by Eric Martin
The death toll from yesterday’s bombing of a Shiite marketplace keeps rising. At present, it stands at a grisly 63. This attack highlights the fact that even under "improved" security conditions – with levels of violence greatly reduced in many parts of the country – Iraq is far from peaceful.
From a distance, the true levels of devastation are hard to appreciate in any deeper sense. Further, the relentless drumbeat of bombings and other incidents leads to a certain level of numbness. It’s impossible to pause and take notice of each. As a result of this continued conflict, the numbers of dead and wounded have reached those hard to comprehend levels where the tragedy of lives lost is blurred by the sterility of statistics. The fact that our media has deliberately chosen to keep images of the carnage from our screens and pages also contributes to the impersonal nature of the math.
One thing that I find myself doing almost reflexively when I read about a bombing such as yesterday’s (perhaps to counteract this tendency), is to try to imagine what such a body count would equal in American terms (something Juan Cole did some time back IIRC). That is, given that Iraq is a much smaller country population wise, what would the corollary be in a country America’s size (this is relevant when trying to measure the impact on a society as a whole from such acts). The conversion rate is actually quite easy due to a certain symmetry in Iraq’s pre-war population (roughly 30 million) and America’s (roughly 300 million) – about ten times the size.
Thus, in order to begin to empathize with Baghdadis, imagine what a bombing that took 630 Americans would feel like. Imagine the outpouring of emotion that would ensue, the sadness, the outrage. And that’s from just one day out of thousands in a war that has seen few, if any, pass without comparable tragedy.
Even under the more conservative civilian death counts, the numbers are currently at or nearing 100,000. That would be like 1 million American civilians. One Million! Consider that on 9/11 we lost roughly 2,900 and that was, for many, a cataclysmic, paradigm shifting event (myself included, resident of lower Manhattan and all).
But it’s not just dead and wounded. Iraqi society has been traumatized in other ways as well. A friend whose current occupation forces him to maintain anonymity passes along this observation via email:
[N]ow that Iraq is now up to 4 million refugees (2M internal, 2M external), I decided to waste some time by figuring out comparable stats, proportionally, to the US. Assuming an initial 30M population, and a current US pop of 300M, obviously that’s like if we had 40 million refugees. To make it a little more specific, though: that’s equivalent to the entire population of 23 states. Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Arkansas, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Connecticut, and Okalhoma combined is right around 40M.
Or, if you prefer, imagine that suddenly the entire state of Texas moved to Mexico and all of New York set up tent cities in the Midwest. Or if all of Michigan and Ohio evaporated into Canada while Florida’s population spread itself through the rest of the south. I really don’t think people have a good handle on just how profound the humanitarian crisis continues to be despite all the "improvement."
Yeah. Imagine America had to re-settle those 40 million refugees – an enormously difficult undertaking uder the best of circumstance. Now try pulling that off in an country still plagued by widespread conflict, lack of security and rampant lawlessness whose government lacks broad support and has shown little, if any commitment, to implementing the program.
Would you blame those that were still a bit skeptical of claims that we are "very close to succeeding"?
Even under the more conservative civilian death counts, the numbers are currently at or nearing 100,000.
Yes, but the two most accurate counts say that at least a million Iraqis have been killed. Those are conservative counts in the statistical sense – the method used to make these estimates tends towards an undercount.
The conservative figures you cite are conservative in the sense of right-wingers liking them better than the more accurate counts.
So the equivalent is 10 million Americans killed.
You missed one thing in your exchange rate on that bombing. Imagine if those 630 American lives had been lost in a bombing in Washington DC. This is the heart of the country, where the government should have the most control.
We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
You’re doin’ fine, Okalhoma!
Okalhoma O.K.
A- l – H – O – M – A
OKALHOMA!
One thing that I find myself doing almost reflexively when I read about a bombing such as yesterday’s (perhaps to counteract this tendency), is to try to imagine what such a body count would equal in American terms (something Juan Cole did some time back IIRC). That is, given that Iraq is a much smaller country population wise, what would the corollary be in a country America’s size (this is relevant when trying to measure the impact on a society as a whole from such acts). The conversion rate is actually quite easy due to a certain symmetry in Iraq’s pre-war population (roughly 30 million) and America’s (roughly 300 million) – about ten times the size
What does this mean? I see people talk about “conversion rates” all the time, and agree that they make some sense when discussing a fiscal impact. But a conversion rate for human life? Is a bomb that kills 63 people in Iraq really equivalent in any meaningful sense to a bomb that kills 630 people in the US?
There are better ways to take into account the size of Iraq in measuring the progress (or the lack thereof) in security.
Although I understand the rhetorical reasons why you’re using “death inflation” here, I don’t know that it adds anything meaningful to the conversation.
Let me make this clearer, lest I be misunderstood.
A bomb that kills 63 people is in no way equivalent to a bomb that kills 630 people, regardless of where each bomb goes off.
I would imagine that a mall bombing in Chicago or New York killing 63 people would elicit enough fear and outrage on its own. No need for a multiplier.
However, your statement that this war has seen few days without similar incident is a bit misleading. Certainly there have been many horrible deaths, but 63 people is a much bigger body count than most of the single-incident reports that I’ve heard of.
Kris,
I didn’t say “similar incident” I said “similar tragedy” meaning that most days have seen similar death counts – even if not from a one off event. Pardon my sloppy wording.
Von,
I believe it is meaningful because it speaks to the degree to which Iraqi society as a whole has been ravaged.
Consider this example. Country X fights a war and loses 100,000 soldiers. Country X is big (500 million population). Tragic for Country X, but not necessarily cataclysmic.
Country Y fights a war and loses 100,000 soldiers. Country Y is small (1 million population). The result is both tragic and cataclysmic for Country Y.
10% of its population died in the war!!!
Does that help?
I sort of agree with von. At some level, a death is a death; we don’t think that losing one of four children is 1/4 as traumatic as losing an only child.
At another level–the smaller the community where a given # of people died, the more likely each member is to have lost a friend, a family member, etc.
If you want to get an equivalence, Iraq’s pre-war population is roughly the same size as New England plus New York state, I think.
But debating units of conversion for dead & displaced is somewhat beside the point; it’s not as if we deal with the meaning of those statistic even on their own terms.
A bit skeptical? Really? I suppose the Ocean just has a wee drop of water in it as far as you are concerned.
Its long long since time claims that success is near receive the utter contempt they warrant.
A bit skeptical? Really? I suppose the Ocean just has a wee drop of water in it as far as you are concerned.
Its long long since time claims that success is near receive the utter contempt they warrant.
I believe it is meaningful because it speaks to the degree to which Iraqi society as a whole has been ravaged.
I see that’s the point you’re going for. But I don’t agree that applying a multiplier of 10 to the death toll from an attack in Iraq in order to “exchange” the deaths to some American standard is really meaningful. All it does is provide a dramatically larger adjusted-for-US number that tells us …. what, exactly? That security in Iraq is getting worse? Better? That this or that policy is failing? That some other policy would be better?
We can measure security and progress in Iraq in any number of ways that takes into account both the size of Iraq and its circumstances. Such measures can be useful for determing policy. I don’t see how this measure is useful for making a policy judgment.
As for your example:
Consider this example. Country X fights a war and loses 100,000 soldiers. Country X is big (500 million population). Tragic for Country X, but not necessarily cataclysmic.
Country Y fights a war and loses 100,000 soldiers. Country Y is small (1 million population). The result is both tragic and cataclysmic for Country
This doesn’t really get to the point. I don’t hear you arguing that 63 dead (or 630, under the “exchange rate”) is a cataclysm for Iraq. You may have more a point when it comes to displaced persons as percentage of the population, but a more useful approach would be to try to determine the direct costs on Iraqi (and Jordanian, and Syrian) society by the displacements. I doubt that those costs are linear, as an “exchange rate” presupposes.
von, the expansion is useful for getting a sense of how likely a random individual is to be affected by the incident. I think many people had some personal connection to the 9/11 victims whereas far fewer had a personal connection to, say for example, the VA Tech victims. After all, regardless of whether the number is 63 or 630, the point is that it is extremely unlikely that a random citizen of the country will be killed directly. However, bombings are relevant to lots of people who were not killed because people’s lives are connected.
…number that tells us …. what, exactly? That security in Iraq is getting worse? Better? That this or that policy is failing? That some other policy would be better?
That’s kind of a narrow set of topics you’re leaving me there Von. What if instead of those topics, I want to discuss how extensively Iraqi society has been traumatized by this war. And then, to help Americans conceptualize, I used conversions to help them to grasp what a large percentage of Iraqi society have been affected. Would that be an acceptable topic to discuss?
This doesn’t really get to the point. I don’t hear you arguing that 63 dead (or 630, under the “exchange rate”) is a cataclysm for Iraq.
That’s a bit pedantic, no? The cumulative death toll is certainly cataclysmic, and one way to help grasp that is to put it in terms proportional to American society so that we can appreciate the scope.
A bit skeptical? Really? I suppose the Ocean just has a wee drop of water in it as far as you are concerned.
Frank, that was a deliberate understatement. Pardon my lack of wit.
Turbulence, your point makes sense where a small community is involved. But there has to be some tipping point in size after which the statistical impact falls below a noticeable threshold. New York is quite a bit larger than Chicago, but no one would call Chicago a small town. If 63 people suddenly die in each city, a Chicagoan’s statistical likelihood of knowing one of the dead may be greater than a New Yorker’s, but not by much.
That’s not to say, of course, that violence day after day does not have a corrosive effect or that every death is a tragedy. Quite the contrary, in fact. But a death exchange rate seems to be a poor way to account for it — at least in the case of Iraq.
“Every death is a tragedy” should be “Every death is not a tragedy.” (If you foolishly rely on double negatives to communicate a point, as I did, you must include the second negative.)
New York is quite a bit larger than Chicago, but no one would call Chicago a small town. If 63 people suddenly die in each city, a Chicagoan’s statistical likelihood of knowing one of the dead may be greater than a New Yorker’s, but not by much.
Two thoughts: the disparity in size between Iraq/USA and Chicago/NYC is pretty big in itself.
Also: Iraq is a tribal society in which kinship, tribal and community bonds are generally wider and stronger. Something to consider when pondering the groups/individuals affected.
That would be like 1 million American civilians. One Million!
Except not really. I approve the sentiment, but these calculations are stupid and wrong. A death is a death is a death. An American life is not worth more than an Iraqi life. And vice versa.
An American life is not worth more than an Iraqi life. And vice versa.
When measuring the impact of loss of life on a society, it is relevant to consider the number of dead as a ratio of the whole.
100,000 dead Iraqis represents a percentage of Iraq’s overall population that would be akin to losing 1 million Americans.
I do not consider that stupid or beside the point. It tells of the extent to which Iraqi society has been ravaged.
Eric,
Long time ObWi reader, first time commenter. I thought this was a very powerful article and the “conversion” a useful device, even if not an airtight analogy.
Obviously, recognizing the inherent value of each life, it is fallacious to equate the death of 1 to the death of 10. With that said, it gave me a new perspective in to the impact of our war.
Thanks J.
I think many people are misinterpreting this post as somehow seeking to change the inherent value of a human life which is, of course, immutable.
What I was actually trying to do, apparently somewhat clumsily, was highlight to depths and extent to which Iraqi society has been ravaged and disrupted by putting the numbers of refugees and casualties in American terms.
Anyway, thanks.
Von. What if instead of those topics, I want to discuss how extensively Iraqi society has been traumatized by this war. And then, to help Americans conceptualize, I used conversions to help them to grasp what a large percentage of Iraqi society have been affected. Would that be an acceptable topic to discuss?
But number inflation doesn’t directly address the percentage of Iraqis affected. It simply produces a large number, from which you infer, without support, a large percentage.
Look, write on any topic you want and with whatever tools you want. But saying that 630 Iraqis are killed by a bomb isn’t really meaningful when 63 were actually killed.
That’s a bit pedantic, no? The cumulative death toll is certainly cataclysmic, and one way to help grasp that is to put it in terms proportional to American society so that we can appreciate the scope.
I understand “cataclysmic” to mean something different from how you’re using it. Moreover, most Americans appreciate that Iraq is in the midst of severe turmoil and civil war. Those that don’t aren’t going to be convinced by your inflation.
Turbulence, your point makes sense where a small community is involved. But there has to be some tipping point in size after which the statistical impact falls below a noticeable threshold. New York is quite a bit larger than Chicago, but no one would call Chicago a small town. If 63 people suddenly die in each city, a Chicagoan’s statistical likelihood of knowing one of the dead may be greater than a New Yorker’s, but not by much.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your point. NYC has a population of 8.27 million people and Chicago has a population of about 3 million people. The means that there will be 2.75 people in NYC connected to a victim for every one person in Chicago that are connected to a victim. I don’t think it is fair to say that a factor of 2.75 is not much. I mean, if your income was reduced by a factor of 2.75 this year, would you say that you were making less money this year than last year, but not by much?
Also: Iraq is a tribal society in which kinship, tribal and community bonds are generally wider and stronger. Something to consider when pondering the groups/individuals affected.
How is that fact, assuming true and relevant here, reflected by inflation?
Rather than drag out this disagreement, I’ll conclude with this: My primary objection to “death inflation” is that it ultimately makes a substanceless point about Iraq. Look, the cry goes, 630 (inflation-adjusted) people died in Iraq today! Well, OK. Except that 630 people didn’t really die. And saying that 630 (inflation-adjusted)people died doesn’t tell us anything about the dynamics of the situation, the effect on day to day life, or the policies being debated.
Better, I think, to stick to the facts.
It tells of the extent to which Iraqi society has been ravaged.
That’s the point — no it doesn’t. It’s an oversimplified emotional appeal that is fundamentally false and therefore less than unhelpful.
And as a rhetorical device, I find the whole notion of one nationality’s life being worth some multiplier of another’s off-putting. It is not persuasive. There are better, less offensive ways to make the same point.
Turbulence, I don’t understand 4:07 p.m. post. Perhaps you’re misapplying a ratio (or something)?
It tells of the extent to which Iraqi society has been ravaged.
That’s the point — no it doesn’t. It’s an oversimplified emotional appeal that is fundamentally false and therefore less than unhelpful.
And as a rhetorical device, I find the whole notion of one nationality’s life being worth some multiplier of another’s off-putting. It is not persuasive. There are better, less offensive ways to make the same point.
Look, write on any topic you want and with whatever tools you want. But saying that 630 Iraqis are killed by a bomb isn’t really meaningful when 63 were actually killed.
I didn’t write that 630 Iraqis were killed!
Where did you get that? I’m…confused. What I wrote was that 63 Iraqis were killed. Maybe there is a fairly innocent misunderstanding that we can get at that explains our impasse?
I understand “cataclysmic” to mean something different from how you’re using it.
What I meant by “cumulative death toll” was not the 63 but the total civilian deaths which is likely considerably greater than 100,000. For a population the size of Iraq’s, that’s cataclysmic.
And to help people conceptualize just how cataclysmic that is for Iraq’s society, let me tell you what that number would be for a population the size of America’s….
Moreover, most Americans appreciate that Iraq is in the midst of severe turmoil and civil war.
I wish this were true, but I don’t think it is. Why do you believe that it is? Do you think that Americans in general are particularly well informed about the state of affairs in foreign countries? Or do you think that the federal government has undertaken a major effort convince the public that Iraq is currently in the midst of severe turmoil? I mean, severe turmoil and civil war don’t seem compatible with walking into a market that’s just like one in Indiana with no armor protection and I distinctly recall Senator McCain and one of his fellow Senators explaining how that was the case. If most Americans really did believe that Iraq was in severe turmoil and a civil war, wouldn’t politicians be unable to talk about how peaceful Iraq is without getting laughed off the stage?
Those that don’t aren’t going to be convinced by your inflation.
Um, why should we believe this?
I agree entirely with Turbulence’s 4:07 pm post.
As I said above, it’s not as if we DON’T act in practice like Iraqi lives are worth a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of American lives; even getting people to seriously imagine a 1:1 ratio would be progress.
I understand the point Eric is trying to make here, and I think it’s a valid one. It’s hard for us to get our heads around the level of damage that’s been done in Iraq.
Instead of messing with the numbers, try this:
Imagine that, any time you went into any public place, there was a more-than-trivial likelihood that you would be subject to violence. Blown up, abducted and tortured, shot dead (by whomever). Take your pick.
Anytime you go anywhere, any of these things could happen to you.
Would it be worth your life to go get a loaf of bread? To go to work? To school?
What if you didn’t have a choice, and just had to take your chances?
Go to buy the paper, bang, you’re dead.
There are probably big parts of Iraq where that isn’t true, but there are also big parts of Iraq where it is.
Not too many parts like that here.
Thanks –
Eric:
I didn’t write that 630 Iraqis were killed!
Where did you get that? I’m…confused. What I wrote was that 63 Iraqis were killed. Maybe there is a fairly innocent misunderstanding that we can get at that explains our impasse?
The topic of discussion is your inflation of the actual numbers to make a rhetorical point, like here:
Thus, in order to begin to empathize with Baghdadis, imagine what a bombing that took 630 Americans would feel like
Turbulence:
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought that the polling has been pretty consistent that Iraq is not a particularly safe place at the moment.
I still don’t get your 4:07 p.m. post. The point that I was getting at was that the percentage of New Yorkers who would know any one New Yorker is likely to be smaller than the percentage of Chicagoans who would know any one Chicagoan, but that the size of either would be very small. .01% is larger than .003%, but that doesn’t make .01% large.
You seem to have turned this around and assumed that one’s social circle gets larger depending on the size of the city …. which doesn’t make sense to me at all. Or have I missed something?
Turbulence, I don’t understand 4:07 p.m. post. Perhaps you’re misapplying a ratio (or something)?
I got the labels backwards. There should be 2.75 affected Chicagoans for every affected New Yorker. Does that clear things up?
And saying that 630 (inflation-adjusted)people died doesn’t tell us anything about the dynamics of the situation, the effect on day to day life, or the policies being debated.
That’s the point — no it doesn’t. It’s an oversimplified emotional appeal that is fundamentally false and therefore less than unhelpful.
And as a rhetorical device, I find the whole notion of one nationality’s life being worth some multiplier of another’s off-putting.
Crikey!
This is not about placing a higher value on certain nationalities. It is about describing the impact on a society.
Yes, when a smallish country like Iraq loses 100,000 civilians, that puts a bigger strain on that society (causes deeper trauma) than it would if a larger country, like America, were to lose 100,000 civilians.
That doesn’t mean that Iraqis are more valued than Americans. Or vice versa. It just means that 100,000 people is a greater percentage of the overall Iraqi population than American.
And for an American used to living in such a large population, it sometimes helps CONCEPTUALLY, not normatively, to put the number in proportional terms. To get a sense of what that level of death would look like in an American setting.
But, YMMV I guess.
So Von, to support your contention that I claimed that 630 Iraqis were killed you cite my quote that said that the number would be proportional to 630 Americans being killed.
Uh huh.
Even your cited evidence makes pretty clear that I never claimed that 630 Iraqis were killed. You realize that right?
Eric, re: your 4:28 p.m. post, you’re changing the subject.
The point is simple: inflating 63 people dead to 630 people dead is not helpful to understanding the situation in Iraq. One can inflation-adjust dollars to account for the number in circulation, but one cannot inflation-adjust lives.
I understand your point now, Turbulence. My point, however, is tied to percentages of the whole as opposed to comparisons of ratios.
I understand the point Eric is trying to make here, and I think it’s a valid one.
Just to clarify, I understand the point Eric is trying to make here, and I think it’s a valid one too. I just don’t think the way he is trying to make the point is valid.
And in fairness, I have seen these equivalence arguments made in a much more ham-handed fashion so many times before that I have lost tolerance for them even when I get that it’s being advanced in good faith.
This is not about placing a higher value on certain nationalities.
Well, not in the abstract but think about it. The argument only makes sense if one generic Iraqi life is more valuable to Iraq than one generic American life is to America.
Brief, OT aside:
All your internet traditions belong to me: http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=10643#comments
I don’t get the problem understanding Eric’s point. I think of it like this:
Say you have tiny village, population 20, and a huge country, population 200 million. If some sort of conflict kills 10 people in each, what effect does this have on each society as a whole? Sure, those ten people in the big country meant a lot to a lot of people, but society as a whole goes on. The village just got cut in half, and very likely ceases to function. Huge effect.
I think that is the point, that what this has done to Iraq is larger than the numbers we see, from the lens of living in a much larger society.
Bah, I probably just made this argument worse.
Von,
Would you agree that if I have $100 and lose $10 on a bet, while you have $10 and lose $10 on a bet, that you will feel it more?
Note: I did NOT say I lost $100.
Well, not in the abstract but think about it. The argument only makes sense if one generic Iraqi life is more valuable to Iraq than one generic American life is to America.
I disagree. Maybe it would help me to illustrate my point if we changed the issue from “lives lost” to, say, “jobs lost.”
Person A says: “In Iraq, there are 10 million unemployed people, and that’s greatly disrupting Iraq’s society. 10 million jobless for Iraq is causing massive societal strains.”
Person B replies: “Big deal, the US has 10 million unemployed too. 10 million unemployed just isn’t such a cataclysmic number. Besides, any unemployed worker is unfortunate, regardless of their nationality. Why do you, Person A, care more about Iraqi workers than American workers?
Person A replies: “10 million unemployed in a country with a population the size of Iraq’s has a much greater effect on Iraqi society than 10 million unemployed in a country the size of America.
No, Iraqi workers are not more or less deserving of my sympathy, but unemployment at that high a proportion of society is accutely devastating. In order to translate the impact in American terms, consider what 100,000 million unemployed would do in terms of devastating American society. Then you can appreciate the scope.”
Now feel free to switch back to lives lost and plug in the above back and forth.
Note: I did NOT say I lost $100.
Nor did you say that some dollars are worth more than other dollars, just that ten dollars are a greater proportion of ten dollars than of a hundred dollars.
Brief, OT continuation:
Wow. When I went to bed “IAAOAIT” was scoring about 5-7 Google hits. Now, 412…
von: s a bomb that kills 63 people in Iraq really equivalent in any meaningful sense to a bomb that kills 630 people in the US?
Yes, it is, Von, unless you believe that Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives.
Further, Eric explained, very clearly, what the meaningful equivalence was.
As you’re a reasonably bright person, and I’ve no reason to suppose you don’t have the mental capacity to understand Eric’s explanation, I presume that on a very basic level you don’t get it because you think that when an American is killed it means more than when an Iraqi is killed.
The fact that our media has deliberately chosen to keep images of the carnage from our screens and pages also contributes to the impersonal nature of the math.
To the media’s credit, there’s a lot of restrictions on what the Iraqi media can take pictures of after a terrorist atrocity. Last month, a Reuters stringer actually got beat up by the authorities in Anbar snapping photos of a suicide bombing. While I agree that terrorist attacks should not be glorified, threatening photographers is certainly not justified.
Moreover, most Americans appreciate that Iraq is in the midst of severe turmoil and civil war.
Then why did I hear a report on NPR about how wonderful life has become in Sadr City, how the Mahdi Army is “on the run” and how hundreds of refugees are pouring back into Bagdhad? It was pure propaganda for the “Surge”. They didn’t even mention al Sadr — odd in a report about Sadr City, isn’t it?
@von:
One slight oddity in your NY/Chicago example. Yes, if 63 people die in both, there will not be 2.75x NYers affected by the deaths than in Chicago. Presumably there will be about the same number of people, as you correctly note. This is the opposite of the point you want to be making. Let’s say (very conservatively) that 10 people will be “affected” by every death; that’s 630 in either case. In NY, a random NYer has a 0.007875% chance of being “affected” by the bombing (and a 0.0007875% chance of having been a victim). In Chicago, a random Chicagoan has a 0.021% chance of being affected, and a 0.0021% chance of being a victim.
Eric,
Where the math fails is that you are saying that a 30 million person society is equal to a 300 million person society. Even if the societies were generally equal in all aspects, this is probably not true based on any value of humanity.
Iraq, which you have taken pains to demonstrate, is not a homogenous society but in fact a group of tribes,and a loose confederation of regions. So, no, deaths in Baghdad are not felt the same in Kurdistan as those in Chicago would feel for New York. Few in the US wll celebrate deaths in NY, many in Iraq will celebrate various attacks in Baghdad.
Iraq as a society is not equal to the US, and so a ratio does not equal impact. It is a nonsensical accounting gimmick.
But jrudkis, in some ways you bolster my argument.
If we divide Iraq into communities, then the impact of such a bombing in say Baghdad, is even greater.
So, no, deaths in Baghdad are not felt the same in Kurdistan as those in Chicago would feel for New York.
It’s not necessarily about “feeling” as it is about impact on society. The number of widows/orphans created, the lasting psychological trauma, the loss of men of a certain age group, etc.
Also: You’re being too reductive. Most Shiites have been horrified at the levels of civilian casualties created by each siege of Fallujah. Many Kurds too.
As for “nonsensical accounting gimmick” you’ll have to elaborate on that as it is more of a statement than an argument.
Do you really think that losing 100,000 civilians would have the same impact on a country the size of Iraq as a country the size of America?
Please explain.
@von:
Eep! Missed your 4:34. H’m. Well. How about we eliminate national proportions altogether then? As I believe was pointed out upthread, the rhetorical device is unnecessary.
New York is ~8m, Baghdad is ~7m. We’d freak out, have a national day of mourning, and impose new draconian security measures if a car bomb killed 63 New Yorkers.
Or for a cleaner still comparison, London, which is also ~7m. The 7/7/05 bombings killed 52, and were very widely felt.
Hmm. Okay, I seem to be back from arguing against the rhetorical device to arguing for it, I think. We shouldn’t need it. We appear to.
The impact is not greater, because the society itself is not greater. At some point your reductionist argument you get to talking about the impact on a nieghborhood, or the local Eagles Club. Wiping out the Iowa City Eagles club is not the same as wiping out the US, no matter what numbers you use.
Iraq is not equal to the US because it is at best a concept, but never a nation(and to preempt the responses, I would say that India and China are greater societies than the US because they do in fact support greater populations).
There are various measures you can use to determine the impact on the society. One of which I would think is whether the society can utilize the population, or is the population a burden. I do not think that 3rd world countries like Iraq can utilize its typically excess workers as well as first world countries, so I think that economically the loss of individuals is not of similar impact to a nation like Sweden.
Iraq is not equal to the US because it is at best a concept, but never a nation
This is also too reductive. Iraq has existed in something like the form we see it today for many centuries. Too much is made of the supposed divisions – as if separate and distinct sectarian regions were the pre colonial norm.
You should check out Reidar Visser’s piece entitled, “Historical Myths of a Divided Iraq.”
I found it very informative. You can try to find a free version on the web. I think they charge you here:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a791673796~db=all~tab=content~order=page
Or email me and I’ll send it to you if you like.
{Sigh.}
An absolute minimum of a hundred thousand civilians have been violently killed. Two million more, mostly Sunnis, have been driven from their homes inside the country (whose infrastructure and non-oil economy are in ruins). Another two million — again, more Sunnis than not — have been forced into exile (and live under constant threat of being forced back into a country where they have no jobs, cannot return to their original homes, and have precarious physical safety).
This state of affairs is one about which the bulk of the people in the country most responsible for the situation are in denial.
The response to Eric’s effort, made in good faith, to help break through the distance and abstraction of these facts only makes the fact of denial more obvious.
Not touching this except OT:
Eric – so, how was that vaca?
Lt Nixon: Welcome home! Glad you made it safe and sound.
I would love to read it, thanks. After a cursory look, I failed to see an email address…I will check again, though I suspect between your two sites you should know mine.
But I find it hard to imagine we are discussing anything but sophistry. I have worked with Kurds in Baghdad. They were interesting in that they were reliable, well trained, good soldiers, and frankly I liked working with them, but generally they were ignorant of Arabic and proudly responded to Arabic with “we are Kurds.” The Karadah Peninsula south of the Green zone is a Kurdish sector, and as well or better protected than the Green Zone. Yet, no one in Baghdad will think of Kurds as Iraqis, let alone as Baghdadis.
Baghdad has significant historic precedence as a city state. I don’t think the current borders do, nor do I don’t think that the Sunni/Shiite split is recent, or unprecedented in the region.
“This is also too reductive. Iraq has existed in something like the form we see it today for many centuries. Too much is made of the supposed divisions – as if separate and distinct sectarian regions were the pre colonial norm.”
This seems a rather odd point to make about sects in Iraq that are, as you discuss above, killing each other on a large scale when looked at as a percentage of the society. Perhaps ‘too much’ is made of these supposed divisions. But they apparently involve lots killing each other.
von: Would you accept a comparison of proportional death rates? E.g. would you accept as a valid comparison, say, 12 violent deaths per 1000 people in Iraq as opposed to 3 violent deaths per 1000 people in the US — NB: these statistics very much extracted from my ass for illustration’s sake — and thus concluding that Iraq is four times more violent than the US?
If that’s the case, what is your objection to clearing the denominators in the above statistic, i.e. translating “12 deaths per 1000” into American terms by multiplying by the appropriate population? As Eric said, he’s not imposing a normative interpretation of the statistic, just a conceptual one.
Though I also understand the general idea Eric is trying to convey, I really disagree with this plugging numbers into a formula method.
I get the point about evaluating the impact the deaths have on the society, and that this is not about the value of individual lives in one place versus another. And this would perhaps be relevant if we were talking about a tiny tiny population. Problem is, Iraq is huge. Sure the US is 10 times as huge, but I’d say when the population is large enough (as in the many millions) it becomes very hard to compare how much a certain number of deaths affects one society compared to another. It may be true that 63 deaths affects Iraqi society more than it would American. But it’s something very difficult to measure, and you definitely can’t just plug in a “multiply by 10” rule. Things are way to complicated for such a simple technique to mean anything.
That’s my take anyway. And I certainly do not believe a million Iraqi deaths affect Iraq the same as 10 million American deaths affect America.
There are various measures you can use to determine the impact on the society. One of which I would think is whether the society can utilize the population, or is the population a burden. I do not think that 3rd world countries like Iraq can utilize its typically excess workers as well as first world countries, so I think that economically the loss of individuals is not of similar impact to a nation like Sweden.
I hope you did not mean that. As phrased, I think that is astonishingly repugnant.
In any case, Eric’s clearly not making an economic argument. (On which you would also be wrong, of course – the costs to Iraq’s economy have surely been enormous.)
It is an explicitly emotional appeal, I think. And I do not mean that as criticism.
It’s an attempt to somehow scale the incomprehensible social and emotional impact of the war and put them on familiar terms, to make the loss “real”, like a punch in the gut.
If a civil war was waging in the United States that had killed several million people, and displaced tens of millions, everyone would be affected. Don’t think about Iraq. Just think about the US and what that civil war might be like to live through (or not to live through).
Then think about Iraq again.
(PS, imagining that Texans are relatively lightly affected by the conflict, and don’t really care about the rest of the nation because they tended to regard themselves as a nation apart anyway, would not make this better in any way. Nor would saying that it’s not really that bad, because Protestants and Catholics hate each other anyway, so hey, everybody wins.)
I’ll add, incidentally, that I’ve used this particular technique more times than I can count in my professional life — math teacher — as it’s one of the better ways to crack through most students’ basic innumeracy. Quibbling that 630 Americans did not, in fact, die in the bombing is just that, since no-one is claiming that they — or indeed, any Americans — did; the issue is to try to render the statistic into terms to which the audience can more comfortably relate.
All of which is moot, incidentally, since the fact is — as Jes noted above — that Americans (en masse) don’t consider foreign lives equivalent to American lives, or even vaguely close. Sad, but true. They’re just a statistic of foreignness, to be quibbled over and discounted as either false or irrelevant; the roadkill of our national solipsism.
Sebastian,
Not sure what you’re gettting at. It’s pretty easy for conflict to spur communal thinking even where before there was relative harmony. Also: the sectarian tensions were exacerbated for the past twenty-thirty years and were thus riper than usual for a flare up.
jrudkis: ericred55 – at – hotmail.
It’s not sophistry, though the point you make about the Kurds is valid. I’m talking more about sub-Kurdistan.
And I certainly do not believe a million Iraqi deaths affect Iraq the same as 10 million American deaths affect America.
Clearly not, since Americans freaked the f*** out over a shooting that wouldn’t even qualify as a blip in Iraq. But that speaks more to our national neuroses, which is sort of the point.
s/waging/raging/
I missed this above, but this is exactly right:
Nombrilisme Vide: Hmm. Okay, I seem to be back from arguing against the rhetorical device to arguing for it, I think. We shouldn’t need it. We appear to.
Steve,
The vacation was amazing. Paris is…well, le sigh. I want back.
Imagine if the media had covered each of the 63 Iraqi deaths like they covered the death of Tim Russert.
Each one was a mother or father or son or daughter or sister or brother, a good or bad or indifferent but still human person who is gone, forever, and doesn’t even get REPORTED because ‘we’re winning’. These people have been STATISTICALLY ERASED.
I’ve often thought about the Iraq to America comparison, and it really does highlight the foolishness of the whole damned enterprise. The 2008 Battle of Basra was never reported in full in the United States media, except as a triumph for Iraqi forces and as a minor skirmish of the kind we’ve come to expect. And yet imagine if, in Chicago, there were over 10 000 casualties and over 1000 deaths in a week of fighting; if, after FIVE YEARS of occupation, the resultant American state had no control over one of its largest cities; and if at the end of it all both sides still retained influence, control, and prestige — that the whole bloody shebang was all for nothing.
I sure hope Joe Lieberman’s sleeping soundly tonight. If not, he can always ask McCain for another pillow.
People use relative proportions the way Eric did all the time–it’s why discussions of Pol Pot don’t just mention the actual death toll under his rule (1.7 million), but usually go on to say that this was roughly one quarter of the population. I bet I could argue that Pol Pot was the worst ruler in history and the same people who object to Eric’s comparison would probably nod in agreement that anyone who killed 25 percent of his citizenry was a good candidate for that position. I’ve also seen people argue that America’s Civil War wasn’t proportionally as bad as some 19th century war involving Paraguay against its neighbors. They weren’t referring to the number of deaths in absolute terms (though maybe Paraguay did suffer more–I don’t know), but to the percentages.
Or in other words, what Anarch said in 6:17.
The response to Eric’s effort, made in good faith, to help break through the distance and abstraction of these facts only makes the fact of denial more obvious.
I agree.
I do not think that 3rd world countries like Iraq can utilize its typically excess workers as well as first world countries, so I think that economically the loss of individuals is not of similar impact to a nation like Sweden.
QED.
Not trying to pick on you, jrudkis, it’s just an example.
The bulk of this thread has been arguments about math. The math is not the point.
The reason it’s horrifying that 63 people were blown up is because 63 people were blown up. It would freak us the hell out if 63, or 6.3, or two, people were blown up in the course of going about their daily business with the regularity that that happens in Iraq. It would freak us the hell out if it happened once.
Enormous parts of the nation of Iraq are not secure in any meaningful sense. By “meaningful sense” I mean that people can’t live their lives without fear of being killed.
If Eric’s thought experiment with the numbers gets in your way of getting your head around that, put it aside. Just think of you, or someone you know and love, being blown up when they went to the store, and having that happen a lot, with the specific quantification of “a lot” left as an exercise for the reader.
Thanks –
Russell,
No problem. I know what I said is hard to read, but if you are going to compare the impact of deaths on a society and try and compare deaths in Iraq to other countries, I think it is reasonable to consider whether that society had jobs for the people killed.
I really think that if a country has 50% unemployment than the death of x percentage of people has less of an effect than a country with 4% unemployment…because the issue is the impact on society, not the friends and family.
My experience would indicate that the individual death of a person in Iraq is felt more intensely and longer than a loss of one of my own friends. The closeness of the various tribes and the particular closeness of men makes every loss feel like the loss of a brother. Our own relative remoteness makes loss feel surreal…and easy to compartmentalize into a weekend unless that person happened to be in your immediate family.
But if the brother has no job, I don’t think society feels the loss even though he may have been loved by his friends and family.
Wow. Of all the things I never would have thought would spark a big fight…
I teach an occasional course in Native American linguistics over here, and to give the students an idea of the kind of impact that smallpox and other diseases had on Native American tribes, especially in the east (90% of many villages died, and among the plains, 40% was a standard), I do similar exercises with students, asking them to list up their immediate circle of family and friends and then mark off every 10th person and repeat the process. If there were a japanese von equivalent who had argued that this was not comparable because the population was much smaller, I would probably say ‘bingo’, and hopefully have them realize that in the context of a communal society, te impact is even greater, which is why the term decimate only means a 10% slice.
I made a similar argument when Abu Grahib broke, and suggested that the communal nature of Iraqi society meant that what happened there had a greater rather than a smaller impact on society.
On a side note, understanding that von seems to really dislke these sorts of equivalency arguments makes his strongly stated dislke of trial lawyers much more understandable.
Wow. Of all the things I never would have thought would spark a big fight…
It’s an internet tradition, aren’t you aware?
That said, isn’t Eric’s point, from a 50,000 foot level, merely asking us to imagine “what would this be like if it happened in the U.S.”? And isn’t taking into account the relative size of the Iraqi and U.S. populations part of that thought (along with geographics, culture, etc.)?
As many commenters state above, if the U.S. had a car bombing once every two weeks that killed 20 people, most of the population would be curled up in a fetal position asking for armed federal agents to search their own homes.
LJ,
But aren’t you simply comparing the lowest common denominator to the highest?
Sure, you can compare the last of the Mohicans to the European invader, but is that an honest comparison? because, really, do you think the guy shooting the last Mohican thought he was European, rather than what ever particular clan he thought he was in?
I really think that if a country has 50% unemployment than the death of x percentage of people has less of an effect than a country with 4% unemployment…
I don’t think this analysis works in general. If a stay-at-home mom is shot dead, even though she doesn’t “work” in a way that gets recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all the stuff she was doing will still need to be done by someone else, and all the societal resources that had been invested in her are now shot. More to the point, just because someone is unemployed in Iraq doesn’t mean they’re not working: there is a lot of under the radar economic activity, ranging from small home based businesses to blackmarket exchanges. Those people don’t show up very well in government statistics, but they do bring in revenue to the family, and when they get blown to bits, that revenue stream that their family relied upon goes away forever. Moreover, even if they’re not working right now, there’s no reason to believe that they would never ever work in the future; lifetime earnings matter in addition to how much money they would have made this year alone. Given that the bombing occurred at a marketplace, I’d guess that many of the victims were in fact gainfully employed.
In any event, the costs to society from bombing extend beyond mere financial losses. If you violently murder lots of people, that means lots of other people are not going to be able to function normally. At best, they’ll have nightmares and be unable to work productively. At worst, they may engage in reprisal killings or commit suicide.
because the issue is the impact on society, not the friends and family.
You can’t really separate the two: the impact of a bombing on family and friends is one of the mechanisms by which the bombing affects society.
Von,
The problem with your participation in this thread is that you apparantly don’t know the difference between inflating and equating
Perhaps Google would be of assistance.
Italics hates the google.
Turbulence,
In general, I am not talking about the employment of the victims, but the employment prospects of the average person. Though in the US, a stay at home mom is not considered unemployed since she is not seeking employment.
If it is an employers market, and there are many to replace the dead, it has less impact than on a society that has tight employment.
jrudkis,
So, just to be clear, if a victim’s family member commits suicide or attempts a reprisal killing, do you believe the impacts on society of that suicide or reprisal killing is a function of the employment rate? Do you believe that if either of those secondary victims were unemployed at the time that we should therefore assume that, had they survived, they would have remained unemployed forever?
I think what jrudkis says is: (1) totally repugnant. (2) not even remotely true. Sort of a parody of a soulless, idiotic social scientist who thinks: if the impact of a violent death doesn’t show up in GDP, it must not affect society! It’s just absurd. GDP & other various social science statistics don’t measure everything relevant; decent social scientists–and I mean this in the sense of “competent” as well as “moral”–recognize this.
Katherine,
I think I am failing to make my point: I beleive that those who know a dead Iraqi feels the pain more than our own less social society. I do not discount that part at all.
But if you are going to say that the death of a factory worker during a depression is equal in impact to society as the same death when workers are at a premium, I think you are wrong.
And the comparison we were making, as I understand it, is the same type of death on different societies. My point is simply that where labor is plentiful, violent deaths have less impact on the society because the economy is impacted less…because the dead person can be replaced and keep the economy working.
If you do not think that the economy is the basis for everyone in society to eat and drink, than I guess I am at a loss.
But if you are going to say that the death of a factory worker during a depression is equal in impact to society as the same death when workers are at a premium, I think you are wrong.
That argument might make sense if you assume that the depression lasts forever. So let me ask you again, do you think Iraq’s current unemployment rate will continue without significant change forever?
Thanks Ugh… (lowering head and moving away slowly)
I think that based on the current and historic level of unemployment in the region, it is reasonble to believe that Iraq will continue to have relatively high unemployment for the future, and that the employment it does have is less productive than other similar regions in the world. In other words, it will have an oil economy with few other exports, and few Iraqis controlling the oil production.
That argument might make sense if you assume that the depression lasts forever
It does not depend on that at all. In society A where there is full employment, the societal effects of the loss of a worker begin to accrue immediately and in society B that is not at full employment they don’t.
The length of time society B is not at full employment affects the amount of difference in the impacts, but not the existence of that difference in the first place.
This is not a novel argument. It is one reason Republican administrations hate full employment. Although the particular aspect of full employment they hate is that workers can remove themselves from the labor market as a bargaining tool rather than get blown up or whatever happens to them in Iraq these days.
And as a final thought, the assertion that a death is a death, that the effect of a humans’ death is going to be the same no matter who the person or what the circumstances – that is a lovely thought. But it isn’t true. Our lives are not all worth the same in any consistent moral calculus that a rational human being would accept. Sorry!
Jrudkis, that’s possible, but if there is another way to explain the impact of depopulation and why Native American linguistics is really the study of scarce data, I’d be happy to consider presenting it.
The last part, I’m not sure if I understand. My point is that it is hard to appreciate how much of an impact the kind of losses have on a culture that is family/clan based and is relatively few in numbers. How would an argument about killing Hawkeye illuminate that?
LJ.
Suppose you were from Newport High, and were responsible for defeating Issaquah High…
Would you be doing so because you were white Europeans, or for closer social ties?
jrudkis,
Are you thinking that the depopulation of native american people was accomplished by death thru warfare? The main engine was an absence of resistance to diseases, so as such, your high school metaphor doesn’t really apply.
I think that based on the current and historic level of unemployment in the region, it is reasonble to believe that Iraq will continue to have relatively high unemployment for the future,
Huh? Do you have any data that would justify this conclusion? I thought that Iraqi unemployment was relatively low before we invaded and destroyed their society.
and that the employment it does have is less productive than other similar regions in the world. In other words, it will have an oil economy with few other exports, and few Iraqis controlling the oil production.
You mean like Norway? Or maybe Venezuela?
Do you have any measurements for productivity?
Do you have any data that would justify this conclusion? I thought that Iraqi unemployment was relatively low before we invaded and destroyed their society.
Hahaha. This is hilarious. Why, the Iraqis may at any moment just spontaneously reconstruct the society we destroyed! Like ordering a restaurant meal or something. Hahaha. Saddam will rise from the dead, and get things back to normal there, right?
I must’ve missed something: why in the hell are people looking at comparative economies again?
What we need to do is find the Americans who planned and executed the bombing, and take them to the International Criminal Court.
Anarch: because their looking for any excuse why Iraqi deaths don’t matter very much.
On the topic at hand, I side with Eric Martin, Anarch (unsurprisingly) and others of that ilk. Objecting to the comparison only serves as a device to minimize the impact of the war on American consciousness, and I deplore those who do it.
OTOH, I am amazed that they do not cite the (last line of) the following. I blame a deficient education in Anglo-Welsh poetry:
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
Dylan Thomas
Just how insensitive do you have to be to think that unemployed people getting killed has no effect on productivity? Just use your imagination for a moment…
An unemployed man two streets away who you know has been killed. When you go to work, how productive are you when you’re mourning him, wondering whether his family is OK, worrying whether it might be you or a family member killed next? How easy it to plan next year’s budget when you’re thinking that you or one of your colleagures might be dead by next year?
Ask people who work in New York or London how long it took them to get back to being fully productive after the bombings, how long before their days at the office or in the shop weren’t frequently interrupted with regrets about what happened and recurrent worries about what might come next. How long before an unexpected noise or sight didn’t start their heart racing and make it hard to concentrate on their work?
Or think about yourself when a close friend or relative has died or even been seriously ill. How productive were you at work in the next week, the next month? Think about that and then imagine what it’s like being an Iraq at work. Or read what it’s like being e.g. the director of Iraq’s national library.
And when you’ve read and thought and tried to imagine yourself in that position then think long and hard before you say such rubbish about deaths not mattering to society again.
@jrudkis
And the comparison we were making, as I understand it, is the same type of death on different societies. My point is simply that where labor is plentiful, violent deaths have less impact on the society because the economy is impacted less…because the dead person can be replaced and keep the economy working.
If you do not think that the economy is the basis for everyone in society to eat and drink, than I guess I am at a loss.
Estimates for unemployment in Iraq are 60-70%, based on what I’ve read. One of the reasons it’s so high is because of a lack of security, e.g., this bombing. So consider this: if in a vacuum, a bomb goes off in New York tomorrow and 63 people die, what happens?
63 people are dead. Presumably many times that are injured (tho’ they’ll have better access to medical care, so their economic output (apparently the only measure we’re allowed in judging the social impact of violence) will be less affected than a comparable number of Iraqis would be, and fewer of these survivors will die in the days and weeks to come. But aside from the loss of 63 units of labor, the partial or temporary loss of Nx63 more units as non-fatal casualties, and whatever damage was done to businesses at the site of the bombing, there will be zero social impact. Well, perhaps some job growth in the security industry, and further government and/or military employment, but other than that, nothing, right? Just the immediate loss of 63 units of labor in a 5-6% unemployment econ- er, society. Does this then balance out with the Iraqi bombing? After all, there’s over 10 times the unemployment in Iraq, even if there’s 10 times the population in the US; that’s actually pretty much the same number of people available in the employment pool. So they’re exactly the same w/o any adjustment, right?
But wait; as noted above, the US bombing would generate growth in security and government, thus removing more people from the unemployment rosters and increasing the impact of these deaths! While the Iraqi bombing may have represented the tipping point for a few more businesses to shut down, and thus impact the society even more, we can’t assume that it alone will have a massive effect in this regard. So let’s call these even, okay? Well, all right, I’m sure the American outpouring of cash to fix security would have a larger impact than a few more Iraqi businesses closing, so we’ll consider (as mentioned above) the proportionally greater burden and loss of the partially damaged Iraqi labor units due to their deteriorated infrastructure here as well, to keep the balance even.
So does that sound good? Even though the US is 10 times the size of Iraq, Iraqi society (as measured by the only conceivably meaningful measure going, the economy) is no more impacted by a bomb exploding that directly eliminates 63 Iraqi units of labor than American society would be by a terror attack that slaughtered 63 American citizens, and vice versa. QED.
Jrudkis’s argument also goes far to explain why, after the Oklahoma bombing, the 19 casualties least mentioned or discussed by the media were the unproductive layabouts who spent whole days doing nothing more economically productive than watch cartoons and pester their moms for action figures. Clearly, their deaths had no impact on America whatsoever: why, for most of them, it would be have been at least a decade before they got any kind of paid job.
What we need to do is find the Americans who planned and executed the bombing, and take them to the International Criminal Court.
Dave, when’s your birthday?
I’m going to buy you your very own life-size straw man. Maybe something like the Ray Bolger character from the Wizard of Oz. You can sit him in a chair in the corner of the room and argue the day away, to your heart’s content.
It’ll save you the trouble of typing.
Thanks –
Sorry, that was a little caustic. It needed s a smiley.
🙂
Thanks –
Charming as always, Jes. My points, which you miss, are set forth above and need not be repeated.
The problem with your participation in this thread is that you apparantly don’t know the difference between inflating and equating
Davebo, inflation an acceptable description — more accurate than “equating”, in fact. But I appreciation your suggestion that I learn how to use Google. Be it known that I am aware of that internet tradition.
(We do our best to bridge the OT with the On-T.)
Anarch: because their looking for any excuse why Iraqi deaths don’t matter very much.
Or, alternatively, it could be based on the reasons we give.
Continued OT:
Brief, OT continuation:
Wow. When I went to bed “IAAOAIT” was scoring about 5-7 Google hits. Now, 412…
More than 400,000 Google hits now for “I am aware of all internet traditions.
von: Or, alternatively, it could be based on the reasons we give.
You’re too smart for that, Von. Sorry: while there are some people I can believe can’t understand Eric’s clear point because they’re not bright enough, I can’t think that of you, despite your efforts in this thread to assert you’re just not capable of comprehending it.
By extension, someone killing my wife equates to the entire population of China being exterminated.
You know, as a fraction of my immediate family, as compared to world population. That’s exchange rate, for you.
But Slarti, China is only 1/5th of the world population, but I think your wife would be 1/4th of your family unit.
I feel compelled to link to this Daily Show clip from 2006.
Eric – as usual – you ROCK! Thank you for helping me to think outside my comfort zone yet again.
Jen
… unless you believe that Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives.
The discussion here on valuing lives in economic terms got me thinking about how it could be done purely in terms of dollars – what is the dollar value of a life in different societies? For the sake of discussion, what if Iraqis believe that Iraqi lives are of lesser value (relative to what we in the western world consider to be “value”)?
Diyya (blood money) is negotiable in Iraq, so it’s hard to make a comparison actually based on Iraq. The best data I could find for the sake of comparison is SA, because the blood money rates are legally prescribed, and the exchange rate is fixed in US dollars (1 U.S. dollar = 3.75 riyals). It’s an Islamic country (one might say the Islamic country) and really the source of Islam, and it’s the wealthiest Islamic country, so it should be a good baseline at the high end of the scale. Speaking of scales:
• 100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man
• 50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman
• 50,000 riyals if a Christian man
• 25,000 riyals if a Christian woman
• 6,666 riyals if a Hindu man
• 3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman.
For starters, here is a society that clearly places different values on human life depending on gender and religious affiliation. So they have already legally decreed that some lives have more value than others. A Muslim man is worth twice as much as a Muslim woman, and worth 30 times as much as a Hindu woman – by law. But let’s just look at the top of the scale. A Muslim man is worth $26,666. That is not defined by us in the west – it is defined by his own society. That doesn’t tell us much unless we have some idea what $26,666 will buy you in SA.
According to the UN Human Development Reports, the estimated earned annual income for a male, non-agricultural worker in SA is $25,678 (Purchasing Power Parity in US dollars – 2005).
So if you are at the top of the legal scale in SA your life is worth about one year’s earnings. Compare that to damages in a wrongful death suit in the US which are typically based on the potential lifetime earnings of the victim. For a young victim that could be 40 years of earnings. Even if we just use the same source as above and their figure of $40,000 (Purchasing Power Parity in US dollars – 2005) with no attempt to account for increasing wages over the years that’s $1,600,000 or 62 times the $ value the society of the SA victim places on his life. And with SA being the wealthiest Islamic country it’s safe IMO to assume that the value would potentially be much less in other Islamic countries.
So if we want to talk about exchange rates and the value of human lives and Americans vs. those in an Islamic country – then at best that rate is around 1 to 60 (at least in terms of dollars). Back to your original example, it would then only take one American killed to equal the 63 Iraqis killed (based strictly on a dollar value). Or put another way, the bomb would have to kill 3,780 Iraqis to have the same (dollar) impact as a bomb that killed 63 Americans.
Now this has nothing to do with us, the value has been set by SA, and I’m constantly told that we in the west have no business pushing our values on other societies – so who am I to argue.
(Note: If it’s not obvious, this is intended primarily as snark. If it has a serious point at all, it is that other societies themselves place far less value on the lives of their citizens than we sometimes do. See China for instance. Standards caveats apply: war bad, our fault, withdraw the troops, etc.)
liberal japonicus: I feel compelled to link to this Daily Show clip from 2006.
Heh. I’d totally forgotten “Improvised Explosive Opportunity”, “filled with the shards of a better tomorrow”. But I will never forget the absolutely vicious sting at the end of the segment; truly one of the finest moments in American journalism, IMO.
Slartibartfast: By extension, someone killing my wife equates to the entire population of China being exterminated.
To you? I should hope so. Going cheap, even.
In light of OCSteve’s comment, is it any wonder that Presidential Airways wants to be tried under Shari’a?
[h/t TPM; the link is very slow — slashdotted?]
If it has a serious point at all, it is that other societies themselves place far less monetary value on the lives of their citizens than we sometimes do.
Fixed.
Exactly. It’s subjective, isn’t it? Treating it as if it’s objective, then, isn’t supportable.
Well, one thing that is objective is the number of widows, orphans, and bereaved family members as a percentage of the overall population.
That matters in terms of gauging the psychological impact on a society, which is important in myriad ways.
… Americans freaked the f*** out over a shooting that wouldn’t even qualify as a blip in Iraq. But that speaks more to our national neuroses, which is sort of the point.
Do you see the problem here? We’ve gone seamlessly from, “Americans should empathize more with Iraqi deaths,” to “American deaths? Get over yourselves!”
I presume that on a very basic level you don’t get it because you think that when an American is killed it means more than when an Iraqi is killed.
Proving nicely why this line of argument fails as effective rhetoric. I get the point that Eric is trying to make, and I essentially agree with the sentiment. Some, however, inevitably can’t grasp that the math makes for an interesting figurative exercise focusing on one aspect of a nation’s suffering, not a moral calculus literally equating 1 x death with 10 y deaths.
Yes, it’s valuable context to know that Pol Pot’s body count amounted to one quarter of his country’s population. But not because it would have occurred to me to think, well 1.7 million deaths may not seem like much …
Slarti: Exactly. It’s subjective, isn’t it? Treating it as if it’s objective, then, isn’t supportable.
Errr… who’s treating it as objective? I think I missed something.
Pasota: Do you see the problem here? We’ve gone seamlessly from, “Americans should empathize more with Iraqi deaths,” to “American deaths? Get over yourselves!”
My point is that our reaction to American deaths is seriously discordant with our reaction to Iraqi deaths, so much so that 12 American dead in a random and senseless shooting are considered a touchstone of our national psyche, but literally orders of magnitude more Iraqi dead — random and senseless deaths for which, in varying measure, we bear responsibility — are a statistic to be quibbled over.
Looked at in that light, yeah, if Columbine rocked (the hypothetical) your world but you’re quibbling over an attempt to render the Iraqi dead comprehensible, yeah, get over yourself. That’s part of empathy, after all: realizing that your sufferings are not the span of all tragedy. [Which, again, I’d argue is one of the fundamental points in this post.] Otherwise, you’re in the no-longer-funny version of this joke:
But not because it would have occurred to me to think, well 1.7 million deaths may not seem like much …
And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening with the Iraqi deaths…
[I should note, btw, that I think we agree on the larger point here that some people are confusing the figurative with the literal here. The difference seems to be on whether it should be criticized as defective rhetoric, or lauded as an attempt to educate. YMMV.]
After reading every comment on the entire thread thus far, I am no closer to understanding why an analogy like this is even remotely controversial on a blog presumably populated by thinking people.
I mean, seriously. This is a rhetorical and illustrative tool used all the time by teachers, attorneys, and just about anyone else who has a need to explain a concept involving numbers and needs to frame it in terms the listener can relate to.
Instead we get pages upon pages of pedantic ratfsckery about how 630 Americans/Iraqis didn’t /really/ die, how the analogy isn’t really a fair one to make, and why people who aren’t economically productive don’t have as great an impact to society, as in a country like Iraq with extremely high unemployment a violent death just doesn’t cause as much fuss. It’s as if the concepts of metaphor and analogy took a vacation.
I mean, seriously. You–and if you’re advancing idiotic arguments like the above, then yes, I’m talking to you–win the epic fail prize in the category of “not getting it”. Could you act like any more of a living, breathing illustration of precisely why arguments like Eric’s are necessary?
Take a step back from the fact that we’re discussing politically controversial deaths and think about it for a minute.
@von:
More than 400,000 Google hits now for “I am aware of all internet traditions.
You need to put it in quotes; “I am aware of all Internet traditions” instead of I am aware of all Internet traditions. The former is up to 1280, the latter is sitting at 416000, whereabouts it probably was on Monday.
@OCSteve:
It’s an Islamic country (one might say the Islamic country) and really the source of Islam
Not to quibble overmuch, but of these only the first should be freely accepted. SA adheres to a very strict, minority interpretation of Islam, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s not widely imitated. And while yes, Meccah and Madinah are found within its borders, SA is not the sole keeper of the faith, no matter what Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and his lot might say.
(Sorry, wouldn’t quibble at all if I hadn’t just been being bad and squabbling with BOB on related matters in another thread.)
OCSteve: It’s an Islamic country (one might say the Islamic country) and really the source of Islam
Here’s a bit of free advice: don’t go around telling people that “the Vatican is a Christian country (one might say the Christian country) and really is the source of Christianity.” I know you’re not religious, so this might not be obvious to you, but that statement is incredibly offensive to Christians; also, it is just wrong. Your original version regarding Islam and SA isn’t much better for Muslims.
I’m with Catsy. Saying “If you take the number of deaths in proportion to the populations of the countries, you would get…” isn’t the same thing as saying “63 deaths in Iraq is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as 630 deaths in the US.” It’s an illustration intended to provide some perspective. That’s all. Get over it.
You … win the epic fail prize in the category of “not getting it”. Could you act like any more of a living, breathing illustration of precisely why arguments like Eric’s are necessary?
So … people who are not persuaded by the argument or who perhaps fail to grasp it altogether illustrate why it’s an effective argument? Is there an “epic fail prize” in logical reasoning?
Pasota: So … people who are not persuaded by the argument or who perhaps fail to grasp it altogether illustrate why it’s an effective argument?
I believe you just substituted “effective” when Catsy wrote “necessary”.
Plainly, Eric’s argument is not effective to people determined to believe that Iraqis are of less individual value than Americans.
But the fact that such people exist – and have no shame at outing themselves on a public blog – demonstrates how necessary Eric’s point is.
So … people who are not persuaded by the argument or who perhaps fail to grasp it altogether illustrate why it’s an effective argument? Is there an “epic fail prize” in logical reasoning?
As Catsy said, they illustrate why arguments like this are very much necessary.
Sadly, I’m inclined to despair about the existence of ANY arguments that would be effective with members of the “epic logic/analogy/empathy fail” demographics.
I believe you just substituted “effective” when Catsy wrote “necessary”. … But the fact that such people exist … demonstrates how necessary Eric’s point is.
And I believe that you just substituted “point” when Catsy wrote “argument.”
I’ve already stated that it is a perfectly valid point. But if an argument is not effective in advancing that point, it can hardly be necessary, can it?
And by the way, the moral indignation is neither effective nor necessary.
Yonmei, your June 19, 2008 at 09:05 AM post really is backhandedly insulting:
You’re too smart for that, Von. Sorry: while there are some people I can believe can’t understand Eric’s clear point because they’re not bright enough, I can’t think that of you, despite your efforts in this thread to assert you’re just not capable of comprehending it.
As I’ve said above, although I do understand the point that Eric is trying to make, I disagree that this is a useful way (1) to make it or (2) to understand the situation in Iraq.
Look, I appreciate that y’all think I’m so smart — nearly as smart as you! — such that if I don’t agree with you, I therefore must be operating in bad faith. Please consider the alternate possibility that I understand the argument but find it unpersuasive for the reasons given. I will, in turn, assume that you understand my arguments and find them unpersuasive.
Of course, to understand my arguments you’ll have to actually read and consider them without the condescending premise that people who disagree with you are either (1) too dumb to understand you or (2) if they understand you, are evil.
Nombrilisme Vide, thanks.
Wow. I’d rather you not misrepresent me and my points by (falsely) claiming that I am “determined to believe that Iraqis are of less individual value than Americans.” But if you must tell a lie, I suppose you should tell a whopper.
I’d take von’s comments (and mine) as statements to the effect that the value of an individual Iraqi life is, in general, exactly the same as (as opposed to a factor of ten more valuable than) an American life.
I’d take von’s comments (and mine) as statements to the effect that the value of an individual Iraqi life is, in general, exactly the same as (as opposed to a factor of ten more valuable than) an American life.
Which is fine, if banal.
It also has nothing to do with Eric’s argument.
I’d take von’s comments (and mine) as statements to the effect that the value of an individual Iraqi life is, in general, exactly the same as (as opposed to a factor of ten more valuable than) an American life.
This is true, but I suspect that the term “value” is so underspecified that this statement doesn’t tell us much. I mean, all humans are equally valuable, but you’d be more willing to risk your life to save a healthy newborn from a burning building than you would a 95 year old cancer patient with a 2 month life expectancy, right? Or perhaps you feel that life insurance payments or court settlements (like the 9/11 compensation magistrate) are inherently unfair since they value different lives differently? That’s why I really don’t like using such vague terms as value in these discussions: they can mean (correctly, with no bad faith whatsoever!) very different things to different people.
For the purposes of understanding our own moral responsibilities as a nation, I think it helps to focus on the total effects our actions have had on Iraqi society. That analysis doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the simple statement that all lives have equal value. For example, systematically killing every surgeon in the US is in some sense equivalent to killing of the same number of random people, but the implications for our society are very different, even though surgeon’s lives aren’t inherently worth more than non-surgeons’.
Now, you may not find any use in explanations that try to address the effect of various disasters as a function of population fraction. Some people do however. Many people have difficulty relating to large numbers of people being violently murdered and in order to make that real, they need to map it back onto a familiar substrate, namely, their own lives and their own nation. You may have sufficient mathematical fluency that you have no need for these techniques, but not everyone will have your skills. It seems that one thing that could improve our foreign policy is if Americans spent more time putting themselves in other peoples’ shoes, which is what Eric was trying to do here I think.
“I mean, all humans are equally valuable, but you’d be more willing to risk your life to save a healthy newborn from a burning building than you would a 95 year old cancer patient with a 2 month life expectancy, right?”
I wonder about statements like this. They are perfectly well accepted (indeed I found myself nodding along), but they seem almost self-evidently impossible. If we really believe the first part of the sentence I don’t think we can really believe the second.
But on second thought that is just a side comment and may not be a helpful observation at all.
FWIW, that’s what I was trying to do turbulence. Offer a different way to conceptualize the death toll so that people can grasp the nature of the impact of this operation on a country the size of Iraq.
I was at no point making a normative judgment on the value of Iraqi lives vs. American lives or any such nonsense.
Von: I’d rather you not misrepresent me and my points by (falsely) claiming that I am “determined to believe that Iraqis are of less individual value than Americans.”
And yet, you persistently, all the way down this thread, argue that you can’t possibly equate an Iraqi’s death with an American’s death – that they’re not the same, you said emphatically in your first comment on this thread, in any meaningful sense.
Either that, or you just can’t do basic arithmetic.
Actually, I came across an article today that sort of gets at a bit of my intention. The lede:
Conflict has undermined the potential of an entire generation of Iraqi children, UNICEF said today. The organisation urged new momentum to reach vulnerable children inside the country with assistance.
The point being that the violence/conflict has been so widespread and far reaching that it has affected an entire generation of Iraqi children – either in direct physical ways, direct loss of loved ones, psychological trauma or loss of vital services like education, food, clean water, etc.
Part of the reason I find it helpful to “convert” the population figures is so that some of us (myself included) who might not do so naturally can grasp the scope of what exactly has been done in Iraq.
Say, ex arguendo, that one reads that we have created 100,000 orphans. Most of us would feel sad at this. 100,000 orphans is terrible no matter how big the country is. 100,000 new American orphans is as tragic as 100,000 new Iraqi orphans. All orphans deserve our sympathy.
But we might not realize how devastating that number is to an entire generation of Iraqis unless we appreciate it as a function of the total population.
So when someone says that a rough corrolary in terms of population size would be a million orphans in America, it’s easier for me to see the magnitude of the problem and appreciate how much of a societal impact such a statistic will have in the long run.
By converting those numbers to American dimensions, I’m not belittling anyone’s life, or augmenting anyone else’s. I’m just thinking in numbers that correlate to overall population size to appreciate the impact on…the overall population!
Anyway. I can’t really explain myself any other way. To each his own*
*(with the exception of Von who is concentrated evil 😉
I wonder about statements like this. They are perfectly well accepted (indeed I found myself nodding along), but they seem almost self-evidently impossible. If we really believe the first part of the sentence I don’t think we can really believe the second.
I can certainly imagine reasonable people taking that position in the context of a consistent ethical framework, but I can also imagine reasonable people taking the opposite position.
I didn’t state it explicitly, but the scenario I had in mind was one where there was some chance of dying associated with the rescue. For me, that makes a crummy utilitarian calculus of the form ‘I should attempt to rescue if ProbabilityOfDyingWhileRescuing) * MyLifeExpectancy < (1 - ProbabilityOfDyingWhileRescuing) * TrappedVictimsLifeExpectancy' work out, along with some fudge factors for total impact on other people, quality of life effects, and bias in guessing at the parameters (especially the dying probability). I wouldn't claim that this is a sound or consistent ethical system, just that it approximates moral intuitions for some people (or at least me). But on second thought that is just a side comment and may not be a helpful observation at all.
I suspect this is one of those areas where lots of people have strong feelings that they assume are more widely shared than they actually are, so I’d guess that discussion here could be quite helpful.
I would second Turbulence, except that I think that it might help to emphasize that all of this has nothing to do with “value” at all.
What Eric is getting at is somewhat different, I think. It is not about the value of individuals lives lost. It is instead about the IMPACT of relatively large numbers of deaths, and trying to get some kind of intuitive handle on the scale of the disaster.
It might help to use a less political example:
Someone up-thread mentioned Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance. This was a disastrous war in the 19th century in which Paraguay’s dictator started a war with Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. (For the Euro-centric: imagine something like Holland starting a war with France, Germany and England…)
Paraguay began the war with a population of over 500,000. By the end, they had lost around 300,000 people. Almost 60% of their population. Something like 90% of the male population was killed. (Apparently, the Catholic Church actually allowed polygamy for a time, to aid repopulation.)
This obviously must have been just unimaginably catastrophic.
To view the impact of the war on Paraguay in modern terms, it is not enough to say that they lost 300,000 people, who are all the same value as a modern American.
Modern America loses something like a couple hundred thousand people every year just to car accidents. That’s certainly awful, but it is not an existential catastrophe. The proportions are absolutely vital.
No, to put the War of the Triple Alliance into perspective, you have to imagine living in an America where something like 170 million people have died. Where there are no military-age men anymore, anywhere.
Imagining that might just help put the Paraguayan catastrophe into perspective. And it has absolutely nothing to do with whether 19th century Paraguayans or Americans are “worth” more.
Nombrilisme Vide: SA is not the sole keeper of the faith
Understood. It was snark though.
Turb: Your original version regarding Islam and SA isn’t much better for Muslims.
As you know I do appreciate your free advice, but, uh, again, snark. Understandable if I didn’t clearly label it as such, but I did…
OTOH – you always ask for numbers, even if they are just estimates, to back up points. I think I gave detailed numbers there (with cites). Am I wrong, even in snark?
It is harder trying to mix pure snark with a serious point, likely a talent I lack. I think they call that satire, and I’m no Jonathan Swift (or Thullen). Still, I think that was a decent effort. I award myself 7/10. YMMV.
Incidentally, for those who are still somehow uncomfortable comparing Iraq with the modern United States in this manner, there is the very handy comparison to the U.S. Civil War.
Wikipedia has the American population (North and South) at the time at a little over 30 million – slightly more than modern Iraq.
It also puts total Civil War deaths, military and civilian, at around 600,000. Also very comparable to the Iraq War so far. (If anything, a bit low.)
So, the Iraq war is already slightly worse in terms of bloodshed than the U.S. Civil War. Heckuva job.
I award myself 7/10.
Careful, you might hurt your shoulder patting yourself on the back… ;^)
@OCSteve
Understood. It was snark though.
Understanding understood, hence my attempt at soft-handedness. And again, were I a more responsible commenter who hadn’t just popped in from elsewhere feeding BOB on precisely the same point, it’d have been let slide entirely…
OTOH – you always ask for numbers, even if they are just estimates, to back up points. I think I gave detailed numbers there (with cites). Am I wrong, even in snark?
If you want a more substantial response, I’ll do my best here:
The discussion here on valuing lives in economic terms got me thinking about how it could be done purely in terms of dollars – what is the dollar value of a life in different societies? For the sake of discussion, what if Iraqis believe that Iraqi lives are of lesser value (relative to what we in the western world consider to be “value”)?
How would you determine the dollar value of life in the US? Here are some guesses on my part:
1. life insurance premiums
2. fraction of GDP that we spend keeping select demographics out of poverty, relative to their numbers
3. court settlements for deaths
4. tv time when people die or go missing
5. the fact that we have AFWDC and WIC programs but no equivalent programs for young men
6. ditto for affirmative action
7. lifetime earnings potential
All of these are really crummy proxies for how our society “values” human lives, and I think the same is true for your blood money numbers. According to (1), old people and sick people are inherently worth less than young or healthy people, but (2) tells us that the elderly are worth more than children. (3) tells us that young people and upper middle class white people are higher value than others, but (4) tells us that young female adults are more important than anyone (oh noes! missing white woman alert!). (5) tells us that mothers and children, especially poor mothers and children are more important while (6) tells us that blacks are more important and (7) tells us that men are more important.
You can pick a random proxy variable and conclude damn near anything you want about how Americans value human life because all these proxies represent a lot more than pure abstract valuation of human lives. They deal with other issues like the value of fairness (5) or remedying for past injustice (6) or disproportionate political power (2 – children don’t vote) or persistent prejudice (7) or existing inequities in society (1, 3).
In short: making cross cultural comparisons of values is really hard to do correctly, and your comment, while impressive in demonstrating your willingness to find an empirical basis for discussion (seriously, mad props to you for that), isn’t well founded IMHO. In other words, you got numbers, but they don’t tell us what you think they do. OTOH, I have a serious bias towards believing that all people are pretty similar in their fundamental values: everyone loves their children and grieves for their dead family and friends.
For starters, here is a society that clearly places different values on human life depending on gender and religious affiliation.
You mean like how women are only worth 72% of what men are worth based on pay differentials? Or do you mean like how we’ve decided that no one can ever become President unless he’s a practicing Christian? I mean, I really think that declaring that no atheist will ever be President says something about our society…
For that matter, can you name for me one society, ancient or modern that did not place different values based on gender and religion?
So they have already legally decreed that some lives have more value than others.
Why do you think that refers to fundamental value rather than compensation for lost income? If you think of blood money in terms of compensation for lost lifetime earnings (or their equivalent), then you can have differential payments without implying anything about fundamental value. Rather, differential payments reflect the fact that women’s lifetime earnings are significantly less than men’s (and that paying someone to do the “woman’s work” that a woman does costs less than paying a man’s lifetime salary). Recognizing that society is sexist is not the same as condoning that sexism.
A Muslim man is worth twice as much as a Muslim woman, and worth 30 times as much as a Hindu woman – by law.
No. The blood money payments are worth more. You’re the one who is inferring that blood money is tantamount to fundamental human value.
A Muslim man is worth $26,666. That is not defined by us in the west – it is defined by his own society.
No, it is defined by SA, so it doesn’t really tell us anything about values of Muslims in other countries, especially since many Muslims in other countries think that SA is crazy heretical perversion of Islam.
You can’t just take some random legal code from SA and pretend like it tells us something about the values of all (or even many) Muslims everywhere.
Even if we just use the same source as above and their figure of $40,000 (Purchasing Power Parity in US dollars – 2005) with no attempt to account for increasing wages over the years that’s $1,600,000 or 62 times the $ value the society of the SA victim places on his life. And with SA being the wealthiest Islamic country it’s safe IMO to assume that the value would potentially be much less in other Islamic countries.
The US is a far more litigious country than even many western nations. It also has a much narrower social safety net than a country like SA. Also, in many Islamic countries, there are cultural practices that dictate that families that lose a wage earner will be cared for by family. One could look at that as a different form of social insurance than what we’ve come up with, and one that obviates the need for massive judgments that can’t be enforced anyway.
Finally, making laws that specify huge massive judgments may not make sense in countries that have significantly less state capacity than the US. Let’s say that SA did demand that you’d have to pay full lifetime income: how could you enforce that judgment in a country where police, judges, and government officials can be easily bribed? For that matter, courts in the US can order whatever they want, but when the perpetrator is an individual, the likelihood that they’ll such a huge judgment is quite small. Due to rampant corruption, entities that can afford to make big payments (princes, large corporations) have much more power to simply shut cases down. I’m not sure you appreciate how difficult it is to run a civil society when most civil servants literally don’t earn enough money to feed their families.
I’m constantly told that we in the west have no business pushing our values on other societies – so who am I to argue.
I don’t know who told you that, but I don’t think it is a good rule, at least not in the form you stated.
If it has a serious point at all, it is that other societies themselves place far less value on the lives of their citizens than we sometimes do.
Really? So, do you think that an Egyptian father or an Iraqi father weeps less if his child is killed than an American father would? That an Iraqi woman whose husband was killed in a marketplace bombing grieves less than an American widow whose husband died on 9/11? I really hope not.
‘I wonder about statements like this. They are perfectly well accepted (indeed I found myself nodding along), but they seem almost self-evidently impossible. If we really believe the first part of the sentence I don’t think we can really believe the second.’
I can certainly imagine reasonable people taking that position in the context of a consistent ethical framework, but I can also imagine reasonable people taking the opposite position.
Speaking as someone who whiled away a goodly chunk of their free time as an undergrad hanging around philosophy students and who thus engaged in semi-rigorous debate on precisely this point more than once, I’m going to mostly side with Seb here. The former is not an unusual position to take, but when one gets down to brass tacks, all but a very few will abandon it. When testing the limit with hypothetical, the point of no return didn’t tend to be “healthy vs. infirm”. a fair number would still cleave to “no preference”; rather it was “intimate vs. stranger”. Very few indeed, when pushed, could hold that they’d be willing to flip a coin to decide whether to save a friend or family member vs. an unknown person. This is, alas*, probably quite relevant to note here.
[/anecdote]
*”Alas” because I was one of the egalitarian idealists who made it to that point but couldn’t hold firm past it.
I think I can put this in perspective without referring to any number: Has anyone heard from RiverBend since she made it to Syria?
Her last post was 22/10/07 from Damascus.
First, as to those who are arguing in good faith:
What Eric is getting at is somewhat different, I think. It is not about the value of individuals lives lost. It is instead about the IMPACT of relatively large numbers of deaths, and trying to get some kind of intuitive handle on the scale of the disaster.
Yes, I know. And, despite being pure unadulterated evil, I agree that this is valuable. I dispute, however, that “death inflation” is a useful way of getting at this. That’s in part because a society of sufficient size is varied and diverse enough such that a rough number proxy can’t be meaningful. In some areas, in some neighborhoods, the factor is probably far more than the rough 10-times multiplier that Eric applies. In others, far less. Iraq is a heterogeneous place. We should treat it as such; our policies should treat it as such.
A secondary objection is the one noted by Slartibartfast: it seems, well, wrong, to suggest that one death is worth ten others. Because we’re talking about Iraqi deaths in this context, my saying so allows some determined partisans to suggest that I view an American life as intrinsically more valuable than an Iraqi life. That’s of course neither what I meant nor what can be reasonably inferred from my statement. But I have learned through hard experience that some people, sometimes those who profess the most open of minds, have blind spots. Heck, I have them too.
(I believe that the foregoing is an adequate — although admittedly not complete — response to sensible comments by Eric and others.)
Second, as to those who simply argue:
And yet, you persistently, all the way down this thread, argue that you can’t possibly equate an Iraqi’s death with an American’s death – that they’re not the same, you said emphatically in your first comment on this thread, in any meaningful sense.
Over the nearly six years that I’ve know your blog personae, Jes, I’ve come to realize that there is at least one fundamental difference between you and I: I am happy to live in a world where you’re allowed to spout your nonsense. I suspect, however, that you’re not happy that I’m allowed to spout mine.
One only hopes that you’re different in real life.
How would you determine the dollar value of life in the US? Here are some guesses on my part:
…
I’ll say again that this is almost COMPLETELY off topic, since the discussion is about impact, NOT value.
But,
A common way to obtain an economic value for a life is in terms of willingness to accept/willingness to pay for a certain change in mortality risk. This yields the “value of a statistical life”, which you will probably see used all over in things like estimates for the cost of global warming.
For example, suppose everyone in a community is willing to accept a payment of $100 in compensation for an increased risk of death of 1/10,000.
Then, statistically, in a group of 10,000 people, one person will die. In exchange for a total payment of $1,000,000. That’s the value of a statistical life.
There are clever ways to use revealed preferences and so on to try to estimate this for actual people. In rich, developed countries, I think it usually ends up working out to somewhere on the order of a few million dollars.
In a poorer countries, where mortality is about the same but incomes are lower, it would tend to be lower. Ability to pay and willingness to accept are correspondingly lower.
In countries like Iraq, where incomes are lower, but mortality is higher by a couple orders of magnitude, I have no idea what happens, either theoretically or empirically.
How much would you have to offer an Iraqi to make him accept exchanging a 1% chance of dying this year for a 2% chance? I don’t really want to even think about it.
In any case, it has nothing to do with Eric’s argument, which is about IMPACT.
If it was one of Al Sadr’s guys that perpetrated this, would that make a difference in your support of him, 20% of the population and all that?
Still blame the US? Look there are bad guys there that will do anything, first the Baath, Then Al Qaeda in Iraq, now the Mahdi Army. I think that those are the bad guys. Not us.
would that make a difference in your support of him
Busted again. I got my Al-Sadr Rocks my World! t-shirt on, and am eating some ‘Sadr’s own’ Hummus (All profits going to various jihads). I was just going to pop in my Al-Sadr Live at the Budokan cd and take in his dulcet tones. I guess I will have to rethink my support of him, and if you could point me to where I made comments supporting Al Sadr, I would happily write a renunciation. Oh wait, there are no comments like that. Better luck next time, DaveC.
That’s in part because a society of sufficient size is varied and diverse enough such that a rough number proxy can’t be meaningful.
I understand what you are saying, von, but I really think this is largely wrong.
You’re obviously correct that there is a great deal of fine grained detail and context that is not captured by a single number, but that doesn’t mean you can dismiss it entirely.
We use all kinds of averages and aggregates to try to make sense of far-away, huge, incomprehensible things. It seems to me that everything you wrote there would also be true of plain old death rates, or could be adapted to dismiss just about kind of national statistic: GDP, population density, average education level. And yet those numbers do have meaning. They should never be mistaken for a complete picture, but they help.
And I think you’re ignoring the ways in which this sort of number and mental exercise helps with context even more than something like straight death rate.
For example, you say that Iraq is a heterogeneous place. That things happen in pockets and hot spots.
But the U.S. is pretty heterogeneous too. And in the course of trying to imagine some kind of civil war on the scale of Iraq, that kills 1 in 30 people, and pits neighborhood against neighborhood, state against state, you might well imagine relatively peaceful areas and all the more hellish hotspots as well. Or what it would be like to be safe, while wondering whether relatives and loved ones across the country were still alive.
In the end the point is not to know in infinite detail the precise death toll for every neighborhood and city in Baghdad. Most Americans don’t know Najaf from Basra, Sadr City from Dora. They don’t need to.
The point is to get a sense of bloodshed, suffering and disruption that a conflict on roughly the same scale produces.
A common way to obtain an economic value for a life is in terms of willingness to accept/willingness to pay for a certain change in mortality risk.
Economics is precisely as much a science as alchemy, as this example reveals.
In the economic model mentioned, we will take the acceptance of a 1/10,000 greater risk of dying in exchange for $100 as evidence of the value a person places on their life. We can do the math, and retrieve the number to place on the price tag.
In the real world, for a 1/10,000 greater risk of dying from one cause, the figure will be $100, for a 1/10,000 greater risk of dying from a second cause, the figure will be $100,000, for a 1/10,000 risk of a third cause, the subject of the questioning will refuse to accept that risk at any price, and for a 1/10,000 greater risk of a fourth cause, the subject will not need to be compensated at all to take on the risk.
This is completely irrational behavior from the economist’s point of view – the numbers should all come out the same – but then economists are completely irrational, and from an insane viewpoint, the sane man appears to be insane.
As a second example, if a group of soldiers, on being asked what compensation they would demand to jump on a grenade thrown in their midst, each said they would not need or accept such compensation, our economist friends would tell us that the theory of revealed preferences had proven that those soldiers lives were worthless, and need not be compensated in any way.
Economics is the study of how to best justify the preferences of the ruling class. It was that in the USSR, it is that here now.
it seems, well, wrong, to suggest that one death is worth ten others.
Were there commemorative features in US newspapers to mark the death of 4000 Iraqis in the war, as there were for the death of 4000 US troops? Have there been long interviews with the grieving parents of dead Iraqi soldiers on prime-time US TV, telling of their pride in their child? The American media (and it’s the same in the UK) already constantly suggest that western deaths in Iraq are worth more than Iraqi ones. Why are you objecting to Eric’s rare attempt to see from a different perspective and not all these reports?
von: it seems, well, wrong, to suggest that one death is worth ten others.
*le sigh*
And yet, you keep arguing that when an American dies it matters so much more than when an Iraqi dies. Given your utter resistence to the idea that Eric is promoting here, that Iraqi lives matter exactly as much as American lives, it appears that you feel an American death is worth more than 10 Iraqi deaths. How much more, Von?
Why do you feel it’s so wrong to equate an Iraqi death with an American death? Because that’s what Eric is doing in this post… and you object to it.
I suspect, however, that you’re not happy that I’m allowed to spout mine.
Thanks for the out-of-context ad hom, Von. Evidently you feel that while you can bitterly attack another person’s views and values without attacking their right to hold them, someone who attacks your views and values is obviously not capable of making the distinction. That says a lot about your state of mind.
Coming back to this, and slightly offtopic:
Given that Von’s expressed point of view – that Iraqi lives are worth less than Americans lives – is supported by the US military hierarchy, by the US government, and by most of the US media – why on earth does Von feel so threatened by the public, pointed criticism of one British lesbian without an army, a government, or a newspaper that he accuses me of wanting to censor him?
On a side note, understanding that von seems to really dislke these sorts of equivalency arguments makes his strongly stated dislke of
trialplaintiff’s lawyers much more understandable.Fixed.
While I don’t object so much to sharpening my point, Phil, I don’t want it so sharp that it pokes someone’s eye out. I do think that the ‘fixed’ thing is really not helpful for keeping a level keel on the conversation. I note that Anarch did this earlier in the thread, and while it highlights some things very effectively, it seems a bit too pointed for ObWi. Just my opinion, so please take it as just my two cents, no disrespect is intended.
While I understand, I disagree. I think nobody does anybody any favors by ignoring things that they know to be true, and by phrasing things in such a way as to give cover for people wanting to evade their real opinions. For better or worse, I follow the Sadly, No! dictum that civility at the expense of decency and honesty is overrated.
I get that, jack. I do have to say, though, that for me it took a while to get past the post title “Exchange Rate” to that point. Exchange rate is, after all, about equivalent value. It’s one of my many flaws: it’s nearly impossible for me to get past a point of initial disagreement to what’s underneath. hilzoy and I had some back-and-forth on this topic a while back in reference to Rousseau and his model of early man. I can’t possibly blame that on Eric, I know.
For me, this whole post doesn’t work. I get the whole relative impact point, but overall it doesn’t work for me. It’s like buying a suit whose jacket fits perfectly, but the trousers are far too tight.
What this says about my ass actually being too big is another conversation entirely.
Then you, like them, are doomed to only to be able to convince those who already agree with you. My opinion, of course, but I find them uncompelling, as I find nearly everyone who thinks brickbats are persuasive.
That last paragraph could be translated into English, or I could let it go a request to read what I meant, not what I actually said. IOW, “to only to be able to” should have “to only be able to”.
Should probably have written this response yesterday: What’s the value of a human life?
I hope that perhaps the juxtaposition of these two things:
It’s one of my many flaws: it’s nearly impossible for me to get past a point of initial disagreement to what’s underneath . . . Then you, like them, are doomed to only to be able to convince those who already agree with you.
. . speaks for itself, but perhaps you’ll practice some introspection here. Or, maybe not. In any case, given the former statement, I’d be wary of deciding just who is doomed to do what to whom. But I’m not you.
My opinion, of course, but I find them uncompelling, as I find nearly everyone who thinks brickbats are persuasive.
I suppose it’s not nearly as persuasive a tactic as helping Jeff Goldstein track IP addresses to figure out where his abusive trolls work. Let me know how that works out for you in the “convincing people of things” arena, will you?
And I hardly think that noting the absolutely, unequivocally true fact that von does not like trial lawyers qua trial lawyers, but, in fact, dislikes plaintiff’s trial lawyers, constitutes a “brickbat.” Perhaps some people are more thin-skinned than I was initially led to believe?
I think it convinced him to stop, so: mission accomplished.
As far as brickbats are concerned, von’s particular case does not encompass the universe, or even a significant subset, of brickbat deployment.
As far as brickbats are concerned, von’s particular case does not encompass the universe, or even a significant subset, of brickbat deployment.
That’s true — lots of lawyers never see the inside of a courtroom.
As far as brickbats are concerned, von’s particular case does not encompass the universe, or even a significant subset, of brickbat deployment.
That’s true — lots of lawyers never see the inside of a courtroom.
Given that Von’s expressed point of view – that Iraqi lives are worth less than Americans lives – is supported by the US military hierarchy, by the US government, and by most of the US media – why on earth does Von feel so threatened by the public, pointed criticism of one British lesbian without an army, a government, or a newspaper that he accuses me of wanting to censor him?
Movin’ on, Jes: No matter how many times you say that my “expressed point of view [is] that Iraqi lives are worth less than Americans lives”, it won’t make it true. But I’m sure that, in hopes of misleading some latecomer, you’ll repeat the libel.
On a side note, understanding that von seems to really dislke these sorts of equivalency arguments makes his strongly stated dislke of [stike: trial] plaintiff’s lawyers much more understandable.
Phil‘s correction is fine. Although, to be more specific, I don’t dislike “plaintiff’s lawyers.” (I realize that I sometimes make tongue-in-cheek statements that suggest that I do.) Many plaintiffs need lawyers; hell, I represent plaintiffs from time to time. (And not just businesses. I’ve represented a prisoner who suffered racial discrimination in a prison workshop; I’ve helped Lambda Legal Defense represent folks who suffered unfair insurance caps for AIDs-related treatment; etc.)
What I dislike are certain tactics by some in the contingency-fee plaintiff’s bar, particularly in the mass tort and patent contexts. These are large, established plaintiff’s lawyers who (frequently) make a lot more money than anyone on the defense side of the “v.”
Make no mistake: there are legitimate cases out there. But my personal view is that the system can motivate attorneys to act in ways contrary to the public interest. This can be particularly true where a big-money case is taken on contingency-fee basis and there isn’t a clear or single “plaintiff” (e.g., in the class action context, or where the owner of a patent is a nonpracticing holding copy headed by a lawyer). Such a circumstance can’t help but distort
“who the client is.” It takes real work for a lawyer to overcome this distortion. Not all do.
von: No matter how many times you say that my “expressed point of view [is] that Iraqi lives are worth less than Americans lives”, it won’t make it true.
And no matter how many times you assert that the reason you don’t understand Eric’s point is that you don’t know your 10 times table, I’m just not going to believe you. Which leaves your belief that Iraqi lives aren’t equal to American lives.
In the UK, of course, you could sue me for libel despite the statement being true, providing you showed that I had damaged you by the assertion. Since your belief is the belief of the dominant culture in the US, I don’t see that you could prove your case.
I find it interesting, however, that having first charged me with wanting to censor you, your next strategy is to make the claim that you could censor me by legal means.
I think it convinced him to stop, so: mission accomplished.
Congratulations! You must be quite proud.
Plus, you know, I’ve seen both OCSteve and Slarti express this if-people-are-snarky-I-can’t-pay-attention-to-the-argument thing. Is this common among people? Among conservatives? I mean, you can either read for content or you can’t, tone aside. If you can’t, I don’t think it’s fair to blame the writer.
I have no problem with eric’s post or the way he chose to make his point. So, in some very limited way, that puts me at odds with von. With that, since you, Jes, assert that von has managed to “persistently, all the way down this thread, argue that you can’t possibly equate an Iraqi’s death with an American’s death,” why don’t you simply quote him to prove it? I don’t see that anywhere.
No, it’s more like once the ad hominem, misrepresentation, foregone conclusions, guilt by association, etc are subtracted, there’s little else there to pay attention to. In general, I mean. Plus, sometimes it’s too damned much work to do the subtracting. If you want to make a compelling argument, please don’t make me work to figure out just what your argument is. In general, Phil, this isn’t about you in particular.
See pretty much 75% of my exchanges with Jesurgislac as for-instances.
Snark is great, if it’s all in good fun. When it’s vicious and you’re on the receiving end, just look and see how willing to wade through all the FUN and extract the core arguments you are willing to be. Of course, YMMV.
This more or less underscores my point. If you’d just come out and say what there is for you to say, it’d remove at least one iteration from the back-and-forth. This iteration would be: what’s your point? If I have to keep asking you what your point is, eventually you might come to the conclusion that the snark is impeding communication. In this situation, to borrow from one of your earlier comments, a little introspection might come in handy.
Of course there may just be a conservatives-are-from-Mars, liberals-are-from-Uranus thing going on, here. Append smiley-face to that if you think I’m being nasty.
“Plus, you know, I’ve seen both OCSteve and Slarti express this if-people-are-snarky-I-can’t-pay-attention-to-the-argument thing. Is this common among people? Among conservatives?”
Is this a serious question? Because it sounds like it should be snarky but that would suggest it means the opposite of what it sounds like you mean.
Yes, tone can change how a message is received. And it isn’t just conservatives. A nasty enough tone can distract from the message. And that isn’t just conservatives.
Again was that really a question?
No, it’s more like once the ad hominem, misrepresentation, foregone conclusions, guilt by association, etc are subtracted, there’s little else there to pay attention to. In general, I mean.
From a regular reader of Protein Wisdom, I find this manifestly unconvincing. At best.
When it’s vicious and you’re on the receiving end, just look and see how willing to wade through all the FUN and extract the core arguments you are willing to be. Of course, YMMV.
I’m an atheist, left-leaning libertarian who supports both individual gun ownership and habeas rights for accused terrorists. This is not a position with which I am unfamiliar.
If you want to make a compelling argument, please don’t make me work to figure out just what your argument is . . If you’d just come out and say what there is for you to say, it’d remove at least one iteration from the back-and-forth.
This from you, of all people? Jesus Christ, Slarti.
And I was completely serious about the “you must be proud.” Presumably you are not ashamed of perhaps helping to get someone fired for trolling the interwebs, ergo, you must be proud.
I mean, I’ve never seen you put that kind of effort into rooting out the trolls over here, nor have I ever seen you place a troll’s place of employment and address in comments here for all to say, nor even recommend a way for people to contact said employer, even though you’ve still got front-page privileges here and there have been some mighty nasty pieces of work here over the years. But still, capital job!
You’re still replacing your point with snark, Phil. Can you even turn it off anymore?
Slarti: Of course there may just be a conservatives-are-from-Mars, liberals-are-from-Uranus thing going on, here. Append smiley-face to that if you think I’m being nasty.
😮 😮 By Jupiter, Slarti, it took me a moment to read that in an American accent and realise how crude you were being. 😮 😮
But if you’re determined to insert yourself into that particular dispute, you might as well know that I have no promise to anyone, anywhere, that I won’t obtain publicly available information about an IP that someone else makes publicly available.
If you think I did something sneaky, you must be unaware of the existence of arin.net.
Lastly, I did nothing to get the guy fired. Was he in fact fired?
If you think there’s a trust issue here with me being able to access commenter IP addresses here, you might want to request that hilzoy change the password. I could swear not to ever login again, but if you don’t trust me to keep your information private, you won’t be trusting that promise.
If any of your point has overlap with any of the above, great. If not, you might want to make your point.
“No, it’s more like once the ad hominem, misrepresentation, foregone conclusions, guilt by association, etc are subtracted, there’s little else there to pay attention to. In general, I mean.
From a regular reader of Protein Wisdom, I find this manifestly unconvincing. At best.”
Are you saying that Slarti is wrong about his comment because he reads Protein Wisdom? I don’t understand the inferences involved in that. Isn’t it possible that Protein Wisdom involves a type of snark that isn’t likely to convince/do anything but irritate its opponents, and therefore reinforces Slarti’s point. He mentioned that it can be fun to watch when it is on your side, but not useful to discussion in general.
Does anyone want to let me know what Phil and Slarti are talking about?
I’d prefer that Phil make his point, at last. Hopefully soon, because it’s looking to me as if he’s accusing me of something, and questioning my ability to keep y’all’s information confidential.
It’s hard to know just what he’s saying, though.
I was just thinking that there seems to be a lot of backstory that I’m unfamiliar with. Probably worth it, since Jeff G. drives me up a tree, and reading him all that time just to be able to follow this would have been excruciating, but there we are.
If you think I did something sneaky, you must be unaware of the existence of arin.net.
I don’t think you did anything sneaky at all. I’m well aware of how to do a whois lookup. It was just interesting to see you go so enthusiastically after a comments troll, to the pointing of looking up where his IP resolved to and posting it in comments. Don’t remember you ever seeing you so concerned about the trolls here, even when you were posting. Just found it curious. Was there something about this particular one, or is there something about Goldstein, or . . . ?
Lastly, I did nothing to get the guy fired. Was he in fact fired?
Beats the hell out of me. I suppose it partially depends on how many people emailed the “abuse@” address that you also made available, as well as contacting the technical contact whose name and West Coast location you also helpfully provided.
it’s looking to me as if he’s accusing me of something, and questioning my ability to keep y’all’s information confidential.
Au contraire. In fact, next time someone shows up, say, accusing hilzoy of being a traitorous commie terrorist lover, I hope you’ll help out here as enthusiastically as you do at Protein Wisdom!
You accusing someone else of being insufficiently clear about a point, though, is just . . . is “surreal” sufficient, or do I need another word here?
I have to say, as a regular commenter on Obsidian Wings, while naturally I consider Slarti to be one of the monsters from hell who should be suspended over a scorpion pit for ten thousand years, you know the kind of thing we liberals love, it would literally never occur to me that he might not be trustworthy with confidential information.
Really. Never.
Or indeed any of the front page bloggers at Obsidian Wings.
Phil: Slarti has never, ever abused any privileges here.
Also: I’d very much prefer it if you all didn’t force me to do my Rodney King imitation. (“Can’t we all get along?”) As, I’m sure, would everyone else. I don’t make a very convincing Rodney King.
Jes: thanks, I think.
hilzoy, too: thanks. Although the notion that I’ve never, ever abused any priveleges might be a wee bit inaccurate, as I did IP lookup that stalker that we had a few years back that kept posting scary things. There might have been one or two other occasions where I had to chase off those who just refused to stay banned; I honestly cannot recall.
So Phil does have a certain point, maybe.
If someone could help me out and point out where I’ve accused Slarti of abusing his privilges or violating any ObWier’s privacy, I’d appreciate it.
I’m just curious as to why he would, at Protein Wisdom, go so far as to post a troll’s company name, employment address, website abuse email and website technical contact in comments for all to take advantage of, and not do the same with troll’s here.
The information here is not mine to share, Phil. I don’t know how else to put it, other than I treat it as classified. The rules are different over there, and I don’t have access to IPs over there. I don’t do anything other than comment occasionally.
Additionally, all of the information you mention is in fact publicly available information. Again, if you know arin.net as you claim to, you’d know that the abuse line, the technical contact, the street address, etc are all in full view when you do an IP lookup. Furthermore, anyone else with the ability to do what I did, which is just about everyone, could look up the same information, given the IP.
Are you really encouraging me to publish privileged information here? If not, you’re still not making yourself clear. Hilzoy is more about gentle correction (sorry for the phrasing, but time is short), but I think she’d be quite taken aback at some of that troll’s antics. And I’d have been tempted. Sorely. Particularly if it posted something like this. It does have a certain history, after all.
me:: I think I can put this in perspective without referring to any number: Has anyone heard from RiverBend since she made it to Syria?
Nombrilisme Vide: Her last post was 22/10/07 from Damascus.
That would be “No”, then.
Anyone else? The long silence is extremely troubling.
My apologies, I was only making a simple suggestion that requoting someone and changing a few words and adding ‘fixed’ as being unhelpful and I certainly didn’t mean to move the conversation in the way it did.
Slarti: I would have banned that in a heartbeat. Only gentle up to a point. 😉
von: I dispute, however, that “death inflation” is a useful way of getting at this.
von, you’ve used “inflation” to describe Eric’s post something like a dozen times, and it’s missing the point completely. In fact, it’s just plain wrong. This isn’t “inflation” in any way shape or form; it’s relativizing a statistic to a different population. If you’re objecting to that then, a priori, you’re objecting to statistics, period. Since you clearly don’t, please come up with some other way of describing this.
[I mean, what’s next? Claiming that one can’t compare relative performance of cars because they’re different models? Objecting that mortality percentages are meaningless because they come from different populations? Please.]
And, FWIW, as a separate point I stand by what I said earlier: Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives to Americans, and reprehensibly so, by pretty much any metric you care to name. I’m not talking the usual tribal “me and mine are more valuable than you and yours”, which I completely understand; I’m talking about nearly total indifference to their suffering, to the point where we’re arguing over the denominators of statistics — when we talk about them at all — instead of weeping over their deaths.
Anarch: [I mean, what’s next? Claiming that one can’t compare relative performance of cars because they’re different models? Objecting that mortality percentages are meaningless because they come from different populations? Please.]
Less than 200 000 abortions are performed per year in the UK. Over 1.2 million abortions are performed per year in the US.
If we follow Von’s thinking as outlined in this thread, then clearly, women and health services in the UK are far more anti-abortion than in the US, since numerically fewer abortions were performed, and it would be “abortion inflation” to compare these numbers by the number of women in either country aged between 14 and 44.
von, you’ve used “inflation” to describe Eric’s post something like a dozen times, and it’s missing the point completely. In fact, it’s just plain wrong. This isn’t “inflation” in any way shape or form; it’s relativizing a statistic to a different population. If you’re objecting to that then, a priori, you’re objecting to statistics, period. Since you clearly don’t, please come up with some other way of describing this.
Inflation is one particular way of “relativizing a statistic to a different population.” “Inflation” occurs when the number of Xs in circulation increases such that the value of any one X is diminished. In the case of money, inflation occurs when the money supply (M(s)) exceeds the growth of productivity.
Inflation is usually used with dollars (or euros, pounds, etc.) But Eric’s doing essentially the same thing with deaths: he’s trying to relativize a statistic by inflating the number of deaths in America to take into account a difference in population size.
Calling Eric’s approach “inflation” simply recognizes the particular kind of relativizing Eric is trying to do. It’s more precise to say “inflation” than it is to use the much broader “relativizing.”
Although I recognize the point that Eric is trying to make, for the reasons stated above, I don’t think that Eric’s approach is the best way to get at is point.
Incidentally, Jesurgislac has some blind spot on this topic that keeps her from actually seeing what I’m arguing. Her purported explanation of my views at 3:18 AM is no different.
Late to the party again.
I’m just curious as to why he would, at Protein Wisdom, go so far as to post a troll’s company name, employment address, website abuse email and website technical contact in comments for all to take advantage of, and not do the same with troll’s here.
I’m not familiar with what happened at PW, because I wouldn’t read that site on a bet. To paraphrase Moe Howard, whenever Goldstein posts, he weakens the nation. Life’s too short. IMVHO, of course.
I’ve been posting here for a little while, and have read Obwi for quite a bit longer, and I’ve never seen Slartibartfast come within ten country miles of abusing whatever privileges he holds here.
Sticking my nose into another cranky topic:
For the record, I also find the “Fixed” style of commenting on a prior post to be annoying. Annoying as in, it’s hard for me to hear the point that’s being made because the words “bugger off” are sounding too loudly in my head.
Which goes, I suppose, to demonstrate that failure to hear the message through the snark is not exclusively a conservative trait.
Personally, of course, I try to eschew snark. Rather than indulge in vulgar sarcasm, I prefer to proceed directly to the multi-paragraph irascible rant. -)
Thanks –
Additionally, all of the information you mention is in fact publicly available information.
Have I disputed that somewhere? Because I don’t believe that I have.
Furthermore, anyone else with the ability to do what I did, which is just about everyone, could look up the same information, given the IP.
Yes, and if anyone had wanted to, they could have. You, of all people posting there, felt the need to save them the trouble, by posting the information right there in the comments thread. Did you feel that was a constructive use of your time? What end did you suppose it would lead to? Does Jeff Goldstein not have an email address, or an AIM or other instant messaging contact, if you felt it was important for him to have that info RIGHT NOW?
Are you really encouraging me to publish privileged information here?
No.
russell, remember when a bunch of people briefly bullied you into dumping “thanks” from your posts, because they thought it was sarcastic? I guess maybe not.
Curiously, of all the people taking exception to my “fixing” of von’s comment, von himself had essentially no problem with it. Perhaps some people’s sensitivity meters need re-adjusting.
“taking exception” is not really how I would characterize it, and if I did, my apologies. I just suggested that it is not really an optimal way to get one’s point across. I mentioned it a while ago when Sebastian did it to Turbulence (and Sebastian acknowledged it graciously I should add). I saw Anarch use it, and when you used it on what I wrote, I thought that I should say something.
I should also point out that in this particular case, it is not von’s comment that you ‘fixed’, it was mine, so it is like you want to start a fight by proxy, and take my words to try and ding von. Or perhaps wanted to take a shot at von and grabbed whatever comment that seemed to make a good club. That’s just asking for trouble imo, though I’m not too fussed about it because I know von isn’t going to go postal on me over it.
von: Incidentally, Jesurgislac has some blind spot on this topic that keeps her from actually seeing what I’m arguing. Her purported explanation of my views at 3:18 AM is no different.
Good grief. Okay. I take it then that you do regard the UK as a more anti-abortion country than the US, as the number of abortions performed in the UK is fewer. Which means your problem with Eric’s post was, in fact, the problem that you don’t understand how to do basic arithmetic.
Can I suggest you take a remedial course? Being that number-blind is surely a serious handicap, even in these days of pocket calculators.
I’m a little surprised to find this thread still going and even somewhat on point.
I sometimes find myself at odds with von, but in this instance I sympathize with his reaction. I want to offer a different example, not precisely analogous but perhaps worth consideration.
I had a very strong negative reaction to the term “ground zero” applied to the World Trade Center. I felt it to be hyperbole to the point of nonsense. Alluding as it does to the effects of a nuclear weapon it is an utterly ridiculous comparison. It fails to encompass the destructive power of even the smallest “tactical” nuclear weapon. Such an inappropriate parallel demeans the tragedy of the attack on the Word Trade Center. It also bespeaks a lack of understanding of the danger of nuclear weapons.
In January, 2002 I wrote a letter to the New York Times on this topic, unpublished of course. It was a futile gesture. Railing against this term is completely pointless — it has entered the lexicon. “I’m feeling lucky” at Google gives you the “Ground Zero Cams”, a live webcam of construction of the Freedom Tower.
Making a numerical comparison of what a tragedy feels like is fraught with peril. It opens the door to all kinds of arguments about value and worth as we have seen here. It also suffers from the curse of innumeracy as Anarch decrys.
But how are we to think about these unimaginable horrors? History is full of them. The future may hold yet worse.
For me, appreciating scale is a help. I was deeply moved by my first visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It gave me insight into the meaning of the number 58,000. [Now, according to http://www.nps.gov/vive/faqs.htm, 58,249.]
I don’t find it useful to apply a “conversion rate” to lives. The raw numbers are bad enough as it is. After writing that letter, I found myself thinking more and more about large numbers of lost lives. I found myself reading population signs as I passed them on the freeway, multiplying and dividing, comparing with Hiroshima, the Holocaust, 1.7 million in Cambodia (Pol Pot), unknown millions in Russia under Stalin, on and on. Is it even possible to comprehend this?
I’m surprised to find that the famous Stalin quote on this subject is not on the Wikipedia page (at the moment, anyway). One million dead may be a statistic to some, but I hope we can at least try to understand. If this is Eric’s way, so be it.
A weapon against innumeracy: Powers of 10.
russell, remember when a bunch of people briefly bullied you into dumping “thanks” from your posts, because they thought it was sarcastic? I guess maybe not.
I don’t remember that, because it never happened.
Seb asked me if I was aware that ending my posts with “thanks” seemed sarcastic. I said no, I wasn’t aware of that, but if it was coming off that way I would remove it, to avoid a misunderstanding.
Several folks, including Sebastian, then chimed in to say that it either didn’t bother them at all, or that it didn’t bother them now that I had clarified my intent.
So, “thanks” returned.
There was no bullying, at all. It was a simple exchange of posts explaining points of view, followed by a resolution that was, and AFAIK continues to be, satisfactory to all.
End of story.
It’s cool if folks want to do the strike-out thing, I was just offering a data point on how it was received by me, personally. God knows my rants probably rub folks the wrong way often enough, I’m really not in a position to do more than offer an opinion.
If you have a beef with Slartibartfast, that’s cool, but it’s not my issue, or really anyone’s here at ObWi as far as I can tell. To my knowledge, Slarti has never, remotely, abused whatever privileges he holds here.
I am now retiring from the discussion of the great IP reverse lookup scandal, as I have nothing further to contribute to it. Plus, I have to go mow the lawn.
Thanks –
I am [more] aware of all Internet traditions as a result of this thread.
@Eric: Possibly the post title started some of the responses down an unhelpful track.
@Jeff: There has been no news or sign of Riverbend anywhere other than her blog since last October that I’m aware of.