Weekend Math Test Scores to Drop: "Beer Goggle" effect

Another RedEye story relates that Google wants to protect users of gmail from themselves (in case they have lapses in character induced by alcohol) with Mail Goggles, a program that will help block an “alcohol-soaked e-mail someone might send” on a Friday or Saturday night. Between 10 PM and 4 AM, or hours of your choosing, any e-mail within the gmail system will not be cleared for sending until the user answers five math problems in a limited period of time, to prove they are relatively sober.

The name Mail Goggles comes from the slang phrase “beer goggles,” which is the effect of alcohol on one’s ability to discern the true nature of that “hottie” across the room at the bar.

It’s funny and sad, another in a long line of fixes trying to mitigate the effects of a society lacking basic moral education. Ford Motor Company, I read elsewhere, is planning to come out with a device parents can activate to prevent the family car from being driven at high and dangerous speeds, with or without alchohol.

Comments

[Ethan C.]

Technology cuts both ways. In Google's case, that principle is quite obvious: you can use Google's calculator to cheat on Google's Mail Goggles.

[Stuart Koehl]

Too bad they couldn't make a breathalizer switch for horses. Imagine how many upper class twits would have been saved from broken necks if they had not been able to start their horses to go steeplechasing after downing several bottles of port.

It might have been a good idea, too, to have someone look over one's mail before posting it--I can think of several wars, dozens of international incidents, and thousands of duels that could have been avoided in that way.

What makes this age different from past ages is we actually do have the technology to address the lack of basic moral education, whereas in the past, they lacked basic moral education and had to put up with the consequences.

[Bill R]

"Technology cuts both ways. In Google's case, that principle is quite obvious: you can use Google's calculator to cheat on Google's Mail Goggles."

If you're smart enough to remember that, Ethan, you're probably still sober...

[NJI]

>>>What makes this age different from past ages is we actually do have the technology to address the lack of basic moral education, whereas in the past, they lacked basic moral education and had to put up with the consequences.<<<

It still says something interesting that we attempt to use technology to address the problems caused by a lack of moral education, rather than applying... moral education.

[Stuart Koehl]

Whereas in the past, people did try moral education, and came out at the same place we are now--which means that the vast majority of people are not amenable to moral education. Has something to do with free will, I think.

[NJI]

I'm not sure if that's technically correct. People did try moral education, and while in some cases it wasn't particularly effective, in other cases it had spectacular results. I offer Britain's actions ending slavery within the Empire's realm as an example.

At any rate, I don't find it hard to bypass that question and point out that, starting from your comment, it is undeniably true that using technology to address a lack of moral education will be less successful that using moral education to address a lack of moral education. :-D Which permits me to restate my point: it says something that we use technology to attempt to address a lack of moral education instead of advocating moral education.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I'm not sure if that's technically correct. People did try moral education, and while in some cases it wasn't particularly effective, in other cases it had spectacular results. I offer Britain's actions ending slavery within the Empire's realm as an example.<<<

That was a matter of implementing a discrete policy that affected relatively few people (slave traders and planters in the sugar islands). At the same time that this was happening, London was a festering cesspit of crime, corruption and vice. Well into the Victorian period, prostitution was rampant (someone recently informed me there were more prostitutes than chambermaids in the city); brothels were ubiquitous and openly frequented; pornography was just about as available as today, if not in so many different forms. Murder, theft, assault--all sorts of crimes were committed at rates much higher than today. It wasn't moral reform, but Robert Peel's establishment of a professional police force, that finally began to turn the tide. In fact, the Brits did not become the peaceful, law-abiding folks of tourist legend until well into the 20th century (and it wasn't entirely true even then), which leads back to the correlation between morality and technology--there isn't one.

Moral education is a slow process, but generally more certain than relying upon technology to keep people from doing dumb things. One thing my experience with military hardware has taught me--anyone who thinks he has invented a fool-proof device has underestimated the ingenuity of fools.

Let us not delude ourselves, however, into thinking that moral education can be delegated to the schools, or is in any way pedagogical. It is really the primary responsibility of parents, and if they won't do it, then neither formal education, nor technology, nor the outlawing of technology will have much of an effect.

[NJI]

>>>That was a matter of implementing a discrete policy that affected relatively few people (slave traders and planters in the sugar islands).<<<

Aren't you forgetting someone, or a lot of someones? And beyond that, you'll notice that the same set of decisions that affected "a relatively few people" caused a war in the USA because both sides felt that the issue affected everyone. Not exactly the minor issue you seem to be attempting to portray.

Yes, at the same time, there was rather a tremendous lot of sin going on. So what? My point wasn't that moral education cures all ills, it was that moral education can lead to great strides forward, as opposed to your generalization that moral education apparently leads nowhere. (As an additional note, I think - based on your later comments - that I should also add that I'm not saying moral education through any particular medium.)

As far as a correlation between morality and technology... please be so good as to avoid dragging your arguments and disagreements on this issue over from other threads. That wasn't my point. I was commenting that it says something that we look to technology to save us from a lack of something else, rather than simply providing the aforementioned something else. Whether that's a matter of fear of moral education, trust in technology, or some combination thereof I didn't attempt to say, nor did I attempt to establish any correlation between morality and technology.

I am, however, in full agreement with your last two paragraphs. :-D

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Aren't you forgetting someone, or a lot of someones? And beyond that, you'll notice that the same set of decisions that affected "a relatively few people" caused a war in the USA because both sides felt that the issue affected everyone. Not exactly the minor issue you seem to be attempting to portray.<<<

That's a bit different from the situation in England. Do not mix apples and oranges. And while, for the South, preservation of slavery was probably the overriding consideration for war, in the North motivations varied greatly, and for at least the first three years, preservation of the Union, not abolition, was the driving force. That aside, the War did not lead to a moral regeneration of the country--quite the opposite in fact. Wars almost always lead to decline in societal morality, especially if they are long and bloody. The abuses of the gilded age, the rise in the philosophy of pragmatism, the decline of formal religious adherence in the late 19th century, all trace back to the the social disruptions of the Civil War.

>>>As far as a correlation between morality and technology... please be so good as to avoid dragging your arguments and disagreements on this issue over from other threads. That wasn't my point. <<<

But that was the point of my original post here. Technology is always irrelevant. It's what you do with it that matters. We are defined by our choices, not by our toys.

>>>I am, however, in full agreement with your last two paragraphs. :-D<<<

Which is why I never worry about technology per se.

[David Gray]

>Whereas in the past, people did try moral education, and came out at the same place we are now

A discredited myth...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>A discredited myth...<<<

By all means, David, please erect your straw man, while I go fetch my Zippo.

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

Stuart, I must say, your line of argument reminds me a lot of one I see a lot these days - moral equivalency by comparing worst cases and average cases. Take any argument on the left that we are as bad as the terrorists we are fighting. Or indeed, that the Bible is as evil as any "hate literature" because of the genocides in Numbers and Joshua. Or that there really are no differences between men and women in strength, by all sorts of anecdotal comparisons. Compare Hitler on his best day to Mother Theresa on her worst, and you can say all sorts of stuff about both.

This seems to me just the sort of thing you are doing here. Granted the past wasn't all wonderful, and granted there are many redeeming qualities of our own era. But that doesn't mean that we don't have some rather serious, and rather particular problems, especially concerning the cultivation of public moral vision in individuals in our society. The exceptions prove the rule.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

There was an article in Science (3 October 2008 vol 322, p. 58) by Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff on "The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality". The abstract is below:

We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.

This doesn't matter/apply for secular folks who don't believe anybody is watching them. But. Britain is probably the most surveilled country in the world. They've got cameras and even microphones in lots and lots of places. (Being a small and relatively rich island country probably makes this possible along with the decreasing cost of the technology.) I suspect a lot of people might behave better for Big Brother even though they think God is dead (or never existed). As many sociologists (and others) have noted, feeling anonymous is a necessary condition for most crimes.

I'll note, of course, that outward observance devoid of inward cleansing is explicity held up as "not good enough" by Jesus in Matthew (chapter 23, I think--that bit about whited sepulchres.)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Stuart, I must say, your line of argument reminds me a lot of one I see a lot these days - moral equivalency by comparing worst cases and average cases.<<<

But isn't that just what the original article did--elevate a few outliers to the status of the norm, and then extrapolate some universal lesson from that? Reading the editors one would get the impression that the world is populated entirely by evil, corrupt, depraved individuals (except for those who read Touchstone, of course). The view of the world as unrelieved darkness is unrealistic and does nobody any favors, nor does blanket condemnation of the modern world, particularly for those of us who really do know better.

>>>Granted the past wasn't all wonderful, and granted there are many redeeming qualities of our own era. <<<

Actually, the past was horrible. You would not want to live there (and if you did, you probably would not live long). The present is horrible, too. And the future will be horrible. That's just the way the world is. But in the horrible past, there was much that was good (as the editors keep reminding us), just as in the present there is much that is good (as they tend to overlook). In the future there will also be much that is good. Blanket approbation and blanket condemnation are not what we need. Rather, we need to work on the metanoia of one human heart at a time. There is no such thing as industrial scale salvation--you have to go door to door. Telling people they are awful usually doesn't work all that well.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. <<<

I have noticed a serious lack of social trust in Europe as compared to the United States. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that everybody is out for themselves and therefore not to be trusted--this, despite Europe's vaunted social safety net and rejection of American "dog-eat-dog" capitalism. I am even tempted to say that social trust is low in Europe precisely because they expect the state to do it all, including keeping an eye on everything they do. This shows up in their charitable activities--Europeans, on the private level, contribute very little to charitable causes as compared to people in the U.S. Even private charities such as OXFAM get most of their money from government grants as opposed to private contributions.