Autonomy and Teaching Character (Mash-up Comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

O.

Earth and the Development of Character

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

O.

Token identity and second-order logic (mash-up comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

O.

Determinism, Folk Psychology and the Devil (Mash-up Comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

Faith, Experience, and Spiders. (Q & A)

Dear Mr. Supposed Philosopher:

I think the whole notion of posting faith in something after having some esoteric feeling affirms no truth and prevents no problems. What do you think of that?

Signed,

Seeing-Is-Believing


Dear Sense-It-or-It's Senseless:

I can perfectly understand your exasperation with people who make claims about the veracity of their inner experiences as if they were straightforwardly accounts of the way things are, and thus worthy of immediate belief (and subsequent action). However, the person who interprets and acts upon such motives may be doing nothing other than what we all do in the face of everyday ambiguous experiences. I am reminded of the account of a close friend, one whom I love as if he were my very brother, on matters not far from this very issue:

"At 3:30am, one morning, my wife wakes me up and tells me to get out of the bed. Allegedly, and I very much emphasize that term, there is a bug crawling around in it. I am quite certain she is dreaming, but she was pretty panicky, so I went along with her. 5 minutes later, after the entire bed was torn apart, and then carefully put back together, piece by examined piece, I was allowed back in and went back to sleep without incident.

The next morning, when I am in the shower, at the very instant when hot water hits my arse, I feel a slight burning. I explore and discover a heinous welt on my butt cheek, quite obviously a bug bite -- in fact, a spider bite.

My lovely bride had faith in something she could not see, but something she was able to feel. I was unable to have faith in something I could neither see nor feel.

Because of my lack of faith; in the end, I got bit in the ars."

As any good lawyer will tell you, precedent sets how we must interpret past experience, and I can think of no better precedent for explaining the link between inner experience and action that this story.



O.

Being, non-Being, and the Devil (Mash-up Comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

Referential Opacity (Mash-up Comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code).

Wrongly convicted prisoners should always be financially compensated by the state

{ Audio this essay @ 7min. @ 1.6mb } After 22 years in prison, Anthony Capozzi was freed--for a crime he didn't commit. As it turned out another man, who bore a close resemblance to him, was guilty, but rape victims identified Capozzi in lineups, so the state brought (and obviously won) a case against him. Now Capozzi was sentenced to a term of 11 to 35 years, and had been denied parole five times since becoming eligible in 1997. Yet--big surprise!--he kept refusing to admit to the crimes; naturally, in a Kafkaesque way, this made it impossible to complete a mandatory sex offender program, so there he sat in prison.

Eventually, a serial offender, so dubbed The Bike Path Rapist, (Altemio Sanchez) was identified by means of DNA evidence. Unfortunately, back in 1983 and '84, Capozzie looked a bit too much like Sanchez, and when Capozzie was identified by various victims in the line up, that was evidence enough for Erie county, NY prosecutors to put him away for 22 years; on this mistake, District Attorney Frank Clark stated:

"I truly regret that this had to happen, everybody trying to do the right thing and going through all the right steps and coming out with the wrong result. I think a simple 'I'm sorry' would never be enough."[1]

It is upon the DA's last remark where I pick up my theme.

First, I have always believed that the state should compensate wrongly convicted prisoners. And I've always been suspicious that the US government has been conniving in hiding the statistics regarding wrongful convictions. Apparently, I'm not alone in my suspicions:

One difficulty faced by those seeking information about exoneration's of erroneously convicted persons is the absence of official statistical information. Incredibly, the government, which collects and disseminates crime statistics "by the gigabyte and the shelf-full," as [a well received book] Actual Innocence notes, fails to include any information about convictions of the innocent, or about exoneration of the wrongfully convicted, in its official crime statistics. Insofar as government crime statistics are concerned, it would appear that no innocent person was ever convicted in the United States of America. "The innocent neither count nor are they counted.... Not one number is assigned to represent the distinct matter of the innocent person. No one has the job of figuring out what went wrong, or who did wrong. No account is taken of the innocent person, wrongly convicted, ultimately exonerated.... America keeps virtually no records when a conviction is vacated based on new evidence of innocence. The only place to study innocence is through accounts carried in newspapers and by broadcast news, a most haphazard net."[2]

Naturally, DAs have no interest in admitting they screwed up. Although career advancements are rightly tied to taking dangerous people off the street, without control variables on the percentage of people wrongly taken off the streets, prosecutors cannot readily be scrutinized for their mistakes, and thus for whether they have been justifiably promoted to positions of increased legal authority within the community.

Second, it is no surprise that wrongful convictions are the result of other procedural and social problems:

In 64 recent cases of DNA exoneration examined by the Innocence Project, mistaken eyewitness identification by the victim or a witness was a contributing factor to the erroneous conviction in 84% of the cases. Other contributing factors included police misconduct (50%), prosecutorial misconduct (42%), inept defense counsel (27%), false or fabricated confessions (24%), and misconduct by jailhouse snitches (21%). A third of the 64 cases involved tainted or fraudulent scientific evidence purporting to show the defendant was guilty. Some of this false evidence came from police crime labs. Racism is also an important consideration. Of the 64 exonerated defendants, 57% were black and 11% were Latino, whereas 29% were white.[2]

As was seen in the Capozzi case, witness testimony was instrumental in that wrongful conviction. Even under ideal condtions, people are often forced to interpret their perceptions, but when conditions are stressful and significantly removed in time, witness testimony becomes highly problematic; and, maximally so when there is capital sentencing for a crime. (Hence, why I'm also against capital punishment.)

Third, the state already respects property rights, and there has been much ballyhoo about imminent domain, and how various state governments have been idiotic in respecting that right. The US constitution enshrines not only property rights, but freedom of movement rights (liberty). Thus, since the state at least recognizes due compensation for property rights, it is only consistent for it to recognize due compensation for freedom of movement rights. Taking away rightfully acquired land requires the state to compensate; likewise, taking away innocently exercised liberty requires the state to compensate.

Finally, there ought to be some objective procedure for determining compensation. I would suggest that one should be reimbursed at the current minimum wage times the number of 40-hour work-week capable years served. For example, at 22 years, times 50 weeks, times 40 hours @ New York state minimum wage of $7.15 per hour; this means Mr. Capozzi should receive from the state of New York (again, the governmental body responsible for his wrongful imprisonment) a total of $314,600. I'm sure Mr. Capozzi, or those who have guardianship over him,[3] could make a go at restarting his life with that kind of cash. (Texas has something like a version of this.[4] ) Naturally, individuals would maintain the right to pursue further amends against the state[5], but I'm arguing here for a default compensation for any wrongfully imprisoned citizen.

More generally, the state could think of such compensatory sums as "misadventure capital" to be invested back into the lives of its otherwise law-abiding citizens.



O.

REFERENCES

[1] Carolyn Thompson, "Man Cleared After 22 Years in Prison" Newsvine (Accessed 4/07/2007)

[2] Donald E. Wilkes "Convicting and Unconvicting the Innocent" University of Georgia School of Law (Accessed 4/07/2007)

[3] Mr. Capozzi has some mental disabilities, which I imagine was quite convenient towards his prosecution back in day.

[4] Marie Delahoussaye "Bill would aid victims of wrongful imprisonment" The Daily Texan Online (Accessed 4/09/2007)

[5] These are known as Wrongful Imprisonment Lawsuits.

US Military challenges in Iraq and robotic aircraft development

{ Audio this essay @ 7min @ 1.59MB } Two excellent articles on military analysis have appeared in Slate magazine in the last few days.

The first one is titled, "Broken Arrow: How the U.S. Army broke in Iraq" by Phillip Carter

Here is a quote:

Four years into the war, the Army still has too few troops to persevere in Iraq and Afghanistan and too few deployed in each place to win. To surge its forces in Iraq, the Army has dipped deep into its well, returning units back to combat after less than a year at home, leaving many with little time to train incoming soldiers and come together as a team. Of all the signs of breakage, perhaps the most acute is the decision to redeploy Army brigades to Iraq sooner and for longer tours in combat. The entire active-duty force is either deployed, set to deploy soon, or within one year of coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan. Short of conscripting millions of Americans to rapidly build a larger military, contracting out for a larger force, or mobilizing the entire reserves at once, military leaders say they have no other choice—to surge in Iraq, they must reduce the time soldiers spend at home between deployments and lengthen their combat tours from 12 to 16 or 18 months. But sending troops to Iraq after such a short time to reorganize, refit, and retrain is a recipe for disaster.[1]

The second one is titled, "B-52, Where Are You? Why the Pentagon doesn't want you to know its bombers finally work" by Gregg Easterbrook

And a quote from that one:

The withering away of the bomber corps reflects planning assumptions a quarter-century old. Then, the thinking was that precision-guided munitions delivered from low altitude by jet fighters would take over nearly all conventional bombing roles. As recently as a few months before 9/11, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the mothballing of 30 B-1 bombers on the theory that they'd never be used in a modern, fighter-dominated air war anyway. Pentagon planners assumed that bombers would play a secondary role while low-flying fighters put the smart explosives on the target. Instead, unexpected technical breakthroughs resulted in extremely accurate munitions that can be dropped from high altitude by bombers, at less cost and risk than using low-flying fighters. The result has been that during the Afghanistan and second Iraq campaigns, most of the air punch has been delivered by a handful of the remaining bombers. Some 80 percent of the bombs dropped during the U.S. seizure of Afghanistan fell from bombers; the share dropped on Iraq since March 2003 is nearly as high. Though bombers have in this decade turned out to be far more important to U.S. military action than Pentagon strategists expected, the government still plans to invest fantastic amounts of money in fighter planes that would be used mainly to drop bombs.[2]

What makes these articles nice "book ends" to one another is that one covers issues in ground military power, while the other covers issues in air military power.

In the end, I think problems identified in both articles will be somewhat alleviated by robotic aircraft, both of the tactical variety[3] and of the strategic variety.[4] However, there seems to be two general problems with robotic aircraft.

First, it appears that they threaten a certain mystique of pilot culture, a culture which is reinforced by the standard profile of a fighter pilot and by society at large. Psychologists have observed that first-born children form a statistically significant proportion of fighter pilots. There have been many reasons cited for this. First borns tend to be more successful, and the very occupation of fighter pilot is highly prized in greater society. Also, older siblings have higher self esteem, confidence in social interactions, and proclivities toward leadership roles.[5] Since there are many individuals already in the profession who both prize and influence the values of fighter pilot culture, and since society itself prizes (and socially rewards) the job of fighter pilot, it is no surprise that a shift to robotic aircraft has not inspired those within (and even outside of) combat aircraft culture. Note, however, that predictors for a person becoming a pilot and predictors for the performance of a pilot are not the same: "Reviews of the research literature have generally concluded that personality factors contribute little to pilot performance."[6]

Second, the appearance of robotic aircraft make the current financial commitments towards advanced, manned fighter programs seem extravagant, perhaps even unnecessary. Naturally, there are people in the Air Force who want to deny this:

Col. Christopher Jella is the commander of the 18th Reconnaissance Squadron, the newest Global Hawk unit. From Beale Air Force Base in California, Jella oversees pilots and sensor operators who control 120-foot-wingspan reconnaissance drones that are launched from forward locations in Southwest Asia. “I think a lot of the mysticism with UAVs [i.e., Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] comes with the fact that we’ve lumped them all into this UAV [rubric],” Jella said. “Remember, back in 1920, you had this thing called an ‘airplane’, and you had the same problem.“What we now call UAVs represent so many diverse aircraft performing such diverse missions that it’s pointless to generalize about them — and pointless to compare them to manned aircraft,” Jella said. What’s more, he adds, the Air Force should be interested in “effects,” not specific hardware.[4]

Colonel Jella's position that it's pointless to generalize and compare robotic aircraft to manned aircraft is in error. There is indeed a very general and straightforward rebuttal to such thinking: when robotic aircraft are destroyed in combat, somebody temporarily loses some money; but, when when manned aircraft are destroyed in combat, somebody loses a husband and/or a parent. Sorry Colonel--I hardly find that generalization about robotic aircraft pointless.


REFERENCES

[1] "Broken Arrow: How the U.S. Army broke in Iraq." Slate Magazine Online (March 2007)

[2] "B-52, Where Are You?: Why the Pentagon doesn't want you to know its bombers finally work." Slate Magazine Online (April 2007)

[3] Frank Colucci "Army Developing Tactics for Armed Robotic Aircraft" National Defense (April 2005)

[4] By David Axe August 2006 "Clouds on the horizon for pilot-less bombers" National Defense (August 2006)

[5] Tenney, Rogers, and Pew, 1988; Gras, Moricot, and Poirot-Delpech, 1989; Rogers, Tenney, and Pew, 1991; Sarter (1991); Woods and Sarter (1992); Madigan and D.Tsang, 1992; Sherman, Helmreich, Smith, Wiener, and Merritt, 1992; Sherman, 1995.

[6] Siem & Murray "Personality factors affecting pilot combat performance: a preliminary investigation." Aviation, space, and environmental medicine 1994 May;65(5 Suppl):A45-8.

O.

Disclosure: I was in the Air Force in the early 1980s, and in the Army National Guard in the late 1980s.