Malcolm Gladwell: "How different are dogs and football players?"

Not much, I guess.

When I first read Gladwell, I thought he was just super-duper. He would seemingly explain and solve all types of multi-faceted social phenomena w/ a simple (Blink!) but persuasive theory. I now find his writing insufficiently skeptical and lacking in analytical rigor. His conclusions somehow always support his own preferred policy outcomes. Nevertheless, his writing style usually makes for an enjoyable read, even when he is well off the mark.

I found my way to his most recent article via A&L Daily.

His latest offering, helpfully subtitled "How different are dogfighting and football?" is typical. Rather than paraphrase his argument, I've excerpted it below. After thousands of words detailing the different negative effects of having your head hit repeatedly (e.g. by playing football) he writes:

In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a “cur,” and abandoned. A dog that keeps charging at its opponent is said to possess “gameness,” and game dogs are revered.

In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff—and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in “The World of Fighting Dogs” (1984), is no more than a dog’s “desire to please an owner at any expense to itself.” The owners, Semencic goes on, understand this desire to please on the part of the dog and capitalize on it. At any organized pit fight in which two dogs are really going at each other wholeheartedly, one can observe the owner of each dog changing his position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master.

This is why Michael Vick’s dogs weren’t euthanized. The betrayal of loyalty requires an act of social reparation.

Professional football players, too, are selected for gameness.

Given that dogfighting requires dogs and pro football requires football players, I can see a pretty big difference already. I think his error stems from his incorrect explanation of why we don't tolerate dogfighting:

But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff—and dogfighting fails this test.

But what about the dog/person being selected? Dog owners have a duty of care (ethically and legally) to their dogs because Americans generally like dogs and believe that 1) since the dog has no meaningful control over his life and depends on the goodwill and mercy of his owner and 2) since no one is required to get a dog, it seems very unfair for someone to adopt a dog, only to make it's life worse. As far as I know, every single player to have ever played professional football did so voluntarily.

And even though he never comes out and says it, that seems to be what's got his craw. He spends about half of the article (which is a lot since Gladwell is wordy-ish) on the current state of research that suggests -surprise!- getting repeatedly hit in the head is bad for you. And I believe him. Basically, the more years you play football, the more likely you are to have some brain/cognition damage later on in life. And given that this is a scientific certainty, why, this is just like dogfighting!

Former offensive lineman Kyle Turley provides the human angle to Gladwell's reporting. He paints scenes of Turley suffering from vertigo and nausea well after his playing days. Turley recalls just how brutal the sport is, “I remember, every season, multiple occasions where I’d hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed, and they wouldn’t come uncrossed for a full series of plays."

NFL players are freemen who voluntarily engage in a brutal, life-threatening, commercial enterprise for our entertainment. I understand that NFL players, at least during the short duration that comprises most careers, make tremendous amounts of money and almost daily receive BJ's in the bathroom of Jerry's Deli from adoring fans. I also understand that to many people, these benefits don't come close to offsetting the expected cost. That's OK by me. But please stop there and resist the impulse to "do something about it."

This same impulse is what motivates supporters of soda taxes, smoking bans, obesity legislation, and all sorts of infringements on individual liberty. Not everyone worships at the alter of Good Health. Not everyone wants to live to be 122. This should be OK by you.

If this argument isn't persuasive, here's another: The rationale given behind this type of legislation is that it is done "for our own good." If we dig deeper, we see that the argument is really that the things they'd like to ban are associated w/ worse health outcomes. This is because the state of the science is such that we can not make a direct causal connection between the offending product or habit and the worse health outcome in a given individual. You can smoke 50 years and not get lung cancer or you can never have smoked and get lung cancer. However, we do know that in a large enough sample, introducing smoking to the sample population will, on the whole, lead to worse health outcomes.

So far so good, right?

If you believe that that rationale serves as a legitimate basis from which to legislate, why not also express a legislative preference for policies that are associated with better health outcomes? Maybe the following list will help explain: being married, staying married, not being gay, regular church attendance, not having children out of wedlock, raising children in a heterosexual 2 parent household, and many, many more!

Or is this just another example of liberty for me, but not for thee. In other words, if you want to have gay gloryhole buttsex every night of the week, our legislators will jump to the fore to demonstrate their "tolerance" and "commitment to diversity." They would never pass judgment on your most intimate life choices. But if you want to have a smoke or eat drink a soda, suddenly they're looking out for you. Because they know what's good for you; it's like they know you better than you know yourself.