What Philosophy is Good For

I've previously defended purely theoretical inquiry, but it's also worth noting that philosophical assumptions abound in ordinary folk and their ways of thinking about the world. Moreover, many of these assumptions are patently false -- the result of lazy conflation, perhaps, or simply not noticing an (obviously true once you see it) alternative possibility. So I think philosophy is especially good at helping us to notice and correct these common errors in our thinking. (It's no coincidence that my dozen Examples of Solved Philosophy are mostly of this sort.)

(I got thinking about this because of Nancy Pelosi's skepticism about whether life begins at conception -- as if the abortion debate turned on some question of biology. Similar idiocy and irrelevance is seen in debates about whether homosexuality is 'innate'. These people just have no idea about what sorts of considerations are morally relevant. The common conflation of rationality and self-interest is another standard example of philosophical error. A less obvious, but perhaps more important, example is the ubiquitous assumption that property is natural, or that the poor just lack resources, not negative freedom -- mistakes tied together by the failure to appreciate that our institution of property is inherently coercive. I've focused on my own fields of moral and political philosophy here, but there are common, demonstrable errors in other subfields too, e.g. scientism in epistemology.)

I don't mean to suggest that correcting commonplace confusions is the only thing philosophy is good for, of course. But I think it is certainly something philosophers are very good at, and it is sufficiently important to give pause to those who would brashly dismiss our discipline. There's an awful lot of ill-informed public debate that could make much better progress with a little more philosophical input.

Quick VP Question

Many liberals seem up in arms about McCain's choice of the inexperienced Palin to be "a heartbeat away from the presidency". This may be a politically effective attack, but in all honesty, would you have preferred any of the alternatives McCain would otherwise have picked?

Update: a more apt criticism, I think, is that it reflects poorly on McCain, recklessly choosing such an unknown quantity (who he'd only spoken to once - or maybe twice - prior to making his decision) for such an important position.

Selfish Irrationality

Via Chris Dillow, I discover a finance professor disputing the "strict classic economists [who] have argued that charity and other selfless acts do not make economic sense." Helping other people can be rational, he insists. Why? Apparently, because it will give you a warm glow. (He quotes evidence that "individuals report significantly greater happiness if they make charitable donations or give gifts to others rather than spending on themselves".)

The implication seems to be that if it weren't for the warm glow -- if we imagine someone who really wouldn't get any personal benefit or welfare boost from helping others -- then, upon seeing others in need, it would be "irrational" for this person to help them. See the neighbour's kid drowning? Fortunately, most of us would get enough of a warm glow to make saving their life rationally permissible. But for the others, they're apparently not thinking straight if they let such a distraction trump their personal desire to watch TV.

Actually, it gets worse. Most of us unthinkingly comply with the obligation not to murder. But if you one day find yourself in a position where a surreptitious poisoning could safely advance your interests (broadly construed: we're not just talking about money, as the prof. says, but 'warm glows' too), and you wouldn't feel any guilt about it, why, it must be downright "irrational" to let dispassionate moral considerations get in your way.

I take it nobody actually believes this. But it's strange, then, how many give lip service to the theory that implies it. Presumably they just haven't thought through the implications; but I have trouble seeing even a prima facie motivation for identifying rationality with self-interest. Why would you ever think that the only relevant considerations, in deciding how to act, are the consequences for oneself? If an action will affect other people too, it seems plain that this, too, might merit - or even require - consideration. But the above view implies that not only is such a blinkered assessment rationally permissible (already a dubious claim), but it's outright impermissible to consider anyone or anything besides oneself. How could a view this loopy be so widespread?

Worthless Political Journalism

I'm beginning to think that most media coverage of the election should be shifted to the 'sports' section of the newspaper. There's precious little substantive reporting of the sort that actually serves any civic purpose -- e.g. helping citizens to decide who they should vote for come November. Hell, most of it isn't even objective sports reporting (polls, etc.), but gossipy fluff about 'expectations' and 'what person X needs to do' in order to receive favourable reporting from oneself and other journalists. The media shapes perceptions through this process of allegedly reporting perceptions, and somehow these stories of mirrors within mirrors, reflecting nothing but themselves, is supposed to constitute news. Perhaps the 'entertainment' section is where they really belong: fluff that is only news because the media focus on it, alongside celebrities that are famous for nothing more than being famous. Smoke and mirrors, the lot of it.

As noted by the navel-gazing NYT:

It is not clear whether [Mrs. Clinton's] substantive case [against McCain] would break through the story line about how well she would do in easing tensions with Mr. Obama and unifying the party.

Is there not anything more important at stake in this election than clashing personalities, emotions, and tribalism? Not the economy? Not foreign policy? Obama's liberal internationalism or McCain's hotheaded belligerence and moral posturing -- not a difference that matters, perhaps? Or at least not as much as whether Clinton gestured enough during her speech to convey whole-hearted support for Obama. It's sickening. Just sickening.

What ever happened to the Fourth Estate? To the civic role of the press in a flourishing democracy? To the idea that their purpose, as journalists, is to educate and inform citizens on the pressing issues of the day? Where are the public broadcasters when you need them?

This ranting and exhortation is all very well, but I wish something could come of it. (Perhaps one day it will, if enough people come to recognize and deplore the problem.) It would be nice if the media could be shamed into raising their standards -- just imagine if they had to affix an immature-looking horse stamp on all their substance-free political reporting, or banish it to the 'entertainment' section as I suggested above. As it is, they get to pretend they're doing "serious" journalism, as a high-status "newspaper of note". And we're supposed to take them seriously! What a sham.

Drive-by Commenting

A great thing about blogging is that you can get instant feedback on your ideas, and engage in interesting conversations and arguments with your readers. Unfortunately, some people seem to interpret comment forms on blogs as a general invitation to spout off their pre-existing opinions on any related topic. (Random Googlers are especially likely to vent once and disappear, hence my reference to 'drive-by commenting'. But there can be repeat offenders too, which are even more annoying -- I had to delete a half dozen irrelevant comments by one guy today.) So let me explicitly reiterate that my policy is to delete comments that don't engage with the specific topic at hand.

If my posting on some issue prompts you to have thoughts of your own, that's great. Go post them to your own blog, citing my post as your proximate inspiration, and I'll be thrilled. But please don't hijack my comment threads to use as your own private soapbox. Get your own -- there are plenty to go around. We're trying to have a conversation here, and while newcomers are always welcome to join in, it's insufferably rude for a stranger to change the topic or otherwise try to take over. The comments here are for responding to the specific issues raised in the post; if you can't pin down a particular quote or section of my post that you're responding to, this may be a sign that your comment doesn't actually engage with what I've written.

[I should note that this warning is just for newcomers. Friends and trusted (regular) commenters are of course welcome to suggest fruitful tangents for further discussion (perhaps in a new post) -- I don't mean to deter that. You guys rock.]

As a general rule, I abide by the principle that dialectical progress is only possible in small steps. So my posts (and subsequent discussion threads) tend to be quite focused, ideally addressing one particular question or argument each. Such focus may be unfamiliar to non-philosophers (cf. problem #2), but if you would like to make some broader, more sweeping criticism of my posts, please do so in my open thread on fundamental disagreements instead. Thanks.

Inverting Emotional Qualia

Conceivably, some aspects of our phenomenology (e.g. colour) could flip around whilst everything else in our minds remains the same. Could this happen with emotions? Might I have an emotionally inverted counterpart, just like me except that fear to him feels like anger to me, and vice versa?

I suspect not. For one thing, I'm inclined to identify emotions by their phenomenal feel, so the above scenario should really be described as his feelings of anger playing the functional role of fear, etc. More importantly, though, this scenario requires that our emotions be wholly independent of the rest of our mental economy (thoughts, judgments), which is arguably incoherent. Emotions are cognitive: part of the what you experience in your anger is a judgment (e.g.) that you have been wronged.

One might respond by trying to break down these components of the emotion, the judgment and some leftover phenomenal feel. But I don't think they are so extricable (compare: what is left over in scarlet once you take away the redness?). An essential part of the overall feel comes from the judgment, so you can't subtract that without significantly altering the phenomenology.

Relatedly, I've been puzzling over a passage from Justin Oakley's Morality and the Emotions (p.19, lightly edited):

Benevolence and gratitude may both [exhaustively?] involve feelings of affection and warmth... But if one emotion can feel like another, different emotion, then the distinctions between emotions cannot be drawn in terms of feelings.

Oakley must be using 'feel' in a very narrow sense, because it seems clear to me that the different emotions have a very distinct phenomenology. But if we restrict our attention to pre-cognitive or uninterpreted phenomenal aspects, perhaps he is right. This is the sense in which duck/rabbit looks the same to you whether you see it as a duck or as a rabbit. But in a broader (and more natural) sense, they obviously look quite different, for they are readily distinguishable experiences. The lesson from duck/rabbit is that interpretation makes a difference to phenomenology (in the broadest sense). And I think the same sort of thing is going on in case of emotions and their cognitive components.

Philosophers' Carnival #76

... is here!

Fair Shares and Others' Responsibilities

If others fail to fulfill their obligations of beneficence, are we obliged to pick up the slack? Liam Murphy's Fair Share view denies this, claiming that we are obligated to do our fair share (as it would be under full compliance), and no more. It would be "unfair", the thought goes, to impose any further costs on us beyond that. We should not have to suffer because of others' moral failings.

I'm not convinced that that line of thought actually makes any sense. For what about those who remain in desperate need of aid? Surely they should not have to suffer because of others' moral failings, either. And their suffering is much, much more serious than ours would be. It seems that others' moral failure leaves us with a choice: (i) pay slightly more than ideally should have been required of us, or (ii) allow others in need to suffer much, much more than they ideally should have to.

Now, maybe it's unfair that we are left with (i) and (ii) as the only available options. But on what planet is (ii) a fairer outcome than (i)? If an impartial benevolent spectator had to choose for us, isn't it obvious that they should pick option (i)? Insofar as considerations of "fairness" enter the picture at all, they surely support those in dire need who haven't received the aid they were rightly entitled to. If it's unfair for us to have to pay more because others aren't pulling their weight, it's grossly unfair for those in need to experience great suffering because of this fact.

Obama the Left-Libertarian?

I was very impressed by Obama's "energy rebate" -- really an unconditional cash injection, in stark contrast to the idiotic gas subsidies promoted by other politicians. Now it looks like this wasn't just a one-off good idea, but reflects his broader economic philosophy:

All told, Obama would not only cut taxes for most people more than McCain would. He would cut them more than Bill Clinton did and more than Hillary Clinton proposed doing. These tax cuts are really the essence of his market-oriented redistributionist philosophy (though he made it clear that he doesn’t like the word “redistributionist”). They are an attempt to address the middle-class squeeze by giving people a chunk of money to spend as they see fit.

He would then pay for the cuts, at least in part, by raising taxes on the affluent to a point where they would eventually be slightly higher than they were under Clinton.

Is the idea of pure redistribution (i.e. for individual spending, rather than government spending) finally going mainstream?

Update: Another quote:

“If you talk to Warren [Buffett], he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re achieving equity on the back end.” He continued by saying that he thought there was some merit in Buffett’s argument.

It then goes on to describe some of his disagreements (which don't sound nearly so sensible to me).

Vera on Sustainability and Moral Dupes

[Guest post by Vera Bradova.]

MORAL DUPE’S DILEMMA

A moral dupe is one who makes sacrifices on behalf of his/her own conscience in matters of the commons, and in so doing aids and abets those who do not.

A person who decides to do the “right thing” at some disadvantage to himself may be said to have the satisfaction that doing the right thing brings. But the moral dupe reaps no such comfort; he must admit that his having done the right thing actually makes it possible for the wrongdoers to do more wrong.

Garret Hardin spoke of this problem in his famous essay on the Tragedy of the Commons. He called it a pathogenic effect of conscience. He writes:

The long-term disadvantage of an appeal to conscience should be enough to condemn it; but has serious short-term disadvantages as well. If we ask a man who is exploiting a commons to desist "in the name of conscience," what are we saying to him? What does he hear? --not only at the moment but also in the wee small hours of the night when, half asleep, he remembers not merely the words we used but also the nonverbal communication cues we gave him unawares? Sooner or later, consciously or subconsciously, he senses that he has received two communications, and that they are contradictory: (i) (intended communication) "If you don't do as we ask, we will openly condemn you for not acting like a responsible citizen"; (ii) (the unintended communication) "If you do behave as we ask, we will secretly condemn you for a simpleton who can be shamed into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the commons."

Suppose my small community decides to put a lot of effort into reducing electricity usage at considerable expense (replacing old appliances, investing in low energy lighting, etc.). Let’s say these worthy citizens are successful in reducing yearly usage by half. They will not have saved anything for future generations! They will merely make it possible for some wasteful nearby employer to use up the “saved” electricity in a month. Our prudence, our economic sacrifice, and all our time and effort will only lead to some improvident person having more available to them to intensify improvident behavior.

But it gets worse. When the sacrifices of the moral dupe affect her reproductive fitness, then she also increases the chances her genes will over the long run be selected against, so that the “appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run.” This is particularly obvious in the area of human population growth, where some people against their own preferences choose to have fewer children than they would otherwise aim for. In this situation the long term future goes to those who reproduce regardless of the burdens thus imposed on humanity as a whole or on the planet itself. As Albert Bartlett has pointed out, “unfortunately, the resources that the [people working on behalf of sustainability] save are not preserved for the use of future generations, but rather are used to support the continued growth of the population. Thus the net result of many of the actions of the sustainers is to accommodate and hence to encourage continued population growth.”

It is profoundly troubling for me to face this dilemma: Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. There are those who see no way out, advocating (perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek) the idea that in order “to save the planet, we must waste it.” The idea of course being that the faster we overreach, the better chance we have to deal with the impending disaster. Michael Lardelli argues that “faced with the inevitability of resource limits the best scenario is to hit these limits with as small a human population as possible. Our waste and inefficiency then becomes a buffer of unused capacity. As resources decline we can reduce our consumption but still have enough to support life (maybe – if our supporting ecosystems have not collapsed completely). In contrast, if we hit our resource limits with maximal numbers of humans each living very frugally, then we have no spare capacity to fall back on and we will all perish.” He concludes that we should consume as wastefully as possible.

So is there a way out of this dilemma? Are there alternatives? Some commons have been managed well. For example, tribal chiefs had in pre-colonial days worked out good management of the Sahel grazing grounds. Various local fisheries and Alpine meadows have been managed well by nearby communities. The experts studying the problem of wise management of the commons say that local management by small, face to face communities is essential. But it is difficult to imagine how this advice would translate into good management of vast, impossible-to-fence-in resources of the global commons (e.g. clean air, viable oceans, healthy old growth forests, etc.) or even, on a smaller scale, the management of electricity supply and usage at the regional level.

I have been a big fan of sustainability and only recently have come to recognize the subversive logic of the moral dupe’s dilemma. Am I doomed to either throwing out my moral principles and waste as much as possible, or resign myself to being a moral dupe, an enabler for precisely those behaviors to which I am opposed on moral grounds?

-- Vera.

Literature Maps

Academics write 'literature reviews', and talk about 'logical space'. I wonder if there's any way to literally map out the existing literature, with nodes and connections, to provide an explicit representation of our communal knowledge? Two kinds of map would be especially valuable: one displaying the chronological unfolding of the literature, in terms of which papers are responding to which other papers (this should be relatively easy to construct); the other would look deeper and attempt to map logical space itself, and the way various arguments and positions are related, regardless of who put them forward or when (though this data should also be included, as a reference aid).

It would be a Herculean task, and no individual philosopher is in a position to codify the sum knowledge of the entire academic community. But it seems susceptible to chunking, and thus possible to construct gradually through wiki-style peer production. (Any Ph.D. could convert the 'literature review' from their dissertation, and authors could fill in the details for their own papers as they are published.)

It's the sort of thing which would be difficult to get off the ground, but once the 'tipping point' is reached, it could be extraordinarily valuable. (Or so it seems to me. What do you think?)

Perhaps the main challenge (in principle) is to work out exactly how to standardize the represented information. How, exactly, does one go about converting a literature review into a formal map? (Presumably not any old citation is substantial enough to qualify as a connection, but where do you draw the line? Is there any principled way to do this?)

Discuss.

Rules for Normative Risk

One proposal for dealing with uncertainty is to follow the rule that will tend (in the long run) to produce the best outcomes. For example, if you worry that shooting a gun out the window has a 1% chance of doing X damage, you shouldn't do it unless you can expect to produce at least X/100 worth of benefits by doing so.

This principle accommodates normal empirical risks. But note that 'merely normative' risk is treated differently. Suppose (for simplicity) that hedonistic utilitarianism is true: what we (objectively) should do is maximize net pleasure. And what we rationally should do is maximize expected net pleasure. That means we should take into account the risks of accidental shootings, but not the 'risk' that some guilty pleasures are intrinsically bad.

Consider the alternative, i.e. following a rule that would have you be indifferent between a 1% chance of killing someone vs. a certain harmless experience which you give a 1% chance of being intrinsically as bad as killing. Clearly, following this rule will not tend to produce the best outcomes, because -- unlike empirical risks -- the 'merely normative' risk will never eventuate, no matter how many times you repeat the scenario.

Importantly, this account can accommodate uncertainty about some non-contingent (e.g. mathematical) propositions, as Carl pointed out:

Suppose that someone constructs a device that includes a Doomsday Device, a big red button, and a supercomputer capable of calculating pi to an extraordinary number of places. When someone presses the red button, the supercomputer will compute the nth and nth+1 digits of pi (in base 10), where n is some cosmically large number, and if both digits turn out to be 2s, the Doomsday Device will be activated. The designers of the machine selected n randomly. Further suppose that I have sufficient empirical evidence to assign overwhelming probability to the proposition that the device is as described above, but lack the computational resources to determine the values of the nth and nth+1 digits of pi. If, in a series of situations such as this (with different values of n), I fail to treat pushing the red button as a 1% chance of disaster I will wind up regretting my alternative decision procedure.

I guess it's appropriate to abstract away from the particular value of n here, because the agent is computationally incapable of any more fine-grained level of response. I don't think any such abstraction is available to accommodate merely normative risk, however. Thoughts?

Moral Demands and Compliance Effects

The concept of 'moral demands' is a familiar one: it concerns the sacrifice a moral theory asks us to make, i.e. the expected loss of welfare from conforming to its requirements, compared to how well-off we might otherwise expect to become. But Liam Murphy, in his Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory, argues that we should also consider the costs and benefits that accrue to us from others' compliance with the moral theory. This yields a broader concept -- that of "compliance effects" (p.52).

Murphy points out that for pretty much any (remotely plausible) moral theory, we'd be a whole lot worse off if no-one was complying with its requirements. It starts to look odd to condemn a theory as 'too demanding', then, given that the compliance effect on us is a net positive. One might turn to a comparative conception of demands, according to which utilitarianism demands too much of the wealthy because they would be so much better off under libertarian norms. But this objection may be turned on its head: "commonsense morality is very demanding on [a poor man] in virtue of the fact that he would do so much better under utilitarianism." (p.55)

P.S. Here's a delightful quote from p.60:

Our individual and social lives are so thoroughly structured by moral and political concerns that we apparently lack any independent perspective from which to examine the impact of those concerns on what they structure.

Though I'm even more struck by the point that our lives are "so thoroughly structured" by moral norms that most of the time we don't even realize it. (Consider, for example, the implicit interference that property gives rise to.)

Railton Diavlog

Awesome. Bloggingheads.tv features a new diavlog with Peter Railton, one of my favourite philosophers. Here's a short clip where he introduces moral realism:



Go watch the whole thing!

Free Amazon Prime

It's old news that you can try Amazon Prime free for a month, which gives you free 2-day shipping on many Amazon products. (It's pretty cool, I tried it last year -- just be sure to set your account options to cancel once the trial period expires, if you don't want to be saddled with the $79 subscription fee.)

What's new is that others can now earn referral fees ($12, to be precise) if you sign up for your free trial by following their links.

So, if you want Amazon to give me free cash, and you free fast shipping, just sign up here! (Alternatively you could substitute another blogger's amazon tag in the url to help them instead. I think the folks at Crooked Timber give all their referral fees to charity, for example. Either way, you should certainly sign up with someone.)

Online Philosophy

Don't miss the 75th Philosophers' Carnival, which includes our recent discussion of Moral Experts and a fun discussion over at Hallq's place concerning 'What Richard Chappell is Wrong About'!

Sympoze ('Digg for philosophers') looks promising. If it came to average a couple dozen users active (voting) per day, it could prove to be a very valuable filter for online philosophical content. Depending on certain technical fixes -- in particular, improved bookmarklet and blog-button functionality -- I'd give it better than even odds of success. What do you reckon?

P.S. I should finally be able to make a start on the PhilReview draft-sharing project soon (depending on a couple of factors outside my control). In the meantime, feel free to contribute any further design suggestions using the wiki.

Moral Experts

What a great paper title: 'Who's to Say What's Right or Wrong? People Who Have Ph.D.s in Philosophy, That's Who' [pdf] (ht: Micha). The first half is a clear and rigorous analysis of all the different things that could be meant by the inane question in the title -- required reading for any intro ethics class. The second half of Sharvy's paper defends a controversial answer to the question 'who is best placed to answer questions about right and wrong?', or 'who are the moral experts?'

If you have a medical problem, see a physician for advice. If you don’t like his advice, get a second opinion—from another expert...

If you have a question about what is right or wrong, consult a professional philosopher... If you don’t like the advice your philosopher gives you, get a second opinion—from another philosopher. Philosophers, incidentally, will treat you much better than medical “doctors” do. They will not give you “orders”; they will not make recommendations without giving you the reasons; they will assume that you are intelligent enough to understand the reasons.

We thus have a place for philosophers as advisers of individual clients. But I would stress their role as theorists even more, in which they would advise legislators on what the public policy should be on such things as abortion law, the use of extraordinary medical measures to prolong the lives of deformed babies or the terminally ill, etc. It is outrageous that national commissions on “ethics” and “morality” often consist mostly of unqualified laymen: physicians, priests, lawyers, etc., rather than professional philosophers (see Singer 1976).

What do you think?

Illegal Searches and Admissible Evidence

According to U.S. law (if I understand correctly), evidence obtained in the course of an illegal police search is inadmissible in court. Presumably the purpose of this rule is to discourage the police from conducting illegal searches. But aren't there better ways to do this? Consider my old principle of moral sacrifice: we should set things up so that, in extraordinary cases, public servants can take extralegal measures and personally suffer the consequences. ("If an end is worth torturing someone for, then it's worth going to prison for.")

This principle suggests that we should allow illegally obtained evidence in court, and instead punish the police officers who were personally responsible for obtaining it illegally. If the punishment is suitably severe (e.g. losing their jobs), this will suffice to deter routine police malpractice. But - importantly - it leaves open the possibility of achieving justice by unconventional means in those rare cases where the stakes are so high that an officer is willing to sacrifice his own career to see justice done.

Am I missing something?

Who needs a challenge?

Thanks to Helen for drawing my attention to this absurd school rating system:

The Newsweek and Washington Post Challenge Index measures a public high school’s effort to challenge its students. The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests a school gave by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. Tests taken by all students, not just seniors, are counted. Magnet or charter schools with SAT combined verbal and math averages higher than 1300, or ACT average scores above 29, are not included, since they do not have enough average students who need a challenge.

Got that? Only "average students" "need a challenge". So elite schools obviously have no place on a list of schools that challenge their students. Gifted kids can just twiddle their thumbs all day for all we care. Obscene anti-intellectualism aside, here are two more concerns about the Index:

(1) The arbitrary cut-off point means that the Index will give undue prominence to magnet and charter schools that fall just below this threshold, to the exclusion of comparable schools whose students do that little bit better. But why celebrate those wannabe-elite schools that are just mediocre enough to escape the cut-off? Why not just pick schools out of a hat?

(Though a few sentences later they seem to have forgotten about the gerrymandered restriction, claiming more broadly that their list represents "the top 5 percent of all 27,000 U.S. high schools in encouraging students to take AP, IB or Cambridge tests.")

(2) More fundamentally, is it even measuring a desirable outcome? It's always good for a school to offer advanced tests, so the challenge is there for the (probably few) students who are up to it. But there's nothing particularly commendable about forcing advanced tests upon ill-prepared students -- which seems to be what this rating system rewards. We need more information - e.g. pass rates - to tell whether these schools are pushing appropriate challenges on their students.

In light of these two points, it looks to me as though the 'Newsweek and Washington Post Challenge Index' is completely worthless.