Nautilus Magazine: Yes, Determinists, There Is Free Will

But that’s not a strategy that I find attractive. I am quite happy to concede that free will requires intentional agency, alternative possibilities among which we can choose, and causation of our actions by our mental states. I think the mistake in the standard arguments against free will lies in a failure to distinguish between different levels of description. If we are searching for free will at the fundamental physical level, we are simply searching in the wrong place. [...]

The neuroscientific skeptic is absolutely right that, at the fundamental physical level, there is no such thing as intentional goal-directed agency. The mistake is to claim that there is no such thing at all. Intentional agency is an emergent higher-level property, but it is no less real for that. Whenever our best scientific explanations of a particular phenomenon commit us to postulating certain entities or properties, then it is very good scientific practice to treat those postulated entities or properties as genuinely real. We observe patterns and regularities in our social and human environment, and the best way to make sense of those patterns and regularities is by assigning intentional agency to the people involved. [...]

Think about weather forecasting. Meteorologists are interested in higher-level patterns and regularities. In fact, the very notion of weather is a higher-level notion. At the level of individual air molecules, there is no such thing as weather. Perhaps the system at that very fine-grained level of description would indeed behave deterministically according to classical physical laws, but as you move to a more macroscopic description, you abstract away from this microphysical detail. That is not driven by ignorance on our part, but by the explanatory need to focus on the most salient regularities.

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UnHerd: How toxic masculinity is tied to terrorism

The UK, like many modern democracies, has a raft of laws that commit our society to sex equality. But the way people actually treat each other in private is another matter. Domestic abuse is widespread, suggesting that toxic masculinity taken to extremes continues to define and distort many intimate relationships. [...]

What’s gone underreported is the relationship between domestic violence and murder statistics. Men do become victims of domestic abuse, but they’re far more likely to be killed by strangers; fully half of female murder victims are killed by a current or former partner, compared to only 3% of male victims. Two women die at the hands of an intimate partner every week, according to official figures.[...]

In the US, where mass shootings without an obvious political motive are common, the link between what happens behind closed doors and acts of public violence has been showing up in research for some time. One of the best-known studies, carried out by an NGO called Everytown for Gun Safety, found that the perpetrator killed an intimate partner or family member in 57% of mass shootings between 2009 and 2014. In many of these cases, the victim had suffered abuse for years.[...]

So many terrorists are men who have been abusing women for years before they become killers. And it’s not hard to see how domestic abuse lays the groundwork. Few men escalate their behaviour to the extremes of violence, but those that do are accustomed to terrorising women and children – and enjoy the sense of power that goes with it. Don’t forget that some of the ‘foreign fighters’ who turned up in Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS admitted that they were attracted by the idea of owning ‘sex slaves’, surely the most extreme form of domestic violence it’s possible to imagine.

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The Atlantic: What Is Pornography Doing to Our Sex Lives?

In the past few decades, digital pornography has been blamed for—well, pick a noun and add the word sex. It’s been named as a culprit for both sex addiction and sex abstinence. It’s been blamed for poor sex education, rampant sexual violence, and rising sexual dysfunction. Pornography is practically the Swiss Army knife of social calamity. [...]

The academic literature on pornography is not like that of climate change or gravity, where practically all researchers agree on the big picture. Instead, there is a broad group of academics and advocates who are deeply split on whether pornography amounts to a public-health crisis, or whether it’s an often harmless outlet and a common scapegoat for dissatisfied couples. [...]

The truth, she argues, is that porn is like food. Much of it is harmless. And some of it is bad. But some of it is simply good. Younger people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, growing up in a small town without friends who share their sexual orientation, might discover in pornography a window into their own experience—and the message that there is nothing wrong with their feelings. “They might see pornography almost like a safe space,” Rothman says. “It can be inspiring and really helpful.”

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The Economist: Why is vanilla so expensive?

In recent years, natural vanilla has sometimes been more expensive than silver by weight. Vanilla farmers in Madagascar are cashing in—but violence, theft and volatile markets are threatening their prospects.

From ice cream to cakes and even perfume, vanilla is the go-to flavour the world over. In recent years the price of natural vanilla has shot up. At one point it was more expensive than silver by weight.

80% of the world’s vanilla is grown in the perfectly suited climate of the north-east region of Madagascar. It’s the country’s primary export crop. For the farmers, like Beni Odon, life is far sweeter when the vanilla price is high.

In 2014 vanilla was $80 a kilo. Three years later it was $600. Today it’s around $500. The price rise is due in part to global demand. The trend of eating naturally means that food companies have shunned synthetic flavouring in favour of the real deal. Beni and the other farmers are cashing in.

But things can change very quickly. Price fluctuations affect producers of agricultural commodities everywhere but vanilla is particularly volatile. In just a few weeks the price can jump, or plummet, by over 20%

Liberalisation is one reason for such movements. The Malagasy government once regulated the vanilla industry and its price. But now the price is negotiated at the point of sale which makes for a freer market but a more volatile one. It’s also a tiny industry. A single cyclone can knock out the entire crop within Madagascar. It’s also a difficult and delicate crop to grow.

The growers have to contend with another problem. Thieves are targeting the vanilla crops. Some farmers have resorted to harvesting the beans before they’re ripe but this produces a poorer quality vanilla and ultimately pushes down the price.

The combination of deteriorating quality and high prices is having an effect. The vanilla price bubble may burst. Big buyers that provide vanilla for the likes of Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s are now working directly with farmers in a bid to gain greater control over quality. Other companies have started to look elsewhere for their natural vanilla. Indonesia, Uganda and even the Netherlands are growing the crop. For a century Madagascar has enjoyed a near-monopoly on vanilla. But this industry may be in line for a radical overhaul.

The Conversation: How to tackle India’s sexual violence epidemic – it starts with sex education

Most of these men did not understand what consent meant or that it needed to be sought. Their stories also highlighted a sense of entitlement and ownership over the victim. I was not particularly surprised by their discomfort and lack of awareness. I myself had never received any form of sex education at home or at school while growing up in India. [...]

Young men in India mature and develop in a male dominated environment, with little or no sex education. And in rural areas, with very little contact with female peers after puberty. Together, this leads to misdirected masculinity, characterised by male sexual dominance and unequal gender attitudes and behaviour.

Differences in gender roles intensify during adolescence, when boys enjoy new privileges reserved only for men – such as autonomy, mobility, opportunity and power. Whereas girls have to start enduring restrictions. Their parents curtail their mobility, monitor their interactions with males and in some cases even withdraw them from school. This is why, India is in great need of comprehensive sexuality education or modules focusing on sexual violence and exploitation awareness. [...]

According to UN Women – the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality – 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives.

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Associated Press: Blurred lines: A pregnant man’s tragedy tests gender notions

The 32-year-old patient told the nurse he was transgender when he arrived at the emergency room and his electronic medical record listed him as male. He hadn’t had a period in several years and had been taking testosterone, a hormone that has masculinizing effects and can decrease ovulation and menstruation. But he quit taking the hormone and blood pressure medication after he lost insurance.

A home pregnancy test was positive and he said he had “peed himself” — a possible sign of ruptured membranes and labor. A nurse ordered a pregnancy test but considered him stable and his problems non-urgent. [...]

A woman showing up with similar symptoms “would almost surely have been triaged and evaluated more urgently for pregnancy-related problems,” the authors wrote.

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Los Angeles Times: States with the worst anti-abortion laws also have the worst infant mortality rates

States with the largest number of abortion restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, counseling and ultrasounds; restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions in public or private health plans; and unnecessary standards on ambulatory abortion clinics tended to have the fewest number of supportive policies, the survey found. Those included Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act; family leave; sex- and HIV education programs; and good access to children’s health insurance programs. [...]

These statistics should give the lie to legislators’ arguments that their anti-abortion measures are somehow good for women’s health or aimed at protecting their rights. A 2017 study by the Center for Reproductive Rights and IBIS Reproductive Health, a healthcare think tank, found that hostility to reproductive rights tended to go hand-in-hand with a lack of state-level policies supporting women’s and infant health. [...]

Experts have connected the dots between abortion restrictions and maternal and infant health problems. Limits on access to legal abortions can prompt women to choose unsafe alternatives. Indeed, the reported rate of maternal deaths in Texas soared from 72 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 148 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2012, a trend that some experts attributed to the state’s closing of abortion clinics and cuts in funding for Planned Parenthood and other family planning services during the same period.

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Axios: Map: Where the world's population is growing and shrinking

The big picture: According to the United Nations, the 10 fastest shrinking countries on Earth are in Eastern Europe. Japan, perhaps the country with the most oft-analyzed demographic challenges, is 11th. Many of those countries are struggling economically, with aging populations, a lack of skilled labor and — in some cases — restrictive immigration policies. [...]

Bulgaria’s population is expected to drop more precipitously than that of any other country on Earth, declining by 1.7 million by 2050. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Sofia, the capital, and the metropolitan area surrounding it disappearing over the course of three decades. [...]

Paradoxically, but perhaps unsurprisingly, far-right anti-immigrant parties have fared best in areas with dwindling populations, and Eastern European countries have generally been unreceptive to refugees arriving in Europe. (Though, having reached Europe, those refugees are typically seeking settlement in wealthier countries.)

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