Further thoughts on helping in Japan

by liberal japonicus

In the previous post, I suggested that Felix Salmon's original post (which he followed up here and here) was shallow and poorly thought out. In the comments, Turb suggests that this case has not been made. Also in the comments, commenter LKT notes the givewell blog and the goodintents blog and suggests that they give a more nuanced viewpoint.

I'm going to try and identify why I think the Salmon posts are shallow, but I'm not denying that people should carefully consider the ramifications of either donating to an organization that is pledging to devote those monies to Japan and those that refrain from doing so.

First of all, Salmon says in his last post on this that the original impetus for the post was because he was to appear on Piers Morgan's show on CNN, so he quickly wrote a blog post to outline his position. He closes with:

In hindsight, I do wish that I’d spent a bit more time on the post instead of rushing it out between panels at SXSW. But I doubt that would have made a huge amount of difference. In future, though, I think I will be more conscious of how the headline and first two sentences of my posts are likely to come across on Facebook. When I’m aggregated by humans, they make sure to get the message across quite clearly. But Facebook’s bots aren’t that smart, and the message can easily be lost completely.

So I think there is evidence that even he feels his post was not as deep as it could have been. And I'd also suggest that, in light of the kind of coverage we have seen, someone getting ready to appear on a CNN show (or at least the minders getting the guests) are not going to be fundamentally concerned with nuance. And I certainly realize that how an argument is laid out, how examples are marshalled, what kind of rhetoric is used can create an impression beyond what the writer wants. But I want to try, as best as I can, to separate out those problems and impressions and deal with Salmon's fundamental thesis and suggest that it has problems in this crisis.

To attempt to summarize, Salmon feels that it is ill-advised to donate to an organization that accepts designated donations for a particular purpose. His arguments are that any organization that hamstrings itself by accepting designated donations is going to be one that doesn't really know how to spend that money. He doesn't seem to make exceptions as far as I can see. Earmarked donations bad, unrestricted donations good.

While that may be true when viewed from the viewpoint of the organizations, it fails to take into account that people want to have some control over their money. If what it takes for people to donate is to feel that their money is going to the cause that is leading them to donate, beggars cannot really be choosers.

It also seems to demand a purity of purpose for aid organizations that is not asked for any other organization that asks for money. I've known friends who worked for various organizations in fundraising capacities and they have stories about what is necessary to get people to donate and support an organization. Until we can crack open people's safety deposit boxes and take out as much as everyone agrees is appropriate, I don't think we can make a sharp dividing line between the good aid organizations that somehow stay true to themselves and the bad aid organizations that accept money for specific purposes. (jftr, the first part was a joke, I don't think we should be able to crack open safe deposit boxes)

People are people, and I think it is rather over-idealistic to think that we can train them to not immediately react to horrific scenes and be moved to donate, though I think it is a good point to be made. But in the aftermath of a disaster the size and scale of this one? Maybe not. And I don't think we would want people to not be moved, to not feel an urge to donate. It is a fundamentally human response to tragedy, and one that we need more of, not less.

Turbulence points out that Salmon made this same argument in regard to Haiti where Salmon notes:

The last time there was a disaster on this scale was the Asian tsunami, five years ago. And for all its best efforts, the Red Cross has still only spent 83% of its $3.21 billion tsunami budget — which means that it has over half a billion dollars left to spend. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s money which could be spent in Haiti, if it weren’t for the fact that it was earmarked.

Salmon argues that this means there was less money for Haiti, but I wonder if this means that the areas that were struck by that tsunami are now back to normal. Apparently not.

While visiting the survivors of the 2004 tsunami, I found in Sumatra as well as Sri Lanka that even as the dust settled and the mechanical diggers crunched into the layer of wrecked buildings, that deeper scars remained untreated. One man burst into tears as he showed me the cement slab that was all that remained of his home. His wife and children were washed away. He was able to escape by hopping on a truck fleeing the advancing wave. I met a child psychiatrist sent by the Indonesian ministry of health to cope with the problems of children who survived horrible scenes of their loved ones dragged out to sea or crushed before their eyes. They had been playing safe in their home one minute and the next minute saw their world transformed into an apocalypse. The psychiatrist – along with international specialists in childhood psychological trauma—were training teachers and imams in the emergency relief camps set up for survivors. One imam – he had lost most of his relatives in the tsunami – told me he was learning how to use knowledge of psychology to help people coming to him with panic disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. The teachers and imams were learning to detect the signs of mental troubles such as persistent sadness, fears, and isolation from others. They learned to get children to remember a time and place when they were happy. To think about those moments and use those thoughts to drive away morbid fears. Finally, the teachers and imams learned to accept there are some problems beyond their ability to cope with and to refer those cases to mental health hospitals. The mental health of survivors was one of a great many challenges after the Asian Ocean tsunami in 2004. There was also the loss of vital records such as land ownership which led to years of delay in reconstructing roads, schools and houses as many claimed the same piece of land.

So why isn't that half a billion going to help these people? This indicates to me less that money that should have gone to Haiti was somehow wasted on Asia, but that aid organizations need to rethink how they distribute aid. So rather than 'Don't Donate Money to Japan', the question should be 'where do we donate money to make a difference?' Not as catchy but a little better on nuance.

While Salmon doesn't give any specifics, it seems to me that the emphasis on earmarked donations ignores any number of parameters that are as good or better measurements of whether to donate to an organization or not. The amount of CEO compensation, the percentage of adminitrative overhead, the model that an organization and what the organization is trying to do all seem more to the point. Furthermore, it is my experience that many of these organizations are doing things on a shoestring, and trying to get the most out of the money that they get. That perspective can be salutary and arguing that an organization staffed with people who are trying to help are not going to find new and innovative ways to help if they were given more funds seems to imagine that these are fixed budgets and once the total is spent, no more could possibly needed and that what they ask for is exactly what they need. Of course, often times with budgeting, you ask for twice as much as you need so you can get half of what you want. But I believe that some organizations could use the extra money to extend and amplify their efforts. People go into these organizations because they are frustrated by the bureaucracy of larger organizations and want to do something more directly, precisely the motivation that people may have for donating money for specific purposes. To deny this is to deny the fundamental possibility that people can find ways to do things differently in ways that can make a difference. The fundamental strength about diversity is that more minds, more people bringing different perspectives to a problem are going to develop new solutions. While Salmon is not denying that fact, he is claiming that there is a one fit solution to the question of funding. I don't think there is.

It also fails to take in the fact that organizations have a particular expertise and can have a particular deployment. And this assumes that somehow, aid organizations get all the money they need. I don't believe that is the case. But the shallowness of Salmon's argument lies not in missing that, it is that it views the act of giving aid as a one way transaction. It seems similar to the lump of labor fallacy. If one stops to think about it, giving aid is not simply for the recipient, it is an act that teaches something to the giver. If this were not the case, I would expect Salmon to be ridiculing when children organize lemonade stands and drives to help when these disasters strike, because it somehow is restricted to the disaster du jour. We like these kinds of stories (or at least I do) not because we feel that the money made is somehow going to make a difference, we feel that the children and the people who have acknowledged the children's effort have acquired some understanding of how it is important to help one another.

Turning to the points that Turb made in this comment that I said I would address and this comment, posted after my promise to address his points, he feels that this point by Salmon is important:

That said, it’s entirely possible that organizations like the Red Cross or Save the Children will find themselves with important and useful roles to play in Japan. It’s also certain that they have important and useful roles to play elsewhere. So do give money to them — and give generously! And give money to other NGOs, too, like Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which don’t jump on natural disasters and use them as opportunistic marketing devices. Just make sure it’s unrestricted.

The emphasis is Turb's and he leaves out the final part of that sentence, the implication of which seems to me to be that if an organization uses restricted donations, it is 'an opportunistic marketing device'. Here is the list that Charity Navigator gives of organizations that are making a committment to use all designated funds to Japan

• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
• AmeriCares
• Architecture for Humanity
• Brother's Brother Foundation
• Direct Relief
• International Food for the Hungry
• International Rescue Committee
• Matthew 25: Ministries Relief
• International GlobalGiving
• Mercy Corps
• ShelterBox USA

While the rankings of Charity Navigator are multi-faceted, it seems a bit problematic to claim that these 4 starred charities are using this as 'an opportunistic marketing device'.

I also pointed out that it is likely that the traditional aid agencies might not be equipped to deal with PTDS among children and other survivors, Turb writes:

Really? I know at least two Red Cross volunteers who have described their work as counseling disaster victims.

Turb doesn't say if those are people in the US Red Cross or the Japanese Red Cross, but I suspect the former. While the number of these types of counselors increased after the Great Hanshin earthquake, about 6,000 people were killed and the population base was 2 million in that disaster. However, for this disaster, about 10,000 people are known dead, another 16,000 are missing and the population base affected of the three seaside prefectures is close to 6 million. At my faculty, we have a social welfare department and some of my colleagues work with counselling. As I understand it, the field is relatively undeveloped in Japan, and understanding the processes and procedures of grief counseling makes me think that even if Turb met two Japanese Red Cross volunteers who have experience counseling disaster victims, there is going to be a need to train more as well as bring in those from overseas.

Turb suggests that this situation "requires counselors who speak Japanese fluently and who have experience with Japanese culture." I wonder how many of those who worked in Haiti were fluent in French and had experience with Haitian culture? Were people who had experience in disaster counseling but were monolingual English speakers, were they unneeded? Or were they unable to do that work? While my experience with and informal training in counselling is with student who suffer from hikkomori, I'm not aware that counselling requires a linguistically and culturally fluent person to provide such counselling. It is preferable, but again, we are talking about a disaster that dwarfs the Great Hanshin Earthquake so I'm not convinced we have the luxury to wait.

Turb makes some points about my short listing of examples of things that may come out of this crisis. For example, when I suggest that aid workers will learn about Japanese earthquake resistant designs, he writes:

This is so wrong I don't know what to say. Most people who work with aid will learn absolutely nothing about the design of earthquake resistant structures. Which is good because the vast majority of those people will not be civil engineers who design structures. But that doesn't really matter because the design of earthquake resistant buildings is not exactly a black art that poor Americans are ignorant of. It is a well studied field

Turb makes the mistake of taking a listing of a point to suggest that I am arguing that aid workers are going to go to other places and design buildings. If I did believe that it would be rather ridiculous, but my point is that in the networks that aid workers are a part of, that knowledge will be dispersed so that other people will consider the possibilities. Turb argues that the model of sharing information is that Japanese engineers publish books(!) and then engineers in other countries evaluate those books and address the problem as experts. This seems like a very traditional model of information dissemination and subject to all the bottlenecks and constraints. Also, it assumes that Japanese engineers are as likely to present to their overseas counterparts as anyone else. 

For example, Japanese factories have P wave detectors which detect the compression waves that an earthquake emits before the destructive S waves, allowing 60-90 seconds warning for shutdown and automated emergency procedures. Just because knowledge is known by someone in a particular place, it does not mean that it is know by others in other places. And this kind of information and ideas are not the only sort that are useful.

A recent cell phone app that is now popular in Japan is one that sends out a general warning when a large earthquake hits and the cell phone emits a set alarm and you can see where the epicenter is, its strength and what precautions to take. These are the sorts of non-traditional ideas that could make a difference on the West Coast or in other newly developing countries where cell phones are having increased market penetration. I don't think it takes a structural engineer or a seismologist at a conference to evaluate this and then determine if it is workable.

Finally, Turb also links to Tyler Cowen's points against Salmon's thesis, which are:

1. The chance that your aid will be usefully deployed, and not lost to corruption, is much higher than average.
2. I believe this crisis will bring fundamental regime change to Japan (currently an underreported issue), rather than just altering the outcome of the next election. America needs to signal its partnership with one of its most important allies. You can help us do that.
3. Maybe you should give to a poorer country instead, but you probably won’t. Odds are this will be an extra donation at the relevant margin. Sorry to say, this disaster has no “close substitute.”

The second point is similar to my point in the earlier post about gaiatsu, yet less directed at political change and more directed at social change, but the other two can also be taken as being against the notion of presenting this argument at this particular time. Hence, shallow and poorly thought out.

Also, in this comment, Turb wrote

I am familiar with this critique of the Red Cross organizations, but usually in the context of states that are, say, engaging in war crimes or genocide. I don't think that the government of Japan is doing that. So while I understand your point in theory, I don't see how it applies in this case.

Since Turb is familiar with the critique and seems to know about the structure of national Red Cross groups, I hope he can correct me. My understanding is that the National Red Cross organizations, while subscribing to the general principals of the ICRC, have their own national quirks and differences. While Salmon claims that the Japan Red Cross doesn't not want or need outside assistance, on their English front page, it says

Thank you very much for your kind concern to the affected population of huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Japanese Red Cross Society mobilizes biggest resources in this emergency phase. Though numerous challenges have occurred one after another since March 11, we do all what we can contribute for victims. Your cash donation to our society is truly welcomed. 

And here it says

If your national society doesn’t collect donation or you wish to send your donations directly to the Japanese Red Cross Society, please direct your fund to the following bank accounts. If you need the receipt of your fund, please state so clearly in the comment section of the bank transfer order. All the fund received under this account will be transferred to the Distribution Committee, which is formed around the local government of the disaster-affected prefecture and to be distributed directly among the affected population of earthquake and tsunami

The Givewell blog notes the discrepancy between a pdf bulletin and the webpage and explains it as follows:

One possible interpretation is that funds will be given directly to those affected by the earthquake, but funds are not needed for the relief effort itself.

I'm not sure how we can precisely square this and how it affects people who are thinking of giving. But it might be worthwhile to consider the history of the Japanese Red Cross which may explain why some communications may suggest they do not want or need outside assistance.

First of all, the national Red Cross organizations are tied to their national health systems and since Japan has universal health care, the kind of monetary assistance that might be vital in the US is not an issue in Japan.

Second, the Japan Red Cross originated in the town I live in, Kumamoto, during the Satsuma Rebellion, Count Sano Tsunetani organized the Hakuaisha, which was influenced by his visit to Paris in 1867 and his introduction to the International Red Cross. He proposed an organization that would treat the wounded from both sides of the Rebellion and the Emperor granted his imprimatur. Subsequently, the royal family has been the sponsors of the organization. After WWII, the US occupation forces revised the structure of the Japanese Red Cross so that it had the status of a legal non profit, but it still retains the royal family's approval and the Empress is the honorary president. I believe that this means that it is less susceptible to the vicissitudes of funding that an organization like the American Red Cross is.

I would also note that JANIC (The Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation) has set up a pooled fund for 28 Japanese NGOs working on the ground to access. This seems like a good solution in that NGOs all have access, giving flexibility, but no earmarks.

Since I am writing in relation to the disaster in Japan, I'm not sure if I would extend my criticism and suggest that Salmon is wrong to push for unrestricted donations in all cases. But in the context of this crisis, I do think he is.

Comments

[AreaMan]

Highly focused aid by real experts can help a lot, and without all the controversy about priorities. There's an Israeli field hospital already set up in the heart of Japan's disaster area. See:
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?ID=213123&R=R1

A hospital is by its nature more of prepackaged module than other approaches, which may naturally be more diffuse. But that's no reason to not do it. Distributing supplies to the masses and cooling the reactors are undoubtedly things that the Japanese can manage best themselves.

Although, if somebody has an airborne generator-and-fuel system that could be flown in and set up as a freestanding unit, it would have come in handy. A globally mobile cooling station like this could be invented for next time.

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks AreaMan, that is very interesting. As someone whose family went thru Katrina, hearing about their challenges in getting power and now with this, it makes me hope that this will encourage the kind of research in portable power, perhaps in the form of fuel cells. I have mentioned this before, but cell phones got a huge boost from the Great Hanshin earthquake, leading to the range of selection and features we have today.

Don't know if this counts, but this article talks about Japan and world soccer and notes this

That has been borne out by the overwhelming display of solidarity shown over the past two weeks, with contributions from clubs, players and fans all over the country and throughout the rest of the world. These gestures, whether huge donations or something as simple as Valencia's players wearing their shirt names in katakana for a Spanish League match, have not gone unnoticed by those most in need of help.

[Turbulence]

my point is that in the networks that aid workers are a part of, that knowledge will be dispersed so that other people will consider the possibilities.

In the US, "ignorance of the fact that earthquake resistant structures can be built" is not a problem we have. It is a completely imaginary problem that you have invented. Civil engineers in the US know how to design earthquake resistant structures. They generally don't do so because that costs money and Americans have concluded that given the liklihood of earthquakes in most American cities, the massive costs would exceed the benefits. By Americans I mean major city and state governments, large property owners, large developers, and insurance companies.

To put it another way: we have a national electrical code in the US that gets updated every few years. Its design is essentially driven by insurance companies that pay for the damage caused by electrical fires. If those same companies ever decided that earthquake resistance was a big problem, they'd start pushing out stronger earthquake resistance standards for design and start charging higher premiums for buildings that couldn't meet them. They haven't done that because earthquakes are much less likely in the US than in Japan.

Now, it is certainly possible that all those people are just wrong and that you, liberal japonicus, a guy who teaches english to secondary school students in Japan knows better than all of them. But that's not a problem you can fix with information dispersal through vague fuzzy networks of people associated with a handful of aid workers. People who buy large buildings are going to need a hell of a lot more than that before they pay tens of millions of dollars more for a large commercial building.

Turb argues that the model of sharing information is that Japanese engineers publish books(!) and then engineers in other countries evaluate those books and address the problem as experts.

Wow. Just wow.

Let me explain to you how this works LJ. Every large building in the US must have its design signed off by at least one licensed civil engineer. Once that engineer puts his signature on the design, he becomes legally responsible for it. If that building collapses, even 30 years later, the licensed engineer who signed off on its design will probably go to prison. When large structures collapse, they can kill 10,000 people easily.

Consequently, licensed civil engineers tend to be a very conservative bunch. They don't incorporate new-fangled ideas into their building designs just because some guy in Japan said those ideas are awesome, as related to him 18th-hand through a diffuse social network. They require extensive models, simulations, experiments, and tests before they adopt new structural technologies. So yeah, I don't expect that Japanese civil engineering innovations will ever be adopted in the US unless those innovators are writing books or publishing journal articles or attending technical conferences.

This seems like a very traditional model of information dissemination and subject to all the bottlenecks and constraints. Also, it assumes that Japanese engineers are as likely to present to their overseas counterparts as anyone else.

The mind boggles. Yes, it is very traditional. People tend to get conservative in their practice when the consequences of not being conservative are "I will kill 10,000 people" and "I will spend the rest of my life in prison".

Look, there is no shortage of new ideas in the world. Every engineer on Earth has lots of new ideas for how to do awesome things. Having ideas is the easy part. You know what's the hard part? Testing those ideas, working out formal models so that you can reason about their properties and how they'll react to stress, running simulations, validating those simulations and the new simulators you had to make, building physical models, testing them, convincing other people that your analysis and experiments are correct, etc. Those are all extremely time consuming. But until someone does that work, civil engineers are not going to risk lives and careers on a new idea.

The fact that you're inventing fictional problems and then proposing highly unlikely information transfers through poorly specified networks as a solution to those "problems" raises all manner of questions about the rest of your analysis.

[D]

1. I'm very sorry, but this post is far too long to consume. You need to write more succinctly. Or, failing that, organize your post in sections to make it easier to understand your main point and follow along. I feel like I'm reading one tangent after another with no overarching structure. Where's a thesis statement when I need one.

2. I pointed this out yesterday in the first comment, but again, the response to your suggestion that people SHOULD restrict where there aid goes, is this: https://lavidaidloca.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/the-asterisk-is-everything/

[Turbulence]

I don't think it takes a structural engineer or a seismologist at a conference to evaluate this and then determine if it is workable.

LJ, my comments were specifically focused on your earlier post where you wrote (and I quoted):

People who work with aid will learn a lot about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures

So yeah, designing a building actually does require a structural engineer. And convincing a structural engineer that a new design is good usually does require a conference paper or a book or an equivalent amount of work.

[hairshirthedonist]

Maybe the earthquake-resistant building-design thing was just a bad example for the general concept LJ was putting forth. In any case, it seems a bit tangential to how people should donate to aid organizations in response to the current Japanese crisis.

But there is the group Engineers without Borders. It is really that controversial to suggest that someone might learn something useful by seeing first-hand what people on the other side of the world do, even if it doesn't revolutionize the field of structural engineering? Even if it's only a matter of gaining the impetus to try (or simply further investigate) some particular design option that was previously considered, but that was superceded by something more familiar to US engineers?

Maybe it's a bit fuzzy and vague, but I don't think it's asinine.

[Turbulence]

Maybe the earthquake-resistant building-design thing was just a bad example for the general concept LJ was putting forth. In any case, it seems a bit tangential to how people should donate to aid organizations in response to the current Japanese crisis.

If LJ wants to withdraw that claim I'm happy to drop the matter. I do think it speaks to a larger issue though: LJ is desperately grabbing for any possible benefit, whether or not it makes sense. Which should give us pause regarding the rest of his arguments.

But there is the group Engineers without Borders.

I don't see how they're relevant to the discussion. They don't seem focused on disaster relief in developed countries as far as I can tell. Can you explain why you thought they're relevant?

It is really that controversial to suggest that someone might learn something useful by seeing first-hand what people on the other side of the world do, even if it doesn't revolutionize the field of structural engineering? Even if it's only a matter of gaining the impetus to try (or simply further investigate) some particular design option that was previously considered, but that was superceded by something more familiar to US engineers?

That's a radically weaker claim than what LJ originally wrote. It is so weak in fact that I'm having trouble seeing why it is necessary or why anyone should care. I mean, there is a lot of travel between the US and Japan right now...if the benefit here is that someone, somewhere will notice something and take that notion back to their home country...well, forgive me for not being blown away.

What's more, "seeing what people do" doesn't make sense here. "What people do" in this context is design large structures. That's not something that random relief workers are going to be exposed to. American relief workers are not going to be working closely with Japanese civil engineers who are designing new structures. And again, even if they were, they won't be able to transmit much knowledge unless they themselves are civil engineers.

Finally, this is all in service to a non-existent problem that LJ conjured out of thin air. We know how to build earthquake resistant structures. Ignorance is not a problem here.

Maybe it's a bit fuzzy and vague, but I don't think it's asinine.

You don't think that the statement people who work with aid will learn a lot about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures is absurd?

[liberal japonicus]

I'm sorry Turb, but I didn't say this

In the US, "ignorance of the fact that earthquake resistant structures can be built" is not a problem we have.

It is not something I wrote, and it is not something I believe. If you think that is an adequate summary of what I said, I'm not sure how to communicate that it is not. I'm left with the impression that you don't want to understand my point, so I will leave you to quoting things I didn't say, I have better things to do with my time.

[liberal japonicus]

D, to make things shorter for you to read, I linked to a page that lists some major charities and whether or not they restrict their donations. I urge people to investigate and support a charity that appeals to them and unlike Salmon, I feel that charities can do good work even if they ask to restrict their donations.

[Turbulence]

It is not something I wrote

It is clearly not and I apologize for giving the impression that I was quoting you.

and it is not something I believe.

OK...If that's true, then I don't understand why you wrote that "people who work with aid will learn a lot about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures" and why you think it would be a benefit. I mean, if you don't think that Japanese structural engineers have lots of knowledge about earthquake resistant design that their American counterparts lack, what precisely is the benefit of having "people who work with aid" go to Japan and "learn about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures"?

[hairshirthedonist]

...well, forgive me for not being blown away.

You are forgiven. My point was not to blow you away, but to suggest simply that LJ's point, as I understood or interpreted it, wasn't asinine. And my interpretation may have been weak, though I didn't suggest otherwise.

In fact, I prefaced it with this:

In any case, it seems a bit tangential to how people should donate to aid organizations in response to the current Japanese crisis.

I could go further and say that it's not a significant enough factor to consider in formulating a scheme for donating.

[meta]Thinking about it more, maybe I just felt like defending LJ because your tone struck me as being overly combative, Turb. I probably wouldn't have bothered if you had approached it more along the lines of "I think you have some misconceptions about A, B and C" and less along the lines of "WTF?! Can you be more ridiculous?!"[/meta]

[Yama001]

Bah this is pretty clearly just a continuation of the Emerson fight.

Disgusting.

[liberal japonicus]

Turbulence,
As I said, this is the first time such a natural disaster has struck a developed nation. As it turns out, it is a developed nation that has a number of base notions that are quite different from the US and the West. How Japanese manage, how aid is deployed, how different attitudes lead to different outcomes are all things that people have a potential to learn from. Otherwise, what hsh said.

[Turbulence]

LJ, while I appreciate your response, you didn't answer the question I raised at all. To wit:

I don't understand why you wrote that "people who work with aid will learn a lot about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures" and why you think it would be a benefit. I mean, if you don't think that Japanese structural engineers have lots of knowledge about earthquake resistant design that their American counterparts lack, what precisely is the benefit of having "people who work with aid" go to Japan and "learn about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures"?

I mean, Japanese "management" and "aid deployment" and "attitudes" don't have anything to do with your original claim about the "design of earthquake resistant structures". I hope you can explain the discrepancy.

[liberal japonicus]

I said that this was a listing of points. I wasn't making a specific comment on structural engineering or building design or any of the numerous things you have repeatedly mentioned, but suggesting some things that might be learned. But if you believe that American structural engineers can learn nothing from Japan at this point in time, you are mistaken.

I noted in an earlier post that this is actually 3 separate disasters. There is the nuclear plant where structural engineers will be examining the construction of the spent fuel rod pools and trying to ascertain it was simply the tsunami that caused the problems, or if the earthquake had a contributory effect. The tsunami was triggered by an offshore earthquake which effected a 5 km strip of land on the coast. I imagine that structural engineers will be looking at how to design towns that can provide people with a better opportunity to escape, since one of the worst hit towns, Minami Sanriku, where half the population are missing, because the roads out of town were clogged with cars and there was poor access to higher ground. The earthquake, the 4th largest recorded in history was accompanied by two other earthquakes, one in Kurikoma, Miyagi and the other in Nagano, which is an area which has been struck by 3 major earthquakes In Japan, structures that are not housing people, such as universities and public buildings, must be inspected and deemed safe. Some structures that people are residing in have been condemned. Are you telling me that structural engineers can find no lessons, not a glimmer of information, in seeing how this process unfolds?
Here's what the Architecture for Humanity site says

Architecture for Humanity is working with a number of local professionals in Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka to provide support and design services to those impacted by the earthquake and tsunami. We are raising funds and laying the groundwork to support local design professionals in the rebuilding of safe, sustainable housing and civic structures.

Structural engineering, like any profession that deals with how people work and live, does not reside in a vacuum. There will be no perfect building, because the buildings have to meet the needs of the people and culture they are embedded in. But that doesn't mean that features, ideas and notions can't be brought in. I feel relatively certain that the rubrics that Japanese code and American code in terms of building safety and inspections are not identical. While I am sure that a structural engineer in America can know what aspects are valued and what aspects are not through a conference presentation or a proceedings paper, I would think that the best way to learn about this would be to see the process unfolding. Or as hsh says

It is really that controversial to suggest that someone might learn something useful by seeing first-hand what people on the other side of the world do, even if it doesn't revolutionize the field of structural engineering?

I don't believe that what I stated was incredibly stronger than that claim and I'm sorry if you read it as such. So I believe the discrepancy seems to lie in the fact that you want to define structural engineering as a narrow field whereas I listed structural engineering as one of a number of examples where insights may be found.

And as you have worked to define precisely the basis and knowledge base of structural engineering, I'd note that you didn't answer the questions I put to concerning the Red Cross volunteers you met. My apologies if it was not clear that they were questions. For example, you said that you met 2 Red Cross volunteers, but you did not say if they were American or Japanese. You also asserted that people who do this kind of counselling need to be fluent in both Japanese language and culture. Given the numbers I presented, do you still believe that to be the case?

I'd also note that you have not commented on the fact that one of Salmon's key points, that the Japanese Red Cross does not want donations, is mistaken. I would be interested in having you explain what effect you think this has on Salmon's argument. Given that this post was an attempt to lay out a case that you specifically requested against Salmon, it would be nice if rather than waiting for me to play 20 questions with you, you could preemptively address some points.

I'd also invite you and anyone else to tell us where they are donating and the reasons why they chose that particular charity. I feel certain that we can learn from that.

[Turbulence]

I said that this was a listing of points.

I don't understand why you think that helps. I mean, writing absurd statements as part of a list of points is still wrong. Do you believe that most of your post was intended as truthful, but the "listing of points" was just lies and disinformation that we shouldn't pay attention to? Or what?

I wasn't making a specific comment on structural engineering or building design or any of the numerous things you have repeatedly mentioned, but suggesting some things that might be learned.

Let's look at what you wrote:

People who work with aid will learn a lot about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures

I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with any definition of the phrase "earthquake resistant structures" (which again, are your exact words) that does not include buildings. Which means you were in fact "making a specific comment on building design". Maybe that's not what you meant. Which is fine; we all make mistakes. But if that's the case, you need to acknowledge that you meant something else.

You seem to have tremendous difficulty acknowledging when you make a mistake. That really hurts your credibility as a writer.

But if you believe that American structural engineers can learn nothing from Japan at this point in time, you are mistaken.

I believe:
(1) That Japanese structural engineers probably could teach their American counterparts some things
(2) That such teaching cannot take place 18th hand through vague amorphous social networks but must take place through direct interactions between experts
(3) Despite (1), American structural engineers already know a very great deal about how to build earthquake resistant structures
(4) There is no serious problem to be solved here.

Again, none of this is in any way connected to what you wrote, which was about aid workers learning things about Japanese earthquake resistant building design. Presumably, this learning would occur by osmosis through proximity to buildings. Or something.

structural engineers will be examining the construction of the spent fuel rod pools...structural engineers will be looking at how to design towns that can provide people with a better opportunity to escape...Some structures that people are residing in have been condemned. Are you telling me that structural engineers can find no lessons, not a glimmer of information, in seeing how this process unfolds?

No. I don't know where you'd get such an absurd notion from.

Yes, Japanese civil engineers will be inspecting and analyzing lots of things. Some of that analysis will be useful to engineers in other countries if it is published properly. But that's my point: experts will be doing stuff, the stuff that they're doing will only make sense to other experts, and will only be useful if shared in a professional setting.

Random aid workers who know nothing about civil engineering are not going to learn great insights about structural engineering from passing Japanese building inspectors and then pass those insights on to American engineers. That's what you claimed would happen (recall: "People who work with aid will learn a lot about how Japanese design earthquake resistant structures"). And it has nothing to do with a bunch of expert inspections.

I don't believe that what I stated was incredibly stronger than that claim and I'm sorry if you read it as such.

LJ, you wrote about aid workers learning about how to design "earthquake resistant structures". Have you ever seen an earthquake resistant chair? Or an earthquake resistant rice cooker? No? I guess we're talking about buildings then.

It is true that I haven't answered questions that you've raised. After the last thread with its sprawling comments, I thought it would be better to focus on one set of issues at a time. I also wanted to see if I could get you to either give a reasonable explanation of your absurd comments or have you retract them. You wrote something that is absurd and wrong. But you refuse to acknowledge that. Instead you keep digging, trying to find increasingly ridiculous post-hoc rationalizations. And that makes it hard for me to continue the conversation. I mean, if you lack the moral or intellectual fiber to recognize and acknowledge a mistake, how can I take anything you write seriously? What would be the point of such a discussion?

[liberal japonicus]

I'm sorry, but I believe I have answered the questions as best as I can and I don't think what I have suggested is absurd. If you think that this relates to moral or intellectual fiber, that's your concern and I urge you to readjust your opinion of me based on that.

But even if it is absurd, I think this focus on what structural engineering is only a tiny point in the larger issue which is, as I wrote about, that this is the first natural disaster of this scale to hit a developed country and we should consider what we can learn. If that doesn't satisfy you, I hope you can live with it.

[Arcinian]

LJ, I appreciate the post. I've had mixed feelings about organizations that earmark their funds and while this doesn't resolve those feelings it does lend some clarity.

I do think it is a fundamental problem with aid that very frequently we have very little idea of what we are paying for, how effective it is, and what the results are in a year or ten. On a small personal scale, getting to know an organization like PP or ASPA can help with that or a shelter that you actually visit but on an international scale we're stuck with research we might not know how to do effectively and which takes significant time and simple faith.