Chrome extension: Blacker Text

Web design has opted for dark grays as opposed to blacks. For a middle-aged person like me, this makes things less pleasant (and perhaps harder, but I don't have the empirical data to show that) to read: the grays not only look dimmer, but also fuzzier to me. So I wrote a simple Chrome extension that automatically snaps near-black colors to black (and near-white to white, for use on dark-mode sites) on all websites, except within links. You can adjust how close you have to be to black (or white) to snap. 

Update: Here is the FireFox version.

The result of using this extension for the last week has been a pleasanter web experience: a lot of sites look crisper, more like reading a book printed with high quality ink on high quality acid-free paper. I miss it on my phone since mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions (I am tempted to switch to a mobile browser that does support extensions, but haven't done so yet).

Eventually, if there is any actual interest in the extension from people other than myself, I may add some per-site options in case some site is broken by this. 

No more Facebook friends

I just unfriended my remaining three Facebook friends. If you were one of them, please take no offense. Facebook friendship isn't friendship, and Facebook unfriending isn't the termination of a friendship. What prompted this was an email from Facebook about 82 friend requests. These are all being ignored, so if you're among the 82, also please take no offense. I want to have friends but not Facebook friends.

I don't use Facebook almost at all. I much prefer ordinary email for private stuff and blog discussion for public stuff. I need to keep a Facebook account, however, if only because there are a few businesses and other organizations that have no way of being electronically contacted except through Facebook.

Is the Internet "the same" as face-to-face social interaction?

I used to claim to think that social interaction by email is not significantly different qua social interaction from face-to-face interaction. But the fact that I typically strongly preferred email interaction to face-to-face interactions is evidence that it's significantly different, and given my introvertive tendencies, it is evidence that it is less social. People like I need significant time "without social interaction" to avoid exhaustion. But writing this post qualifies, even though it is obviously a social activity.

Or maybe it's not correct to characterize introverts as tired out by social interaction. Rather, they are tired out by particular modalities of social interaction. So perhaps there is a response possible to the argument of the preceding paragraph.

Epistemic self-sacrifice and prisoner's dilemma

In the fall, I attended a really neat talk by Patrick Grim which reported on several computer simulation experiments by Grim. Suppose you have a bunch of investigators who are each trying to find the maximum ("the solution to the problem") of some function. They search, but they also talk to one other. When someone they are in communication with finds a better option than their own, they have a certain probability of switching to that. The question is: How much communication should there be between investigators if we want the community as a whole to do well vis-a-vis the maximization problem?

Consider two models. On the Local Model (my terminology), the investigators are arranged around the circumference of a circle, and each talks only to her immediate neighbors. On the Internet Model (also my tendentious terminology), every investigator is in communication with every investigator. So, here's what you get. On both models, the investigators eventually communally converge on a solution. On the Internet Model, community opinion converges much faster than on the Local Model. But on the Internet Model the solution converged on is much more likely to be wrong (to be a local maximum rather than the global maximum).

So, here is a conclusion one might draw (which may not be the same as Grim's conclusion): If the task is satisficing or time is of the essence, the Internet Model may be better—we may need to get a decent working answer quickly for practical purposes, even if it's not the true one. But if the task is getting the true solution, it seems the Local Model is a better model for the community to adopt.

Suppose we're dealing with a problem where we really want the true solution, not solutions that are "good enough". This is more likely in more theoretical intellectual enterprises. Then the Local Model is epistemically better for the community. But what is epistemically better for the individual investigator?

Suppose that we have a certain hybrid of the Internet and Local Models. As in the Local Model, the investigators are arranged on a circle. Each investigator knows what every other investigator is up to. But the investigator has a bias in favor of her two neighbors over other investigators. Thus, she is more likely to switch her opinion to match that of her neighbors than to match that of the distant ones. There are two limiting cases: in one limiting case, the bias goes to zero, and we have the Internet Model. In the other limiting case, although she knows of the opinions of investigators who aren't her neighbors, she ignores it, and will never switch to it. This is the Parochial Model. The Parochial Model gives exactly the same predictions as the Local Model.

Thus, investigators' having an epistemic bias in favor of their neighbors can be good for the community. But such a bias can be bad for the individual investigator. Jane would be better off epistemically if she adopted the best solution currently available in the community. But if everybody always did that, then the community would be worse off epistemically with respect to eventually getting at the truth, since then we would have the Internet Model.

This suggests that we might well have the structure of a Prisoner's Dilemma. Everybody is better off epistemically if everybody has biases in favor of the local (and it need not be spatially local), but any individual would be better off defecting in favor of the best solution currently available. This suggests that epistemic self-sacrifice is called for by communal investigation: people ought not all adopt the best available solution—we need eccentrics investigating odd corners of the solution space, because the true solution may be there.

Of course, one could solve the problem like this. One keeps track of two solutions. One solution is the one that one comes to using the biased method and the other is the best one the community has so far. The one that one comes to using the biased method is the one that one's publications are based on. The best one the community has so far is the one that one's own personal opinion is tied to. The problem with this is that this kind of "double think" may be psychologically unworkable. It may be that investigation only works well when one is committed to one's solution.

If this double think doesn't work, this suggests that in some cases individual and group rationality could come apart. It is individually irrational to be intellectually eccentric, but good for the community that there be intellectual eccentrics.

My own pull is different in this case than in the classic non-epistemic Prisoner's Dilemma. In this case, I think one should individually go for individual rationality. One should not sacrifice oneself epistemically here by adopting biases. But in the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, one has very good reason to sacrifice oneself.

Chesterton, the Internet, the family and arranged marriage

There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge. - G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, Chapter XIV

Thus the very thing that gives joy to many, including me, about the Internet, the availability of specialized, congenial social groups, is what is wrong with the Internet, according to the Chesterton. Chapter XIV of Heretics is an argument in favor of the moral importance of social groups--such as the family--whose membership we do not choose. It is, thus, an argument in favor of random associations. For in such groups we must simply bear with people--and, oh, how much sometimes there to be borne--whom we would not have chosen to be with, and this broadens the mind, pulling us out of complacency.

I have earlier argued that there is nothing wrong with arranged marriage. But Chesterton lets one go further. The very thing that people object to about arranged marriage, that it does not let one choose someone congenial to oneself, is its value. A marital selection based on congeniality lets each minimize the amount of required change and growth. But an arranged marriage, where a match in religious views is ensured by the parents, but otherwise personality characteristics may be wildly different forces one to broaden one's mind, at least in contexts that do not allow an easy way for the spouses to separate (of course, it is important to allow separation in extreme cases, such as abuse, even if remarriage is wrong).

This advantage is not very great, because the closeness of association in marriage is such that even in a love match, the negative, self-congratulatory effects of congeniality are mitigated by the myriad of differences, and sometimes annoying similarities, that one had no way of knowing about, and that make for growth as a person. Moreover, marriage itself changes a person, and so what one knew about the other prior to marriage will in part be irrelevant, thereby making a love match somewhat more like an arranged marriage.

This is not, of course, a blanket endorsement of marrying people who are utterly different from one. Congeniality in itself may not be so valuable, but if one is going to marry, one should marry someone with a modicum of virtue and moral sensitivity. Moreover, one should already have developed some virtue and moral sensitivity oneself to be mature enough for marriage. So there is a similarity in the fact of the possession of virtue, valuable not because of the similarity but because of the virtue, that it is good to have. Moreover, it's probably not a good idea to marry someone who is so far uncongenial to one as to impede moral growth, by changing love to disgust. And so on. At the same time, the evidence that a practice of love matches is better than a practice of arranged marriage at avoiding these problems is weak.

Finally, it must be reemphasized that the above defense of arranged marriage only works in contexts where it is not easy to separate from one's spouse, or where at least there are significant costs of such separation, such as a lifetime of sexual abstinence (as in the case of Christian marriage, where it is permissible for spouses to separate in circumstances of abuse and maybe even adultery, but they remain married in fact if not in law, and hence cannot marry anyone else). Chesterton talks of how scary it would be to be snowed in one's street. What is scary about it is that one would be forced to socialize with people one had not chosen for oneself. But it is essential that there be an element of forcing here--that one be stuck in marriage.

The above considerations give a powerful response to the following sophomoric argument: "If a couple really loved each other and were really compatible, they wouldn't need marriage. They would just live together, and their love and compatibility, rather than legal ties, would keep them together." Moral transformation hurts. Patients whose are not anesthetized need to be restrained for operations. If the couple is always compatible and their congenial love is sufficient, without commitment, to keep them together, then it is very unlikely that the members of the couple are being morally transformed by their closeness. Thus, leaving aside the case of the already morally perfect (and they might as well be celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of God), a couple is either not going to be transformed significantly by a life-long relationship or else there will be strains that require one to be held down, to be snowed in.

Let me end by noting that perhaps the most serious problem with arranged marriage is that, I think, it tends to be found in cultures where there is a strong pressure to marry. It is important that the marriage commitment be undertaken freely. This is compatible with the parents' choosing the marriage partner, or giving one a short list, as long as one is free to reject them all, free to remain celibate.