Category Archives: ethics

Drift

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Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, had some thoughts on how the US should interact with today’s People’s Republic of China.  Among other things, he wants three key areas of disagreement to be accepted and…managed.  (I’ll leave aside his blithe, and erroneous, assertion that the “trade war” between the PRC and us is our doing and not the PRC’s.)

The most realistic option for the future is to focus on managing the two countries’ major disagreements. This approach has worked for four decades when it comes to Taiwan.

No, that’s a demonstration of the utter failure of “managing the two countries'” disputes.  That approached has contributed to the Republic of China’s expulsion from the UN Security Council and from the UN altogether.  It has contributed to the PRC’s threats and political near-dominance of the RoC.

Management is also likely to be the best approach for the South China Sea. As with Taiwan, “final status” issues are best left vague.

And by extension, the supposed optimal approach to the PRC’s harassment of Japan and Japanese islands in the East China Sea as the PRC pushes to seize that water.  Again, no.  All “management” has done so far in the South China Sea is lead to acceding to the PRC’s seizure of islands owned by the nations rimming the Sea, or owned in disagreement only with others of the rim.  All “management” has done so far is lead to acceding to PRC militarization of the islands it has seized from those nations and to routine harassment of shipping passing through international waters around those seized islands and aircraft overflying them.

In other domains, the US will simply have to accept China for what it is. China will continue to maintain a large (if somewhat reduced) state role in the economy and a closed political structure.

Again, no.  The PRC as it is, is a nation that routinely steals other nations’ companies’ proprietary information, that demands “sharing” of technology and other proprietary intellectual property as a condition of doing business inside the PRC, and that demands those companies install “back doors” to allow the PRC government ready access to those same tech and IP materials.  All “management” does here is meekly accept the PRC’s economic dishonesty.

Hass’ proposals amount to drift into surrender.  This is unacceptable.

Decisions

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In a Wall Street Journal article Monday, Google’s MFWIC, Sundar Pichai, defended his decision to support the People’s Republic of China with a Google “search” engine that’s carefully compliant with PRC censorship requirements.

What interests me this time, though, is this bit:

Mr Pichai…played down the idea that the Project Maven decision was made only based on employee feedback. He said Google has also listened to experts in ethics and artificial intelligence.

Project Maven is a DoD program intended to develop artificial intelligence for American national defense purposes—including, yes, an improved ability to kill our enemies when they attack us.

Pichai’s rationalization of his decision to turn his back on our national defense doesn’t matter. Our enemies are developing AI and will use it against us. Pichai’s decision only potentiates those enemies’ relative capabilities.

Don’t be evil.  That used to be Google’s motto.  How is it evil to help our country defend itself?  How is it not evil to help our enemies, even if without AI support (other than “search” AIs)?

Now the corporate motto, handed down from parent Alphabet, is Do the right thing.  How is refusing to help our nation defend itself a right thing?  How is helping our enemies a right thing?

Sundar Pichai knows the answers to these questions full well.

A Couple of Questions

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I don’t often cite PowerLine, but here’s a statistic that wants a little discussion.

It wasn’t easy for the Times/Siena poll locate its sample of 800 likely voters. The poll made 51,983 calls in search of those 800 likely voters.

This is what The New York Times said about the sample—absent the hype:

Can Democrats turn Texas blue? We made 51,983 calls, and 800 people spoke to us.

Hyped or blandly reported, this is a statistic without context, and so it’s meaningless.

Is the list called actually a randomly drawn sample?  That’s the only way the 800 can be considered random and so representative.  The NYT, well down in their description, admits their sample is not random.

People who respond to surveys are almost always too old, too white, too educated and too politically engaged to accurately represent everyone.
…
Pollsters compensate by giving more weight to respondents from under-represented groups.
…
But weighting works only if you weight by the right categories and you know what the composition of the electorate will be.

There’s a hint in that last, too.

Is getting 800 respondents out of 52,000 tries typical?  What’s the trend over the last, say, dozen or so elections, both Presidential and mid-terms considered separately as well as together?  NYT chose to be silent on that.

Is telephoning really a good way to get a random sample?  Sure, things have changed since the Harry Truman polling debacle, but….  We’re out and about a lot more today, too, and it’s easier to just ignore incoming calls from numbers we don’t recognize.

 

Aside: what’s not being talked about in the NLMSM (I wonder why…) are these two statistics from the same Times/Siena poll, carefully ghosted so as to be made less noticeable: Beto O’Rourke’s Approval/Disapproval rating

41% favorable rating; 44% unfavorable; 15% don’t know

compared with Ted Cruz’ Approval/Disapproval rating:

51% favorable rating; 42% unfavorable; 7% don’t know

A Thought on Reason

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Peggy Noonan had some thoughts on reason, centered on the just concluded confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Senator Susan Collins’ (R, ME) analysis of her reasons for voting for his confirmation.

I have a couple of thoughts on a couple of Noonan’s thoughts.

Susan Collins put on a clinic in thoroughness and justice. Democrats need to stand up to the screamers.

Noonan needs to understand: the Progressive-Democrats are the screamers.

A word on the destructive theatrics we now see gripping parts of the Democratic Party. … Do you know how that sounded to normal people, Republican and Democratic and unaffiliated?

It sounded perfectly normal to those of the Progressive-Democratic Party. First, hear the deafening silence of the remainder of Noonan’s parts of the Democratic Party: not a word in demurral of that behavior. Second, hear Hillary Clinton’s rejection of civility and Eric Holder’s threats of violence. Third, recall Spartacus Booker’s “come up in Congressmen’s face;” Clinton’s statement that millions of Americans are irredeemably deplorable racists, homophobes, and misogynists; Barack Obama’s dismissal of millions of Americans as nothing more than bitter Bible-clinging, gun-toting denizens of flyover country; Maxine Waters’ incitement to harass Republicans wherever they are; the NLMSM’s dismissal of Kanye West as just a token negro and a negro who doesn’t read.

That’s the danger we face this fall.

Future Nominations for Judgeships

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A denizen of flyover country—Jan Graham of Nebraska, in fact—had a thought in her Letter to the Editor of Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal:

Every one of those Harvard and Yale law students protesting Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment should have their names written down and kept in case they want to be a judge someday. At that point their college-age record can be used to show that they don’t believe in due process and shouldn’t ever be considered for the bench.

Nor can they be considered, legitimately, for any prosecutorial office, Federal, State, or count/parish.

Full stop.