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Until evolutionary psychology became trendy, workers in that field struggled with the legacy of the sociobiology of the 20’s and 30’s, when claims about the way evolution worked were turned into claims that the existing structure of society was Right. The people dominating society justifiably dominated society because they were the most fit.

After Naziism, that kind of thinking was drastically out of favor, so the (early) evolutionary psychologists were mostly scrupulous about distinguishing “is” from “ought”.

My favorite person along those lines went a step further. It was George Miller (?), an evolutionary biologist who described results of evolution like unbridled status competition as evil. (“Mother Nature is a wicked old witch.”)

Levi-Strauss examined in great detail how humans reason in terms of binary oppositions. What he didn’t do is take the next step: saying that such reasoning is *bad*, *wrong*, and even *evil*. For example, political rhetoric in the USA contrasts the small-town to the big-city, the “heartland” to the coasts. That’s stupid. I come from a medium-sized city that’s centered around a university. We mix-and-match both stereotypes. But there are no lessons drawn from how we live, because the only relevant examples are hedonistic New York / San Francisco vs. pure small farming towns. It’s not just that the stereotypes are exaggerations (the poverty, divorce, unwed motherhood, and drug use statistics for small town America are shocking); it’s that those two stereotypes fill all our attention.

That’s unfair to M. Levi-Strauss. Why should it be his job to fix humanity? But I wish someone with some credentials would tell us - repeatedly - that we reason stupidly.

“Microtest with emotional baggage” is supposed to remind you of working with people who have emotional baggage. You’re trying to talk about some simple thing, and suddenly they fly off the handle because of some connection to some bad experience once. That’s like a microtest that can’t be run unless you instantiate 8000 classes that have nothing to do with the point of the test.

Or: the difficulty of working with people who need constant stroking and validation and support. That’s like a microtest that can’t function without selenium or watir running it against a full browser - even though the only thing the test is about is whether a particular button is hooked into the app correctly.

See the linked picture.

I had tests that:

- in response to a, C sends ca and cb to mock versions of A and B.

- in response to cb, B sends ba to a mocked version of A and deals with the (faked) results appropriately.

The bug was that C sent cb before it sent ca. However, ca causes a change in A that affects the results given by ba.

There were a couple of things that contributed to the bug:

1. The real name of what I’m here calling “cb” was not very intention-revealing. It didn’t even hint that cb’s purpose was related to the purpose of “ca”, so it didn’t seem like order mattered. I’ve changed the names to make the relationship clearer.

2. It probably doesn’t make sense for B to be coupled to A. (I think the coupling once did make more sense, but changes over time left only one vestige of their original relationship.) I’ve changed the graph so that C explicitly tells B what it needs to know about A.

So, were I a better programmer, the bug wouldn’t have happened. But: if I’d used real A’s and B’s instead of mock ones, I *might* be more likely to have a test of message “a” that noticed the inconsistency between A and B.

I’m building an app for my wife’s secretaries, and will be for the foreseeable future. It’s used to schedule animals for student practice or professor demonstrations.

I’m doing this mainly to practice on something of respectable scope, but we might as well get as much out of it as we can. So if people want to teach testing courses from it, teach TDD by adding onto it, or whatever, that would be great.

The movie linked above shows that the app is more than a toy. At the moment, most of the code is in the javascript (objective-J variant) front end. The backend (Sinatra/Sequel/Postgres) is simple now, but there will be (as usual) an unlimited amount of business logic coming up.

marick@exampler.com

What happened at Munich? The leader of a weaker power (Britain) was faced with a stronger, more technologically advanced power that had shown it was not shy about using force. That leader (Chamberlain) attempted to appease the stronger power by giving it what it wanted.

What those who talk about appeasement act like they don’t believe is that *we* (the US) are the stronger, more technologically advanced power that has shown it is not shy about using force. States like Iran are in the position of Great Britain of ‘38. When US commentators talk about the folly of appeasement, leaders of Iran should hear that *they* would be foolish to attempt to appease the US, that no amount of giving in will have an effect, that their only option is to develop a credible deterrent (which, given the relative sizes of the countries and economies, really means: nukes).

Appeasement is about the relationship of the weaker to the stronger. Good guys vs. bad guys is irrelevant unless you actually believe that leaders of Iran *view themselves* as cartoon villains.

I’m not saying I have any great ideas what to do about what seem to me very likely to be Iranian nuclear ambitions. What I’m saying is that up-is-down-ism isn’t likely to generate any.

Grr.

* Abortion

I’m not happy with abortion. My bias, though, is to defer to actual humans rather than to abstractions or to potential humans. So I want to let the woman decide.

(I don’t believe, by the way, that your way of thinking works. (1) We don’t generally get to define contractual agreements for other people. “What you *really* meant by offering me a ride was a contractual agreement to get me where I was going. Therefore, you should compensate me for that flat tire.”  (2) The results of applying “you really meant” contracts to other areas would be absurd. For example, since you believe the justification for legal involvement in marriage is that it produces children, you should be prepared to bill my mother in law and the man she married after my wife’s dad died for their failure to produce children in return for marital benefits. (3) Penalties for contract violations should be proportional, not just clever. You do not argue that “significant and irreversible changes” are an appropriate penalty. Why not add a fine to the cost of a desired abortion? Or 40 days of community service teaching proper use of condoms in an opt-in course for teenagers?)

* Gay marriage

Again, there are actual human beings who suffer by not being able to marry.    Making other people suffer shouldn’t be done lightly. The increase in taxes gay marriage might cause strikes me as the epitome of “lightly”.  

I’m also a big fan of marriage. I strongly suspect that it’s good for society, at least for our society, so the more the (heh) merrier.

* Drug legalization

The War on Drugs has been a complete failure on its own terms. It has also increased corruption, promoted the militarization of the police and associated loss of civil rights and traditions, costs us a ton of money, and is doing its patriotic part to lose us a war in Afghanistan. Even if I thought drug use (including alcohol and nicotine) was inherently wrong, I’d have to say that the cost is greater than the benefit. Since I don’t particularly care if other people drink or get high, I see no reason not to legalize drugs. Based on effect and addictivity, marijuana and nitrous oxide (say) should be less regulated than alcohol. Heroin (the only drug the most enthusiastic drug user I’ve ever known would not touch) should be much more strictly regulated. 

If we’re going to ban drugs, by the way, we should also ban small children spinning around until they get dizzy and fall down, which always seemed to me to spring from the same desire-to-mess-with-your-head as drug use does.

* Prayer in schools

No purpose is served by embarrassing little Christians when their teacher leads the whole class in an Islamic prayer. Or vice versa. Or little agnostics in a “non-demoninational” prayer. 

When it comes to prayer clubs in the school, I’m torn. On the one hand, everybody knows that those often become an excuse for the majority (Christian, in this country) to bully or embarrass the minority. On the other hand, the minority might as well get used to it. I’ve finally settled on a semi-strict constitutional interpretation that goes like this:

I happen to think that the 2nd amendment is clear enough. We’re a country where “happiness is a warm gun” is constitutionally sanctioned. Deal with it. Similarly, we’re a country where government has been instructed not to favor religion, even though we’re an atypically religious nation. Deal with it.

* Sex out of wedlock

I encourage it. Once bound to a partner, I bet you’re asking for trouble if you stray, but I guess it’s your business.