were to claim that they were as good an artist as Michaelangelo, you would probably think that they were wrong, and not just because your tastes differ. You would probably think Michaelangelo's superiority to be not just a matter of personal opinion. The tension here is between a belief that works of art can be judged, in certain respects, by some reasonably objective standards and the belief that, nonetheless, the final arbiter of taste is something subjective. This is not a contradiction, but a tension nonetheless.

This "tension" may be disposed by three little words: "in my view". If I say that Michaelangelo is one of History's finest artists, I am merely affirming my own personal opinion and don't make any grand claims about some "objective" set of rankings. I suspect that the second question is deliberately imprecise - it would not be unreasonable to read it as a request for one's personal opinion - something a bit more specific which distinguished between one's personal opinion and objective standards would probably have given the game away. If this isn't a sneaky way of producing an ersatz tension then the authors of the test are guilty of making several outrageous assumptions about what "you would probably think".

Corkward bound

Off to West Cork this weekend for my prospective brother-in-law's stag night, back on Monday.

"Invincibles" vinced again

Though their late away goal offers a glimmer of hope, after tonight's 3-1 defeat, it would be a brave punter indeed who would bet on Arsenal progressing in this season's champions' league at the expense of FC Hollywood. Arsenal were pretty dreadful and, if anything, are flattered by the scoreline, Bayern Munich were in control throughout and should grind out a 0-0 draw or 1-0 win at Highbury to complete Arsenal's traditional winter-time exit from this competition. I have to say, the odds offered by bookies for Arsenal winning the champions' league are exceedingly stingy, year on year. Talk about money for old rope - 9-1 fourth favourites? you're having a laugh!

Internet Commentator still silent on Sinn Fein meltdown

I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am neither ignorant of nor indifferent about the huge story here over the last week - the investigation into money-laundering by the provisional republican movement, the brutal torture-murder of Bert McCartney in Belfast and intimidation of witnesses. It's just that I find it difficult to add anything distinctive to the great work by Richard Delevan on this. Kudos also to Broom of Anger, Gavin and Slugger.

I have a couple of observations though:

1) It is clear that Sinn Fein have made a grave miscalculation about tolerance towards continuing IRA activity. It appears to have mistaken the tacit hands-off approach associated with drawing Sinn Fein into the political system, and particularly IRA cooperation on decommissioning, for some sort of blanket amnesty. The polite fictions a) that the IRA and Sinn Fein are separate organisations and b) that the Provisional Republican movement was not a de facto mafia were just that: polite fictions, designed to offer the wiggle room necessary for Sinn Fein to discreetly disband the IRA with the minimum of fuss and become an ordinary political party. It seems that Sinn Fein assumed that everybody took such fictions as literal truth.

2) It is also clear from the attempts to close down any investigation into Bert McCartney's murder that the Provisional Republican movement considers the relationship between itself and its "community" to be analogous to that between a Feudal lord and his serfs.

In the first case, the political damage to Sinn Fein in the Republic could be devastating. Their small but loyal support here is crucially dependent on the "trustworthy" image Gerry Adams has carefully cultivated. In the last week his mask has dropped, losing the plot and demanding to be arrested (be careful what you wish for!) and crudely insisting that the government needed to "get their head out their asses". Further, another major plank of the party's support here is its incredible wealth, it is far richer than any other on the island. It is hard to see this surviving should the current investigation prove successful.

Secondly, the events in the Republic will matter little to SF's core support in the north, but the Provisional Republican movement may have made another fatal miscalculations in overestimating the extent to which their embrace of a small number of psychotic sadists woud be tolerated by the community it purports to protect but treats like chattels. It may well be the case that, as the cynical SF shills commenting as Slugger suggest, this will blow over as has happened with previous IRA murders of nationalists. But, McCartney's murder was particularly sickening - eyes gouged out, disembowelled, head stamped on, recalling those of the notorious Loyalist "shankill butchers" gang - and this might yet prove hard for Sinn Fein to live down.

Belated Bloggiversary Autocelebration

How did I miss this?

Two years blogging last Friday. Here's my first post.

Zero Sum Cultural Celebrations

Ciarán has an interesting observation on Belfast's St Patrick's day festival in the light of Belfast council's decision not to fund the parade:

But what I also found was something that I remarked on in my first post to this blog, way back in November. That is, that the celebration just came across as aggressive. At least part of the intention of the event was to mark some absolute ownership on the city centre for the day, in the same way that, like it or not, the 12th is partly about marking absolute ownership of various spaces for a few days in July

It is probably, depressingly, the case that, in Northern Ireland at least, "cultural celebration" is a zero sum game. Each culture defines itself in relation to the other, particularly so as there is little to distinguish ordinary protestants and catholics from one another. They look similar, wear similar clothes, eat similar food, enjoy similar leisure activities, go to the same holiday destinations and support the same English football teams. So, to properly celebrate one's own culture it is obligatory to deprecate the other guy's.

By the way: nice to see Ciaran back in action after his suspicious stomach bug. Bad Ulster Fry or The Securocrats? As with the comments section at Slugger, you pays your money, takes your choice.

Goodbye Gonzo

I am saddened to learn (via Gerry O'Sullivan) of the suicide of Hunter S Thompson.

Why aren't more footballer like Gary Neville?

And I have something specific in mind, not his particular virtues as a player and professional. Rather, why don't they have a similar disdainful attitude towards agents who don't appear to offer anything like a service commensurate with the lavish rewards?

"If you've got that kind of money, the percentage players give to their agents, then give it to your mum and dad instead," he says, while maintaining that any player should be capable of conducting his own salary negotiations. "It's easy to find out what your comparables are earning," he says. "How hard can it be to write that down on a bit of paper, stick it in front of a guy and say, 'This is what I want?' Agents just cause so much disharmony in football."

It amazes me to see the amounts of money paid to agents. Where I, and apparently Neville, differ from the conventional view on this is that I don't see the agents as parasites on the clubs so much as the player. As far as I can see, if a club is prepared to pay £20m to his old club for a player, £4m to his agent and, say £20m in wages over four years, then that player's contract is worth precisely £44m to the new club. The value of the loss of that player to the old club is still £20m. The fact that the transfer fee, agent's fee and players salary are all accounted for separately doesn't change that. If the agent were to slash his fee in half, the player could expect to receive an amount approximately equivalent in increased wages. I can understand why clubs pay agents - it is often the only way to acquire or retain a player - what I don't understand is what's in it for the players.

The problem with skills-based immigration

Great piece in The Economist [subscription required], on the British government's new immigration plan, which explains concisely the problem I have with proponents of skills-based immigration restrictions:

Under the new rules, fewer low-skilled workers will be allowed in, while those with plenty of qualifications and experience will be welcomed, particularly if their skills fall into categories believed to be in short supply. A committee of experts will be assembled to determine exactly what those skills are.

This way of managing immigration has a respectable pedigree - sensible people such as the Australians and Canadians do it - but that does not mean it makes economic sense. Employers are better than governments at knowing what jobs are in short supply (as Australian employers discovered a while ago when the government got its sums wrong and left them with a critical shortage of doctors). If governments think that immigration is running at politically unacceptable levels, they should limit total numbers. Micro-managing the labour market is not the answer.

Until now, the government has been quietly and commendably liberal on economic migration, but now it is worried. It hasn't started building dykes, but is trying to channel the flow. That is a mistake: it risks ending up with a flood in one place, a drought in another and a policy up the spout.

Those who argue for such entry requirements simply assume it to be the case that such restrictions represent the most effective method of identifying the most suitable immigrants. It never seems to occur to them how this particular centrally planned system manages to get around the problem of information identified by Hayek. Such a system could no more predict the demand for, say, plumbers for the next year than it could the weather.

Told you so

[Jeez -that was a quick break!] I just wanted all Celtic fans, to whom I have ever patiently explained that Roy Keane would never play for them, to note the great man confirm this himself. What hostage to fortune he offered, during one interview several years ago, by idly opining that wearing the hoops might not be a bad way to end one's career. This one comment, never since repeated, has been the basis of a fervent, fanatical belief of every Celtic fan I have ever come in contact with which has somehow managed to acquire the status of conventional wisdom. I never believed it for a second.