On Trolls and Dissenters

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Community meetings of all types and topics are frequently endangered by a common complication: that guy.

The person who speaks longer than anyone wants them to, who raises concerns that are unpopular amongst the broader public, or who unfailing uses every public platform as an opportunity to promote their pet issue, whether it is on topic or not.

Many a meeting has been derailed by this character’s irrelevant ravings, and many a community member has been silenced – fearing that if they spoke up they might appear as mad.

But there’s an interesting dilemma in this portrayal: of the many actions, motivations, and outcomes which could be lumped into this category some of them productive and some of them not.

Manin persuasively argues that debate of conflicting views is a necessary condition for successful deliberation – with groups otherwise likely to default towards prevailing norms. Diversity of views is not enough; “disagreement in face-to-face interactions generates psychic discomfort” which groups will avoid given the opportunity.

Good deliberation, then, requires disagreement and debate as a core element – not as something which may arise or not as the context decides.

How, then, can one distinguish the actions of a counter-productive troll and a valuable dissenter? Many times, the unpopular thing needs to be said.

Rachel Barney’s excellent [Aristotle], On Trolling – written, as the name implies, in the spirit of Aristotle, lends some helpful guidance to this question.”Every community of speakers holds certain goods in common, and with them the conversation [dialegesthai] as an end in itself; and the troll is one who seeks to damage it from within.”

The troll, then actively seeks to destroy a community, to set “the community apart from each other” and introduce “strife where before there was scarcely disagreement.”

Barney/Aristotle is careful to note that the troll can be distinguished from the productive dissenter which Manin imagines:

One might wonder whether there is an art of trolling and an excellence; and indeed some say that Socrates was a troll, and so that the good man also trolls. And this is in fact what the troll claims: that he is a gadfly and beneficial, and without him to ‘stir up’ the thread it would become dull and unintelligent. But this is incorrect. For Socrates was speaking frankly when he told the Athenians to care for their souls, rather than money and honors, and showed that they lacked knowledge. And this is not trolling but the contrary, exhortation and truth-telling— even if the citizens get very annoyed. For annoyance results from many kinds of speech; and the peculiarity [idion] of the troll is not annoyance or controversy in general, but confusion and strife among a community who really agree.

Thus the troll takes the guise of a productive dissenter, whom a democratic peoples would do well to embrace, while actually seeking to destroy, not improve, a community through their dissension.

This may be a meaningful epistemic distinction, yet it can be challenging to define in practice. As Manin points out, a “community who really agree” may have simply come to agree through the processes of group dynamics.

Importantly, this type of agreement is not intrinsically related to issues of power and oppression. That is, while one may argue that agreement arrived through coercion is not really agreement at all, Manin is primarily concerned with instances where a group can be genuinely said to agree. The root of this surface agreement may not be coercion at all, but rather an unfortunate result of the fact that individuals tend to be biased and, worse yet, “groups process information in a more biased way than individuals do.”

That is, without some gadfly perturbing the system, groups tend to systematically shift toward consensus, “regardless of the merits of the issue being discussed.”

If we, like Barney/Aristotle, are to take trolling as inherently bad, more productive forms of dissent, exhortation, or truth-telling must then be distinguished. Therefore, following Manin, I’d be inclined to push back on defining a troll as one who sows discord amidst a community which agrees. If agreement was achieved through systematic social processes, perhaps a little discord could be good.

One then might seek to capture trolling through a broader definition of motivation: a troll seeks to destroy while a dissenter seeks to improve.

Importantly, though, destruction is not intrinsically beyond a dissenter’s concern: indeed, a dissenter may seek to break corrupt institutions and social structures. To smash context rather than settle for reformist tinkering, as legal scholar Roberto Unger would say.

More accurately, then, a dissenter can be seen as seeking to improve the human condition, apart from the specific context of political structures, while a troll – like Eris – seeks solely to sow discord.

In his 1992 address to Wroclaw University Václav Havel argues in favor of breathing “something of the dissident experience into practical politics.”

“The politics I refer to here cannot be enshrined in or guaranteed by any law, decree, or declaration,” Havel says. “It cannot be hoped that any single, specific political act might bring it about and achieve it. Only the aim of an ideology can be achieved. The aim of this kind of politics, as I understand it, is never completely attainable because this politics is nothing more than a permanent challenge, a never-ending effort that can only in the best possible case leave behind it a certain trace of goodness.”

This permanent challenge is the noble undertaking of the dissenter, whether in the form of sweeping revolution or more mundane provocations.

In the mundane world of practical politics, then, this leaves us still with the problem: how do we distinguish the permanent challenge of the dissenter from the wanton destruction of the troll?

Social Science that Matters (?)

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

The social sciences, some would argue, suffer from a ‘soft’ problem.

As Laurence Smith et al. describe in a 2000 article published in the aptly-named, Social Studies of Science, “Dating back at least to the writings of Auguste Comte, it has been thought that the sciences can be arrayed in a hierarchy, with well-developed natural sciences (such as physics) at the pinnacle, the social sciences at the bottom, and the biological sciences occupying an intermediate position.”

This hierarchy indicates somehow the ‘hardness’ or ‘softness’ a discipline. The natural sciences are more purely ‘science;’ more genuinely a description of nature as it is. The social sciences, on the other hand, are ‘softer’ – less predictive, testable, rigorous, or, perhaps, simply more subjective.

It’s generally unclear just what defines the hard/soft hierarchy, but in comparing a number of different definitions, Smith continually found the same thing: physics is the hardest science, sociology is the softest. Chemistry and biology are both well in the ‘hard’ science camp, while the analytic social sciences of psychology and economics skirt the ‘soft’ boundary and approach ‘hard’ territory.

This model makes social science out to be the poor cousin of the more prestigious natural sciences.

Whether you agree with that assessment of the social sciences or not, the inferiority complex and sense of always needed to justify the existence of one’s field effects the way social science is done.

As Danish economist and urban planner Bent Flyvbjerg describes, “inspired by the relative success of the natural sciences in using mathematical and statistical modelling to explain and predict natural phenomena, many social scientists have fallen victim to the following pars pro toto fallacy: If the social sciences would use mathematical and statistical modelling like the natural sciences, then social sciences, too, would become truly scientific.”

This pushes the social sciences down a computational path – a route, Flyvbjerg argues, which leads these otherwise valuable disciplines to produce more and more amounting to less and less.

“The more ‘scientific’ academic economics attempts to become,” he writes, “the less impact academic economists have on practical affairs.”

Furthermore, the whole attempt is foolhardy. As Flyvbjerg argues in Making Social Science Matter, “social science never has been, and probably never will be, able to develop the type of explanatory and predictive theory that is the ideal and hallmark of natural science.”

In emulating the computational and analytical approaches of the ‘hard’ sciences, social science aims to be something it is not and looses itself in the process.

As an (aspiring) computational social scientist, this argument seems like something worth thinking about.

Perhaps Flyvbjerg is too quick to write off the value of statistical approaches in social science, but nonetheless I find he has a compelling point.

Rather than trying to capture the episteme of natural sciences, Flyvbjerg argues the social science would do better to embrace phronesis. As he explains:

“In Aristotle’s words phronesis is a ‘true state, reasoned, and capable of action with regard to things that are good or bad for man.’ Phronesis goes beyond both analytical, scientific knowledge (episteme) and technical knowledge or know-how (techne) and involves judgements and decisions made in the manner of a virtuoso social and political actor.”

Essentially, social scientists should not obsess with trying to measure and quantify everything, but should rather aim towards the humanist goal of seeking to understand what is good and what is bad.

Perhaps unlike Flyvbjerg, I don’t see an inherent conflict between these aims. I can imagine that amidst the realities of a bureaucratic academy and fervent publish or perish pressures, scholars might find themselves forced along a too narrow path – but I see this as a broader challenge facing academia, not a singular failing of social sciences.

There is, I think, great value in developing computational models for complex social systems; in seeking to quantify and measure numerous facets of human interaction. The failing in this episteme approach comes only when phronesis is ignored completely.

In his own work on urban development, Flyvbjerg has a great saying: power is knowledge.

“Power determines what counts as knowledge, what kind of interpretation attains authority as the dominant interpretation,” he writes in Rationality and Power. “Power procures the knowledge which supports its purposes, while it ignores or suppresses that knowledge which does not serve it.”

These words come amidst his in-depth account of the bureaucracy and power which continually corrupts an ambitious urban development project in Aalborg. Most notably, this corruption rarely comes in the form of overt suppression, but rather a subtle, persistent distortion of information. “Power often ignores or designs knowledge at its convenience.”

This reality is in sharp contrast to the democratic ideal which “prescribes that first we must know about a problem, then we can decide about it. For example, first the civil servants in the in the administration investigate a policy problem, then they inform their minister, who informs parliament, who decides on the problem. Power is brought to bear on the problem only after we have made ourselves knowledgeable about it.”

Accepting the distorting effect of power, it’s reasonable to be skeptical of computational “knowledge.” In this sense, an episteme approach would only serve to further the interests of power – adding scientific credibility to an already distorted presentation of knowledge.

This is a valid concern, but again I find it to be a question of extremes. All methodological choices have consequences, all findings require interpretation. Understanding that dynamic has more value than walking away.

Power is knowledge isn’t an admonition that knowledge ought to be abandoned all together – rather it is a reminder: knowledge isn’t produced in a vacuum. Power shapes knowledge. Try as you might to be neutral and unbiased, this dynamic is inescapable. The computational social scientist is intrinsically a part of the system they seek to study.

The Bombing of Philadelphia

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

On May 13, 1985 state police dropped a bomb on 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. Eleven people, including five children, were killed. The resulting fire spread to neighborhing houses, destroying 61 homes and leaving nearly 250 people homeless.

This was the day that Philadelphia bombed itself.

In a New York Times article which ran a few days later, area resident Steve Harmon commented ”Drop a bomb on a residential area? I never in my life heard of that. It’s like Vietnam.”

Of course, there’s a dark irony in this shock. Killing civilians? That’s what we’re supposed to do overseas, not to our own people.

The Times similarly reported that onlookers “were shocked by the devastation of an area whose residents –teachers, nurses, civil servants, factory workers — were known for their flower gardens and congenial block parties. Ronald Merriweather, whose home escaped damage, looked at the smouldering ruins of other houses and said, ‘It looks just like a war zone. The neighborhood was here and now it’s gone.’ Families that had evacuated supposedly for a day found themselves refugees…”

The bombing targeted the MOVE, a black liberation group who’d had numerous problems with police and neighbors. In 1978, police officer James Ramp was killed in a shootout between police and MOVE members. The nine MOVE members later convicted for this murder maintained that Ramp was killed by friendly fire.

Police made the decision to drop a bomb on the residential building following a 90-minute shootout which came after “a week of growing tension between the city and the group, known as Move. Residents in the western Philadelphia neighborhood had complained about the group for years.”

The extent of the devastation came largely because once the fire broke out, officials waited 30 minutes before dispatching fire control teams to respond. They’d been hoping the fire would create an opening in the roof of the MOVE building, through which police planned to drop more tear gas.

In an NPR piece, Sociologist Robin Wagner-Pacifici argued that the bombing of Philadelphia has largely been forgotten for ideological reasons: “MOVE’s quasi-Rastafarian, anti-technology, pro-animal-rights worldview doesn’t neatly fit on any part of the political spectrum, while other militant groups she has studied had some degree of overlap. And you can’t lump MOVE in with other black power movements of the time, either; black radical groups often bristled at their tactics.”

That is, people remember incidents in Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho because those movements fit into a broader narrative – a sort of mainstream extremism.

Of course, the people killed there were also white.

But more broadly, it seems that we quickly forget our own trespasses – abroad and domestically. In 1894, thirty-four people were killed in Chicago when the National Guard was called in to quelled the Pullman Strike. So as appalling as it may sound, it is somehow not surprising that state police in Philadelphia decided to bomb a residential neighborhood some 100 years later.

How little we learn.

It was a very lovely spring day…

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Perhaps its because I just spent several hours siting outside reading rather than doing the work I more properly ought to be doing, but all I can think of today is a particularly memorable passage from Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Stein, I feel compelled to add, was raised in my hometown of Oakland, California.

It was a very lovely spring day, Gertrude Stein had been going to the opera every night and going also to the opera in the afternoon and had been otherwise engrossed and it was the period of the final examinations, and there was the examination in William James’s course. She sat down with the examination paper before her and she just could not. She wrote at the top of her paper, Dear Professor James, I am so sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy to-day, and left.

The next day she had a postal card from William James saying, Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you feel I often feel like that myself. And underneath it he gave her work the highest mark in his course.

Is Diversity Enough?

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been reading Manin’s critical Democratic Deliberation: Why We Should Promote Debate Rather Than Discussion.

At the core of his argument, Manin complains that liberal theorists traditionally conflate “diversity of views” with “conflicting views.” Holding that a necessary and sufficient condition for good deliberation is “that participants in discussion hold diverse views and articulate a variety of perspectives, reflecting the heterogeneity of their experiences and backgrounds.”

To be clear, Manin isn’t suggesting that diversity of thought isn’t critical to deliberation – rather, he argues, it is not sufficient.

“Diversity of views is not a sufficient condition for deliberation because it may fail to bring into contact opposing views,” he writes. “It is the opposition of views and reasons that is necessary for deliberation, not just their diversity.”

There are many ways in which the mere presence of diversity may not result in the articulation of divergent views. Social psychology research has well documented the challenges of confirmation bias, where people “systematically misperceive and misinterpret evidence that is counter to their preexisting belief.” Or even avoid conflicting evidence all together.

To make matters worse, Manin points to research which further finds that “groups process information in a more biased way than individuals do, preferring information that supports their prior dominant belief to an even greater extent than individual people.”

More broadly, diverse experiences and views may not always translate directly into divergent opinions or perspectives on a given topic. Manin asks us to imagine a community facing a very reasonable and rational fear: say, a serial killer is on the loose. Discussing a proposal to expand police powers at this time of crisis, “the variety of perspectives and dispersion of social knowledge among them will ensure that many arguments, each deriving from the particular perspective, experience, or background of the speaker, are heard in support of expanding the prerogatives to the police.”

That is, the diverse reasons may all support the same view.

And finally, in a large heterogenous society, diverse opinions and experience may become polarized as fragmented, separate communities. That is, “a variety of internally homogeneous communities will coexist, each ignoring the views of the others.”

And, of course, there is the deep problem of power. Divergent perspectives will often go unspoken in situations where one group or groups have been systematically oppressed and silenced. Where even explicit invitations to freely share their views are rightly perceived as hollow or out-right disingenuous. This is a dynamic which John Gaventa documents powerfully in his study of poor, white, coal miners in the Appalachian Valley.

The damaging impact of this dynamic cannot be understated, as Gaventa argues, “power serves to create power. Powerlessness serves to re-enforce powerlessness. Power relationships, once established, are self-sustaining.”

Finally, there is the simple social challenge that “encountering disagreement”, as Manin writes, “generates psychic discomfort.” People don’t really like to argue.

(Of note here, there is little cross-cultural consideration in Manin, so while mainstream America’s distaste for argumentative discourse is well documented in numerous places, I’m not sure how broad a claim this properly ought to be.)

The solution to this seems simple: argue more. Take “deliberate and affirmative measures” to ensure lively debate and critical discussion. Don’t just assume that if diverse people are present, diverse voices will be heard. Seek out divergent views and conflicting arguments. If no one else says them – argue for them yourself.

This last point, I think, is particularly critical in looking at deliberation through a power-lens. If you are a position of power you are responsible for ensuring that diverse view be heard. This can mean working to create a safe space where people genuinely feel welcomed to share their views – or it can mean saying the unpopular thing yourself, putting it out there as a valid idea, worthy of further consideration.

Summer Writing Goals

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

As a Ph.D. student in the summer, I have, it seems, quite a bit of freedom. I’ll be working, of course, and I have no shortage of things to learn, but I’m faced with a vast expanse of time in which there is much to accomplish but little which is due. My time is my own.

It’s a gift, really, but one which requires some discipline and forethought to accept successfully. I spent much of last week putting together week-by-week learning goals for myself; papers to read, specific topics to study.

Looking through it now, though, I am struck by just how mechanical my goals are; I want to learn specific algorithms and approaches, catch up on specific literatures and authors. These are good and important uses of my time, but it strikes me, too, that something is missing.

I started this blog three years ago in part because – as a generically over-busy employee and adult – I wanted to ensure that I took time out in my life to think. I bunt on a lot of days, to be sure, but nonetheless it seems a worthwhile goal to try to think at least one interesting thought a day.

Perhaps what’s most exciting about the summer, then, is that it’s a time that allows for stepping back to look at the big picture; to remember the broader questions which motivate my work. I have learned a great deal of valuable knowledge in my classes, but they have done little to relieve my Wittgensteinian doubt that people can’t deeply communicate or my Lippmannian skepticism that ‘the people’ aren’t ultimately up to the task of governance. I have found, on the whole, my writing drifting away from questions of justice and equality towards questions of implementation and practicality.

I have written before that my primary motivation comes from the civic studies question: what should we do? In that sense, it seems fair to say that my attention lately has been focused primarily on the ‘what‘ and the ‘do,‘ while, perhaps, neglecting the ‘should.‘

This is entirely to be expected, of course – the three elements are equally important but traditionally divorced in the academy. If I were a humanities Ph.D. student I’d no doubt be finding that I focus too much on the should with an unfortunately loss of practicality.

My summer writing goal, then, is to explore this should. I will continue to use the bulk of my time to study more practical topics of implementation, but this blog will be my space to step back and think about the broader questions. That’s what I want to make time for.

I’ll also keep writing, of course, about whatever random facts or interesting historical notes come my way. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that.

Broadly, then, and entirely for my own benefit – as this blog unapologetically is – here are just a few of the questions on my mind which I plan to spend some time thinking and writing about this summer:

Power – what is the role of power in the Good Society? How does it shape interactions and experiences? Is it achievable to eliminate power dynamics? Would we want to?

Dialogue – what are the strengths and limitations of dialogue as a tool for the collective work of governance? What institutions ought to be supplemented with public dialogue and when should public dialogue be supplemented by institutions? What are the realities of power dynamics in dialogue? Can they be overcome?

Institutions of democracy – What institutions are vital to democracy? How should they function and what should they accomplish? What institutions detract from democracy?

Historicism and morality – if human institutions and ideals are constantly subject to change, how do we know what is good? What would a continually Good Society look like? How would it change and adapt without simply falling into fads of the day?

Global society – why does it seem that the whole world is going to hell and what do we do about? What structures and institutions can support the Good Society on a global scale? What are our individual responsibilities as global and local citizens?

Pessimism and skepticism – why hope is not always required. Or warranted.

Divergent views – What does it truly mean to make space for divergent views? How do you distinguish from creating space to consider unpopular opinions and giving a platform to trolls and bigots? Can one be accomplished and the other avoided?

Phronetic and computational social science – what is the role of measurement in social sciences? What does it add? What does it detract? Is social science trying too hard to be ‘science’? What results from seeking predictive social science?

Reasoning and Absurdity

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates describes the human soul as consisting of three parts, which he describes through allegory: “two horses and a charioteer.” Furthermore, “one of the horses was good and the other bad.”

More precisely, one horse “is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory,” while the other, a “crooked lumbering animal,” is “the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur.”

This tripartite image captures an understanding the soul which has continued to permeate Western thought. The good horse is man’s noble spirit (thymos), the other his wild appetites (epithymia). The charioteer, tasked with the difficult task balancing the instincts of these two beasts, has the most crucial role: this is man’s reason (logos) itself.

In this struggle, “if the better elements of the mind which lead to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and harmony – masters of themselves and orderly.”

Aristotle seems to invoke a similar argument when he comments in Nicomachean Ethics, “as sight is in the body, so is reason in the soul.”

Reason, it seems, is fundamental to who we are as human people – and, perhaps more importantly, is essential to what it means to be a good person.

As with many things, though, this Greek ideal is complicated by the realities of modernity.

This classical Greek understanding goes beyond finding the act of reasoning to be good. Reason is not merely a process through which unique people may come to unique conclusions, rather it is the tool through which we may ultimately uncover Truth. Singular, universal, Truth.

This is problematic in a pluralistic world.

While there may be some moral stances on which all reasonable people could agree, asserting the existence of Truth – whether or not you claim to have discovered that Truth – amounts to the harsh assertion that some people are right and some people are wrong; that some religions are right and some religions are wrong; that some cultures are right and some cultures are wrong.

Such a position is untenable.

Thus, perhaps, we are plunged into despair. Holding diversity of thought and belief in high esteem means abandoning any pursuit of Truth and relinquishing the reins of reason. There is not one Truth that can be discovered through the scholarly art of reason; rather reason is little more than a mantle to drape around whichever views fit our fancy.

This is the challenge that Nietzsche refers to in On the Genealogy of Morals when he quotes the secret motto of the Order of Assassins: Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

The destruction of Truth, the dispersion of reason – while so very valuable in our pluralist, modern times – muddies the question of what is right and what is wrong. Where do cultural differences end and moral imperatives begin? How do you balance one person’s religious freedom with another’s personal freedom?

Nietzsche sees this an inescapable cycle, arguing that “all great things bring about their own demise through an act of self-sublimation.”

Thus reason must ultimately destroy itself – as reason will reveal that there is no Truth.

“What meaning does our being have, if it were not that that will to truth has become conscious of itself as a problem in us?” Nietzsche writes. “Without a doubt, from now on, morality will be destroyed by the will to truth’s becoming-conscious-of-itself: that great drama in a hundred acts reserved for Europe in the next two centuries, the most terrible, most questionable drama but perhaps also the one most rich in hope…”

“Rich in hope” is not the expression most people would use for this terrible drama. If nothing is true, everything is permitted. Only anarchy and nihilism can follow.

I myself am more drawn to Camus’ take on things. With his dry, French wit he sees the conflict but dismisses it as conflict. Yes, the world is absurd, he reasons. That’s not license to do as you will.

You are free, perhaps, to be a terrible person, but that doesn’t mean you ought to let yourself follow that path. You still need to steer your horses.

This is the message I get from much of Camus’ work: the world is absurd, life is meaningless, and with that freedom some will permit themselves to fulfill the worst of human nature. But we also have a choice to be good. And without any reasoning, without any truth to justify it, that’s the choice we ought to make.

In The Stranger, Meursault is rightfully punished while others’ every-day callousness goes shamefully unchecked. In The Plague, our heroes – faced with the absurd, seemingly certain result of death, continually choose to fight for life. In The Fall, our unnamed, damned narrator wistfully declares, “But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!“

The absurd is no reason to stop fighting for what’s right.

And yet, in much of his writing Camus is indirect with his moral claims; perhaps he finds little ground to judge the morality of others.

So I was struck this morning by the unwavering moral claims Camus’ makes in his 1946 speech “The Human Crisis:”

Yes, there is a human crisis because in today’s world, we can contemplate the death or the torture of a human being with a feeling of indifference, friendly concern, scientific interest, or simple passivity. Yes, there is a human crisis, since putting a person to death can be regarded with something other the horror and scandal it ought to provoke. Since human suffering is accepted as a somewhat boring obligation, on a par with getting supplies or having to stand in line for an ounce of butter.

There is a human crisis, because in a world where nothing is true, we foolishly assume that everything is permitted. We reason away our responsibilities, occasionally decrying perpetrators only to accept bystanders neutral. It’s not our responsibility, it is not our concern.

But Nietzsche is wrong; there is no death of morality and there is no death of truth. We may not always know what’s best, but Camus’ feels it in his bones: we still have an imperative to do what is right.

Activist Roots of Mother’s Day

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

In 1925, Anna Jarvis was arrested for disturbing the peace at a Philadelphia confectioners convention.

The candy makers, she thought, had done poorly to profit though the commercialization of motherly affection.

I imagine the scene – dignified confectioners discussing various ganaches and pastries, Jarvis crashing in like Carrie Nation, perhaps similarly wielding a hatchet for good measure. Eventually getting carted off while still yelling at the profit mongers for twisting her invention.

No doubt it was significantly less dramatic, but that’s how I picture it.

In 1948, Jarvis died in Philadelphia’s Marshall Square Sanitarium, having spent her fortune fighting to stave off the commercialization of mother’s day.

She was unsuccessful.

Jarvis was, in fact, the founder of mother’s day. She had started the celebration in 1908 – three years after her own mother’s death – and worked to see it become a national holiday in 1914.

For much of her life, Jarvis’ mother, Anne Reeves Jarvis, organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs which worked to address tragically high infant mortality rates and tended wounded soldiers from both sides of the U.S. Civil War.

The group’s motto was “Mothers Work — for Better Mothers, Better Homes, Better Children, Better Men and Women.” In the midst of war, its members fought hard for peace. Amongst so much injustice, the women fought for justice.

In 1870, abolitionist and member Julia Ward Howe articulated the vision of the work clubs with her Mother’s Day proclamation:

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

It goes on to call for a general congress of women “without limit of nationality.” After all, “as men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war,” women must now “leave all that may be left of home” in order to discover the means of peace.

So, this was what was in the mind of the young Anna Jarvis, three years after she buried her mother – founder of the radical Mothers’ Day Work Clubs – when, on May 10, 1908, she gathered 400 people at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, to commemorate her mother and celebrate the first Mother’s Day.

Jarvis asked that people wear carnations to remember all mothers.

And then she worked for the day to become a national holiday. A day for peace, for equity, for lifting the voices of women among the shouts of men and, yes, a day for sending a handwritten note to your own mother and thanking her for giving you so much.

So, perhaps, you can appreciate the devastation which motivated Jarvis’ rebellion as she saw this vision go awry. As she saw mother’s day devolve into little more than a day to buy flowers and chocolates, and, perhaps, to get you off the hook from calling your mother for another year.

While I can identify with Jarvis’ distaste for commercialization, in honesty, though, I’m not entirely enamored with Jarvis’ ideal mother’s day either.

She intentionally tried to frame the day as a holy day – organizing it on Sundays and celebrating in a church. And she intentionally called the day ‘mother’s day’ as opposed to ‘mothers’ day.’ It was a day to celebrate your own mother, she insisted, not a day to celebrate all mothers.

As one article puts it, “Jarvis retreated from her mother’s socially conscious vision for Mother’s Day in favor of one that idolized the mother’s individual role.”

This, I believe, was a mistake. Her visions of celebrating individual mothers for their sacred domestic role plays into all the tired tropes of separate spheres. We can do better than that.

And I’d give her a pass, say that Jarvis’ vision was simply a product of her time, but I can’t help but think that her mother would have envisioned something more radical – and, of course, her mother knew best.

Predictive Accuracy and Good Dialogue

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

While I’m relatively new to the computer science domain, one thing that’s notable is the field’s obsession with predictive accuracy. Particularly within natural language processing, the primary objective of most scholars – or, perhaps, more exactly, the requirement for being published – seems to be producing methods which edge past the accuracy of existing approaches.

I’m not really in a position to comment on the benefit of such a driver, but as an outsider, this focus is striking. I have to imagine there are great, historical reasons why the field evolved this way; that the mentality of constantly pushing towards incremental improvement has been an important factor in the great breakthroughs of computer science.

Yet, I can’t help feel like in this quest for computational improvement, something important is being left behind.

There are compelling arguments that the social sciences have done poorly to abandon their humanistic roots in favor of emulating the fashionable fields of science; that in grasping for predictive measures, social science has failed its duty towards the most critical concerns of what is right and good. Perhaps, after all, questions of such import should not be solely the domain of philosophy departments.

It seems a similar objection could be raised towards computer science; and no doubt someone I’m not aware of has raised these concerns. Such an approach would go beyond the philosophical literature on moral issues in computer science, probing more deeply into questions of meaning, interpretation, and structure.

Wittgenstein questioned fundamentally what it means for two people to communicate. Austin argues that words themselves can be actions. And there is, of course, a long tradition in many cultures of words having power.

None of these topics, while intrinsic to natural language, seem to be deeply embraced by current approaches to natural language processing. Much better to show a two point increase in predictive accuracy.

And to a certain extent, this dismissal is fair. While I myself have a fondness for Wittgenstein, I imagine computer science wouldn’t advance far if, instead of developing algorithms, practitioners spent all their time wondering – if you tell me you are in pain, do I understand you because I, too, have had my own experiences of pain? How can I know what ‘pain’ means to you?

Yet, while Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations may be too far afield, it does highlight some practical issues. Perhaps metaphysical concerns about what it means to communicate can be safely disregarded, but this still leaves questions about what it looks like to communicate. That is, it seems reasonable to assume that miscommunication does happen, but what happens to dialogue plagued by such problems? What does it look like when people talk past each other or when they recognize a miscommunication and take steps to resolve it? Can an algorithm distinguish and properly parse these differences? Remembering, of course, that a human, perhaps, cannot.

In a recent review of literature around the natural language processing task of argument mining, I was struck by the value of a 1987 paper focused on understanding the structure of a single speech-act. It evoked no Wittgenstein-level of abstraction, and yet brought an important element of theory to the computational task of parsing a single argument.

I couldn’t find – and perhaps I missed it – no similar paper exploring the complex interactions of dialogue. Of course, there is much work done in this area among deliberation scholars – but this effort is not easily translated into the mechanized logic of algorithms.

In short, there seems to be a divide – a common one, I’m afraid, in the academy. In one field, theorists ask, what does it mean to deliberate? What makes good deliberation? And in another they ask, what algorithms can recognize arguments? What algorithms accurately predict stance?

And, while both pursuing important work, the fields fail to learn from each other.

On the Absurd and Daily Living

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Albert Camus finds all lives to be absurd.

In his masterful The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses this tragic, absurd, hero to illustrate the absurdity of every day life. Sisyphus’ ceaseless labor, rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, is futile and hopeless, and yet – “the workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd.”

This is a bold claim. Are we each, indeed, as absurd as Sisyphus?

As an initial reaction, one might grope first towards the long view. If you find, as Camus does, that life itself is inherently meaningless; that there is no greater, higher, or broader purpose, then, perhaps, indeed, you may find, too, the peculiarities of daily life to be absurd.

In this sense, all of life, all choices of action, are absurd. Facing the inescapable fate of oblivion, we too find our “whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.”

Of course, one may take the merrier view that such absurdity is not our undeniable fate; that life does have purpose after all.

Much of Camus’ argument seeks to counter this claim; such hope in higher purpose is the hasty conviction of fools. There is little doubt that hope is comforting; but it ultimately betrays the greater cause of consciousness. The tragedy of Sisyphus, the tragedy of our lives, comes from our consciousness, Camus argues, but this consciousness is also our greatest strength.

For Sisyphus, Camus’ conclusion is clear: “The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.”

Thus he urges each of us to be conscious of our absurdity; to embrace the meaninglessness which pursues us as we plod through our daily lives; to scorn the idols which proffer their empty hope; and to proudly find ourselves stronger than our rock.

Yet, amidst his towering prose, Camus fails to confront a core claim: Are we each, fundamentally, as absurd as Sisyphus?

The tragedy of Sisyphus lies not only in his consciousness, not only in his total exertion towards nothing. Rather, his tragedy lies in the dreariness of his setting; in the repetition of his existence.

Consider Camus’ account of the sins which earned Sisyphus his doom. Not only was he found to have a “certain levity in regard to the gods,” his real sin was to live. Following his death, Sisyphus obtained permission from Pluto “to return to earth in order to chastise his wife” who had disobeyed his final order to “cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square.”

But once returning to life, Sisyphus refused to give it up. “When he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.”

This was Sisyphus’ crime. He lived too much; experienced too much. The punishment of the gods ensured not only his futile labor but his continued existence in a state of non-experience. All he would ever know again was his rock and his mountain; his mountain and his rock.

In this story, we are not, perhaps, the laborer, working everyday in his life at the same tasks. Rather, we Sisyphus, returned from the underworld. Unabashedly enjoying the beauty and experience that comes with every miraculous day.

Or, perhaps, this is exactly what the story is supposed to remind us. We can live with the vibrancy of Sisyphus on earth or share in his quiet scorn from the underworld. We can work on our big, important, projects, laboring ceaselessly towards some absurd end – or we can laugh and take whatever life throws at us; loving the harsh and extraordinary experience of simply being alive.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which fate we choose. Indeed, this is Camus’ most remarkable lesson: our fates are our own. No darkness or decree can strip us of that. We are each the master of our days. Fully free to contemplate “that series of unrelated actions” which become our fate. And thus, like Sisyphus, despite our burdens, despite our labors, we too may conclude that all is well.

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