Tuesday, 27 November 2012
One more thing about two-point attempts
With the scores level late near the end of an NFL game, your side scores a touchdown. You've worked out that the chance of success with a two-point conversion, for either side, is a little over 50%. So you should try for two? No. It makes a difference only if your opponents are going to score a touchdown of their own. Then if you've failed with a two-point attempt, they're certain to win by kicking a single point (under the simplifying assumption that these kicks always succeed). Whereas if you've succeeded, they can still tie the game with their own two-point conversion. In fact, to make your two-point attempt the right strategy the chance of success has to be more than (2 - sqrt(2)), about 58.6%.
Friday, 23 November 2012
Numerate Coaching in Sports
Moneyball documented the rising importance of numeracy in baseball coaching, starting with Billy Beane at Oakland in the late 1990s: gratifyingly for nerds this has spread to other sports. There was a hint of this in a Thanksgiving game of American Football this evening (it's a good game for armchair coaches).
Dallas was behind by 22 points early in the fourth quarter. The scoring system is that you score six points for a 'touchdown', and that qualifies you to attempt to kick a 'point after' - like a conversion in rugby. As an alternative to the point after you can opt to try to score again from the two yard line: that's worth two points. More easily than scoring a touchdown, you can get three points for a 'field goal' - the difference of 22 points was a difference of four converted touchdowns against two field goals. In practice the success rate for two-point attempts is about 48%, whereas points after are a near certainty, assuming a regular kicker in reasonable playing conditions, so the two-point option is selected only at certain scores late in the game.
And this was one of them. Dallas scored a touchdown, and tried (successfully) for two points. This is clearly the correct strategy. The only real chance of getting anything out of the game from 22 points down was to outscore their opponents by three touchdowns to none over the remainder of the game, and to get at least one two-point conversion. It was right to make the attempt at the first opportunity because if it succeeded they could revert to points after following the next two (presumed) touchdowns*, whereas if it failed they could attempt to compensate with two more two-point attempts.
There's a more common application of this sort of strategy for a team behind by 14 points late enough in the game that its only chance is to score two touchdowns to none. The correct strategy** is to attempt two points after the first touchdown, because if you fail you can attempt to compensate by scoring two points after the next, whereas if you succeed you can win the game with a point after the next touchdown.
However, having reduced the deficit to 14 points, Dallas did score another touchdown, and kicked a point after instead of trying for another two. So perhaps I've overestimated the coach's intelligence. Or perhaps he understood what he ought to do, but lacked the courage to do it.
Unsurprisingly enough, none of this affected the result. Dallas lost.
___
*This consideration is sufficient to demonstrate the correctness of the strategy, but as the rest of the post suggests, it's not the whole story
**Assuming that points after are certain, this latter strategy is correct if the two-point success rate is more than (3-sqrt(5))/2, about 38.2%.
Dallas was behind by 22 points early in the fourth quarter. The scoring system is that you score six points for a 'touchdown', and that qualifies you to attempt to kick a 'point after' - like a conversion in rugby. As an alternative to the point after you can opt to try to score again from the two yard line: that's worth two points. More easily than scoring a touchdown, you can get three points for a 'field goal' - the difference of 22 points was a difference of four converted touchdowns against two field goals. In practice the success rate for two-point attempts is about 48%, whereas points after are a near certainty, assuming a regular kicker in reasonable playing conditions, so the two-point option is selected only at certain scores late in the game.
And this was one of them. Dallas scored a touchdown, and tried (successfully) for two points. This is clearly the correct strategy. The only real chance of getting anything out of the game from 22 points down was to outscore their opponents by three touchdowns to none over the remainder of the game, and to get at least one two-point conversion. It was right to make the attempt at the first opportunity because if it succeeded they could revert to points after following the next two (presumed) touchdowns*, whereas if it failed they could attempt to compensate with two more two-point attempts.
There's a more common application of this sort of strategy for a team behind by 14 points late enough in the game that its only chance is to score two touchdowns to none. The correct strategy** is to attempt two points after the first touchdown, because if you fail you can attempt to compensate by scoring two points after the next, whereas if you succeed you can win the game with a point after the next touchdown.
However, having reduced the deficit to 14 points, Dallas did score another touchdown, and kicked a point after instead of trying for another two. So perhaps I've overestimated the coach's intelligence. Or perhaps he understood what he ought to do, but lacked the courage to do it.
Unsurprisingly enough, none of this affected the result. Dallas lost.
___
*This consideration is sufficient to demonstrate the correctness of the strategy, but as the rest of the post suggests, it's not the whole story
**Assuming that points after are certain, this latter strategy is correct if the two-point success rate is more than (3-sqrt(5))/2, about 38.2%.
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Thoughts on the US Election
Barack Obama has been duly re-elected president, winning the Electoral College by 332 to 206, and the popular vote by 50.6% to 47.8% (with the rest going to minor candidates).
The result was closely in line with the projections of the poll aggregators, so no one had any right to be surprised by it. And yet much of the Republican Party seems to have been genuinely shocked. A host of Republican pundits predicted a Romney victory - "I am now predicting a 330-vote electoral landslide" (by which definition the actual result was an Obama landslide"). Romney's campaign agreed that he was ahead. Now, media pundits don't necessarily say what they think - they are writing to please their readers as much as to inform them. And even pessimistic politicians need to present a reasonably confident demeanour during elections, so as to maintain enthusiasm among party workers and donors. But Romney's campaign tactics in the final weeks - his cautious approach to the last two debates, and his decision to campaign in Pennsylvannia on the day of the election - seem to suggest that his campaign really thought he was going to win.
So how can they have been so wrong? To win the election, Romney would have had to overcome not the 2.7% margin in the popular vote, but the 4.7% margin in Colorado, along with lower hurdles in Virginia, Ohio and Florida. You deserve to be wrong if you make a projection based on reports of enthusiasm at Romney rallies and how many yard signs you've seen, but most of the Republican analysts were looking at raw polling numbers much the same as everyone else's. What they did with them was different - they thought turn-out would be much higher among Romney supporters than Obama's. One non-partisan polling organization - Gallup - agreed with them, so they've got some excuse. But if your interpretation of what's happening is well away from the consensus, and if the consensus turns out to be right, you have to wonder whether you've overestimated your own competence.
The demographic breakdown of votes cast is interesting - Romney did as well among white voters as did GHW Bush against Dukakis. But whites are no longer a large enough proportion of the electorate for that to be sufficient. Since the demographics shifts are going to continue, the Republicans need a new strategy. It's always a pleasure to offer advice to a defeated foe, so here's mine:
1) Ditch Bush. You can't stop the electorate blaming Bush rather than Obama for the USA's economic difficulties, but you can stop them expecting more of the same from the next Republican they elect.
Republicans are convinced that Obama is woefully incompetent. I really can't understand why they think so, but if they want people to take them seriously on the subject they need first to face up publicly to the fact, obvious to much of the electorate, that GW Bush was a disastrously bad president. He failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks, then he invaded Afghanistan to follow up his demand that the Taliban must "hand over the terrorists" but failed to catch the most important terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, whom he'd said he wanted "dead or alive". He invaded Iraq because it hadn't complied with demands to rid itself of "weapons of mass destruction" and the weapons turned out not to exist. He had no sort of exit strategy for either war, with the result that the war in Iraq lasted officially for nearly nine years, and the war in Afghanistan is in its twelfth year. And he destroyed the USA's reputation for respecting human rights by adopting the torture of suspects as a routine practice. Meanwhile on the economic front he exploded the budget deficit by cutting taxes and expanding Medicare benefits, then steered the USA and the world into the worst financial crisis for eighty years. And he indulged in government by crony, most visibly in the case of FEMA and its feeble response to Hurricane Katrina. Against this litany of disaster, Republican charges against Obama are vanishingly small beer.
Politicians in the UK have learnt to disown their former leaders - Labour in particular have moved sharply away from Tony Blair, who shared in some of Bush's folly. It's really not that hard.
2) Ditch vote-losing rhetoric that's not part of your core message. The primary system forces presidential candidates to appeal first to their own parties, which makes it harder to occupy the centre ground when it comes to the general election, so Republican leaders need to get started now on persuading their members that Hispanic immigrants are as much a part of the American Dream as anyone else, and that women are entitled to the same sexual autonomy as men. The examples of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock should make it easy to persuade the Neanderthals to keep their prejudices to themselves.
My understanding is that the Republicans' corebelieve belief is in low taxes and small government, and that it's a popular notion in the USA. So concentrate on that.
3) Get out more. Republicans have their own version of reality, not just when it comes to opinion polls. Fox News is helpful to them if it attracts converts, but damaging if it hides the truth about what's happening in the USA from the Primary electorate. A political party should have its own values, but not its own facts.
Meanwhile, what should Obama be doing? All the talk is of a "fiscal cliff" - at the end of the year the "Bush Tax Cuts" will expire, and there will be an automatic cut of about 0.25% in federal spending. The raw effect will be roughly to halve the budget deficit (fiscal multiplier effects will make the actual deficit reduction smaller, as they have when European governments have attempted to reduce their deficits). But in reality, it's not a cliff, it's a slope - the effects will be gradual. And they'll cause more pain to Republicans than to the president - why should he care if taxes go back to Clinton-era levels? And most of the Democrats' favourite programmes are protected from the spending cuts. And unlike most of Congress, Obama doesn't have to worry about re-election any more.
I think this is what Obama planned all along. The Republicans have engaged in unprecedented levels of obstruction in Congress, so once the Democrats lost their super-majority in the Senate, Obama found it very difficult to get any legislation passed. He has responded by extending the use of executive powers, and by exploiting the Republican's weakness - their lack of contact with reality which caused them to believe that they would win the recent presidential election. So he made short-term compromises, attracting much criticism from his own side, in order to get a budget deal which suits him this side of the election - the Republicans assumed they would have the presidency and a Senate majority by now, so they thought it didn't much matter what they agreed to.
Having won his gamble on re-election, all Obama has to do now is sit on his hands. Income taxes will go up, and he can then offer Republicans proposals he actually likes to reduce them again. Here are some suggestions from me:
- a carbon tax, in return for revenue-neutral reductions in income taxes. The tax would be levied on all fossil fuels at a level corresponding to an independent scientific estimate of the global economic cost of carbon dioxide emissions.
- phasing out agricultural subsidies, in return for revenue-neutral reductions in income taxes. Obama has always supported agricultural subsidies, but then he's always cared about re-election. He's free now to do what's right.
- legalizing marijuana, and taxing it, in return for revenue-neutral reductions in income taxes.
I can't say I'm confident that Obama will propose any of these things. But I'd love it if he did.
The result was closely in line with the projections of the poll aggregators, so no one had any right to be surprised by it. And yet much of the Republican Party seems to have been genuinely shocked. A host of Republican pundits predicted a Romney victory - "I am now predicting a 330-vote electoral landslide" (by which definition the actual result was an Obama landslide"). Romney's campaign agreed that he was ahead. Now, media pundits don't necessarily say what they think - they are writing to please their readers as much as to inform them. And even pessimistic politicians need to present a reasonably confident demeanour during elections, so as to maintain enthusiasm among party workers and donors. But Romney's campaign tactics in the final weeks - his cautious approach to the last two debates, and his decision to campaign in Pennsylvannia on the day of the election - seem to suggest that his campaign really thought he was going to win.
So how can they have been so wrong? To win the election, Romney would have had to overcome not the 2.7% margin in the popular vote, but the 4.7% margin in Colorado, along with lower hurdles in Virginia, Ohio and Florida. You deserve to be wrong if you make a projection based on reports of enthusiasm at Romney rallies and how many yard signs you've seen, but most of the Republican analysts were looking at raw polling numbers much the same as everyone else's. What they did with them was different - they thought turn-out would be much higher among Romney supporters than Obama's. One non-partisan polling organization - Gallup - agreed with them, so they've got some excuse. But if your interpretation of what's happening is well away from the consensus, and if the consensus turns out to be right, you have to wonder whether you've overestimated your own competence.
The demographic breakdown of votes cast is interesting - Romney did as well among white voters as did GHW Bush against Dukakis. But whites are no longer a large enough proportion of the electorate for that to be sufficient. Since the demographics shifts are going to continue, the Republicans need a new strategy. It's always a pleasure to offer advice to a defeated foe, so here's mine:
1) Ditch Bush. You can't stop the electorate blaming Bush rather than Obama for the USA's economic difficulties, but you can stop them expecting more of the same from the next Republican they elect.
Republicans are convinced that Obama is woefully incompetent. I really can't understand why they think so, but if they want people to take them seriously on the subject they need first to face up publicly to the fact, obvious to much of the electorate, that GW Bush was a disastrously bad president. He failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks, then he invaded Afghanistan to follow up his demand that the Taliban must "hand over the terrorists" but failed to catch the most important terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, whom he'd said he wanted "dead or alive". He invaded Iraq because it hadn't complied with demands to rid itself of "weapons of mass destruction" and the weapons turned out not to exist. He had no sort of exit strategy for either war, with the result that the war in Iraq lasted officially for nearly nine years, and the war in Afghanistan is in its twelfth year. And he destroyed the USA's reputation for respecting human rights by adopting the torture of suspects as a routine practice. Meanwhile on the economic front he exploded the budget deficit by cutting taxes and expanding Medicare benefits, then steered the USA and the world into the worst financial crisis for eighty years. And he indulged in government by crony, most visibly in the case of FEMA and its feeble response to Hurricane Katrina. Against this litany of disaster, Republican charges against Obama are vanishingly small beer.
Politicians in the UK have learnt to disown their former leaders - Labour in particular have moved sharply away from Tony Blair, who shared in some of Bush's folly. It's really not that hard.
2) Ditch vote-losing rhetoric that's not part of your core message. The primary system forces presidential candidates to appeal first to their own parties, which makes it harder to occupy the centre ground when it comes to the general election, so Republican leaders need to get started now on persuading their members that Hispanic immigrants are as much a part of the American Dream as anyone else, and that women are entitled to the same sexual autonomy as men. The examples of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock should make it easy to persuade the Neanderthals to keep their prejudices to themselves.
My understanding is that the Republicans' core
3) Get out more. Republicans have their own version of reality, not just when it comes to opinion polls. Fox News is helpful to them if it attracts converts, but damaging if it hides the truth about what's happening in the USA from the Primary electorate. A political party should have its own values, but not its own facts.
Meanwhile, what should Obama be doing? All the talk is of a "fiscal cliff" - at the end of the year the "Bush Tax Cuts" will expire, and there will be an automatic cut of about 0.25% in federal spending. The raw effect will be roughly to halve the budget deficit (fiscal multiplier effects will make the actual deficit reduction smaller, as they have when European governments have attempted to reduce their deficits). But in reality, it's not a cliff, it's a slope - the effects will be gradual. And they'll cause more pain to Republicans than to the president - why should he care if taxes go back to Clinton-era levels? And most of the Democrats' favourite programmes are protected from the spending cuts. And unlike most of Congress, Obama doesn't have to worry about re-election any more.
I think this is what Obama planned all along. The Republicans have engaged in unprecedented levels of obstruction in Congress, so once the Democrats lost their super-majority in the Senate, Obama found it very difficult to get any legislation passed. He has responded by extending the use of executive powers, and by exploiting the Republican's weakness - their lack of contact with reality which caused them to believe that they would win the recent presidential election. So he made short-term compromises, attracting much criticism from his own side, in order to get a budget deal which suits him this side of the election - the Republicans assumed they would have the presidency and a Senate majority by now, so they thought it didn't much matter what they agreed to.
Having won his gamble on re-election, all Obama has to do now is sit on his hands. Income taxes will go up, and he can then offer Republicans proposals he actually likes to reduce them again. Here are some suggestions from me:
- a carbon tax, in return for revenue-neutral reductions in income taxes. The tax would be levied on all fossil fuels at a level corresponding to an independent scientific estimate of the global economic cost of carbon dioxide emissions.
- phasing out agricultural subsidies, in return for revenue-neutral reductions in income taxes. Obama has always supported agricultural subsidies, but then he's always cared about re-election. He's free now to do what's right.
- legalizing marijuana, and taxing it, in return for revenue-neutral reductions in income taxes.
I can't say I'm confident that Obama will propose any of these things. But I'd love it if he did.
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
Vote Obama
Today is the day of the US presidential election. The main candidates are the President, Barack Obama, who sits somewhat to the right of David Cameron in the political spectrum, and the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, who is off in the ultra-violet. (You might prefer to call it infra-red if you favour the US political colour scheme.)
Intrade is currently selling Obama 'shares', which pay $10 if Obama wins, for $6.99 (it was $6.68 when I looked last night), i.e. they give him a 70% chance of winning. Whereas you can back Romney on Betfair at 4.6 (£1 pays £4.60 if Romney wins), i.e. they give him a 21.7% chance of winning. Since these chances add up to less than 100%, if you've got accounts on both exchanges you can lock in a profit by taking both bets in an appropriate ratio, provided you bet large enough to cover the fixed fees, and the exchange you win on doesn't default. (Which suggests that arbitrageurs are none too confident in the soundness of one of the exchanges.)
Nate Silver, who got the last presidential election almost exactly right, is giving Obama a 92% chance of winning, based on his analysis of all the good quality state and national polls (recent reports that the candidates are neck and neck have been based on the national polls, which have been tighter, perhaps because sampling controls need to be determined state by state). That suggests that it's the Intrade market which is off.
Conor Friedersdorf attracted a good deal of attention six weeks ago with his article Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama. His argument was that the only way to get presidents one agrees with is not to vote for candidates one disagrees with, and his principal disagreement was over Obama's drone warfare in Pakistan.
I agree about the drone warfare. The general counter-argument is that the primaries are for picking a candidate you like; the presidential election is for choosing a president from the candidates on offer. Specifically, here are two reasons to vote against Romney, and therefore for Obama:
1) Romney supports torture. I hoped this stain on the honour of the USA had gone with GW Bush, but Romney wants to bring it back. He prefers to call it by the Gestapo name,Verschärfte Vernehmung, translated into English, but whatever you call it the US executed Japanese soldiers for it at the end of the second world war. This is a line the US must not again cross.
2) It's possible to persuade oneself, based on Romney's more moderate statements of the last few weeks, that he'd be not much worse than Obama - that he won't start a war in Iran, or try to fix the deficit by cutting taxes and increasing military spending. But that's a dangerous game, because he speaks in code, and it's a code you may not pick up on.
Here's a quote from his website, on the subject of Marriage:
__
I haven't got a vote in this election. If you have, and you like Romney's policies, then thank you for reading. Otherwise, please vote for Obama.
Intrade is currently selling Obama 'shares', which pay $10 if Obama wins, for $6.99 (it was $6.68 when I looked last night), i.e. they give him a 70% chance of winning. Whereas you can back Romney on Betfair at 4.6 (£1 pays £4.60 if Romney wins), i.e. they give him a 21.7% chance of winning. Since these chances add up to less than 100%, if you've got accounts on both exchanges you can lock in a profit by taking both bets in an appropriate ratio, provided you bet large enough to cover the fixed fees, and the exchange you win on doesn't default. (Which suggests that arbitrageurs are none too confident in the soundness of one of the exchanges.)
Nate Silver, who got the last presidential election almost exactly right, is giving Obama a 92% chance of winning, based on his analysis of all the good quality state and national polls (recent reports that the candidates are neck and neck have been based on the national polls, which have been tighter, perhaps because sampling controls need to be determined state by state). That suggests that it's the Intrade market which is off.
Conor Friedersdorf attracted a good deal of attention six weeks ago with his article Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama. His argument was that the only way to get presidents one agrees with is not to vote for candidates one disagrees with, and his principal disagreement was over Obama's drone warfare in Pakistan.
I agree about the drone warfare. The general counter-argument is that the primaries are for picking a candidate you like; the presidential election is for choosing a president from the candidates on offer. Specifically, here are two reasons to vote against Romney, and therefore for Obama:
1) Romney supports torture. I hoped this stain on the honour of the USA had gone with GW Bush, but Romney wants to bring it back. He prefers to call it by the Gestapo name,Verschärfte Vernehmung, translated into English, but whatever you call it the US executed Japanese soldiers for it at the end of the second world war. This is a line the US must not again cross.
2) It's possible to persuade oneself, based on Romney's more moderate statements of the last few weeks, that he'd be not much worse than Obama - that he won't start a war in Iran, or try to fix the deficit by cutting taxes and increasing military spending. But that's a dangerous game, because he speaks in code, and it's a code you may not pick up on.
Here's a quote from his website, on the subject of Marriage:
Marriage is more than a personally rewarding social custom. It is also critical for the well-being of a civilization. That is why it is so important to preserve traditional marriage – the joining together of one man and one woman.This might not be an important issue for you. But look at the argument, which can fairly be paraphrased as "Marriage is critical for the well-being of civilization: that is why we should stop some people getting married". Which doesn't make any sort of sense. Romney has got reasons to oppose same-sex marriage, but he's not telling us what they are, because the people he's talking to already know and he's better off not spelling it out for the rest of us. (On the other hand, if he wanted to campaign for restrictions on divorce his argument would work quite well, I think that's a clue to what he really thinks.)
__
I haven't got a vote in this election. If you have, and you like Romney's policies, then thank you for reading. Otherwise, please vote for Obama.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Evidence-Based Executions
Few people start with a careful study of statistical data before forming a view about the desirability of the death penalty for murder. Proponents are looking for a fitting punishment, opponents are against killing people, or unwilling to risk executing the innocent, or (me) think that the operation of the death penalty is damaging to the body politic. However, I suppose that many opponents would, however reluctantly, change their minds if it could be shown that the death penalty saves many people from being murdered - I'd be unwilling to put my own sense of what is fitting ahead of the lives of innocents. Similarly, I hope that many proponents would be willing to give up on retributive justice if it could be shown that it results in more people being murdered, perhaps by legitimizing killing in the minds of potential murderers. So statistical data do matter.
In the USA, capital punishment was suspended between 1972 and 1976, as a result of Supreme Court decisions against and for it, and subsequently restored piecemeal. Currently, 32 States have an active death penalty statute, applied with various degrees of enthusiasm. This would seem to provide much data for statistical investigation of the effect of the death penalty on the murder rate, but results have been disappointingly inconsistent. This paper explores the modelling issues involved: I reproduce its chart showing the lives that would be saved or lost per additional execution, averaged across states, according to twenty different choices of model.
One approach is to study the competing models and decide which one likes best on its merits. But few have got the time and knowledge of statistics to do that. Even for those who have, the result will be a personal opinion of little use for persuading others - a more common approach for public discussion is to select the study which gives results which suit one's case.
I have a proposal. The USA should abolish the death penalty for everyone whose date of birth is on an even day of the month. (Date of birth as officially recorded as of the date of they commit murder.) If the deterrent effect of the death penalty is important, we should soon see a disparity in murder rate between the odds and the evens. There might be other effects - from legitimizing arbitrary killing, or, in the other direction, from having fewer executions to remind potential killers of the punishment they risk - but we would at least find out how big the deterrent effect is.
Perhaps the Supreme Court would disallow this under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
In the USA, capital punishment was suspended between 1972 and 1976, as a result of Supreme Court decisions against and for it, and subsequently restored piecemeal. Currently, 32 States have an active death penalty statute, applied with various degrees of enthusiasm. This would seem to provide much data for statistical investigation of the effect of the death penalty on the murder rate, but results have been disappointingly inconsistent. This paper explores the modelling issues involved: I reproduce its chart showing the lives that would be saved or lost per additional execution, averaged across states, according to twenty different choices of model.
One approach is to study the competing models and decide which one likes best on its merits. But few have got the time and knowledge of statistics to do that. Even for those who have, the result will be a personal opinion of little use for persuading others - a more common approach for public discussion is to select the study which gives results which suit one's case.
I have a proposal. The USA should abolish the death penalty for everyone whose date of birth is on an even day of the month. (Date of birth as officially recorded as of the date of they commit murder.) If the deterrent effect of the death penalty is important, we should soon see a disparity in murder rate between the odds and the evens. There might be other effects - from legitimizing arbitrary killing, or, in the other direction, from having fewer executions to remind potential killers of the punishment they risk - but we would at least find out how big the deterrent effect is.
Perhaps the Supreme Court would disallow this under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.But it would take them a few years to get round to it, so we'd get some data anyway.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
On freedom of speech
William Connolley asks in a comment to my post on abortion
I think the law goes too far already in restricting free speech. I agree with the 'Reform Section 5' campaign - "Nobody has the right not to be insulted or offended" - to amend Section 5 of the Public Order Act. (This is the Section in relation to which John Terry was unsuccessfully prosecuted.) I think it reasonable for the law to prohibit verbal bullying - monkey chants from football crowds for example - but not to attempt to enforce good manners. Not everything which is undesirable should be illegal.
I'm reminded of an incident between Glenn McGrath, bowling for Australia, and Ramnaresh Sarwan, batting for the West Indies in a team captained by the star batsman Brian Lara. McGrath had been talking to Sarwan a lot, apparently trying to wind him up - Sarwan was thought to be vulnerable to this sort of distraction. Eventually, an exchange something like this took place:
But I digress: William C was asking about film censorship, not verbal insults. Well, as a practical matter we should not ban films because people report being offended by them, because that would give general licence to get any film banned. How about banning visual depictions of the prophet Muhammad? - that seems to be something which causes genuine anguish to some Muslims. If we were going to do that, should we not equally ban all visual depictions of people or animals, if they offend religious sensibilities? My understanding is that the hadiths cited in support of the proscription do indeed apply to all such depictions (5268-71 here, 646-7 here, 447-50 here.) Evidently we cannot cater for all religious sensibilities without banning almost everything: I prefer to keep the films and give the religious the opportunity to demonstrate their fortitude.
There is one restriction I would countenance, which would be a ban on the representation of falsehood as truth. So you could make a film about a fictional character - call it Life of Brian - and say what you want about him. If you chose to make a film about a real character you could either represent it as a work of fiction, or restrict yourself to a narrative having at least some support in the historical record, except where the record is silent. One would want the courts to err on the side of permissiveness.
If mental anguish is not a reason to restrict insults, or films, why should it be a reason to restrict abortions? First,I didn't say it should; my main point was that campaigners against restrictions on abortion should recognize that it does cause real distress. Second, I give reduced weight to the essentially arbitrary distress caused by offence against religious doctrine - arbitrary because the distress could be abolished merely by changing the doctrine. Whereas the anguish felt by opponents of abortion is, I think, a consequence of an instinctive not a learnt feeling that a fetus is a person.
Are you going to allow the mental anguish of millions of wacko muslims to be a reason for banning films they don't like?My answer is that any ban would be ultra vires, but I wouldn't if I could.
I think the law goes too far already in restricting free speech. I agree with the 'Reform Section 5' campaign - "Nobody has the right not to be insulted or offended" - to amend Section 5 of the Public Order Act. (This is the Section in relation to which John Terry was unsuccessfully prosecuted.) I think it reasonable for the law to prohibit verbal bullying - monkey chants from football crowds for example - but not to attempt to enforce good manners. Not everything which is undesirable should be illegal.
I'm reminded of an incident between Glenn McGrath, bowling for Australia, and Ramnaresh Sarwan, batting for the West Indies in a team captained by the star batsman Brian Lara. McGrath had been talking to Sarwan a lot, apparently trying to wind him up - Sarwan was thought to be vulnerable to this sort of distraction. Eventually, an exchange something like this took place:
McGrath: What does Brian Lara's dick taste likeOutrageous behaviour by McGrath? Well, he had recently found out that his wife's cancer had recurred (she died five years later). Heartless by Sarwan? Well, there's no reason to think that he knew about the cancer. Homophobic? No, probably not, but you could read it that way if you wanted. It seems to me that the authorities were wise to make no public intervention - the players sorted it out.
Sarwan: I don't know, ask your wife
McGrath: If you ever fucking mention my wife again, I'll fucking rip your fucking throat out
But I digress: William C was asking about film censorship, not verbal insults. Well, as a practical matter we should not ban films because people report being offended by them, because that would give general licence to get any film banned. How about banning visual depictions of the prophet Muhammad? - that seems to be something which causes genuine anguish to some Muslims. If we were going to do that, should we not equally ban all visual depictions of people or animals, if they offend religious sensibilities? My understanding is that the hadiths cited in support of the proscription do indeed apply to all such depictions (5268-71 here, 646-7 here, 447-50 here.) Evidently we cannot cater for all religious sensibilities without banning almost everything: I prefer to keep the films and give the religious the opportunity to demonstrate their fortitude.
There is one restriction I would countenance, which would be a ban on the representation of falsehood as truth. So you could make a film about a fictional character - call it Life of Brian - and say what you want about him. If you chose to make a film about a real character you could either represent it as a work of fiction, or restrict yourself to a narrative having at least some support in the historical record, except where the record is silent. One would want the courts to err on the side of permissiveness.
If mental anguish is not a reason to restrict insults, or films, why should it be a reason to restrict abortions? First,I didn't say it should; my main point was that campaigners against restrictions on abortion should recognize that it does cause real distress. Second, I give reduced weight to the essentially arbitrary distress caused by offence against religious doctrine - arbitrary because the distress could be abolished merely by changing the doctrine. Whereas the anguish felt by opponents of abortion is, I think, a consequence of an instinctive not a learnt feeling that a fetus is a person.
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Thoughts on the abortion debate
Following the recent reshuffle, the new Minister for Women, Maria Miller, and the new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, have separately reaffirmed their views that the time limit for termination of pregnancy under section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act should be reduced from 24 weeks, to 20 weeks and 12 weeks respectively*.
That provoked a flurry of media commentary. Perhaps the most discussed contribution has been Mehdi Hasan's article asking for respect from the left for his anti-abortion views. Kelly Hills declined to grant it. Chris Dillow offered a utilitarian perspective. Sarah Ditum agreed with Hasan that the issue shouldn't be about left and right, and disagreed with him about everything else. Meanwhile the estimable Kate Smurthwaite appeared on divers radio programmes to give a feminist perspective, provoking Paul B (that's not me) to recommend moderation in debate.
What strikes me is that much of the argument is not very rational. Why 24 weeks, or 20 weeks, or 12 weeks, or any other specified time limit? And if abortion without time limit is ok (it's legal in some circumstances under sections 1(1)(b-d) of the Abortion Act), then why not infanticide? The 24-week limit is usually presented as being related to the earliest time at which a fetus might survive outside the womb, but why should that be the criterion?
Matthew Parris wrote a trenchant piece in The Times on Saturday [paywall] pointing out that Michael Nazir-Ali's carefully constructed arguments against gay marriage seem rather insincere when one learns that he's actually opposed to all homosexual relationships. Similarly, to get to the real point in arguments about abortion we need to understand the true motives involved. So here's my guess.
First, the arguments against abortion are not primarily religious. As Hasan points out, Islamic scholars are divided on the issue. So are Catholics and Protestants. So are Orthodox and Reform Jews. Evidently scripture offers no unambiguous guidance on the question. And while the Catholic Church is firmly against abortion, Catholics in general are often willing to ignore its teaching, for example on contraception, or the death penalty. (It's worth noting here that Catholic teaching on the issue does not concern itself with the question of ensoulment, so we needn't consider it in discussing time limits,)
Second, there is an instinct common to almost all of us to protect infant children (I suppose it's an adaptive trait). It's natural to extend that to fetuses who look like infants. I believe that this is the basis for almost all contemporary opposition to abortion.
Third, no one of even a remotely liberal disposition wants to force women to bear children against their will. For some, their reluctance is tempered by the extent to which they think the woman should have avoided getting pregnant if she didn't want to bear the child.
To me, it makes a lot of sense to frame the issue as a trade-off between our instinct to protect babies and our reluctance to oppress women. I doubt that the two sides of the argument differ much in their feelings about babies, though those in favour of legal abortion may have made some effort not to attach their feelings to fetuses in the womb, while those against have gone the other way. But there is a big difference, and to a large extent it's a left-right difference, in attitudes to women's reproductive autonomy.
Seen in that light, it's clear that infanticide is never permissible- the mother's autonomy is no longer at issue. Earlier, a fetus which might be capable of surviving outside the womb is physically no different from a very premature baby, and therefore evokes very strong protective instincts, making us very reluctant to kill it. Before that, the later an abortion takes place the more like a baby the fetus is, and the less likely we are to fall on the woman's side of the trade-off. By contrast, a blastocyst at around the time of implantation is visually nothing like a baby: anyone who knows this but objects to abortion at that stage is making a moral argument about its status as a human being.
To return to the commentaries I cited earlier. Hasan is, incidentally, right about the abortion law in other European countries: if we were to change the time limit in 1(1)(a) to 14 weeks, that would make the law here very much like that in France. If that's what Hunt is proposing then it's not an extreme position by European standards. And I agree with Hasan that his and other views against abortion should be respected. One doesn't have to accept his argument about a right to life for fetuses to recognize that the pain many people feel at the fact of abortion is real (Dillow singularly fails to weigh this pain in his analysis). I agree with Paul B (that's still not me) that “if you object to having an abortion then don’t have one” is avoiding the point, albeit it's an effective way to remind a man that he has less skin in the game than does a fertile woman.
If we accept the mental anguish of third parties as a factor, how should that affect our approach to abortion? First, we should try to reduce late abortions by making access to early abortions easier. Second, we should treat all abortions as a matter for regret - not blame, but regret - the more so the later they occur.
And what of the time limit? It would certainly be more comfortable to have it on the short rather than the long side of the earliest time at which survival outside the womb is possible. That's the argument for 20 weeks. Hills writes "Approximately 1% of abortions – around 2,729 – are done at or after the 20th week; numbers that happen to correspond pretty closely to how many abortions are granted due to there being abnormalities with the foetus that are largely considered incompatible with life." That would seem to be an argument for reducing the time limit in 1(1)(a) to 20 weeks, since abortion would remain legal without time limit under 1(1)(d) - "a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped". However, if there are no abortions under 1(1)(a) after 20 weeks, then it makes no difference if we change the limit. Whereas if, more plausibly, there are some, we should find out how many and why before we change anything.
I've steered clear of discussing any right to life for the fetus. (Personally I don't understand arguments about rights: I'm more interested in obligations.) Chris Dillow in his piece says "none of you should give a damn about my opinion". But, if you want to know, I think that our obligations towards (or, if you prefer, the rights of) a blastocyst/embryo/fetus/baby increase progressively as it develops. The only coherent alternative I can see is that they arise fully formed at the moment of conception, as the Catholic Church holds. And I don't believe that, because a zygote is very obviously not a person.
____
*Hunt may mean 12 weeks embryonic age, timed from conception, whereas the current limit is in terms of gestational ago, timed from last menstrual period, about two weeks earlier.
That provoked a flurry of media commentary. Perhaps the most discussed contribution has been Mehdi Hasan's article asking for respect from the left for his anti-abortion views. Kelly Hills declined to grant it. Chris Dillow offered a utilitarian perspective. Sarah Ditum agreed with Hasan that the issue shouldn't be about left and right, and disagreed with him about everything else. Meanwhile the estimable Kate Smurthwaite appeared on divers radio programmes to give a feminist perspective, provoking Paul B (that's not me) to recommend moderation in debate.
What strikes me is that much of the argument is not very rational. Why 24 weeks, or 20 weeks, or 12 weeks, or any other specified time limit? And if abortion without time limit is ok (it's legal in some circumstances under sections 1(1)(b-d) of the Abortion Act), then why not infanticide? The 24-week limit is usually presented as being related to the earliest time at which a fetus might survive outside the womb, but why should that be the criterion?
Matthew Parris wrote a trenchant piece in The Times on Saturday [paywall] pointing out that Michael Nazir-Ali's carefully constructed arguments against gay marriage seem rather insincere when one learns that he's actually opposed to all homosexual relationships. Similarly, to get to the real point in arguments about abortion we need to understand the true motives involved. So here's my guess.
First, the arguments against abortion are not primarily religious. As Hasan points out, Islamic scholars are divided on the issue. So are Catholics and Protestants. So are Orthodox and Reform Jews. Evidently scripture offers no unambiguous guidance on the question. And while the Catholic Church is firmly against abortion, Catholics in general are often willing to ignore its teaching, for example on contraception, or the death penalty. (It's worth noting here that Catholic teaching on the issue does not concern itself with the question of ensoulment, so we needn't consider it in discussing time limits,)
Second, there is an instinct common to almost all of us to protect infant children (I suppose it's an adaptive trait). It's natural to extend that to fetuses who look like infants. I believe that this is the basis for almost all contemporary opposition to abortion.
Third, no one of even a remotely liberal disposition wants to force women to bear children against their will. For some, their reluctance is tempered by the extent to which they think the woman should have avoided getting pregnant if she didn't want to bear the child.
To me, it makes a lot of sense to frame the issue as a trade-off between our instinct to protect babies and our reluctance to oppress women. I doubt that the two sides of the argument differ much in their feelings about babies, though those in favour of legal abortion may have made some effort not to attach their feelings to fetuses in the womb, while those against have gone the other way. But there is a big difference, and to a large extent it's a left-right difference, in attitudes to women's reproductive autonomy.
Seen in that light, it's clear that infanticide is never permissible- the mother's autonomy is no longer at issue. Earlier, a fetus which might be capable of surviving outside the womb is physically no different from a very premature baby, and therefore evokes very strong protective instincts, making us very reluctant to kill it. Before that, the later an abortion takes place the more like a baby the fetus is, and the less likely we are to fall on the woman's side of the trade-off. By contrast, a blastocyst at around the time of implantation is visually nothing like a baby: anyone who knows this but objects to abortion at that stage is making a moral argument about its status as a human being.
To return to the commentaries I cited earlier. Hasan is, incidentally, right about the abortion law in other European countries: if we were to change the time limit in 1(1)(a) to 14 weeks, that would make the law here very much like that in France. If that's what Hunt is proposing then it's not an extreme position by European standards. And I agree with Hasan that his and other views against abortion should be respected. One doesn't have to accept his argument about a right to life for fetuses to recognize that the pain many people feel at the fact of abortion is real (Dillow singularly fails to weigh this pain in his analysis). I agree with Paul B (that's still not me) that “if you object to having an abortion then don’t have one” is avoiding the point, albeit it's an effective way to remind a man that he has less skin in the game than does a fertile woman.
If we accept the mental anguish of third parties as a factor, how should that affect our approach to abortion? First, we should try to reduce late abortions by making access to early abortions easier. Second, we should treat all abortions as a matter for regret - not blame, but regret - the more so the later they occur.
And what of the time limit? It would certainly be more comfortable to have it on the short rather than the long side of the earliest time at which survival outside the womb is possible. That's the argument for 20 weeks. Hills writes "Approximately 1% of abortions – around 2,729 – are done at or after the 20th week; numbers that happen to correspond pretty closely to how many abortions are granted due to there being abnormalities with the foetus that are largely considered incompatible with life." That would seem to be an argument for reducing the time limit in 1(1)(a) to 20 weeks, since abortion would remain legal without time limit under 1(1)(d) - "a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped". However, if there are no abortions under 1(1)(a) after 20 weeks, then it makes no difference if we change the limit. Whereas if, more plausibly, there are some, we should find out how many and why before we change anything.
I've steered clear of discussing any right to life for the fetus. (Personally I don't understand arguments about rights: I'm more interested in obligations.) Chris Dillow in his piece says "none of you should give a damn about my opinion". But, if you want to know, I think that our obligations towards (or, if you prefer, the rights of) a blastocyst/embryo/fetus/baby increase progressively as it develops. The only coherent alternative I can see is that they arise fully formed at the moment of conception, as the Catholic Church holds. And I don't believe that, because a zygote is very obviously not a person.
____
*Hunt may mean 12 weeks embryonic age, timed from conception, whereas the current limit is in terms of gestational ago, timed from last menstrual period, about two weeks earlier.
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