You're only as old ... as ... you ....... feel ................

My favorite Onion video.

Dig a Little Deeper

The Freakwenter Award for best music video goes to Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver's Dig a Little Deeper. Digging itself into hole, the band shows a deep sense of irony behind what would at first appear to be a straightforward admonishment to sell your soul to a lover, who from the outset is rather difficult to satisfy. The frogs are not exactly reassuring.

News bloopers

A sentence from the Miami Herald:

The plane was on autopilot and climbing passed 10,000 feet when the pilot died.

More on typos here and here.

Stimulus

In this economic turmoil, the feds are putting together tax rebates to stimulate consumer spending. Much study is given to the question of how much of the tax rebate will be spent instead of going straight into personal savings. If the rebate recipients don't spend the extra money, the rebate is considered a failure.

A much-cited blog post by Susan Woodward and Bob Hall makes the obvious (in retrospect) observation that if the government really wants to stimulate spending, all we have to do is temporarily eliminate sales taxes (or provide any other type of "spending subsidy"). Consumers get to take advantage of the stimulus only if they choose to spend. This hits the wallet on the head, so to speak, and is 100% efficient in doing what we want a stimulus to do.

Converting federal debt to hell: the tipping point

I have already described some of the costs of bearing a large national debt in terms of regular-every-day economics of supply and demand. Upon further reflection, these costs are small when compared to the possibility that the debt will someday turn all that remains of our entire wayward economy into a pillar of salt. The end is near.

As you pore over this dense post to decipher the secrets of our imminent demise, do not fall into the trap of comparing our situation too closely with that of Argentina just a few years ago. Careful analogies may be drawn, but keep in mind at least two of the many differences: Argentina is tiny, and in the years leading up the crisis, Argentina had its currency tied to the dollar.

The US federal government is in debt by over $11 trillion. Who cares? Right now, with interest rates on treasury bills near zero, the US is paying approximately no interest on the debt. However, rates on government debt have varied widely. In 2006, rates on 6-month bonds were at about 5% (annualized). The point is that a small change in the interest rate makes a big change in how fast the debt grows. Even a 1% rate increase means that we lose $110 billion more per year (1 percent times 11 trillion).

Why is it that interest rates on government debt are the lowest in the world? There is no law that sets these rates; the rates are entirely dictated by supply and demand. In fact, the only reason that rates are low is that people (and foreign nations) like to put their money somewhere safe, and the US has never ever defaulted on its debt.

Now it's not like this would ever happen, but just suppose for a moment that the US is going through some kind of economic turmoil. Things go a little wacky, no one knows exactly what is going on, and somehow we end up with an interest rate of 10%. Let's see how things might play out with regards to the federal debt:

• The debt grows more quickly, perhaps by 8% per year (assuming a 2% inflation rate).
• High interest rates at home mean that fewer people can buy houses or cars or education. The economy shrinks. This leads to lower tax revenue, so the debt grows even faster.
• People who are lending the US their money get just a tiny bit worried. They are pretty sure that the US would never default, but they consider it a big enough risk that they decide to lend to the US only at 11% instead of 10% interest. As described in the first two points above, this makes everything even worse.
• The US politicians get scared that they won't win the next elections (just three years away) if they don't do something quick. The only thing that works quickly is a lot of government spending. So we go another trillion into debt to pay for that.
• Lenders see what the politicians are doing and realized get a little more worried. They charge 15% on the debt, up from 11%. As mentioned above, this makes things even worse for the US.
• Then the lenders start looking at each other. They notice that everyone is worried that the US might default. Even though Lender A doesn't think that the US will default a priori, he knows that all the rest of the lenders might be more worried than he is. And if all the rest of the lenders get too worried, then they will completely stop lending, and the US will have no choice to default. Of course, this is all only hypothetical in the mind of Lender A. But just in case, Lender A refuses to lend to the US for any less than a 25% interest rate.
• All the lenders are like Lender A. On speculation that future interest rates will be higher than current ones, investors refrain from lending to the US in the present. It's like a "reverse bubble."
  
• At some unpredictable moment, interest rates rise exponentially, perhaps causing the US debt to double annually, and everyone realizes that there is no way for the US to pay back its debts. Then no one lends anything to the US anymore. The government goes into default. Terrible things happen (not sure exactly what, but believe me, it will make you wish your home was Calcutta).

This is bound to happen if the national debt continues to grow much faster than our GDP, which appears likely for quite some time. Exactly when it will happen is uncertain. The Second Coming -- of the financial crisis -- will come like a corporate executive in the night, floating down from the sky beneath a golden parachute.

Clever demons will arise and try to confuse you with statements like, "interest rates in the US will never get high enough in the US to cause problems because the Federal Reserve knows how to keep money cheap." But remember this so that you will recognize their lie for the fruit it produces: high inflation rates cause rapid devaluation of government bonds. Foreign investors will hold out for even higher interest rates to make up for this devaluation, the descent into hell will proceed only faster.

Take heed, not all is lost (which is much different than to say "all is not lost" -- most things will indeed be lost). If you act soon enough, you can be spared from the worst of the famine that is sure to follow. Take your money now, and do not invest it in government bonds, where future default will destroy, but instead invest in land in West Virginia, the little Afghanistan of the US, where it is easy to hide among the hills, easy to establish strong defenses, and where there is enough ginseng and wild onions and squirrels to sustain you and your children into the next generation.

No wonder no one understands finance

I am indebted to the stock market today for wiping away my debts as my securities holdings increased in value. My insecurities, on the other hand, decreased in significance, as the prices of equities shot up. Now I can forgive the market for its inequities.

The Burgeoning Beast

According to a Wall Street Journal article last week, Obama's budget plans over the next 10 years are forecast to result in an increase of $6.5 billion in federal debt. Divide that by a US population of approximately 300 million, and you get an increase in debt of about $22 thousand PER PERSON over the next ten ten years, or about $2,200 per person per year.

The current national debt stands at about $11 trillion, or about $37,000 per American. This does not count personal credit card, home loan, school loan, or any other kind of personal debt. Nor does it count municipal debt or state debt. This is only federal debt, the kind of debt that we get as a result of electing the president and congress. This debt is a hidden drain on our economy. Exactly how it works against our economy is a bit more complicated than the obvious pain of increasing taxes, which is why politicians prefer to increase debt rather than raise taxes.

Kudos to Obama if he manages to spend that money with unprecedented effectiveness, but I have my doubts. Maybe Ron Paul, or some hybrid of Paul and Obama, say "Pabama," will run for president next time. He/she/it already has my support.

Moral Development and Disempathy

In a previous post, I conjectured that some Aspergians may have greater empathy skills than their behavior suggests:

One could theoretically be very good at seeing from the shoes of another, and yet act in a way that does not reveal such understanding. Loyalty to hidden ideology, or a fear of deviating from how I know to act, might sometimes motivate me to willfully ignore my empathic sensibilities.

This is an issue for not only Aspergians. Most people at some time or another decide to trample on the feelings of another. Rather than try and catalog all kinds of concious disregard for empathetic awareness, or disempathy, I'd like to explore more deeply the role of moral development in creating disempathy.

One widely accepted model for moral development (in individuals) runs roughly as follows:

• We start out with simply avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. Babies cry for milk and cry for a diaper change regardless of whether it's a convenient time for the parents.
• Then we look slightly beyond ourselves and pay attention to the rules that the parents and other authorities use to control us. We also become susceptible to peer pressure, and try to fit in to win the support of friends.
• Then we get kind of idealistic. We say, I'm going to be generous because I have high moral integrity and it is good and right to be generous. We become aware of "ethics" and some notion of a social contract. We (consciously or subconsciously) evaluate our behavior based on principles such as "what if everyone acted that way? Would life be nice then?"

Moral development ends approximately there, at least in this model. In my experience, the next developmental stage is a departure from traditional morality for the acquisition of complete moral relativism, or complemorelivism. In this next stage, "what is, is," people act as they act, and it is just an interesting natural phenomenon the way that people seem to prefer cooperation to open conflict. Intrinsic subjective values still exist in complemorelivism , and life is still rich with meaning, but The Force that drives everything hides deeper and deeper among the incentives and laws and ethics that we use to harness that force.

I will argue that disempathy flourishes not only in the first stages of moral development, but also in the final ones. I'll give some short examples of how adherence to moral principals in each stage may motivate disempathy. These examples do not imply that the actor is practicing disempathy, given the possibility that the actor has no empathy, and hence cannot be accused of disregarding empathy. However, assuming that the subject has empathy, these explain how moral principles may serve as one of several possible motives for disempathy.

In the first stages of moral development, the moral principle is to serve your immediate needs without regard for others. You're supposed to take that toy and not share it, without regard for the feelings of your playmates. Or, if you decide to share the toy, it's only because you fear harsh consequence of not sharing, such as a brisk spanking.

In the next stages, morality says that you should obey the authorities. If Mom asks you to go kick the neighbor's irritating-pissing-stinky-vicious-barking dog to death, you obey, regardless of how this will make your neighbor feel (not to mention the dog). Granted, this example may seem unrealistic, but that is only because Mom is usually operating on higher moral principles.

In the final stages, you adopt "ethical principals" of widely varying levels sophistication and focus. Examples at this stage tend to be more subtle. I will provide two examples disempathy surrounding the principled opposition to war, or killing in general:

• You say, "War is wrong," and look down your nose at a soldier. You raise emotional walls against the soldier, and cling to your perspective rather than allow yourself fully consider the possible benefits of their work, or the force of personal experience that motivates the soldier. As a result, you may exercise disempathy by telling the soldier that you think his work is "wrong," even though this will make the soldier uncomfortable. Nevermind that you have great motives for telling the soldier this. Nevermind that you believe that the soldier or the rest of humanity could benefit from you spreading your ideas. This does not negate the fact that you are disregarding the soldiers feelings, and that this disempathy arises from your principled opposition to war.
• On the highest level of morality (at least with regard to empathy), your opposition to war is not a principle in itself, but instead it arises from a deeper ethic: to maximize some measure of the general happiness of humanity. You may believe that you significantly reduce killing by somehow avoiding payment of federal taxes, to shrink the military budget. (See Henry David Thoreau.) You are aware of the financial, social, and legal difficulties that tax avoidance brings upon your family, but you believe that on net, tax avoidance will increase the overall well-being of humanity. Here you are practicing disempathy against your family, at least if they aren't enthusiastic about whole tax avoidance thing.
  

An individual becomes truly free to abandon disempathy for the sake of a particular relationship (possibly at the expense of other relationships) only upon their arrival at complemorelivism. This is not to say that all complemorelivists are good at empathy, or intent on using empathy to benefit others. Nonetheless, I have shown that adherence to "ethics" constrains an individual's positive use of empathy even as it requires the use of empathy.

To the Naysayers

In Asperger's from the Inside Out, aspergian Michael John Carley writes

When something hits you like a ton of bricks as you read about [Asperger Syndrome] and you internally shout, 'That's it!' ... then you're usually on the right track.
...

But whereas I empathized with the need to save the money that a clinical diagnosis usually requires, I started to see a disturbing pattern in some self-diagnosed folks: I began to hear stronger-than-usual complaints that they were feeling doubt from the world that they could actually be on the [autism] spectrum.
...

I know that with all the doubt there was from people I love, that I needed that official diagnosis in order to withstand the pressure to shrug off my AS as nonsense.
...

And what is truly overwhelming is the flood of new information that the diagnosis brings--the new interpretations not only about yourself, but also about the people around you. This is not bad news, this is good news. Maybe the best you've ever had.

Lunchtime Jabber

Haiku's are easy.
Sometimes it doesn't make sense.
Refrigerator.

Evidently not original.

Neurotypical Syndrome

From the perspective of the Aspergian/autistic community, typical people seem somewhat mentally ill. Hence we have coined "neurotypical syndrome" to describe the disorder affecting the majority of the population. Thanks to The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical, we have a cohesive set of symptoms to describe this disorder:

Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.

Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. NTs find it difficult to be alone. NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity. NTs find it difficult to communicate directly, and have a much higher incidence of lying as compared to persons on the autistic spectrum.

NT is believed to be genetic in origin. Autopsies have shown the brain of the neurotypical is typically smaller than that of an autistic individual and may have overdeveloped areas related to social behavior.

To determine if you are NT, take this online screening exam.