Names in Utopia
November 22, 2011
New post up at Fantasy Matters.
Please read and comment there! I’d love to hear if anyone else has read this novel (Woman on the Edge of Time) — it was quite different from my normal dystopic tendencies.
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In her last post, Heather Whitney explored the concept of self-interest and argued that we need to rethink what we mean by it. In this post, she examines the power of names, as inspired by her reading of Marge Piercy’s novel Woman on the Edge of Time.
Names are strange and powerful things – we see this in our own lives and in fiction. In fiction, I instantly think of The Neverending Story, where the only way the boy Bastian can save Fantasia and the childlike Empress is by saying her name. In our own world, many women struggle with whether they should adopt their husband’s last name upon marriage, thereby giving up their father’s.I recently read Woman on the Edge of Time, a post-gender feminist utopia novel. And, in a novel filled with complex and difficult themes and ideas, it was the contrasting use of names between that 2137 utopia and 1970s present that I found particularly interesting. Here, I’d like to spend some time thinking about what names seem to be doing in these alternate realities. To that end, I’ll first summarize the novel and sketch out some of the distinctions I see. Then, I’ll raise a puzzle.To be clear, I don’t know how names ought to function – in utopia anymore than here. I’m not even sure, as a descriptive matter, I quite understand how names function at all. Instead, my goal here is modest: I’d like to simply raise a question for the reader – a question that, I hope, provokes both reflection and response.
Brief Story SynopsisThe novel follows Connie (aka Consuelo, aka Conchita), a poor Mexican woman who has been in and out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Clockwork Orange-esque mental institutions. The novel begins when Connie is once again forced into one of these institutions, this time against her will. Around the same time as Connie is readmitted, she begins communicating with, and eventually visiting, people in 2137. This utopian future, whether real or imaginary, stands in sharp contrast to both Connie’s mid-1970s reality and the alternative totalitarian future only she can prevent. In Utopia 2137 the nuclear family has been eliminated; it’s also post-race and post-gender [no “he”; no “she”; men as well as women breastfeed; and women no longer bear children (as they had to give up what “made them special” in order to achieve true sex equality)].
Naming
Naming is also quite different in 2137. While a child is given a name, upon reaching adulthood (at around 13), the child is free to change that name – not only once, but whenever they’d like. Some change their name daily (risking only mass confusion) while others change their names once, twice, sometimes, or never. The idea is that individuals are free to change their name whenever and to whatever they’d like. But, interestingly, what you don’t see in 2137 is people having more than one name at the same time.
We can contrast names in 2137 with Connie’s name experience, as she explained to those in 2137:
“‘I’ve always had three names inside me. Consuelo, my given name. Consuelo’s a Mexican woman, a servant of servants, silent as clay. The woman who suffers. Who bears and endures. Then I’m Connie, who managed to get two years of college—till Consuelo got pregnant. Connie got decent jobs from time to time and fought welfare for a little extra money for [her daughter]. She got me on a bus when I had to leave Chicago. But it was her who married Eddie, she thought it was smart. Then I’m Conchita, the low-down drunken mean part of me who gets by in jail, in the bughouse, who loves no good men, who hurt my daughter….’ When she stopped short, the others were silent but did not seem scared or judgmental. As usual, Luciente [Connie’s main guide in 2137] spoke first. ‘Maybe Diana could help you to meld the three women into one.’”
From the above, we can sketch out the major differences between names in the two worlds:
2137 (utopia)
- Individuals are free to choose their own name
- Individuals are free to change their name at any time
- All people at time t refer to you by the same name, x.
- The same people who called you x at t1 will call you, if you decide to change your name, y at t2.
Present (1970s–portrayed as virtually dystopic)
• Individuals are given their name, but it’s unclear if Connie chose to go by these three variations of her given name or whether others put those names upon her
• Not all people at time t will refer to you by the same name [we imagine Connie goes by Connie in class but then returns to her neighborhood and is called “Consuelo.” When she gets upset with herself, she may internally refer to herself as “Conchita.”]
• Very rarely does the same one person call us by more than one name (whereas a person in 2137 decides to change her name and, as a result, the person who called her x yesterday will now call her y, in our world, that rarely happens (except with women’s last names).
Given the response people in 2137 had to Connie’s explanation of her experience with names and identity, it seems safe to say they (and the author) see Connie’s divided identity as a bad thing. I’ll call the people in 2137’s problem with Connie’s divided identity an objection to Vertical Disjoined Identity. That is, people in 2137 object to multiple identities (represented by “Consuelo”; “Connie”; and “Conchita”) coexisting at the same point on a timeline.But, given their willingness to change their own names frequently over time, they are clearly not opposed to what we can call Horizontal Disjoined Identity. That is, while they think an individual should only have one name at a time, they find it acceptable to change that name over time.
So my question is this: why, in purported utopia, is Horizontal but not Vertical Disjointed Identity acceptable? Classic super heroes engage, to some extent, in Vertical Disjointed Identity. Those who play WOW (World of Warcraft) or otherwise have alternate names and identities online do the same. In fact, so did I when I went only by “Summer” at summer camp. And these aren’t just examples of one unified identity with multiple names; Batman acts different, plays out a different role, when he’s Batman than he does as Bruce Wayne. As Summer, I felt like a different person – a better, kinder, and happier me. I felt like I was a different person – the sort of person I imagined a “Summer” to be.
So, is Vertical Disjoined Identity bad? If you imagine utopia, is it eliminated?
Why?
Penguins, Leviathans, and how we understand what self-interest means
November 3, 2011
Another two weeks, another post up at Fantasy Matters.
I thought I’d paste below my article - but do leave comments over at Fantasy Matters. (I’d just like to keep a copy here.)
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In her last post, Heather Whitney discussed some of the implications of the legal dilemma portrayed in the Star Trek episode “The Measure of a Man.” In this new post, she expands on some of the discussion generated by her last post.
Choice is complicated. In the moment of choosing, be it an individual deciding whether or not to eat a cookie or a company deciding whether to hand over a user’s data, it often appears to come down to a simple weighing of costs and benefits. But, while that deliberation process is significant, study after study show that there’s a lot more than our in-the-moment weighing makes it seem. We, for instance, are more trusting of others after a quick nasal spray of the hormone oxytocin. We actually eat less food when the plates we’re eating off of are smaller. A lot, it’s clear, goes on behind the scenes of choice. And, for those interested in helping people choose to do good, it’s critical to understand and then use these varying mechanisms to help people harness their “better” selves.
Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler sets off to do just this in his new book, The Penguin and the Leviathan. In the book, Benkler frames the battle as between two competing conceptions of human nature: self-interest (selfishness) on the one side and cooperation on the other. While I very much enjoyed (and recommend) Benkler’s book, I want to challenge that setup. Straightforwardly, the battle is not between “purely selfish” people on one side and cooperative “good” people on the other; the battle is between people who misunderstand what’s in their self-interest and those who don’t. And the challenge is figuring out how to get people to reevaluate what self-interest means, since our current understanding (that doing what’s in your self-interest means doing what’s greedy) actually makes it easier for people to choose that greedy thing.
Why Framing and Meaning Matter
When we make important choices, we ask ourselves a lot of questions. We ask which choice would best help our friends and family. We ask what our “gut” tells us to do. If we’re religious, we think about that. And, invariably, we ask “what’s best for me? What’s in my self-interest?”
But asking the questions are just the first step. What really influences our decision is how we come to understand what, for instance, self-interest means.
Here’s a study Benkler discusses that makes this more concrete:
Psychologist Lee Ross and colleagues divided participants into two groups and had them play the standard Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The only difference between the standard version and Ross’ was that Ross told one group they were playing “The Community Game” and the other group that they were playing “The Wall Street” game. To repeat, the only difference between the two games was the name; the difference in outcome, however, was astounding. Those who played the Community version cooperated 70 percent of the time while those playing the Wall Street game cooperated only 33 percent of the time.
The takeaway here is clear: while each participant experienced in-the-moment deliberations about whether or not to cooperate, by framing that choice as one made within a “Community Game” or “Wall Street Game”, the researchers were able to fundamentally alter the way participants went about deliberating. And they did this by exploiting the participants’ understanding of both what “Community” and “Wall Street” mean and what those participants think it means to make decisions within those value-laden frameworks.
Our Current Conception of Self-Interest
Ross’ participants clearly thought of “Community” in a way that suggested cooperation and “Wall Street” in a way that did not. What’s crucial to note, however, is that the connection participants made between “community” and cooperative behavior is in no way determined a priori. We can easily imagine another society that, due to historically contingent circumstances, now associates Community with aggression and hostility. We take the concept Community and then build an understanding (a conceptualization) of it. This also happens with Self-Interest and Selfishness. Formally, these are concepts; what’s important (and potentially problematic) is how we fill them in.
By looking at Benkler’s self-interest vs. cooperation battle we can find the origins of our current conceptualization of self-interest.
Benkler’s Leviathan conception of human nature is fueled by (unsurprisingly) Hobbes’Leviathan and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. On this view, humans are motivated by material gain and power. When deliberating, we mechanically weigh costs and benefits in order to deduce (and then choose) whatever helps us get ahead. We’re robotic, calculating, hyper-rational, and see others as weaklings, mere tools to exploit to their foolish detriment and our greedy gain. We are, quite frankly, unpleasant. It is this view that I think currently shapes our conception of self-interest.
And we can test this. While public service announcements try to get teens to see drugs as actually bad for them, we never call the girl who “just says no” selfish, nor do we call her action motivated by self-interest. Our dominant conception of self-interest sees self-interested actions as motivated by greed, and this girl’s actions strike us as neither of those things.
Instead, we associate this girl with Benkler’s competing conception of human nature – one that focuses on our ability to be virtuous, empathetic, cooperative, and generous. On this view, we can transcend our selfishness; we’re more than selfish. Benkler calls this view the “Penguin” in honor of Tux, the symbol of Linux – an operating system built on free and open source (and thus, Benkler implies, selfless) software. Based on the original choice framework I laid out above, when the Penguin is deciding what to do, she just doesn’t tend to ask the “what’s in my self-interest” question.
Why Our Current Self-Interest Conception Is Harmful
Let’s take an illustration Benkler puts forward to illustrate the difference between Leviathans and Penguins:
You’re sitting on a bench when a passerby drops $100. You pick it up. Nobody is around to see what you do. Do you keep it?
As Benkler sees it, for the “purely selfish person, the answer is simple.” They keep the money because “[t]here are no possible repercussions.” But, in contrast, “for the person with morals [the Penguin], there are repercussions – feelings of guilt for not having returned the money.”
Here’s what I find harmful: When someone is sitting on that bench and sees that money drop, we know that they, in trying to figure out what to do, might be asking themselves lots of different questions (what’s the right thing to do? How will I feel if I keep this money? Think about if you were the one who dropped the money, wouldn’t you want someone to return it, etc.). And, we know those questions can be highly influential. As I understand it, Benkler sees the person ask asking two main questions that lead to opposite choices: you can do what’s in your self-interest (what’s good for you) and keep the money or you can do what’s not in your self-interest but is instead moral (so good in some unqualified sense), and return the money.
But doesn’t this framework, which relies on a deprived conceptualization of self-as-inherently-greedy, push someone to believe that there is at least some value no matter what she decides? She can do some good (good for herself) by keeping the money or perhaps more good by returning it. But that clearly concedes too much. We actually don’t think keeping the money is good for her. And why? Because, when you get down to it, we don’t actually think of our selves as the horribly myopic Gollum-like creatures we would have to be in order for pocketing someone else’s $100 to be so unquestionably in our self-interest. But, because we understand “self-interest” to mean greed, we confuse ourselves. In other words, we’re always going to ask and care about what’s in our self-interest. When we’ve decided that greedy things are always in our self-interest (because we’ve accepted the Leviathan understanding as an accurate description of selfishness) we then think the greedy thing is good for us.
In contrast, imagine a world where our conceptualization of self-interest viewed the self as more Penguin-like. But, instead of Benkler’s view, where the Penguin is selfless, we understood that, being Penguins, helping others was quite often good for them and for us.
Now imagine the person on the park bench. They still have to choose whether or not to pocket the money. But, instead of seeing keeping the money as good for them, now they see doing so as potentially bad for them (it’s not what someone who’s truly self-interested might do). At that point, they may recognize that the only thing counting in favor of keeping the money would be greed – and that greed would be nakedly called what it is, instead of stealthily hiding behind a concept that suggests it is in their self-interest. I believe this framework, like the “Community Game” would set our decision making against a backdrop more conducive to virtuous choices.
So what do we do?
People are always going to be self-interested; when they are deciding what to do they’re going to ask themselves what is best for them. The question, and challenge, is getting them to think about themselves and their interests in a robust (non-Leviathan) way. So how do we do that?
The first step seems to be to change how we use “self-interest” and “selfishness”. If we talk about heroic characters as doing not just good but doing what was good for them, we can slowly transform our understanding of what “self-interest” means.
And then, for the next person on the park bench asking what’s in their self-interest, the inquiry will produce much more robust (and less depressing) thoughts and results.
How we talk about Data (the android) and what it means about us
October 13, 2011
Another post up at Fantasy Matters. Now with Star Trek references!
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In Not Only for Myself: Identity, Politics & Law, Martha Minow references a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that I wanted to expand on in this entry.
Episode Synopsis
The episode, “The Measure of a Man”, centers on Data, an android. In the episode, a cybernetics specialist (and Starfleet Commander) requests permission from Captain Picard to disassemble Data for research purposes. The Commander explains that through the operation, he’ll (he hopes) finally acquire the knowledge necessary to mass-produce androids. The procedure, however, is not without risks. The Commander cannot guarantee that post-reassembly Data will retain memory of the “ephemeral” quality of his experiences. Upon realizing this, Data refuses to consent to the procedure. And, Captain Picard, Data’s superior officer, also refuses consent. Anticipating their less-than-enthusiastic response, the Commander produces transfer papers that place Data under his command. And, as Data’s new superior officer, orders him to undergo the procedure. Left with the unattractive choice of undergoing the procedure or quitting Starfleet, Data decides to quit. Furious and undeterred, the Commander argues that Data cannot quit Starfleet anymore than the ship’s central mainframe can; Data is property and property can’t quit. The on-site JAG officer agrees but Picard, also undeterred, demands a trial to challenge Data’s property designation.
At first, the courtroom debate is as you’d expect; the argument was whether Data was property or a person and so, both sides pointed to different facts about Data to prove their side. (“Data can be turned on and off by a switch, which makes him a machine, which makes him property.” “Yes, but Data also values friendship and keeps sentimental trinkets, so Data is really a person.”) But then, the strategy changes. Instead of focusing on facts about Data to prove his personhood, Data’s lawyer (Picard) reframes the entire question, asking instead what sort of people they wanted to be. On the cusp of potentially creating an entire race of androids, did they want to be the sort of people who would deny them personhood? The sort of people who would choose to look at an android who saw himself as a person and tell him he was mistaken? Is that who they wanted to be?
In the end, the court found Data to be a person. But, before leaving, Data tells the Commander that he will agree to the procedure once the Commander figures out how to ensure his safety, adding further that he finds the Commander’s research to be intriguing. In later episodes, Data and the Commander take up a correspondence, as equals.
Minow uses this scene to explore the idea that when we are not for others, we are capable of monstrous acts. Here, I bring it up instead to explore the multiple frameworks from which we can view difficult questions and the importance of utilizing each in our decision making process.
As I see it, there are two overarching deliberation frameworks highlighted in this episode:
- How we as a society make legal determinations and why that process matters.
- How individuals make decisions and the danger of individuals conflating and collapsing moral and ethical questions into legal ones (i.e. thinking that just because an option is legally permissible, they should do it.)
The significance of legal determinations
The episode powerfully illuminates that there are at least two distinct perspectives from which we can make legal arguments.
First, we see the traditional model. The question is whether Data is property and so both sides argue that, all of Data’s attributes considered, he’s more machine than person or more person than machine.
The second type of argument, the type Picard ends with, is radically different. Instead of making the legal determination based on facts about the thing being labeled (Data), the tables are turned and the judge is asked what the court’s decision says about them. To make a decision based not just on what Data is but based on what sort of people they wanted themselves to be.
Both types of arguments are powerful and important.
The first type of argument (pointing to facts about a person and making institutionally-supported conclusions based off them) unavoidably leads that individual, and those who share in his attributes, to internalize those determinations and, as a result, be shaped by them. Minow references a Washington Post article, “Stereotypes Within,” that captures how sixth graders have already internalized stereotypes about their own ethnic groups that greatly limit their sense of self and future opportunities. Picard makes a similar argument with regards to Data – by calling him property, they would preemptively deprive him the joys of self-discovery and creation. The point here is not that all institutionally-supported classifications are inherently bad, but just that they are powerful. Thus, we would do well to tread lightly.
The second argument reminds us that what the law is is a reflection on who we are and who we want to become. Minow emphasizes that when we are not for others we are capable of monstrous acts. This episode adds an interesting twist for it seems that sometimes focusing exclusively on others, by weighing factors about them, lends itself to our forgetting that we too are transformed by our decisions. In other words, at least sometimes, the winning argument may be a selfish one. What is best for us, Picard asks. Do we want to be monsters? We have to take care of ourselves by making decisions that help us become who we want to be, too.
The responsibility of the individual
As society is shaped by what it permits and prohibits, so too are individuals shaped by what they choose to do. An option being legally permissible is only the first step; the second harder and ennobling one is to then decide whether to not to actually pursue it. When we neglect the second question, we deprive ourselves of the blessing of being the sort of creature who has shaped herself by making choices she thought good.
Imagine that the court found Data to be property. If the Commander would have then disassembled him, we would still find the Commander morally repugnant. We condemn the society that says such behavior is permissible but we also separately judge the man who takes advantage of that opportunity.
The episode, and stories like it, helps us pull apart the many viewpoints from which we should examine our decisions. We can tear down or empower others with the law, our society is shaped in part by what we allow, and we as individuals are made by what we choose. We should, it is clear, take care.
Guest Blogging at Fantasy Matters
September 29, 2011
My first guest post is up over at Fantasy Matters. If you get a chance, take a look and leave a comment (leave the comment there, not here). For a bit of context for those of you who don’t already know — I’m at Harvard Law School and these posts are the product of my current independent study project.
I also highly recommend taking a look at some of the other discussions going on over there. It’s Banned Book Week and the posts and comments about the consequences of censorship are important, interesting stuff.
23andMe Sends People The Wrong DNA Results [and what is (and is not) interesting about it]
June 9, 2010
As reported Monday (TechCrunch article here), 23andMe recently sent the wrong DNA results to up to 96 customers. Long story short, it appears the lab they farm the sequencing out to (LabCorp) mixed up the labeling on one of their 96-well trays (a standard sized plate) and, well, that meant that when some people logged on to see their results, they ended up seeing the results of someone else.
Beyond the obvious privacy and data security questions this raises, I think it’s the response from 23andMe customers that’s most interesting and illuminating. I will paste their feedback in below since, unless you have an account, you won’t be able to see it (if you do have one, see it here.)
Title: Results in, my son is not my son?
Yesterday I received a message that my son and my daughter’s results were in. I rushed to carrier status and checked, she was negative for all the diseases. I checked my son’s it stated that he was a carrier for hemochromatosis, I was upset. How could he be a carrier and we weren’t. Well my husband’s result’s weren’t in yet so I would wait and see. Still upset I checked family inheritance and noticed my daughter shared with me, and then I checked my son’s. He was not a match for any of us. I checked his haplogroup’s and they were different from ours. I started screaming. A month before my son was born two local hospitals had baby switches. I panicked and I checked over and over. My kid’s were sitting at the computer because we all wanted to see the results. My son laughed but he looked upset. I called my sister in tears. She being the pragmatic one instantly told me to stop crying. She reminded me we took a thousand pictures of his birth and every breath he took the first few months. She told me to check the traits. When I checked for eye color I noticed he was GG (blue eyes) we are AG. My son does not have blue eyes. I compared genes and I noticed he did not compare with any African Americans. His closest results were European. Then I read a post from another person who had wrong results. I realized these results were wrong. I sent an e-mail to 23andme. I received the standard 3-5 days response.Upset, I sent Shirley Wu an e-mail, she said she would forward it to customer service. That’s it. So far I haven’t heard a word from 23andme.
Later I found my son in my bed asleep and hugging my pillow. He did not go to school today, he said he was sick. I told him it’s a mistake.
Someone out there has new results maternal L2c2, paternal E1b1b1a, and those are my son’s results. I looked at relative finder my son has 56 relatives. My son’s Ancestry painting came up today, it says 99% European. I share with 3 of the relatives. I hope they don’t send an invite. Thank god the results were totally off or I would have been in linbo for days. I hesitated before I sent this post, I wanted to give 23andme time to get back to me with some explanation. I am still waiting. I am still screaming inside………
In the comments section another user wrote,
23andme has just sent my son’s girlfriend a notice about a mistake in her processing and took down her results. She was just about to write in and ask how they determined she was Asian. She has spent the day in shock.
I don’t know if she yet called her mother, but I know she was wondering what to ask. She came back 100% Asian. We talked about all possibilities..and some of them were odd and disturbing.
We have spent the entire day discussing her 100% Asian ancestry painting and taking a new look at her pics. Even the high risk breast cancer results were less disturbing to her than what the ancestry meant.
23andme…time for some mea culpas here…
So why does this matter?
Well, before that, I think there’s an important point to be made: the root problem here is not a direct-to-consumer (DTC) specific one - any lab using 96-well plates could have confused labels (or whatever exactly happened here.)
So what’s this “96-well plate” business, you ask? Basically, when a lab is running the same test on a lot of samples, it’s much easier to have one big plate with a lot of wells than it is to have a bunch of individual test tubes. Think about it — would you rather carry around 96 individual test tubes or one plate with 96 wells in it? Since it’s easier and faster, this plate method also contributes to scalability, which then helps bring down costs. So, not only would a lab sequencing for 23andMe use this, but any lab working with a lot of samples that require the same procedures.
Non-DTC examples:
- BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic testing (which is ordered through a doctor)
- Hepatitis B immunity (checking to see if you have it, that is)
Point being: this mistake didn’t happen because these tests were offered DTC.
Now, what I do think important here is the responses from 23andMe users. DTC companies have long stressed that they aren’t providing medical testing but genetic information (and thus shouldn’t be regulated in certain ways)– but what does all that mean? The first user’s experience (above) shows that the first thing she does when she gets her son’s results is check for carrier status. It’s true that whether or not I’m a carrier for, say, a SNP associated with hemochromatosis, is genetic information — but is getting that information also the result of a medical test? Given the intensity and speed with which she checked for those things, it sounds a lot more like she viewed it as a test than as just “genetic information.” [Maybe I feel this way because “information” sounds so neutral, but “medical test” more closely captures the way we respond to our testing “results.”
To be honest though, I don’t have enough experience with how regulations view the difference to say, but I think the distinction is not so obvious — and the non-obviousness isn’t just a function of how our policies and regulations view the difference. How do people truly view the information they’re given through these tests? An interesting study would be to take people who are told they are a carrier for something and see if they act differently — see if, upon telling their family, if their family treats them differently. How do we process that sort of information?
Why is HIV testing a medical test but the results of a DTC genetic test not? Because an HIV test tells you whether or not you will actually develop certain ailments? The BRCA tests don’t tell you definitely that you will or will not get breast and/or ovarian cancer, but they’re considered medical. Difficult…
Other food for thought:
-The community feedback and advice given to users who wrote about confusing or upsetting results was strong and helpful — I think it shows that, if you’re willing to engage with a community of active and interested participants, you can get constructive information without a doctor middleman. On the flip side, it sounds like users didn’t hear back from 23andMe for days — and thinking you were adopted for a few days doesn’t sound so great.
- DTC genetic testing results aren’t just “for fun.” There were unquestionably traumatic identity crises going on with some of these people. And why? Because when they first clicked through and got their results they were ready to accept those results as telling them deep truths about themselves. They weren’t rapid-fire clicking to carrier status or ethnic background to take a glance, eat some popcorn, and then go out with friends and forget about it. No, this information meant something to people.
It will be interesting to see what comes of this… I’m willing to bet Walgreens is counting its blessings right now, though.