102,522 research outputs found
Justice Roberts’ America
Less than a week after the Roberts Court issued its decision in National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius, Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New Yorker, compared the first part of Chief Justice John Roberts\u27s opinion, in which he found that the Commerce Clause did not authorize Congress to enact the individual mandate section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires all individuals to buy health insurance, with an Ayn Rand screed, noting that the pivotal sections of the argument were long on libertarian rhetoric but short on citations of authority. Roberts held (although held might be stating it too strongly) that the Commerce Clause does not authorize Congress to regulate the inactivity of individuals—the act of not buying health insurance—even if that inactivity impacts interstate commerce. Rather, the Clause only authorizes congressional regulation where there is some activity of a commercial nature there to be regulated. Injecting a dose of libertarian and individualist thinking more typically associated with the Lochner-era\u27s substantive due process jurisprudence into Commerce Clause reasoning, Roberts argued that the inactivity of not buying insurance is tantamount to doing nothing, and doing nothing cannot be characterized as commercial activity even if it has a commercial impact
Competition and cooperation among different punishing strategies in the spatial public goods game
Inspired by the fact that people have diverse propensities to punish
wrongdoers, we study a spatial public goods game with defectors and different
types of punishing cooperators. During the game, cooperators punish defectors
with class-specific probabilities and subsequently share the associated costs
of sanctioning. We show that in the presence of different punishing cooperators
the highest level of public cooperation is always attainable through a
selection mechanism. Interestingly, the selection not necessarily favors the
evolution of punishers who would be able to prevail on their own against the
defectors, nor does it always hinder the evolution of punishers who would be
unable to prevail on their own. Instead, the evolutionary success of punishing
strategies depends sensitively on their invasion velocities, which in turn
reveals fascinating examples of both competition and cooperation among them.
Furthermore, we show that under favorable conditions, when punishment is not
strictly necessary for the maintenance of public cooperation, the less
aggressive, mild form of sanctioning is the sole victor of selection process.
Our work reveals that natural strategy selection can not only promote, but
sometimes also hinder competition among prosocial strategies.Comment: 6 two-column pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Physical
Review
Finding footing in a postmodern conception of law
Copyright @ 2010 Pace UniversityThe following jurisprudence paper examines the implications of postmodern thought upon our conception of law. In this paper I argue that, despite the absolute, all-consuming moral relativism towards which postmodernism seems to lead in its most extreme form, its acceptance in fact in no way undermines the possibility of finding solid ground for our legal principles. This paper contends that moral objectivity can be found in the individual experience of suffering generated by these very subjective concoctions. Subjective concoctions or not, they are real in that they imbue a sense of value into conditions, and may thus serve as foundational principles for law. While our value systems are stripped of all claim to objective authority, ultimately, all postmodernism does is force us to set aside our larger concepts of “justice,” and instead root our legal conceptions at this far more fundamental level of human experience
Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee
Jefferson Davis sent Robert E. Lee an unusual note after the battle of Gettysburg. The dispatch did not contain any presidential recommendations or requests, only a clipped article from the Charleston Mercury criticizing Lee and his subordinates for failure in Pennsylvania. Why Davis sent this article is impossible to say, and Lee apparently was not interested in the president’s motivations. The General dismissed newspaper criticism of himself as “harmless,” but the Mercury’s condemnation of the army disturbed him. He considered the charges harmful to the cause, for his officers and soldiers were beyond reproach. Defeat, Lee insisted, was his responsibility alone. “No blame can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish what was projected by me,” he wrote, “nor should it be censured for the unreasonable expectations of the public. I am alone to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess & valour. [excerpt
Pluralism and Anti-Pluralism in Economics: The Atomistic Individual and Religious Fundamentalism
This short paper examines a possible connection between religion and economics in terms of the parallelism between the atomistic individual doctrine and the individual soul doctrine. The paper explores whether resistance to pluralism in economics as a methodological practice might be illuminated in terms of this connection. On this view, resistance to pluralism in economics is not a matter of economists holding methodological views about economics practice that are contrary to pluralism, but is rather a kind of anti-pluralism reflecting an intransigent defense of the atomistic individual view as a kind of core or ‘untouchable’ deep doctrine. Two arguments are advanced to demonstrate the parallelism between the atomistic individual doctrine and the individual soul doctrine
The Enterprise of Socratic Metaethics
That human beings have the potential for rationality and the ability to cultivate it is a fact of human nature. But to value rationality and its subsidiary character dispositions - impartiality, intellectual discrimination, foresight, deliberation, prudence, self-reflection, self-control - is another matter entirely.
I am going to take it as a given that if a person's freedom to act on her impulses and gratify her desires is constrained by the existence of others' equal, or more powerful, conflicting impulses and desires, then she will need the character dispositions of rationality to survive. The more circumscribed one's freedom and power, the more essential to survival and flourishing the character dispositions of rationality and the spirit may become
Impact of generalized benefit functions on the evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods games with continuous strategies
Cooperation and defection may be considered as two extreme responses to a
social dilemma. Yet the reality is much less clear-cut. Between the two
extremes lies an interval of ambivalent choices, which may be captured
theoretically by means of continuous strategies defining the extent of the
contributions of each individual player to the common pool. If strategies are
chosen from the unit interval, where 0 corresponds to pure defection and 1
corresponds to the maximal contribution, the question is what is the
characteristic level of individual investments to the common pool that emerges
if the evolution is guided by different benefit functions. Here we consider the
steepness and the threshold as two parameters defining an array of generalized
benefit functions, and we show that in a structured population there exist
intermediate values of both at which the collective contributions are maximal.
However, as the cost-to-benefit ratio of cooperation increases the
characteristic threshold decreases, while the corresponding steepness
increases. Our observations remain valid if more complex sigmoid functions are
used, thus reenforcing the importance of carefully adjusted benefits for high
levels of public cooperation.Comment: 8 two-column pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in Physical
Review
Data protection and the legitimate interest of data controllers: much ado about nothing or the winter of rights?
EU data protection law is in a process of reform to meet the challenges of the modern economy and rapid technological developments. This study analyses the legitimate interest of data controllers as a legal basis for
processing personal data under both the current data protection legislation and its proposed reform. The relevant provision expands the scope of lawful processing, but is formulated ambiguously, creating legal
uncertainty and loopholes in the law. The new proposed regime does not resolve the problem.Taking a“rights” perspective, the paper aims to show that the provision should be narrowly interpreted in light of the ECJ case
law, and to give effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights; a rephrasing of the norm is desirable. The provision on the legitimate interest of data controllers weakens the legal protection of data subjects
Evolutionary establishment of moral and double moral standards through spatial interactions
Situations where individuals have to contribute to joint efforts or share
scarce resources are ubiquitous. Yet, without proper mechanisms to ensure
cooperation, the evolutionary pressure to maximize individual success tends to
create a tragedy of the commons (such as over-fishing or the destruction of our
environment). This contribution addresses a number of related puzzles of human
behavior with an evolutionary game theoretical approach as it has been
successfully used to explain the behavior of other biological species many
times, from bacteria to vertebrates. Our agent-based model distinguishes
individuals applying four different behavioral strategies: non-cooperative
individuals ("defectors"), cooperative individuals abstaining from punishment
efforts (called "cooperators" or "second-order free-riders"), cooperators who
punish non-cooperative behavior ("moralists"), and defectors, who punish other
defectors despite being non-cooperative themselves ("immoralists"). By
considering spatial interactions with neighboring individuals, our model
reveals several interesting effects: First, moralists can fully eliminate
cooperators. This spreading of punishing behavior requires a segregation of
behavioral strategies and solves the "second-order free-rider problem". Second,
the system behavior changes its character significantly even after very long
times ("who laughs last laughs best effect"). Third, the presence of a number
of defectors can largely accelerate the victory of moralists over non-punishing
cooperators. Forth, in order to succeed, moralists may profit from immoralists
in a way that appears like an "unholy collaboration". Our findings suggest that
the consideration of punishment strategies allows to understand the
establishment and spreading of "moral behavior" by means of game-theoretical
concepts. This demonstrates that quantitative biological modeling approaches
are powerful even in domains that have been addressed with non-mathematical
concepts so far. The complex dynamics of certain social behaviors becomes
understandable as result of an evolutionary competition between different
behavioral strategies.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in PLoS Computational
Biology [supplementary material available at
http://www.soms.ethz.ch/research/secondorder-freeriders/ and
http://www.matjazperc.com/plos/moral.html
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