Golemans Botschaft ist eine andere: Ein industriell hergestelltes Produkt ist nicht einfach grün oder nicht, sondern mehr oder weniger „grünlich“. Auch wenn die Ökobilanz gemessen an den Alternativen günstig ausfällt, sollte es immer noch mit Bedacht benutzt werden.

The case involves “Hillary: The Movie,” a slashing political documentary released last year while Mrs. Clinton, now the secretary of state, was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. The film was produced by Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that is a nonprofit corporation.

The McCain-Feingold law bans the broadcast, cable or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before a general election.

Jetzt, ist das richtig oder falsch? Im Grunde die Argumente gegen solche Regelungen recht einfach, sind doch grundsätzliche Menschenrechte beschnitten. Wobei sich für mich schon dabei die Frage stellt, inwiefern Menschenrechte für Unternehmen anzuwenden sind.

Die Argumentation für diese Einschränkungen muss sich schon etwas mehr aus dem Fenster lehnen:

The Austin decision said campaign speech financed by corporations was suspect. “The corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form,” Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote for the majority in 1990, “have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.”

Im Grunde würde ich mich dieser Argumentation anschließen. Während die Hoffnung auf eine Politik ohne Kontroversen und Einzelinteressen einen an den Rand des Totalitarismus führt, kann man wie ich finde legitimerweise fordern, dass diese Einzelinteressen ungefähr ausgewogen zur Sprache kommen. Oder?

The Roberts court has struck down every campaign finance regulation to reach it, and it seems to have a majority prepared to do more. Indeed, last year, in Federal Election Commission v. Davis, Justice Alito, writing for the majority, said leveling the electoral playing field was not a matter for the courts or constitutional.

In his opinion, Justice Alito cited Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s dissent in the Austin case. “The notion that the government has a legitimate interest in restricting the quantity of speech to equalize the relative influence of speakers on elections,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the passage cited by Justice Alito, is “antithetical to the First Amendment.”

Hier wird ein typisches Strohmannargument aufgestellt. Natürlich geht es nicht darum, das politische Spielfeld ausgeglichen zu machen. Unterschiedlicher politischer Einfluss ist ja am Ende genau das, was man braucht um Wahlen zu entscheiden und Regierungen zu bilden. Die Frage ist, ob Geld das geeignete Medium des Unterschieds ist.

Auf einer Speisekarte in einem Restaurant stattet man die in einem Festpreis-Menü wählbaren Hauptgänge mit vorgeblichen Preisen aus, die sie beim Einzelkauf kosten würden. Theoretisch (und Laborbefunden folgend) sollten dann die angeblich teureren Sachen häufiger gewählt werden, weil sie ja wertvoller sind besser sein müssen. Passiert aber nicht. Das mag daran liegen, dass wir wenn’s ums Essen geht doch ganz gut wissen, was wir „wirklich“ wollen. Oder dass Laborbefunde ein Problem haben:

“Maybe, sometimes, old-fashioned economics is just about right,” Dr. Shayo says. “Maybe when it comes to food, people do have reasonably stable preferences. Some people like shrimp and some don’t, even if it’s worth a lot of money.”

The researchers don’t deny that consumers can be swayed by variations in sticker prices in laboratory experiments. But they question how significant that factor is in real-world settings where prices can’t be inflated so extremely, like the Tel Aviv restaurant. “Size is everything,” Dr. Heffetz says. “Our findings remind us that knowing that ‘A has a positive effect on B’ is not enough. The effect may simply be too small to matter.”

Ich fürchte, dass eine Menge Wissenschaftler darüber nochmal nachdenken sollten.

Weiter mit dem Thema Evolution: Leser eines Blogs werden gebeten, Listen zu schicken, die jeweils separat ihre 10 teuersten Einkäufe und die 10 Einkäufe, die ihnen am meisten Glück bereitet haben enthalten:

The size-matters effect seemed to show up in a much less rigorous bit of research conducted at my TierneyLab blog with the help of Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico. In his new book, “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior” (Viking), he argues that humans often waste money because of the unconscious — and mistaken — belief that our costly stuff will signal our intelligence and sterling personality traits to potential mates and allies.

As an exercise, Dr. Miller asked readers of the blog to list the 10 most expensive things they had ever bought, and then list the 10 purchases that had brought them the most happiness. More than 200 responded. As we expected, many people rued spending lots of money for stuff that hadn’t brought them joy. Boats seemed to have particularly low utility in delivering happiness per dollar; many cars fit that category, too, and so did many expensive weddings.

But we were struck by how much overlap there was between the most-expensive list and the most-happy list. People repeatedly included on both lists their homes, their college education, their vacation trips, their high-priced electronics (large-screen televisions, Blu-Ray player, audio equipment, computers) and certain models of cars (BMW 325, Audi A4, Jaguar, Subaru WRX, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic).

Indeed, the first trend that Dr. Miller identified was the match between the happiness and expense lists. Some of this may have been because of postpurchase rationalization, but a lot of buyers seemed to be suffering anything but remorse. As one reader, Janet Hubbs, put it:

“The three things (not necessities) I have spent the most money on in the past ten years are: my cottage at Cape Cod, my Lexus, and my Rolex — and I LOVE all three, in the order of their cost. And I don’t care what that says about me.”

Und die Listen überschneiden sich also erheblich. Ob man damit aber die Eingangsthese widerlegen kann, dass viele unserer Anschaffungen wegen der Signalwirkung und nicht wegen der direkten Nützlichkeit gekauft werden, bezweifle ich. Denn dass die Signalwirkung auch glücklich machen kann, ist ja genau der Sinn der Sache. Und warum genau Janet Hubbs ihre Rolex so beglückt müsste man sie am besten fragen. Vermutlich, weil sie dann immer weiß wie spät es ist? Aber hier kommen wir in ein Gebiet, wo vielleicht nicht nur das Laborexperiment an seine Grenzen stößt.

Hier zunächst das Ergebnis vor Wikipedias Schiedgericht, der höchsten Instanz dort:

And it can be hard to expect neutrality on some topics. For example, the 430 Wikipedia articles about all aspects of Scientology represent a free-floating civil war, a “miasma,” in the description of Ira Brad Matetsky, a corporate litigation lawyer in New York. He is a member of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, which last month waded into the sniping over the Scientology entries.

In a sweeping ruling with little precedent in the eight-year history of Wikipedia, the committee blocked editing from “all I.P. addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted.” The ruling did allow users from those addresses to appeal to be reinstated on a case-by-case basis.

[…]

The decision has a range of sanctions for dozens of users, including outspoken critics of Scientology and Wikipedia administrators, from mild chiding for poor behavior to bans on editing about Scientology to total bans. Among the violations were name-calling and repeated nullifying of the editing of others without any discussion first.

[…]

The Church of Scientology accepted its ban in that spirit, saying in a statement: “More importantly is the fact that Wikipedia finally banned those who were engaged in unobjective and biased editing for the purposes of antagonism as opposed to providing accurate information. We hope the decision will result in more accurate and useful articles on Wikipedia as the site evolves.”

Die Entwicklung in Wikipedia gibt Anlass zu soziologischen Überlegungen:

The discovery that Wikipedia is not the anarchic paradise some might imagine can be a shock. Others see hypocrisy, evidence that there is a class of users who control what appears there, people who benefit from Wikipedia’s huge public clout with little public scrutiny.

But taking the longer view, it is apparent that in its brief history, Wikipedia is quickly replicating the creation of society, from an Eden (no rules, no need for rules) to a modern entity.

“Bureaucracy is inevitable,” said Joseph Reagle, whose Ph.D. thesis was about the history of Wikipedia and collaborative culture, crediting the German sociologist Max Weber. “Even if you have a supposed anarchy or collective, that doesn’t mean the rules aren’t there, just that they are implicit.”

Statt dessen zitiere ich aus einem Artikel über den Kampf der amerikanischen Banken gegen eine ausgeweitete Privatinsolvenz, in dem einige interessante Mechanismen ausgeführt werden:

[…] the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, was missing its centerpiece: a change in bankruptcy law […] that would have given judges the power to lower the amount owed on a home loan.

It had been stripped out three weeks earlier in a showdown between Senate Democrats and the nation’s banks, including many that are getting big government bailouts.

As Congressional Democrats and the White House crow about multiple victories over the financial industry, including new rules for credit card issuers, banks are quietly savoring an even bigger victory of their own.

Es geht mit Geld:

Within his own party, moderates were badly split. Some, like Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, represent states that are the corporate home to major banks. The industry has showered both lawmakers with campaign cash.

Und politischem Druck in verschiedenen Richtungen, um die Lager zusammenzuhalten:

Mr. Durbin next sought a compromise with credit unions and three large banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. In April, at a delicate stage in the talks, Mr. Durbin gave the banks a proposed compromise that was marked not to be circulated, a senior Congressional aide involved in the talks recalled.

Within six minutes, the memo was distributed to the entire Republican caucus — along with a warning from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, to stay away from it. The compromise went nowhere.

[…]

Senator Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican leading the charge against the bankruptcy change, told bankers there would be consequences if they dealt with the Democrats. According to an April 20 e-mail message between industry officials in touch with Mr. Kyl, he told them “not to make a deal with Durbin and then come looking to Republicans when they need help on something like regulatory restructuring.”

Am schönsten sind natürlich persönliche Kontakte:

Moreover, Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, did not seem to share Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm for the bankruptcy change.

Mr. Geithner was lobbied by the industry early. Two days after he was sworn in, he invited Mr. Fine from the community bankers to his office for a private meeting. The association, with influential members in every Congressional district, is one of Washington’s most powerful trade groups.

Könnte ja alles ein Teil des normalen demokratischen Prozesses sein, alle Interessen organisieren sich, verschaffen sich Gehör, am Ende steht die beste Lösung. Naja:

There was no counterweight to that legislative muscle. Bankrupt homeowners do not have a political action committee or lobbyists.

Mr. Fine reports that the political action committees run by his association alone have built a war chest of nearly $2 million, a 40 percent jump over the last year, even though members have had to cut other expenses in the recession.

“The banks get it,” Mr. Fine said. “They understand you need a strong political action committee to get access to the fund-raisers. That’s where the lawmakers are.”

Wer dazu mehr Informationen möchte, kann sich übrigens die Seite des Center for Responsive Politics anschauen, wo viele der Geldströme und Lobbyausgaben nachgezeichnet werden. Wenn man sich etwa die Tabelle mit den Top Spendern in Lobbyausgaben 2008 anschaut, wird einem schwummrig:

Ein interessanter NYTimes-Artikel macht diesen Punkt noch einmal in aller Deutlichkeit, und hat auch einen praktikablen praktischen Ratschlag:

“Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” […]

She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption.

Außerdem noch eine kleine philosophische Ausführung, motivierend und ängstigend zugleich:

She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.

“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.”

ARGHH! JA! Ich werde mich bemühen!

Der Tod neigt dazu, eine deprimierende Sicht des Krieges zu vermitteln.

Hier also noch eine wirklich tiefsinnige und nachdenkenswerte Ausführung von ihm, zitiert aus der Amazon.com Seite des Buches:

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Encarta could not compete, however, against the Web and Google. The Google search engine is an automated, continuously updated, always-expanding guide to information that is completely free. Authority now comes not from a small group of encyclopedia editors and famous contributors but from Google’s algorithms, which analyze links that point to Web pages elsewhere and other clues to make an educated guess about trustworthiness.

Google has effectively enlisted millions of Web page authors, whose links serve as recommendations for the largest editorial board ever assembled. Many Google search results lead off with a pointer to Wikipedia. The crowd-curated Web may have been what Microsoft had in mind when it vaguely explained Encarta’s closing this way: “People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”

Zunächst ist es spannend, dass „das Web“ an sich und Google als Konkurrenten der klassischen Enzyklopädie dargestellt werden und nicht, wie ich als erstes denken würde, Wikipedia.

In der Tat kann man da vielleicht insgesamt drei Ansätze zur Legitimation von „Wissen“ herausdestillieren. Und darüber, so meine ich, nicht schreiben ohne Wissen in Anführungszeichen zu setzen und sich auf konstruktivistische Pfade zu begeben, aber dazu in späteren Beiträgen mehr.

Der erste ist der klassische Ansatz, in dem eine ausgewählte Expertengruppe, in ihren jeweiligen Wissensbereichen etabliert (im Sinne der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft) und informiert, in einem relativ esoterischen Prozess entscheidet, was als wissenschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Konsens aufgefasst werden kann und damit in einer Enzyklopädie erscheinen darf. Dabei geht es letztlich um Relevanz und Richtigkeit, und es spielt keine Rolle ob das Medium 24 Bände Brockhaus oder eine CD-ROM von Microsoft ist.

Der zweite Weg ist der Wikipedia-Ansatz, der versucht eine relativ direkte Demokratie für editorische Entscheidungen einzuführen. Bei genauem Hinsehen ist das deutlich komplizierter ist als man erwarten würde. Es gibt Regeln und eine Art Konsens-Demokratie. Und es gibt Abstimmungen, für die gerade ein interessantes Beispiel auf der Startseite aufgetaucht ist. zum Thema Lizenzrecht.

Der dritte Weg ist nun der „google-Weg“, bei dem das Gewand einer Enzyklopädie komplett abgelegt ist und die enge Verbindung zwischen Wahrheit und Relevanz besonders deutlich wird, auf die ich im Rahmen meiner Geplanten Konstruktivismus-Reihe noch näher eingehen möchte. Der google-Weg ist eine Kombination von demokratischen und technokratischen Elementen — jeder kann eine Internetseite erstellen und ist damit an googles Berechnungen beteiligt, aber nur Google bestimmt, wie diese Berechnungen aussehen, und hält sogar den genauen Modus geheim.

Dass dabei durchaus auf einen demokratischen Prozess angespielt wird zeigt dieser Ausschnitt aus einer Tech-Info-Seite:

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.

Auch wenn noch keiner dieser Ansätze endgültig ausgeschieden ist — es zeichnet sich ein Ende der klassischen Enzyklopädie ab. In der Welt der wissenschaftlichen „Journals“ hält sich noch relativ beharrlich das Prinzip des ausgelesenen Kreises, der Urteile fällt. Aber auch dort rührt sich Aufruhr.

Im Grunde ist es also ein Rennen zwischen dem „Community“-Ansatz von Wikipedia und dem „Technology“-Ansatz von Google, und ich bin sehr gespannt wie dieses Rennen ausgeht. Etwas in mir revoltiert gegen die versteckte Herrschaftsausübung, die von googles technischem Monopol ausgeht. Anderersteits gibt es auch eine versteckte quasi-demokratische Legitimation: Durch uns alle, die wir google weiter benutzen.

Gleichzeitig ist das demokratische Modell von Wikipedia ziemlich komplex, mir scheint dort eine Art Parallelwelt entstanden zu sein, der darin enstehende Unmut wird an verschiedenen Stellen satirisch aufgearbeitet: Wie man Admin wird, das Recht des Älteren oder Revert-Wars. Sehr spannend auch das Verhältnis zum Expertentum, überhaupt könnte ich mich in den Dokumenten dieser Welt richtig verlieren.

Hier noch ein ernsthafter Text zu den Problemen in Wikipedia, einer zum Problem der Google-Bombe, ein Schmankerl: Wikipedia-Philosophien, und eine Hausaufgabe: Den Text zum Neutralen Standpunkt in Wikipedia aus konstruktivistischer Perspektive lesen.

The solution to the issue of fundamentals lies in exposing a widely held and rather old-fashioned fallacy that the human sciences inherited form the nineteenth century, a view about the relation between biology and culture. In that version, culture was conceived as an „overlay“ on biologically determined human nature. The causes of human behavior were assumed to lie in that biological substrate. What I want to argue instead is that culture and the quest for meaning within culture are the proper causes of human action. The biological substrate, the so-called universals of human nature, is not a cause of action but, at most, a constraint upon it or a condition for it. The engine in the car does not „cause“ us to drive to the supermarket for the week’s shopping, any more than our biological reproductive system „causes“ us with very high odds to marry somebody from our own social class, ethnic group, and so on. Granted that without engine-powered cars we would not drive to supermarkets, nor perhaps would there be marriage in the absence of a reproductive system.

But „constraint“ puts the matter too negatively. For biologically imposed limits on human functioning are also challenges to cultural invention. The tool kit of any culture can be described as a set of prosthetic devices by which human beings can exceed or even redefine the „natural limits“ of human functioning. Human tools are precisely of this order – soft ones and hard ones alike. There is, for example, a constraining biological limit on immediate memory – George Miller’s famous „seven plus or minus two“. But we have constructed symbolic devices for exceeding that limit: coding systems like octal digits, mnemonic devices, language tricks. Recall that Miller’s main point in that landmark paper was that by conversion of input through such coding systems we, as enculturated human beings, are enabled to cope with seven chunks of information rather than with seven bits. Our knowledge, then, becomes enculturated knowledge, indefinable save in a culturally based system of notation. In the process, we have broken through the original bounds set by the so-called biology of memory. Biology constrains, but not forevermore. (S. 20f, Hervorhebungen im Original)

[…] What I want to argue in this book is that it is culture and the search for meaning that is the shaping hand, biology that is the constraint, and that, as we have seen, culture even has it in its power to loosen that constraint. (S. 23)

Und Bruner zeigt auch wie ich finde sehr schön auf, welche praktischen Implikationen diese Perspektive hat:

But lest this seem like a preface to a new optimism about humankind and its future, let me make one point clear before turning, as promised, to the issue of relativism. For all its generative inventiveness, human culture is not necessarily benign nor is it notably malleable in response to troubles. It is still customary, as in the fashion of ancient traditions, to lay the blame for the failings of human culture on „human nature“ – whether as instincts, as original sin, or whatever. Even Freud, with his shrewd eye for human folly, often fell into this trap, notably in his doctrine of instinct. But this is surely a convenient and self-assuaging form of apologetics. Can we really invoke our biological heritage to account, say, for the invasive bureaucratization of life in our times, with its resultant erosion of selfhood and compassion? To invoke biological devils or the „Old Ned“ is to dodge responsibility for what we ourselves have created. For all our power to construct symbolic cultures and to set in place the institutional forces needed for their execution, we do not seem very adept at steering our creations toward the ends we profess to desire. We do better to question our ingenuity in constructing and reconstructing communal ways of life than to invoke the failure of the human genome. Which is not to say that communal ways of life are easily changed, even in the absence of biological constraints, but only to focus attention where it belongs, not upon our biological limitations, but upon our cultural inventiveness. (S. 23f)

Diese Ausführungen verweisen neben der oben besprochenen Lesart noch auf zwei interessante Anknüpfungspunkte. Erstens liegt in der Behauptung von kulturellen Möglichkeiten, unsere Gesellschaft zu gestalten, die Frage nach unseren wahren Absichten – wenn wir nicht sehr erfolgreich sind, unsere Schöpfung dorthin zu steuern, wo wir vorgeben hin zu wollen, steuern wir vielleicht in Wahrheit ganz anders?

Zweitens verweist Bruner auf Ausführungen zum Relativismus und Konstruktivismus, und lustigerweise ist das auch das Thema, mit dem ich mich in nächster Zeit intensiver beschäftigen möchte…

Literatur:
Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press. (deutsch: Bruner, J. S. (1997). Sinn, Kultur und Ich-Identität. Kulturpsychologie des Sinns. Heidelberg: Auer.)