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Archives for August 2015

UnTrumpable

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When Trump first threw his hair into the ring, many pundits and comedians assumed his campaign would be a short-lived (but extremely funny) misadventure in political theater. However, Trump has not only managed to stay in the fight, he seems to be winning. As this is being written Donald Trump enjoys a commanding lead over the other Republican candidates. He is even closing on the Democrats’ presumed nominee, Hilary Clinton.

While the specifics of Trump’s adventures are not particularly philosophical, his success does provide a foundation for a discussion of the state of American politics. To be honest, though, I just want to write about Trump. Like everyone else.

As a general rule, when a serious political candidate engages in gaffes (especially involving race or gender), the result is often a career ending injury. At the very least, the politician’s handlers get him (or her) into damage control: there are walk backs, clarifications, insincere apologies and all the usual spin. Interestingly, Trump has claimed that Mexico is sending criminals and rapist to America (though there are some good people) and that war hero John McCain is not a hero. Trump has an interesting track record of saying awful things about women and created a stir with his remarks about Megyn Kelly. While pundits and comedians expected these sort of things to damage Trump’s standing, they seem to have contributed to his success.

One reason that these remarks might not have harmed Trump is that they are exactly the sort of things people should expect Trump to say—Trump has been a media star for decades and his ways should surprise no one at this point. To use an analogy, if your rabidly socialist cousin Sarah starts ranting about corporations after she has knocked back several glasses of Merlot at Thanksgiving, you would not be surprised at all. That is what Sarah has done and what Sarah will do, at least until the workers’ revolution. If your Wall Street financier cousin Laura started ranting about the evils of money and corporations, then you would be very surprised. So, one lesson from this is that politicians who have established media personalities clearly suffer little from remaining in character. After all, they are doing exactly what they do and if it has not hurt them much yet, it probably will not cause undo damage now.

Trump’s remarks seem to have actually helped him. One possible reason for this is that there is probably a significant number of Americans, especially conservatives, who are tired of politics as usual. While all the insider Republican candidates claim to be opposed to politics as usual, their words do not match their engaging in politics as usual. Trump, in contrast, is not engaging in politics as usual. As noted above, he does not walk back his comments and even his expression of regret is more of a “sorry, not sorry” than an actual apology. Ironically, Trump is delivering on what is but an empty promise from other politicians and they seem rather confused as to why he is doing so well. It seems to have something to do with the fact that he is spiking the ball they set up with their words.

While most Americans are now very uncomfortable about overt racism, there is a significant percentage of the population that is rather worried about the fact that the United States will soon cease to be a majority white nation. While the other Republicans skirt around this concern with talk about border security and immigration, Trump is not afraid to lay out an immigration plan that addresses this directly. His opposition to birthright citizenship, a core component of American values, is a clear statement of this view. While such straight talk is avoided by the other Republicans, in part because they wish to court the Latino and Hispanic votes, Trump is merely pulling away the veil to reveal what seems to be a very real concern of many conservatives. While this might make it harder for him to win in the general election, it seems to be working quite well with many Republicans. There are, after all, many people who say things like “I’m not racist, it is just that Mexicans and blacks are more likely to commit crimes and they are not as capable as whites” and sincerely believe what they say.

While most Americans are also quite uncomfortable with overt sexism, there is clearly a significant percentage of the population that is fine with women having a lower status relative to men. At the very least, they are quite comfortable with casual sexism. A significant number of conservatives are opposed to equal pay for women (on the grounds that while it is fine to impose things like transvaginal ultrasounds and abortion waiting periods on women, it is wrong to impose on employers) and other matters relating to women’s rights. As such, it hardly surprising that Trump is doing well. While the other candidates do endeavor to appear to be pro-life and against compelling businesses to provide pay equity or maternity leave for women, they generally avoid harsh engagements with women. Trump, however, engaged Megyn Kelly head on, thus earning more ire from women. While this did give the one female Republican candidate a boost, it also seems to have helped Trump. After all, he is open in his views of women and this sort of sincerity is no doubt quite appealing to conservatives who wish they had the Trumps to say the same things. These are the sort of folks who say things like “I’m not a sexist, but women are just not as capable as men and paying them the same as men for the same work would violate the freedom of employers. But I’m sort of fine with transvaginal ultrasounds. And yes, Viagra should be covered by insurance, but not birth control.”

One thing that really strikes me about Trump is that he has shown that he is clearly willing to fight with certain parts of Fox News. This has, as might be imagined, surprised many of the pundits. After all, Fox News has long enjoyed its position as one of the masters of the Republican Party and it would seem insane for a Republican to spat with Fox. That was, after all, Jon Stewart’s job. Accusing the “lame stream” media of bias and asking “gotcha questions” has been the job of Republicans and the conservative media.

One reason Trump can go after parts of Fox is that he is a media star in his own right—the networks simply cannot not cover his Trumpings. Other candidates have to maintain good relations with Fox and at least be somewhat tolerable to the other major media channels.

Another reason Trump can engage in fights with the media, including some parts of Fox, is that he is exploiting a narrative created by conservatives and, rather ironically, the right-leaning media (such as Fox). Fox, Republican politicians and folks like Rush Limbaugh have railed against the media for being a filter, for being biased, and for having an agenda. They crafted a narrative of being against the “lame steam” media, but these attacks seem to have had the effect of generating the potential for hostility against all media. So, Trump is able to make the claim that he is being mistreated by the media and being subject to unfair questions. The irony is that he is using the conservative and Fox narrative about the media against Fox News.

Since Fox and the others crafted a fine sword calculated to cut the media, it should not be surprising that Trump has taken up this blade and turned it against those who hoped to use him as a viewership generator. Unless, of course, this is all part of a plan: a manufactured battle to generate even more viewership.

Given all these factors, it should not be surprising that Trump is doing well. Despite this, most serious pundits claim that Trump will not be the Republican candidate. And, they say, even if he were he could still not win the general election.

While Trump could blow up, implode or get tired of the game, he could also maintain his success and take the nomination. He could even win the presidential election. Here is how it might go down.

First, voter turnout in the United States is low—most potential voters do not vote. Many of these voters would probably vote Democrat while many of the folks who reliably vote tend to be more conservative. The Republicans have also been busy making it harder for those likely to support Democrats to vote. This is done under the guise of fighting the all but non-existent voter fraud. While the impact of these laws will probably be less than liberals fear, they will still have an impact—far more than the mostly make-believe voter fraud that Republicans profess to fear (as they deny vast amounts of evidence for climate change).

Second, there is the Hillary Factor. While Hillary Clinton is popular with many Democrats and independents, this popularity has been eroded—in part due to the issue of the private email server. Clinton’s supporters will certainly lack the fire of Obama’s supporters—though a more charismatic and likeable female candidate could probably fire up supporters to a degree on par with how Obama motivated people in 2008. But, while Hillary is a woman, she seems to be just another politician who happens to wear pantsuits rather than pants.

The growing popularity of Bernie Sanders might require Hillary to go left to win the primaries or even have him as her vice presidential candidate. Since Bernie is an avowed socialist and most actual voters are moderates, this could push people who would otherwise vote for the Democrat to vote for Trump or not vote (which would help Trump). While many Republicans would probably admit in private that Hillary Clinton would be a much better president than Trump, the majority of them would vote for Trump over Hillary—and certainly over Bernie Sanders. As such, a combination of voter apathy and a dislike of Clinton could make Trump the next President of the United States. So, America, prepare for some Quality.

 

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Autonomous Weapons II: Autonomy Can Be Good

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As the Future of Life Institute’s open letter shows, there are many people concerned about the development of autonomous weapons. This concern is reasonable, if only because any weapon can be misused to advance evil goals. However, a strong case can be made in favor of autonomous weapons.

As the open letter indicated, a stock argument for autonomous weapons is that their deployment could result in decreased human deaths. If, for example, an autonomous ship is destroyed in battle, then no humans will die. It is worth noting that the ship’s AI might qualify as a person, thus there could be one death. In contrast, the destruction of a crewed warship could results in hundreds of deaths. On utilitarian grounds, the use of autonomous weapons would seem morally fine—at least as long as their deployment reduced the number of deaths and injuries.

The open letter expresses, rightly, concerns that warlords and dictators will use autonomous weapons. But, this might be an improvement over the current situation. These warlords and dictators often conscript their troops and some, infamously, enslave children to serve as their soldiers. While it would be better for a warlord or dictator to have no army, it certainly seems morally preferable for them to use autonomous weapons rather than employing conscripts and children.

It can be replied that the warlords and dictators would just use autonomous weapons in addition to their human forces, thus there would be no saving of lives. This is certainly worth considering. But, if the warlords and dictators would just use humans anyway, the autonomous weapons would not seem to make much of a difference, except in terms of giving them more firepower—something they could also accomplish by using the money spent on autonomous weapons to better train and equip their human troops.

At this point, it is only possible to estimate (guess) the impact of autonomous weapons on the number of human causalities and injuries. However, it seems somewhat more likely they would reduce human causalities, assuming that there are no other major changes in warfare.

A second appealing argument in favor of autonomous weapons is based on the fact that smart weapons are smart. While an autonomous weapon could be designed to be imprecise, the general trend in smart weapons has been towards ever increasing precision. Consider, for example, aircraft bombs and missiles. In the First World War, these bombs were very primitive and quite inaccurate (they were sometimes thrown from planes by hand). WWII saw some improvements in bomb fusing and bomb sights and unguided rockets were used. In following wars, bomb and missile technology improved, leading to the smart bombs and missiles of today that have impressive precision. So, instead of squadrons of bombers dropping tons of dumb bombs on cities, a small number of aircraft can engage in relatively precise strikes against specific targets. While innocents still perish in these attacks, the precision of the weapons has made it possible to greatly reduce the number of needless deaths. Autonomous weapons would presumably be even more precise, thus reducing causalities even more. This seems to be desirable.

In addition to precision, autonomous weapons could (and should) have better target identification capacities than humans. Assuming that recognition software continues to be improved, it is easy to imagine automated weapons that can rapidly distinguish between friends, foes, and civilians. This would reduce deaths from friendly fire and unintentional killings of civilians. Naturally, target identification would not be perfect, but autonomous weapons could be far better than humans since they do not suffer from fatigue, emotional factors, and other things that interfere with human judgement. Autonomous weapons would presumably also not get angry or panic, thus making it far more likely they would maintain target discipline (only engaging what they should engage).

To make what should be an obvious argument obvious, if autonomous vehicles and similar technology is supposed to make the world safer, then it would seem to follow that autonomous weapons could do something similar for warfare.

It can be objected that autonomous weapons could be designed to lack precision and to kill without discrimination. For example, a dictator might have massacrebots to deploy in cases of civil unrest—these robots would just slaughter everyone in the area regardless of age or behavior. Human forces, one might contend, would show at least some discrimination or mercy.

The easy and obvious reply to this is that the problem is not in the autonomy of the weapons but the way they are being used. The dictator could achieve the same results (mass death) by deploying a fleet of autonomous cars loaded with demolition explosives, but this would presumably not be reasons to have a ban on autonomous cars or demolition explosives. There is also the fact that dictators, warlords and terrorists are able to easily find people to carry out their orders, no matter how awful they might be. That said, it could still be argued that autonomous weapons would result in more such murders than would the use of human forces, police or terrorists.

A third argument in favor of autonomous weapons rests on the claim advanced in the open letter that autonomous weapons will become cheap to produce—analogous to Kalashnikov rifles. On the downside, as the authors argue, this would result in the proliferation of these weapons. On the plus side, if these highly effective weapons are so cheap to produce, this could enable existing militaries to phase out their incredibly expensive human operated weapons in favor of cheap autonomous weapons. By replacing humans, these weapons would also create considerable savings in terms of the cost of recruitment, training, food, medical treatment, and retirement. This would allow countries to switch that money to more positive areas, such as education, infrastructure, social programs, health care and research. So, if the autonomous weapons are as cheap and effective as the letter claims, then it would actually seem to be a great idea to use them to replace existing weapons.

A fourth argument in favor of autonomous weapons is that they could be deployed, with low political cost, on peacekeeping operations. Currently, the UN has to send human troops to dangerous areas. These troops are often outnumbered and ill-equipped relative to the challenges they are facing. However, if autonomous weapons will be as cheap and effective as the letter claims, then they would be ideal for these missions. Assuming they are cheap, the UN could deploy a much larger autonomous weapon force for the same cost as deploying a human force. There would also be far less political cost—people who might balk at sending their fellow citizens to keep peace in some war zone will probably be fine with sending robots.

An extension of this argument is that autonomous weapons could allow the nations of the world to engage groups like ISIS without having to pay the high political cost of sending in human forces. It seems likely that ISIS will persist for some time and other groups will surely appear that are rather clearly the enemies of the rest of humanity, yet which would be too expensive politically to engage with human forces. The cheap and effective weapons predicted by the letter would seem ideal for this task.

In light of the above arguments, it seems that autonomous weapons should be developed and deployed. However, the concerns of the letter do need to be addressed. As with existing weapons, there should be rules governing the use of autonomous weapons (although much of their use would fall under existing rules and laws of war) and efforts should be made to keep them from proliferating to warlords, terrorists and dictators. As with most weapons, the problem lies with the misuse of the weapons and not with the weapons.

 

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42 Fallacies in Spanish

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42 Fallacies Cover 2Alexis Beldad Moraleda has translated my 42 Fallacies into Spanish.
It can also be downloaded directly: 42-Falacias.

Autonomous Weapons I: The Letter

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On July 28, 2015 the Future of Life Institute released an open letter expressing opposition to the development of autonomous weapons. Although the name of the organization sounds like one I would use as a cover for an evil, world-ending cult in a Call of Cthulhu campaign, I am willing to accept that this group is sincere in its professed values. While I do respect their position on the issue, I believe that they are mistaken. I will assess and reply to the arguments in the letter.

As the letter notes, an autonomous weapon is capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention. An excellent science fiction example of such a weapon is the claw of Philip K. Dick’s classic “Second Variety” (a must read for anyone interested in the robopocalypse). A real world example of such a weapon, albeit a stupid one, is the land mine—they are placed and then engage automatically.

The first main argument presented in the letter is essentially a proliferation argument. If a major power pushes AI development, the other powers will also do so, creating an arms race. This will lead to the development of cheap, easy to mass-produce AI weapons. These weapons, it is claimed, will end up being acquired by terrorists, warlords, and dictators. These evil people will use these weapons for assassinations, destabilization, oppression and ethnic cleansing. That is, for what these evil people already use existing weapons to do quite effectively. This raises the obvious concern about whether or not autonomous weapons would actually have a significant impact in these areas.

The authors of the letter do have a reasonable point: as science fiction stories have long pointed out, killer robots tend to simply obey orders and they can (at least in fiction) be extremely effective. However, history has shown that terrorists, warlords, and dictators rarely have trouble finding humans who are willing to commit acts of incredible evil. Humans are also quite good at these sort of things and although killer robots are awesomely competent in fiction, it remains to be seen if they will be better than humans in the real world. Especially the cheap, mass produced weapons in question.

That said, it is reasonable to be concerned that a small group or individual could buy a cheap robot army when they would otherwise not be able to put together a human force. These “Walmart” warlords could be a real threat in the future—although small groups and individuals can already do considerable damage with existing technology, such as homemade bombs. They can also easily create weaponized versions of non-combat technology, such as civilian drones and autonomous cars—so even if robotic weapons are not manufactured, enterprising terrorists and warlords will build their own. Think, for example, of a self-driving car equipped with machine guns or just loaded with explosives.

A reasonable reply is that the warlords, terrorists and dictators would have a harder time of it without cheap, off the shelf robotic weapons. This, it could be argued, would make the proposed ban on autonomous weapons worthwhile on utilitarian grounds: it would result in less deaths and less oppression.

The authors then claim that just as chemists and biologists are generally not in favor of creating chemical or biological weapons, most researchers in AI do not want to design AI weapons. They do argue that the creation of AI weapons could create a backlash against AI in general, which has the potential to do considerable good (although there are those who are convinced that even non-weapon AIs will wipe out humanity).

The authors do have a reasonable point here—members of the public do often panic over technology in ways that can impede the public good. One example is in regards to vaccines and the anti-vaccination movement. Another example is the panic over GMOs that is having some negative impact on the development of improved crops. But, as these two examples show, backlash against technology is not limited to weapons, so the AI backlash could arise from any AI technology and for no rational reason. A movement might arise, for example, against autonomous cars. Interestingly, military use of technology seems to rarely create backlash from the public—people do not refuse to fly in planes because the military uses them to kill people. Most people also love GPS, which was developed for military use.

The authors note that chemists, biologists and physicists have supported bans on weapons in their fields. This might be aimed at attempting to establish an analogy between AI researchers and other researchers, perhaps to try to show these researchers that it is a common practice to be in favor of bans against weapons in one’s area of study. Or, as some have suggested, the letter might be making an analogy between autonomous weapons and weapons of mass destruction (biological, chemical and nuclear weapons).

One clear problem with the analogy is that biological, chemical and nuclear weapons tend to be the opposite of robotic smart weapons: they “target” everyone without any discrimination. Nerve gas, for example, injures or kills everyone. A nuclear bomb also kills or wounds everyone in the area of effect. While AI weapons could carry nuclear, biological or chemical payloads and they could be set to simply kill everyone, this lack of discrimination and WMD nature is not inherent to autonomous weapons. In contrast, most proposed autonomous weapons seem intended to be very precise and discriminating in their killing. After all, if the goal is mass destruction, there is already the well-established arsenal of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Terrorists, warlords and dictators often have no problems using WMDs already and AI weapons would not seem to significantly increase their capabilities.

In my next essay on this subject, I will argue in favor of AI weapons.

 

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Race & Performance Based Funding

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Florida, like some other states, has imposed performance based funding on its state universities. The basic idea is that each state school is evaluated by ten standards and then the schools are ranked. The top schools are rewarded and the bottom schools are punished.

As a runner and a professor, I certainly get the idea of linking rewards to performance. As a runner, I believe that better performance merits the better awards (be it a gold medal, a fat stack of cash, or a ribbon). As a professor, I believe that performance merits the better grades and that poor performance merits the corresponding lower grades. However, I also recognize the importance of fairness.

In the case of running, a fair race requires that everyone must compete on the same course and under the same conditions. The age and gender of the runners is also taken into account when assessing performance and there are even age-graded performance formulas to take into account the ravages of time.

In the case of grading, a fair class requires that everyone is required to do the same work, receives the same support from the professor, and that the assessment standards are the same. Fairness also requires that special challenges faced by some students are taken into account. Otherwise, the assessment is unjust.

The same applies to performance based funding of education. If the goal is to encourage better performance on the part of all the schools, the competition needs to be fair. Going with a classroom analogy, if a student knows that the class is rigged against her, she is not likely to be motivated to do her best. There also seems to be an obvious moral requirement that the assessment be fair and this would require considering the specific challenges that each school faces. Laying aside the normative aspects, there is also the matter of accuracy: knowing how well a school is performing requires considering what challenges it had to overcome.

While all the schools operate within the state of Florida and face similar challenges, each school also faces some special challenges. Because of this, a proper and just assessment of a schools performance (how well it does in educating students, etc.) should reflect these challenges. To simply impose standards that fail to consider these challenges would be unfair and would also yield an inaccurate account of the success or failure of the school.

Consider the following analogy: imagine, if you will, that the Pentagon adopted a performance based funding model for military units using various standards such as cost of operations, causalities, how well the units got along with the locals and so on. Now imagine that the special challenges of the units were not properly considered so that, for example, a unit operating in the deserts of Iraq fighting ISIS was assessed the same way as a unit stationed in Kentucky. As might be imagined, the unit in Iraq would certainly be assessed as performing worse than the unit stationed in Kentucky. The unit in Kentucky would presumably cost less per person, have far fewer causalities, and get along much better with the locals. As such, the unit fighting ISIS would find itself in funding trouble since its performance would seem rather worse than the unit in Kentucky. Of course, this approach would be irrational and unfair—the unit fighting ISIS might be performing extremely well relative to the challenges it faces. The same, it would seem, should hold for schools. Turning back to performance based funding, I will consider the relevant standards and how they are unfair to my school, Florida A&M University.

Florida A&M University is an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and is still predominantly African-American. The school also prides itself on providing educational opportunities to students who have been denied such opportunities as well as those who are first generation college students. Put roughly, we have many African-American students and a large number of students who are burdened with economic and educational baggage.

As I have mentioned in a previous essay, FAMU fared poorly under the state’s standards. To be fair, we honestly did do poorly in regards to the state’s standards. However, there are the important questions as to whether the standards are fair and whether or not the assessment of our performance is accurate.

On the one hand, the answer to both questions can be taken as “yes.” The standards apply to all the schools and the assessment was accurate in terms of the results. On the other hand, the answer is also “no”, since FAMU faces special challenges and the assessment fails to take these into account. To use a running analogy, the situation is like comparing the true 5K times of various runners. This is fair and accurate in that all runners are using their 5K times and the times are accurate. However, if some runners had to run hilly trails and others did their 5Ks on tracks, then the competition would not be fair. After all, a slower 5K on a hilly trail could be a much better performance than a 5K on a track.

To get directly to the point, my claim is that FAMU faces the special challenge of racism and the legacy of racism. This, I contend, means that FAMU is being assessed unfairly in terms of its performance: FAMU is running hills on a trail while other schools are enjoying a smoother run around the track. In support of this claim, I offer the following evidence.

One standard is the Percent of Bachelor’s Graduates Employed and/or Continuing their Education Further. A second is the Average Wages of Employed Baccalaureate.  The third is the Six Year Graduation Rate and the fourth is the Academic Progress Rate (2nd Year Retention with GPA Above 2.0). These four break down into two general areas. The first is economic success (employment and wages) and the second is academic success (staying in school and graduating). I will consider each general area.

On the face of it, retention and graduation rates should have no connection to race. After all, one might argue, these are a matter of staying in school and completing school which is a matter of personal effort rather than race.

While I do agree that personal effort does matter, African-American students face at least two critical obstacles in regards to retention and graduation. The first is that African-American students are still often victims of segregation in regards to K-12 education and receive generally inferior education relative to white students. It should be no surprise that this educational disadvantage manifests itself in terms of retention and graduation rates. To use a running analogy, no one would be surprised if the runners who were poorly trained and coached did worse than better trained and coached runners.

The second is economic, which ties directly into the standards relating to economic success. As will be shown, African-Americans are far less well off than other Americans. Since college is expensive, it is hardly surprising that people who are less well-off would have a harder time remaining in and completing college. As I have discussed in other essays, the main (self-reported) reason for students being absent from my classes is for work and there is a clear correlation between attendance and class performance. I now turn to the unfairness of the state’s economic success standards.

While I do not believe that the primary function of the state university is to train students to be job fillers for the job creators, I do agree that it is reasonable to consider the economic success of students when evaluating schools. However, assessing how much the school contributes to economic success requires considering the starting point of the students and the challenges they will face in achieving success.

To be blunt, race is a major factor in regards to economic success in the United States. This is due to a variety of historical factors (slavery and the legacy of slavery) and contemporary factors (persistent racism). These factors manifest themselves quite clearly and, as such, the relatively poor performance of African-American graduates from FAMU is actually what should be expected.

In regards to employment, the University of Chicago conducted a study aimed at determining if there is racial bias in hiring. To test this, the researchers responded to 1,300 job advertisements with 5,000 applications. They found that comparable resumes with white sounding names were 50% more likely to get called for an initial interview relative to those with more African-American sounding names. The researchers found that white sounding applications got call backs at a rate of 1 in 10 while for black sounding names it was 1 in 15. This is clearly significant.

Interestingly, a disparity was also found in regards to the impact of experience and better credentials. A white job applicant with a higher quality application was 30% more likely to get a call than a white applicant with a lower quality application. For African-Americans, the higher quality application was only 9% more likely to get a call than a lower quality black application.

This disparity in the hiring process seems to help explain the disparity in employment. For whites, the unemployment rate is 5.3% and it is 11.4% for blacks. As such, it is hardly surprising that African-American students from FAMU are doing worse than students from schools that are mostly white.

Assuming that this information is accurate, this means that FAMU could be producing graduates as good as the other schools while still falling considerably behind them in regards to the employment of graduates. That is, FAMU could be doing a great job that is getting degraded by racism. As such, the employment assessment would need to be adjusted to include this factor. Going with the running analogy, FAMU’s African-American graduates have to run uphill to get a job, while white graduates get to run on much flatter course.

In addition to employment, a graduate’s wages is also one of the standards used by the state. FAMU fared poorly relative to the other schools here as well. However, this is also exactly what should be expected in the United States. The poverty rate for whites is 9.7% while that for blacks it is 27.2%. The median household wealth for whites is $91,405 and for blacks $6,446. Blacks own homes at a rate of 43.5% while whites do so at 72.9%. Median household income is $35,416 for blacks and $59,754 for whites. As such, it would actually be surprising if African American graduates of FAMU competed well against the statistics for predominantly white schools.

It might be contended that these statistics are not relevant because what is of concern is the performance of African-American college graduates and not the general economic woes of African-Americans. Unfortunately, college education does not close the racial wealth gap.

While the great recession had a negative impact on the wealth of most Americans, African-Americans with college degrees were hits surprisingly hard: their net worth dropped 60% from 2007 to 2013. In contrast, whites suffered a decline of 16% and, interestingly, Asians saw a slight increase. An analysis of the data (and data going back to 1992) showed that black and Hispanics had more assets in housing and more debts and these were major factors in the loss of wealth (the burst of the housing bubble crashed house values). In terms of income, researchers take the main causes of the disparity to include discrimination and career choices. In addition to the impact on salary, this wealth disparity also impacts retention and graduation rates. As such, the state is right to focus heavily on economics—but the standards need to consider the broader economic reality as well.

It is reasonable to infer that the main reason that FAMU fares worse in these areas is due to factors beyond the control of the school. Most of our students are black and in the United States, discrimination and enduring historical factors blacks do far worse than whites. As such, these poor numbers are more a reflection of the poor performance of America than on the performance of Florida A&M University. Because of this, the standards should be adjusted to take into account the reality of race in America.

 

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Isis & Rape

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Looked at in the abstract, ISIS seems to be another experiment in the limits of human evil, addressing the question of how bad people can become before they are unable to function as social beings. While ISIS is well known for its theologically justified murder and destruction, it has now become known for its theologically justified slavery and rape.

While I am not a scholar of religion, it is quite evident that scriptural justifications of slavery and rape exist and require little in the way of interpretation. In this, Islamic scripture is similar to the bible—this book also contains rules about the practice of slavery and guidelines regarding the proper practice of rape. Not surprisingly, mainstream religious scholars of Islam and Christianity tend to argue that these aspects of scripture no longer apply or that they can be interpreted in ways that do not warrant slavery or rape. Opponents of these faiths tend to argue that the mainstream scholars are mistaken and that the wicked behavior enjoined in such specific passages express the true principles of the faith.

Disputes over specific passages lead to the broader debate about the true tenets of a faith and what it is to be a true member of that faith. To use a current example, opponents of Islam often claim that Islam is inherently violent and that the terrorists exemplify the true members of Islam. Likewise, some who are hostile to Christianity claim that it is a hateful religion and point to Christian extremists, such as God Hates Fags, as exemplars of true Christianity. This is a rather difficult and controversial matter and one I have addressed in other essays.

A reasonable case can be made that slavery and rape are not in accord with Islam, just as a reasonable case can be made that slavery and rape are not in accord with Christianity. As noted above, it can argued that times have changed, that the texts do not truly justify the practices and so on. However, these passages remain and can be pointed to as theological evidence in favor of the religious legitimacy of these practices. The practice of being selective about scripture is indeed a common one and people routinely focus on passages they like while ignoring passages that they do not like. This selectivity is, not surprisingly, most often used to “justify” prejudice, hatred and misdeeds. Horribly, ISIS does indeed have textual support, however controversial it might be with mainstream Islamic thinkers. That, I think, cannot be disputed.

ISIS members not only claim that slavery and rape are acceptable, they go so far as to claim that rape is pleasing to God. According to Rukmini Callimachi’s article in the New York Times, ISIS rapists pray before raping, rape, and then pray after raping. They are not praying for forgiveness—the rape is part of the religious ritual that is supposed to please God.

The vast majority of monotheists would certainly be horrified by this and would assert that God is not pleased by rape (despite textual support to the contrary). Being in favor of rape is certainly inconsistent with the philosophical conception of God as an all good being. However, there is the general problem of sorting out what God finds pleasing and what He condemns. In the case of human authorities it is generally easy to sort out what pleases them and what they condemn: they act to support and encourage what pleases them and act to discourage, prevent and punish what they condemn. If God exists, He certainly is allowing ISIS to do as it will—He never acts to stop them or even to send a clear sign that He condemns their deeds. But, of course, God seems to share the same policy as Star Fleet’s Prime Directive now: He never interferes or makes His presence known.

The ISIS horror is yet another series of examples in the long standing problem of evil—if God is all powerful, all-knowing and good, then there should be no evil. But, since ISIS is freely doing what it does it would seem to follow that God is lacking in some respect, He does not exist or He, as ISIS claims, is pleased by the rape of children.

Not surprisingly, religion is not particularly helpful here—while scripture and interpretations of scripture can be used to condemn ISIS, scripture can also be used to support them in their wickedness. God, as usual, is not getting involved, so we do not know what He really thinks. So, it would seem to be up human morality to settle this matter.

While there is considerable dispute about morality, the evil of rape and slavery certainly seem to be well-established. It can be noted that moral arguments have been advanced in favor of slavery, usually on the grounds of alleged superiority. However, these moral arguments certainly seem to have been adequately refuted. There are far fewer moral arguments in defense of rape, which is hardly surprising. However, these also seem to have been effectively refuted. In any case, I would contend that the burden of proof rests on those who would claim that slavery or rape are morally acceptable and invite readers to advance such arguments for due consideration.

Moving away from morality, there are also practical matters. ISIS does have a clear reason to embrace its theology of rape: as was argued by Rukmini Callimachi, it is a powerful recruiting tool. ISIS offers men a group in which killing, destruction and rape are not only tolerated but praised as being pleasing to God—the ultimate endorsement. While there are people who do not feel any need to justify their evil, even very wicked people often still want to believe that their terrible crimes are warranted or even laudable. As such, ISIS has considerable attraction to those who wish to do evil.

Accepting this theology of slavery and rape is not without negative consequences for recruiting—while there are many who find it appealing, there are certainly many more who find it appalling. Some ISIS supporters have endeavored to deny that ISIS has embraced this theology of rape and slavery—even they recognize some moral limits. Other supporters have not been dismayed by these revelations and perhaps even approve. Whether this theology of rape and slavery benefits ISIS more than it harms it will depend largely on the moral character of its potential recruits and supporters. I certainly hope that this is a line that many are not willing to cross, thus cutting into ISIS’ potential manpower and financial support. What impact this has on ISIS’ support will certainly reveal much about the character of their supporters—do they have some moral limits?

 

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