r3lativ

Filip Palda's "Pareto's Republic and the New Science of Peace"

2012-01-27T20:55:00.001-05:00

The PPE workshop today had Filip Palada presenting his book Pareto's Republic and the New Science of Peace. Palada's main concern is with the process that creates more efficient institutions and he notes that it's not an accident that better institutions seem to be associated with more peaceful states of affairs (not just less war but also less private violence). He noted that secure property rights in an evironment of rule of law are key, but he didn't give an answer as to what factors lead to such a system. Here are some of my thoughts on it.

First of all, Peter Leesom is right that the book should be called The Kaldor-Hicks Republic, as that is the concept of efficiency he seems to be using when he's assessing whether a set of institutions is better than another. This detail aside...

There were lots of discussions about how dictators and their cronies could be compensated such that they would agree to leave (compensation + a changed regime being better than no compensation + the regime). Peter Boettke mentioned that this is virtually impossible to do due to the problem of credible commitment: How would you assure the dictators and their cronies that they would really get to keep the promised goodies after they agree to leave? The amount of money necessary to compensate them for this risk is simply too much. So, the alternative is similar to what has happened in post-communist transitions: the former nomenklatura still maintains some power and the wealth that comes with it.

Of course there's also a different kind of compensation possible: You can tell them, "if you agree to leave, we agree not to kill you". I assume Gadhafi would have been wise to take such a bargain while it was still possible. This hints to what I think is missing in Palada's approach: what ultimately determines the changes in institutions is the power struggle between different actors. Formal institutions can be seen as tools used by those with a position of power to try to secure their position and the associated rents. Culture, while posing some constraints (how much bullying are people willing to take?), is not that important because people adapt to whatever the institutional environment happens to be, i.e. culture changes to reflect what's prudent to do at the individual level within the given institutional setting (more or less e.g. why don't North Koreans have more of a Guns of Brixton mentality, while the Tibetans seem to do). So, if you want to understand the way institutions change you have to track the power struggles and what factors (such as technology or international forces) change the balances of power.

It is often said that violence should be the means of last resort. For example, in the Revolt of the Masses Ortega y Gasset defined the degree of civilization of a society as the number of options or methods available in that society for solving conflicts before resorting to violence. In practice however, violence is usually the means of first resort. The microeconomics of this is something along those lines: if you are much more powerful than me, you face a very strong temptation to just take my stuff or bully me into some sort of exchange that is disadvantageous for me (and with which I wouldn't have agreed under non-threatening conditions). Morality may offer some restrained to the possible bully, but this is not a reliable long-term solution because the immoral have larger gains compared to the moral and thus gradually take over.

Consequently, an environment of (quasi-)voluntary exchanges is the result of a balance of power. Olson's story about the fact that stationary bandits (aka governments) win over roving bandits is along these lines, and this story seems to have a pretty good historical basis (see the 'From Egalitarism to Kleptocracy' chapter in Guns, Germs, and Steel).

I would say that it is even impossible to define what a voluntary exchange is, if the two agents are not of similar power. This is because violence has two uses: (1) one is predation of the powerful over the weak, (2) the other is enforcement of contracts and agreements. If you do me a service based on my promise that I would give you some money (or service) at a later date, what prevents me from abandoning my promise is the credible threat of what would happen to me if I don't deliver my part of the deal. But that threat is credible only if it is made by someone sufficiently more powerful than me (or by the possibility of lost future revenues via some reputation mechanism - like the eBay or Amazon ratings systems). The problem is that, if the deal was made with such a much more powerful agent, what assures us that the deal really was voluntary? After all, it would have been awfully generous of such an agent to restrain himself and not bully me into “agreeing” to a disadvantageous exchange. In other words, if the agreement is between two agents of very unequal power, there is no way to tell whether the powerful agent uses violence for predation or for enforcement. Thus, under such conditions, the very distinction between voluntary and involuntary agreements disappears (at least if you agree that a distinction exists only if it can be measured).

This means that we can talk of voluntary exchanges only when the two parties are of similar power, and there is a third party enforcer (either an agent such as a government or a network such as the reputation networks on eBay or Amazon) who is much stronger than the two. This also means that if the third party enforcer is a specified agent, there can be no real voluntary agreements between a normal agent and this much stronger enforcer. I.e. there is no such thing as a voluntary contract with the government (because there's nothing you can do if the government doesn't comply with its contractual obligations - see the current "debts restructuring" discussions in which private banks lose tons of money as states no longer pay them back - and nothing you can do if the government decides to attach some obligations to you that you don't really like and for which you are not compensated - e.g. mandated health insurance). It also means that there can be no such thing as anarcho-capitalism as it is normally construed – i.e. assuming contracts between normal people and protection agencies much stronger than them (because he who has the power to protect you, also has the power to abuse you, regardless of whether that “protector” is state or private).

So, to answer Palada's dilemma about what can be done to improve the institutional settings and increase peace, we need to focus on the way various power centers constrain each other. This is of course a very old and good idea: the concept of checks-and-balances and of federalism. But what factors lead to better checks and balances and create a larger safe space in which voluntary agreements can happen?

One way to think about it, not necessarily the best, is the Rothbardian theory of history, which assumes there are cycles of power losses due to authorities being taken by surprise by certain technological inventions that (temporarily) empower the weak. E.g. the invention of the printing press undermined the power structure, but eventually the invention was captured by government – the modern bureaucratic state would not have been possible without printing. The industrial revolution and the emergence of cities undermined the power of the land-owning aristocracy, but eventually capitalism morphed into the modern neomercantilist system as the new capitalist elites found the state useful as well. Radio was quickly captured by the state as the EM spectrum was nationalized, and it was effectively used for propaganda by the Nazi and fascist regimes. Now the internet has taken governments by surprise, and they are currently working hard to get back some sort of control (e.g. think SOPA/PIPA and ACTA).

So, from this perspective, the only truly exogenous factor is technology (in the sense that it generates surprises with wide-spread and unpredictable consequences for the existing power structure). Institutions and culture are endogenous: institutions are tools used by the current elites for (attempting) to maintain control and preserve their rents, and culture is more of an effect than a cause (i.e. culture understood from an act utilitarian point of view, and being driven by whatever is prudent for individuals to do in a given context, while somewhat constrained by our biological moral sentiments, such altruistic punishment etc.).

Marina Abramovic, Rhythm 0

2011-12-31T11:41:00.001-05:00

Inheritance rights in Russia under Peter the Great

2011-12-30T03:19:00.001-05:00

From John Nye's review of Richard Pipes' Property and Freedom:

Peter the Great is often saluted for having modernized Russia's culture and economy. But Pipes makes clear that Peter's Westernization was primarily cultural and technological. Although receptive to Western ideas in art, literature, music, and science, Peter did little to adopt the legal institutions so crucial to English success. Rather than improving individual property rights, Peter blurred a variety of existing distinctions and endangered the long-run stability of all reforms through arbitrary confiscation. Peasant agriculture was held back by a law requiring that all holdings must be bequeathed in toto to a single heir. Though intended to stop the devolution of large holdings into small parcels through inheritance, the law had the effect of destroying the working land market that had begun to emerge in Russia.

Ashwin Parameswaran on the tradeoff between short-term stability and long-term resilience

2011-12-25T07:54:00.001-05:00

From this, rather long, blog post:

The puzzle:
Most monetary and fiscal interventions result in a rise in the financial markets, NGDP expectations and economic performance in the short run. Yet,
we are in the middle of a ‘great stagnation’ and have been for a few decades.
the frequency of crises seems to have risen dramatically in the last fifty years culminating in the environment since 2008 which is best described as a perpetual crisis.
each recovery seems to be weaker than the previous one and requires an increased injection of stimulus to achieve results that were easily achieved by a simple rate cut not that long ago.
... Similarly, when a central bank protects incumbent banks against liquidity risk, the banks choose to hold progressively more illiquid portfolios. When central banks provide incumbent banks with cheap funding in times of crisis to prevent failure and creditor losses, the banks choose to take on more leverage. ... Of course, in economic systems when agents actively intend to arbitrage such commitments by central banks, it is simply a form of moral hazard. But such an adaptation can easily occur via the natural selective forces at work in an economy – those who fail to take advantage of the Greenspan/Bernanke put simply go bust or get fired. ...
some of you may raise the following objection: so what if the new state is pathological? Maybe capitalism with its inherent instability is itself pathological. And once the safety nets of the Greenspan/Bernanke put, lender-of-last-resort programs and too-big-to-fail bailouts are put in place why would we need or want to remove them? If we simply medicate the economy ad infinitum, can we not avoid collapse ad infinitum?

This argument however is flawed.
The ability of economic players to reorganise to maximise the rents extracted from central banking and state commitments far exceeds the the resources available to the state and the central bank. ... as Minsky and many others have documented, the pace of financial innovation over the last half-century has meant that banks and financialised corporates have all the tools they need to circumvent regulations and maximise rent extraction.
Minsky noted that "A high-investment, high-profit strategy for full employment – even with the underpinning of an active fiscal policy and an aware Federal Reserve system – leads to an increasingly unstable financial system, and an increasingly unstable economic performance. Within a short span of time, the policy problem cycles among preventing a deep depression, getting a stagnant economy moving again, reining in an inflation, and offsetting a credit squeeze or crunch."
...The structural malformation of the economic system due to the application of increasing levels of stimulus to the task of stabilisation means that the economy has lost the ability to generate the endogenous growth and innovation that it could before it was so actively stabilised. The system has now been homogenised and is entirely dependent upon constant stimulus. ...

Tainter on the importance of legitimacy for state power

2011-12-22T22:18:00.001-05:00

From The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter (p. 26-8):

Anthropologists have had some difficulty defining the concept 'state.' It is something that seems clearly different from the simplest, acephalous human societies, but specifying or enumerating this difference has proven an elusive goal. Many anthropologists, despite this difficulty, insist that states are a qualitatively different kind of society , so that the transition from tribal to state societies represents the 'Great Divide' (Service 1975) of human history. ...
States are, to begin with, territorially organized. That is to say, membership is at least partly determined by birth or residence in a territory, rather than by real or fictive kin relations. ... The territorial basis both reflects and influences the nature of statehood ...
States contrast with relatively complex tribal societies (e.g., chiefdoms) in a number of ways. In states, a ruling authority monopolizes sovereignty and delegates all power. The ruling class tends to be professional, and is largely divorced from the bonds of kinship. This ruling class supplies the personnel for government, which is a specialized decision-making organization with a monopoly of force, and with the power to draft for war or work, levy and collect taxes, and decree and enforce laws. The government is legitimately constituted, which is to say that a common, society-wide ideology exists that serves in part to validate the political organization of society. And states, of course, are in general larger and more populous than tribal societies, so that social categorization, stratification, and specialization are both possible and necessary ...
States tend to be overwhelmingly concerned with maintammg their territorial integrity. This is, indeed, one of their primary characteristics. States are the only kind of human society that does not ordinarily undergo short-term cycles of formation and dissolution ...
States are internally differentiated ... Occupational specialization is a prime characteristic, and is often reflected in patterns of residence ... By virtue of their territorial extensiveness, states are often differentiated, not only economicaliy, but also culturally and ethnically. Both economic and cultural heterogeneity appear to be functionally related to the centralization and administration that are defining characteristics of states ...
Despite an institutionalized authority structure, an ideological basis, and a monopoly of force, the rulers of states share at least one thing with chiefs and Big Men: the need to establish and constantly reinforce legitimacy. In complex as well as simpler societies, leadership activities and societal resources must be continuously devoted to this purpose. Hierarchy and complexity, as noted, are rare in human history, and where present require constant reinforcement. No societal leader is ever far from the need to validate position and policy, and no hierarchical society can be organized without explicit provision for this need.
Legitimacy is the belief of the populace and the elites that rule is proper and valid, that the political world is as it should be. It pertains to individual rulers, to decisions, to broad policies, to parties, and to entire forms of government. The support that members are willing to extend to a political system is essential for its survival. Decline in support will not necessarily lead to the fall of a regime, for to a certain extent coercion can replace commitment to ensure compliance. Coercion, though, is a costly, ineffective strategy which can never be completely or permanently successful. Even with coercion, decline in popular support below some critical minimum leads infallibly to political failure (Easton 1965b: 220-4). Establishing moral validity is a less costly and more effective approach.
Complex societies are focused on a center, which may not be located physically where it is literally implied, but which is the symbolic source of the framework of society . It is not only the location of legal and governmental institutions, bur is the source of order, and the symbol of moral authority and social continuity . The center partakes of the nature of the sacred. In this sense, every complex society has an official religion (Shils 1975 : 3; Eisenstadt 1978: 37; Apter 1968: 2 18).
The moral authority and sacred aura of the center not only are essential in maintaining complex societies, but were crucial in their emergence. One critical impediment to the development of complexity in stateless societies was the need to integrate many localized, autonomous units, which would each have their own peculiar interests, feuds, and jealousies. A ruler drawn from any one of these units is automatically suspect by the others, who rightly fear favoritism toward his/her natal group and locality, particularly in dispute resolution (Netting 1972: 233-4). This problem has crippled many modern African nations (cf. Easton 1965b: 224). The solution to this structural limitation was to explicitly link leadership in early complex societies to the supern a tural. When a leader is imbued with an aura of sacred neutrality, his identi fi c ation with natal group and territory can be superseded by ritually sanctioned authority which rises above purely local concerns . An early complex society is likely to have an avowedly sacred basis of legitimacy, in which disparate, formerly independent groups are united by an over arching level of shared ideology, symbols, and cosmology (Netting 1972: 233-4; Claessen 1978: 557; Skalnik 1978: 606).
Supernatural sanctions are then a response to the stresses of change from a kin-based society to a class-structured one. They may be necessitated in part by an ineffective concentration of coercive force in emerging complex societies (Webster 1976b: 826). Sacred legitimization provides a binding framework until real vehicles of power have been consolidated. Once this has been achieved the need for religious integration declines, and indeed conflict between secular and sacred authorities may thereafter ensue (see, e.g. , Webb 1 965). Yet as noted, the sacred aura of the center never disappears, not even in contemporary secular governments ( Shils 1975: 3-6). Astute politicians have always exploited this fact. It is a critical element in the maintenance of legitimacy.
Despite the undoubted power of supernatural legitimization, support for leadership must also have a genuine material basis. Easton suggests that legitimacy declines mainly under conditions of what he calls 'output failure' ( 1965b : 230). Output failure occurs where authorities are unab l e to meet the demands of the support population, or do not take anticipatory actions to counter adversities. Outputs can be political (Eisenstadt 1963: 25) or material. Output expectations are continuous, and impose on leadership a never-ending need to mobilize resources to maintain support. The attainment and perpetuation of legitimacy thus require more than the manipulation of ideological symbols. They require the assessment and commitment of real resources, at satisfactory levels, and are a genuine cost that any complex society must bear. Legitimacy is a recurrent factor in the modern study of the nature of complex societies, and is pertinent to understanding their collapse.

Dennett - Free-floating rationales and the reason why law exists

2011-11-16T23:22:00.001-05:00

From Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (1984).

Free-floating rationales (pp. 24-25):

a set of reasons that were appreciated by, thought out by, and rendered explicit by no one. The subtlety and deviousness of this thinking-without-a-thinker is often more than a match for the thinking we thinkers do. ...
explain as little as possible and tell one's field operatives only what they absolutely need to know to perform their roles. Mother Nature is similarly stingy when she apportions comprehension, it appears. When larger "goals" can be achieved by cleverly organized armies of uncomprehending agents, such as ants, the "Need to Know" rule is ruthlessly invoked. ...
Mother Nature abides by the "Need to Know" principle, but we appreciate a contrary principle: our ideal is to be completely savvy, to be able to notice all the reasons that concern us, to be in the dark about nothing of relevance to us, to be the completely and perfectly informed guardians of our own interests. That is what it would be to be able to choose one's course of action always as reason dictated. We often say that "reason dictates" a certain course of action to an actor in a certain circumstance. ... we mean that a certain problem (abstractly considered-that is, whether or not any creature has explicitly expressed and addressed it) has a certain (optimal) solution. The problem is defined by the circumstances and interests of the actor in question. ...
Kant draws our attention to the distinction between merely doing what reason dictates and doing what reason dictates because reason dictates it. One might, in the first instance, just happen to do "the right thing," or be caused by extraneous and irrelevant factors to do the right thing. However fortunate one might be to fall into such a circumstance, this is to be distinguished from the good fortune enjoyed by one who has the marvelous further power to be moved by reasons.
Intermediate between the actor who purely coincidentally "does the right thing" and the actor who is moved by the right reasons to do the right thing is the actor who tends to do the right thing (because the actor was designed to tend to do the right thing), but nevertheless does the right thing (when it does) unwittingly. This intermediate actor, it seems, does not attend to the wise voice of Reason directly, cannot itself actually hear and comprehend Reason's dictates; however, it seems as though the process (or agent) that designed the actor was thus responsive to Reason's dictates.

Diminished Responsibility and the Specter of Creeping Exculpation (pp. 158-164):

Why do we want to punish people who "commit crimes"? ... We can readily identify sorts of harms we would like to see minimized in our society, and we have reason to believe that if we prohibit the causing of these harms, and give force to the prohibition by threatening sanctions, we will thereby I, diminish the frequency of those harms. We believe this institution is at least somewhat effective, and we believe this for good reasons. First, it follows from our conception of rationality that if the members of society are even approximately rational, they will see that it is not at all in their interests to be caught having committed the prohibited deeds, and will hence in general be deterred. And we have plenty of empirical evidence that the citizenry, taken as a whole, is appropriately sensitive to such institutions. Laws (backed by sanctions) do make a difference, and in the desired direction. But we recognize that these desirable effects fall short of the ideal. ...
this system of laws would deter perfectly, because (unlike us) everyone would be so rational. People-all people-would see as plain as the noses on their faces that crime didn't pay, and hence would all abstain from it. Judges and policemen and jailers would be appointed and trained, and would sit around, like the Swiss Army, waiting to be called into action, but rather doubting that it would ever happen in their lifetimes. Why isn't that the situation we find ourselves in? If we're really homo sapiens, the "rational animal," why are our prisons overcrowded and our judges overworked? One reason seems to be that we skimp on our institutions of enforcement, and hence people, being rational indeed, see that under certain conditions crime does pay, or at any rate is likely enough to pay to be worth the risk. The deterrent power of laws is (ideally) a function of people's perception of the likelihood of their being apprehended and the severity of the penalty that might be inflicted. Increasing either factor increases deterrence. ...
Since rapidly diminishing returns would be the result of any further investment in strengthening our enforcement, the optimal institution will be one in which a certain amount of lawbreaking, apprehension, and conviction is "tolerated." That is not to say our present system needs no serious reform, but-runs this argument-it would be irrational to hold out any hope of devising a system of perfect deterrence. So lawbreakers will always be among us; the jailer will never have-should never have an entirely ceremonial position. ...
Deterrence depends on several factors, and one is "publicity": deterrence has a chance to succeed only with people who know the law and understand the conditions and sanctions. There may be individuals, we recognize, who fail to meet these conditions, and hence may commit the prohibited deed because the deterrent effect of the law never reaches to them. That is why a part of the cost of the institution of laws is public education; secret laws are useless as deterrents. The cost-effective way of achieving a suitably high level of knowledge is to combine a sufficiently energetic public information program with a somewhat peremptory (and hence bracing) legal wrinkle: ignorance of the law is no excuse. This latter condition provides a motivation to all to maintain a state of mild inquisitiveness about the law and any new changes in it. ...
There is a tacit requirement that laws be made as straightforward and comprehensible as possible, so that it is not asking too much to suppose people under their jurisdiction can comprehend them, but for some people this is asking too much. These are, paradigmatically, the mentally incompetent and insane. We excuse them from criminal liability because they manifestly do not meet the minimal conditions for deterrability, and the attempt to educate them, to bring them up to the knowledge and comprehension threshold, would be fruitless-or at least too costly. To punish them as if they were responsible citizens would be to undermine the very institution of punishment (which depends on its credibility) by undermining its rationale. It would be as outrageous-as offensive to the rationality of the citizenry at large-for the law to refuse to distinguish these people as nonresponsible, as it would be for the law to maintain its "ignorance is no excuse" rule while passing and enforcing secret laws. So in order to preserve the credibility and defensibility of the system, we add explicit provisions excluding various types of people from legal responsibility.
This has the effect of diminishing the pool of eligible punishees, the genuinely responsible and guilty-as-charged. But we recognize that perhaps the principles used to demarcate this class are crude, and the question arises whether the law's credibility and acceptability (its justice, in short) could be further improved by making finer-grained distinctions. ...
So we must get arbitrary again, and draw the line-exactly where is no more important in this case than it is in the case of setting a legal age for drinking or driving. We must set up some efficiently determinable threshold for legal competence, never for a moment supposing that there couldn't be intuitively persuasive "counterexamples" to whatever line we draw, but declaring in advance that such pleas will not be entertained. We mustn't look too closely at the particular micro-details of the accused's circumstances, but just try to establish (crudely and swiftly) that in general this agent is deterrable, even though he was not deterred on this occasion. ...
We cannot conclude from the fact that a wager was lost that it was irrationally made. So long as the risk was taken in full knowledge of the consequences of the loss, the agent can hardly complain that the sanctions now imposed are unfairly applied to him.

We're 7 billion

2011-11-02T02:35:00.001-04:00

Jack Goldstone at NewPopulationBomb:

For the two hundred years from 1750 to 1950, the fastest population growth took place in the world’s most advanced economies. Their rising productivity and improving governance ushered in previously unseen prosperity, and fuels optimism for the future.

But in the next century, the fastest population growth will take place in the world’s least advanced economies and some of its worst-governed countries. A global effort to improve governance and education in those countries, allowing the world to benefit from the human potential of billions of additional people, could again usher in a new stage of global prosperity. But failure to meet this challenge may consign billions of people to live in countries with failing states, brimming with angry and frustrated youth, prone to high levels of violence, and recurrent humanitarian disasters on ever-larger scales. There is still time to build partnerships and make investments to respond to this challenge, but every week, another three million children are born in the poorest countries, and the clock ticks on.

Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist:

The peak is in sight. Even as the population passes seven billion, the growth rate of the world population has halved since the 1960s. The United Nations Population Division issues high, medium and low forecasts. Inevitably the high one (fifteen billion people by 2100) gets more attention than the low one (six billion and falling). But given that the forecasts have generally proved too high for the past few decades, let us imagine for a moment what might happen if that proves true again.

Africa is currently the continent with the highest birth rates, but it also has the fastest economic growth. The past decade has seen Asian-tiger-style growth all across Africa. HIV is in retreat, malaria in decline. When child mortality fell and economic growth boomed like this in Europe, Latin America and Asia, the result was a rapid fall in the birth rate. For fertility to fall, contraception provides the means, but economic growth and public health provide the motive. So the current slow decline in Africa’s birth rate may turn into a plummet.

If that happens, the low UN estimate could prove more accurate with the world population peaking a little above eight billion and falling to a billion less than today by the end of the century.

Good things might happen: "agricultural productivity continues to rise", "EU tariff barriers against African produce are lifted and America’s crazy policy of diverting food into motor fuel is reversed", "with more people able to afford fossil fuels, fewer will depend on forests for cooking fuel", "water use grows steadily more efficient with the spread of drip irrigation". So:

It is quite possible that your great grandchildren will not only be fewer in number, but will live in a world with huge nature reserves, vast forests and rich seas.

Prospects for virtual life: Is Java a Wittgensteinian language?

2011-10-23T00:46:00.001-04:00

Several years ago I wrote an article saying that Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) looked a lot like the Platonic vision of the world and wondered whether a Wittgensteinian programming language could be created. From the article:

...although at ground level OOP is still actually made of loops and conditions, it sure looks different from a programmer's point of view. In case of OOP you have to deal with so called objects (such as a button or a window or a menu or whatever you invent) and these objects have properties, events and methods.

Traditional programming was causal, while OOP is intentional. Traditionally, you would tell the computer something like: "Do this, then that, if the user does that go that way, if (s)he does that other thing go the other way, then enter this loop and continuously check and check and check whether the user has done anything you have plans for, and God forbid (s)he does something unexpected, and so on." Usually, you would have to predict any possible action the user could do and devise a certain response.

In OOP you are not programming in such a causal manner, you are actually setting various purposes or functions to various objects. You say "The purpose of this button over here is to open up that window", "The purpose of this text box is to get some text from the user." And so on. This allows you to create much more complex programs in a more bug-free manner.

A property is how the object looks like. For example, it has a certain color, or a certain text imprinted on it, or has a certain position inside a window and so on. When you change the value of some property, the object miraculously changes its appearance. You're just saying "I want you to be like that", and it becomes like that.

An event is something that can happen to the object. For example a button can be clicked. Or the mouse can go over it. A text can be changed. Etc. You, as a programmer, can say to an object: "If this event ever happens to you, this is how I want you to react."

A method is something that the object can do. While events are things inflicted on objects, methods are the things the objects themselves do. For instance, a text box can undo a text change or can copy the selected text to Clipboard.

What's fun from a philosophical point of view is that this OOP creates a very platonic virtual world. Plato's most famous idea is that everything in the real world, everything that we see and ourselves included, is only a sort of copy of some "archetypal" or ideal object. In the same way, every object OOP deals with is created from a so-called class. A class is the ideal, platonic object. A class consists in a set of properties without a specified value, having empty events and methods. To create a particular virtual object (that you can actually see on screen or with what you can actually do anything) you assign certain values to the ideal object (to the class), and write some code for its events and methods.

The class defines in a sort of abstract manner what all the possible objects of that type could be like. A class doesn't define a particular button, but defines the concept of any button. Translating Plato into OOP language: he believed the true world is the world of classes only, while the world of objects is only apparent (he used the following metaphor: objects are like the shadows of the classes, and we are only seeing these shadows, wrongfully taking them for real). In other words, he believed God was a computer programmer that did the job in a divine Visual Basic.

The philosopher most famous for debunking Plato's vision of the world is Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's most famous idea is that objects in the real world are not the outcome of some platonic classes, but that they come in "families". A family is a set of real objects that resemble each other from various points of view. For example, the family "chair" is a set of all the objects that we call by that name. But we group together these objects in one single family, not because they share some common essence, but out of historic accidents. For example, in Romanian a toilet seat is called a "toilet chair" (because Romanians read sitting on the toilet more often than the English). To Romanians the toilet seat is part of the "chair" family, while the English have a more restrictive concept of "chair".

For describing his idea, Wittgenstein used the metaphor of a rope: a rope is made of many fibers, but there's no fiber that has the same length as the entire rope. In the same way, object A resembles object B, which resembles object C, and which, in turn, resemble object D, and all these objects may be part of the same family, but nonetheless, object A may not resemble object D in any dramatic manner. In other words, there's no common thread through all the objects called by a certain name - i.e. belonging to a certain family.

I've been wondering how a Wittgensteinian programming language would look like. Suppose the buttons and all the windows you could encounter in this virtual world would not arise from certain classes, but they would belong to a family. I think the virtual world would be much more diverse and fun, and, probably, any programmer's nightmare.

In order to create a new object, you would have to take an existing object and modify it in various ways. But there would not be any predetermined class to tell you in what ways you may modify it - a predetermined concept of "all" objects of that type. I guess such a Wittgensteinian standard would be great for the open source programs.

I've noticed now that someone made an interesting comment that Java can be seen as an example of such a Wittgensteinian language:

Maybe JavaScript is more of a Wittgensteinian language. It has three big differences compared to C++, C# and Java: First, there's no distinction between objects and classes; new objects are created not by instantiating classes but by copying existing objects. Second, it uses duck typing -- instead of checking whether an object is derived from a particular class, you check whether it has a given property or method. Third, there's no enforced encapsulation; properties and methods can be added or changed from without.

It seems to me that this is an important threshold, much more important than the transition from traditional programming to OOP. The reason is that evolution by natural selection works in a Wittgensteinian language. For instance, all living beings form a large Wittgensteinian family created by biological evolution - different species exist because extinction has created gaps in the threads of family resemblances that link living beings one to another, and not because members of a species are instantiations of an abstract class (this was Darwin's main insight, see Dennett 1995, chapter 2 for details). Once a Wittgensteinian programming language is available (e.g. Java), one can develop genuine evolution by natural selection in the virtual world. Java would be the equivalent of DNA.

I'm thinking of the following thing. Right now all programs are the result of intelligent design, i.e. each new program is the result of some human programmer making the changes in order to achieve some desired goal (such that the program serves some desired function). However, with a Wittgensteinian language it is possible in principle to eliminate the programmer entirely, and just let programs evolve under the selection pressure of users' demands. For example, right now many programs collect crash reports and improvement suggestions from users, but actual human programmers need to sift through all these reports and decide what changes to make. An Darwinian alternative to this system would involve an automatic meta-program sift through the reports, operate changes in the program and test the program (the alpha version) against a set of users willing to serve as testers (as it commonly already happens).

Biological evolution provides another important suggestion: the meta-program can be written in the same language as the program. In case of life, DNA is not enough to make a living being, DNA has to be transcribed into the proteins that actually make up the creature by some enzymes - but these enzymes are themselves proteins, and, as such, the information about how to make them is also coded in the DNA. This is a loop. The consequence of this loop is that not only life forms change, but also the mechanism for building life forms can change (and it did change - these are known as the "major transitions in evolution", see Maynard Smith & Szathmáry, Carroll, or Kirschner & Gerhart).

Applied to the virtual world of computer programs, this idea would mean that the program that sifts through user reports and which operates the changes in existing programs developing new versions can itself be written in Java (or in some other Wittgensteinian language), and, as such, can also be subjected to evolution by natural selection. This would thus become a self-contained system for developing better and better (i.e. in line with users' demands) computer programs without any need for human computer programmers.

Lenin on state capitalism

2011-10-20T23:54:00.001-04:00

From "Session of the All-Russia C.E.C.", 1918:

When I read these references to such enemies in the newspaper of the Left Communists, I ask: what has happened to these people that fragments of book-learning can make them forget reality? Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism in Russia, that would be a victory.

How is it that they cannot see that it is the petty proprietor, small capital, that is our enemy? How can they regard state capitalism as the chief enemy? They ought not to forget that in the transition from capitalism to socialism our chief enemy is the petty bourgeoisie, its habits and customs, its economic position. The petty proprietor fears state capitalism above all, because he has only one desire—to grab, to get as much as possible for himself, to ruin and smash the big landowners, the big exploiters. In this the petty proprietor eagerly supports us.

Here he is more revolutionary than the workers, because he is more embittered and more indignant, and therefore he readily marches forward to smash the bourgeoisie—but not as a socialist does in order, after breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to begin building a socialist economy based on the principles of firm labour discipline, within the framework of a strict organisation, and observing correct methods of control and accounting—but in order, by grabbing as much as possible for himself, to exploit the fruits of victory for himself and for his own ends, without the least concern for general state interests and the interests of the class of working people as a whole.

What is state capitalism under Soviet power? To achieve state capitalism at the present time means putting into effect the accounting and control that the capitalist classes carried out. We see a sample of state capitalism in Germany. We know that Germany has proved superior to us. But if you reflect even slightly on what it would mean if the foundations of such state capitalism were established in Russia, Soviet Russia, everyone who is not out of his senses and has not stuffed his head with fragments of book learning, would have to say that state capitalism would be our salvation.

I said that state capitalism would be our salvation; if we had it in Russia, the transition to full socialism would he easy, would be within our grasp, because state capitalism is something centralised, calculated, controlled and socialised, and that is exactly what we lack: we are threatened by the element of petty-bourgeois slovenliness, which more than anything else has been developed by the whole history of Russia and her economy, and which prevents us from taking the very step on which the success of socialism depends. Allow me to remind you that I had occasion to write my statement about state capitalism some time before the revolution and it is a howling absurdity to try to frighten us with state capitalism.

First principles

2011-10-20T00:44:00.001-04:00

God:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Lao-tzu:

When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil.

You are 1 percent

2011-10-14T15:40:00.001-04:00

based on David Henderson.

This is bad: the slowdown of technological growth

2011-10-05T01:53:00.001-04:00

Peter Thiel:

The fading of the true Green Revolution — which increased grain yields by 126 percent from 1950 to 1980, but has improved them by only 47 percent in the years since, barely keeping pace with global population growth

...

Looking forward, we see far fewer blockbuster drugs in the pipeline — perhaps because of the intransigence of the FDA, perhaps because of the fecklessness of today’s biological scientists, and perhaps because of the incredible complexity of human biology. In the next three years, the large pharmaceutical companies will lose approximately one-third of their current revenue stream as patents expire, so, in a perverse yet understandable response, they have begun the wholesale liquidation of the research departments that have borne so little fruit in the last decade and a half.

The economics of Twitter/Google+/Tumblr

2011-09-27T02:53:00.001-04:00

I have this Google+ account where I post almost nothing, and yet people keep adding me. That puzzled me until I realized that the cost of adding someone who doesn’t post anything is almost zero because they will not pollute your feed anyway. There is a cost only to add people who keep posting garbage.

As far as interesting people are concerned, the more interesting they are (whatever that means) the more followers they tend to have. Also – up to a certain point – the more interesting posts per day they have the more followers they tend to have (because they increase their chances of being reblogged by others and thus they increase their visibility on the network). However, if they post too many things per day they’re beginning to be annoying and there’s a point beyond which they post so many things that they are all over people’s feeds crowding out other people. Beyond this point people get upset and unfollow them.

The story in a single picture:

Some highlights of David Schmidtz’ talk on the institution of property

2011-09-17T01:33:00.001-04:00

Property is a bundle of rights (check out Wesley Hohfeld).

Property = right to use + right to forbid use by others.

[My comment: this seems insufficient as it doesn’t distinguish ownership from rent.]

Right to exclude is more fundamental than the rest of the rights in the bundle (all the others are conditional on it for their existence).

Property rule: others need your consent in order to use it.
Liability rule: if others use it without your permission they have to compensate (e.g. eminent domain).
Inalienability rule: can't use/sell at all (illegal to sell your kidney, prostitution, voluntary slavery contracts etc.).

Purpose of rights is to organize social behavior efficiently. Corollary of this: We should have the minimum number of rights that are able to achieve this because beyond that minimum we are inflicting unnecessary constraints.

Contracts = algorithms that grant permissions for the use of property.

A system of property rights is working when it facilitates:
- production
- trade
- creative destruction (i.e. experimentation)
- growth of businesses
- limits externalities
- minimizes transaction costs

[Question: Doesn’t the minimization of transaction costs cover all the other conditions?]

Jose Saramogo despre subgesturi

2011-08-13T14:08:00.001-04:00

Din Omul duplicat:

Gestul pe care l-a facut Tertuliano Maximo Afonso catre el, oarecum pe ascuns, insemna ca ii multumea pentru mesaj, insa, in acelasi timp, parca mai era ceva, un lucru caruia, in lipsa unui termen mai bun, ii vom da denumirea de subgest. ... Cu alte cuvinte, in timp ce gestul principal se arata in mod deschis conciliant, spunand, Ce a fost, a fost, a trecut, subgestul, reticent, nuanta, Da, dar nu de tot. ... Se obisnuieste sa se spuna, de exemplu, despre Cutare, Cutarica sau Cutarescu ca au facut, intr-o anumita situatie, un gest din acesta sau din acela sau din celalalt, o spunem asa, simplu, ca si cum acesta sau acela sau celalalt, intrebare, manifestare a sprijinului sau indemn la prudenta, ar fi expresii turnate dintr-o singura piesa, intrebarea, intotdeauna metodica, sprijinul, intotdeauna neconditionat, indemnul, intotdeauna dezinteresat, cand adevarul intreg, daca vrem cu adevarat sa-l cunoastem, daca nu ne multumim cu literele mari ale mijloacelor de comunicare, cere sa fim atenti la scintilatiile multiple ale subgesturilor care vin in spatele gesturilor, asa cum praful cosmic vine dupa coada cometei, pentru ca aceste subgesturi, ca sa recurgem la o comparatie la indemana tuturor varstelor si gradelor de intelegere, sunt la literele micute dintr-un contract, a caror descifrare da de furca, dar ele se afla acolo. Cu toata modestia pe care o recomanda uzantele si bunul-gust, nu ne-ar surprinde deloc daca, intr-un viitor foarte apropiat, studiul, identificarea si clasificarea subgesturilor ar deveni, fiecare in sine si impreuna, una dintre cele mai fecunde ramuri ale stiintei semiologiei in general. S-au vazut cazuri mai extraordinare ca acesta. (p. 45-46)

Jose Saramago, The Double, p. 39-40

Hayek – Why I am not a conservative

2011-07-11T12:12:00.001-04:00

From The Constitution of Liberty (1960):

As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such,[5] while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead. There would not be much to object to if the conservatives merely disliked too rapid change in institutions and public policy; here the case for caution and slow process is indeed strong. But the conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about. It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can foretell how they will do this in a particular instance. There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly."

This fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two other characteristics of conservatism: its fondness for authority and its lack of understanding of economic forces. Since it distrusts both abstract theories and general principles,[6] it neither understands those spontaneous forces on which a policy of freedom relies nor possesses a basis for formulating principles of policy. Order appears to the conservative as the result of the continuous attention of authority, which, for this purpose, must be allowed to do what is required by the particular circumstances and not be tied to rigid rule. A commitment to principles presupposes an understanding of the general forces by which the efforts of society are co-ordinated, but it is such a theory of society and especially of the economic mechanism that conservatism conspicuously lacks. ...

Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty. In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them.[7] Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.

When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them. ...

To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits. I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion.

In the last resort, the conservative position rests on the belief that in any society there are recognizably superior persons whose inherited standards and values and position ought to be protected and who should have a greater influence on public affairs than others. The liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people - he is not an egalitarian - bet he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are. While the conservative inclines to defend a particular established hierarchy and wishes authority to protect the status of those whom he values, the liberal feels that no respect for established values can justify the resort to privilege or monopoly or any other coercive power of the state in order to shelter such people against the forces of economic change. Though he is fully aware of the important role that cultural and intellectual elites have played in the evolution of civilization, he also believes that these elites have to prove themselves by their capacity to maintain their position under the same rules that apply to all others.

Closely connected with this is the usual attitude of the conservative to democracy. I have made it clear earlier that I do not regard majority rule as an end but merely as a means, or perhaps even as the least evil of those forms of government from which we have to choose. But I believe that the conservatives deceive themselves when they blame the evils of our time on democracy. The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.[8] The powers which modern democracy possesses would be even more intolerable in the hands of some small elite. Admittedly, it was only when power came into the hands of the majority that further limitations of the power of government was thought unnecessary. In this sense democracy and unlimited government are connected. But it is not democracy but unlimited government that is objectionable, and I do not see why the people should not learn to limit the scope of majority rule as well as that of any other form of government. At any rate, the advantages of democracy as a method of peaceful change and of political education seem to be so great compared with those of any other system that I can have no sympathy with the antidemocratic strain of conservatism. It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem. ...

Though the liberal certainly does not regard all change as progress, he does regard the advance of knowledge as one of the chief aims of human effort and expects from it the gradual solution of such problems and difficulties as we can hope to solve. Without preferring the new merely because it is new, the liberal is aware that it is of the essence of human achievement that it produces something new; and he is prepared to come to terms with new knowledge, whether he likes its immediate effects or not.

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it - or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position. Frequently the conclusions which rationalist presumption draws from new scientific insights do not at all follow from them. But only by actively taking part in the elaboration of the consequences of new discoveries do we learn whether or not they fit into our world picture and, if so, how. Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would hardly be moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge facts.

Connected with the conservative distrust if the new and the strange is its hostility to internationalism and its proneness to a strident nationalism. Here is another source of its weakness in the struggle of ideas. It cannot alter the fact that the ideas which are changing our civilization respect no boundaries. But refusal to acquaint one's self with new ideas merely deprives one of the power of effectively countering them when necessary. The growth of ideas is an international process, and only those who fully take part in the discussion will be able to exercise a significant influence. It is no real argument to say that an idea is un-American, or un-German, nor is a mistaken or vicious ideal better for having been conceived by one of our compatriots. ...

There is one respect, however, in which there is justification for saying that the liberal occupies a position midway between the socialist and the conservative: he is as far from the crude rationalism of the socialist, who wants to reconstruct all social institutions according to a pattern prescribed by his individual reason, as from the mysticism to which the conservative so frequently has to resort. What I have described as the liberal position shares with conservatism a distrust of reason to the extent that the liberal is very much aware that we do not know all the answers and that he is not sure that the answers he has are certainly the rights ones or even that we can find all the answers. He also does not disdain to seek assistance from whatever non-rational institutions or habits have proved their worth. The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face this ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic[12] - but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism.

There is no reason why this need mean an absence of religious belief on the part of the liberal. Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. That this is not essential to liberalism is clearly shown by its English ancestors, the Old Whigs, who, if anything, were much too closely allied with a particular religious belief. What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different sphere which ought not to be confused.

Read the whole essay.

The Book Game

2011-07-03T04:37:00.001-04:00

Dwight Garner writes:

Here’s what you’ll need to play: slips of paper (index cards work well), a handful of pencils or pens and a pile of paperback books. Any sort of book will do, from a Dostoyevsky to a Jennifer Egan, and from diet guides to the Kama Sutra. But we’ve found it’s especially rewarding to use genre books: mysteries, romance novels, science fiction, pulp thrillers, westerns, the cheesier the better. ...

Once you’ve gathered your loved ones at the table — 4 to 10 is optimal — ... here is how the game unfolds. One player, the “picker” for this turn, selects a book from the pile and shows its cover around. Then he or she flips it over and reads aloud the often overwrought publisher-supplied copy on the back cover.

Hearing these descriptions read aloud is among the game’s distinct joys. Here is one example, from the back cover of a paperback titled “Paradise Wild” (1981), by Johanna Lindsey. Try to imagine the following recited in the voice of the fellow who does the husky voice-overs for coming attractions in theaters, or by your slightly tipsy best friend:

“A well-born Boston beauty, Corinne Barrows has traveled halfway around the world in search of Jared Burkett — a dashing rouge and a devil; a honey-tongued charmer who seduced and despoiled her ... and then abandoned the impetuous lady after awakening a need that only he could satisfy. She has found him on the lush and lovely island of Hawaii.” This goes on, but you get the idea.

One reason it’s less fun to play with serious rather than genre novels is that their back covers tend to contain phrases like “sweeping meditation on mortality and loss” rather than “a need that only he could satisfy.”

The other players absorb these words, and then write on their slips of paper what they imagine to be a credible first sentence for Ms. Lindsey’s novel. Essentially, they need to come up with something good — or bad — enough to fool the other players into thinking that this might be the book’s actual first sentence. Players initial their slips of paper and place them upside down in a pile at the center of the table.

Meanwhile the picker — the person who read the back cover aloud — writes the book’s actual first sentence on another slip of paper. He or she collects all the slips, mixing the real first sentence with the fakes, and commences to read each one aloud. Each person votes on what he or she thinks is the real first sentence.

Here’s how score is kept: If someone votes for your bogus sentence, you get a point. If you pick the real first sentence, you get two points. (The picker doesn’t vote in this round.) Now go around the table clockwise. Someone else picks a book, and you repeat the process until a round ends – that is, until each person has had a turn at being the picker. ...

Another excellent variant of the paperback game involves obtaining a poetry anthology and reading, say, the first three lines of a rhyming quatrain out loud. Players then compete to write a fake fourth line. ...

What, by the way, is the actual first sentence of Johanna Lindsey’s “Paradise Wild”? Here goes: “The tall, slender, golden-haired young woman fidgeting by the hall table fastened her startling green eyes on the closed door at the left of the hall.”

via Marius Comper

The norms of the scientific community

2011-05-25T18:02:00.001-04:00

There are two answers to the question “Why is science so successful?” The most popular, and probably mistaken, answer is that science has a method for guiding the discovery process. The other answer, associated with Michael Polanyi and Paul Feyerabend, is that the success of science is due to the scientific community having a particular kind of social organization (works according to certain norms).

Willmoore Kendall describes these norms in the following way:

[T]he discussion process works in those situations   in which men who are products of the tradition organize themselves for a serious venture in the pursuit of truth ... Such   men demonstrably    proceed   on some such principles   as these:

(a)   The   pursuit   of truth is indeed forwarded by the exchange of opinions and ideas among many; helpful suggestions    do   indeed   emerge   sometimes    from surprising quarters; but one does not leap from these facts to the conclusion that helpful suggestions may come from just anybody.

(b) The man or woman who wishes to exercise the right to   be heard has   a logically   and   temporally prior obligation to prepare himself for participation in the exchange, and to prepare himself in   the   manner   defined   by   the   community.

Moreover   (c), from the moment   he begins to participate    in the   exchange,   he   must   make manifest, by his behavior, his sense of the duty to act as if the other participants   had something to teach him-the duty,   in a word, to see to it that the exchange goes forward in an atmosphere of courtesy and mutual self-respect.

Next   (d),   the   entrant   must   so behave   as to show that   he understands   that   scholarly   investigation   did not begin with his appearance on the scene, that there is a strong presumption that   prior investigators   have not labored entirely in vain, and that the community   is the custodian of-let    us not sidestep the mot juste - an orthodoxy, no part of which it is going to set lightly   to one side.

(e) That orthodoxy   must be understood as concerning first and foremost the   frame of reference within   which the   exchange of ideas and opinions is to go forward. That frame of reference is, to be sure, subject to change, but this is a matter of meeting the arguments   that led originally to its adoption, and   meeting   them   in   recognition    that    the ultimate decision, as to whether or not to change it, lies with the community.

(f) The entrant, insofar as he wishes to challenge the orthodoxy, must expect barriers to be placed in his way, and must not be astonished   if he is punished, at least in the short term, by what are fashionably   called   "deprivations";   he must,   indeed, recognize   that   the   barriers and the   deprivations are a necessary part of the organized procedure by which truth is pursued.

(g) Access to the channels of communication   that represent the community's central ritual (the learned journals, that is to say) is something   that the entrant   wins by performing the obligation   to produce a craftsmanlike piece of work.

(h) The ultimate fate of the entrant who disagrees with the orthodoxy   but cannot   persuade the community   to accept   his point   of view   is, quite simply, isolation within or banishment from the community.

[The "Open Society" and Its Fallacies, The American Political Science Review, 54(4), 1960, pp. 972-979]

Lee Smolin describes the norms in the following way:

Science has succeeded because scientists comprise a community that is defined and maintained by adherence to a shared ethic. It is adherence to an ethic, not adherence to any particular fact or theory, that I believe serves as the fundamental corrective within the scientific community.

There are two tenets of this ethic:

1) If an issue can be decided by people of good faith, applying rational argument to publicly available evidence, then it must be regarded as so decided.

2) If, on the other hand, rational argument from the publicly available evidence does not succeed in bringing people of good faith to agreement on an issue, society must allow and even encourage people to draw diverse conclusions.

I believe that science succeeds because scientists adhere, if mperfectly, to these two principles. To see whether this is true, let us look at some of the things these principles require us to do.

* We agree to argue rationally, and in good faith, from shared evidence, to whatever degree of shared conclusions are warranted.

* Each individual scientist is free to develop his or her own conclusions from the evidence. But each scientist is also required to put forward arguments for those conclusions for the consideration of the whole community. These arguments must be rational and based on evidence available to all members. The evidence, the means by which the evidence was obtained, and the logic of the arguments used to deduce conclusions from the evidence must be shared and open to examination by all members.

* The ability of scientists to deduce reliable conclusions from the shared evidence is based on the mastery of tools and procedures developed over many years. They are taught because experience has shown that they often lead to reliable results. Every scientist trained in such a craft is deeply aware of the capacity for error and self-delusion.

* At the same time, each member of the scientific community recognizes that the eventual goal is to establish consensus. A consensus may emerge quickly, or it may take some time. The ultimate judges of scientific work are future members of the community, at a time sufficiently far in the future that they can better evaluate the evidence objectively. While a scientific program may temporarily succeed in gathering adherents, no program, claim, or point of view can succeed in the long run unless it produces sufficient evidence to persuade the skeptics.

* Membership in the community of science is open to any human being. Considerations of status, age, gender, or any other personal characteristic may not play a role in the consideration of a scientist's evidence and arguments, and may not limit a member's access to the means of dissemination of evidence, argument, and information. Entry to the community is, however, based on two criteria. The first is the mastery of at least one of the crafts of a scientific subfield to the point where you can independently produce work judged by other members to be of high quality. The second criterion is allegiance and continued adherence to the shared ethic.

* While orthodoxies may become established temporarily in a given subfield, the community recognizes that contrary opinions and research programs are necessary for the community's continued health.

...

I would call this kind of community, in which membership is defined by adherence to a code of ethics and the practice of crafts developed to realize them, an ethical community. Science, I would propose, is the purest example we have of such a community.

But it is not sufficient to characterize science as an ethical community, because some ethical communities exist to preserve old knowledge rather than to discover new truths. Religious communities, in many cases, satisfy the criteria for being ethical communities. Indeed, science in its modern form evolved from monasteries and theological schools — ethical communities whose aim was the preservation of religious dogma. So if our characterization of science is to have teeth, we must add some criteria that cleanly distinguish a physics department from a monastery.

To do this, I would like to introduce a second notion, which I call an imaginative community. This is a community whose ethic and organization incorporates a belief in the inevitability of progress and an openness to the future. The openness leaves room, imaginatively and institutionally, for novelty and surprise. Not only is there a belief that the future will be better, there is an understanding that we cannot forecast how that better future will be reached.

Neither a Marxist state nor a fundamentalist religious state is an imaginative community. They may look forward to a better future, but they believe they know exactly how that future will be reached. ... An imaginative community believes that the future will bring surprises, in the form of new discoveries and new crises to be overcome. Rather than placing faith in their present knowledge, its members invest their hopes and expectations for the future in future generations, by passing along to them the ethical precepts and tools of thinking, individual and collective, that will enable them to overcome and take advantage of circumstances that are beyond the present powers of imagination. Good scientists expect that their students will exceed them. ...

The scientific community is thus both an ethical and an imaginative community.

What should be abundantly clear from this description is that controversy is essential for the progress of science. My first principle says that when we are forced to reach a consensus by the evidence, we should do so. But my second principle says that until the evidence forces consensus, we should encourage a wide diversity of viewpoints. This is good for science — a point that Feyerabend made often, and I believe correctly. Science proceeds fastest when there are competing theories. The older, naive view is that theories are put forward one at a time and tested against the data. This fails to take into account the extent to which the theoretical ideas we have influence which experiments we do and how we interpret them. If only one theory is contemplated at a time, we are likely to get stuck in intellectual traps created by that theory. The only way out is if different theories compete to explain the same evidence.

Feyerabend argued that even in cases where there is a widely accepted theory that agrees with all the evidence, it is still necessary to invent competing theories in order for science to progress. This is because experiments that contradict the established view are most likely to be suggested by a competing theory and perhaps would not even have been conceived were there not a competing theory. So competing theories give rise to experimental anomalies as often as the reverse.

Therefore Feyerabend insisted that scientists should never agree, unless they are forced to. When scientists come to agreement too soon, before they are compelled to by the evidence, science is in danger. ...

Science moves forward when we are forced to agree with something unexpected. If we think we know the answer, we will try to make every result fit that preconceived idea. It is controversy that keeps science alive, keeps it moving. In an atmosphere filled with controversy over rival views, sociological forces are not enough to bring people into agreement. So on those rare occasions when we do come to consensus on something, it is because we have no choice. The evidence forces us to do so, even if we don't like it. That is why progress in science is real. ...

While the progress of science relies on the possibility of achieving consensus in the long term, the decisions an individual scientist makes as to what to do, and how to evaluate the evidence, are always based on incomplete information. Science progresses because it is built on an ethic recognizing that in the face of incomplete information we are all equal. No one can predict with certainty whether an approach will lead to definite progress or years of wasted work. All we can do is train students in the crafts that experience has shown to lead most often to reliable conclusions. After that, we must leave them free to follow their own hunches and we must make time to listen to them when they report back. As long as the community continually opens up opportunities for new ideas and points of view and adheres to the ethic that in the end we require consensus based on rational argument from evidence available to all, science will eventually succeed.

The task of forming the community of science will never be finished. It will always be necessary to fight off the dominance of orthodoxy, fashion, age, and status. There will always be temptations to take the easy way, to sign up with the team that seems to be winning rather than try to understand a problem afresh. At its finest, the scientific community takes advantage of our best impulses and desires while protecting us from our worst. The community works in part by harnessing the arrogance and ambition we each in some degree bring to the search. Richard Feynman may have said it best: Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.

[The Trouble with Physics, chapter 17, “What Is Science?”, pp. 301-307]

Kirzner & Lachman on the “market process”

2011-05-23T08:03:00.001-04:00

From The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics edited by Edwin Dolan.

Kirzner, “Equilibrium Versus Market Process”:

In our classrooms we draw the Marshallian cross to depict competitive supply and demand, and then go on to explain how the market is cleared only at the price corresponding to the intersection of the curves. Often the explanation of market price determination proceeds no further—almost implying that the only possible price is the market-clearing price. Sometimes we address the question of how we can be confident that there is any tendency at all for the intersection price to be attained. The discussion is then usually carried on in terms of the Walrasian version of the equilibration process. Suppose, we say, the price happens to be above the intersection level. If so, the amount of the good people are prepared to supply is in the aggregate larger than the total amount people are prepared to buy. There will be unsold inventories, thereby depressing price. On the other hand, if price is below the intersection level, there will be excess demand, “forcing” price up. Thus, we explain, there will be a tendency for price to gravitate toward the equilibrium level at which quantity demanded equals quantity supplied.

Now this explanation has a certain rough-and-ready appeal. However, when price is described as being above or below equilibrium, it is understood that a single price prevails in the market. One uncomfortable question, then, is whether we may assume that a single price emerges before equilibrium is attained. Surely a single price can be postulated only as the result of the process of equilibration itself. At least to this extent, the Walrasian explanation of equilibrium price determination appears to beg the question.

Again, the Walrasian explanation usually assumes perfect competition, where all market participants are price takers. But with only price takers participating, it is not clear how unsold inventories or unmet demand effect price changes. If no one raises or lowers price bids, how do prices rise or fall? (p. 116)

The concept of “economizing” is insufficient for explaining the market process:

Robbins defined economics as dealing with the allocative aspect of human affairs, that is, with the consequences of the circumstance that men economize by engaging in the allocation of limited resources among multiple competing ends. ...

Robbinsian economizing consists in using known available resources in the most efficient manner to achieve given purposes. ... For Robbins, economizing simply means shuffling around available resources in order to secure the most efficient utilization of known inputs in terms of a given hierarchy of ends. It is the interaction in the market of the allocative efforts of numerous economizing individuals that generates all the phenomena that modern economics seeks to explain. ...

The notion of a Robbinsian plan assumes that information is both given and known to the acting individuals. Lacking this information market participants are blocked from Robbinsian activity altogether. ... We lack justification within this framework for stating, for example, that unsold inventories will depress price; we may only say that with excessive price expectations Robbinsian decision makers will generate unsold inventories. As decision makers they do not raise or lower price; they are strictly price takers, allocating against a background of given prices. If all participants are price takers, how then can the market price rise or fall? By what process does this happen, if it happens at all? (p. 118-9)

Entrepreneurship fills the gap:

Mises’s concept of human action embodies an insight about man that is entirely lacking in a world of Robbinsian economizers. This insight recognizes that men are not only calculating agents but are also alert to opportunities. Robbinsian theory only applies after a person is confronted with opportunities; for it does not explain how that person learns about opportunities in the first place. ... [W]hen the prevailing price does not clear the market, market participants realize they should revise their estimates of prices bid or asked in order to avoid repeated disappointment. This alertness is the entrepreneurial element in human action, a concept lacking in analysis carried out in exclusively Robbinsian terms. At the same time that it transforms allocative decision making into a realistic view of human action, entrepreneurship converts the theory of market equilibrium into a theory of market process. ... (p. 119-20)

The producer’s decisions about what product to produce and of what quality are invariably a reflection of what he believes he will be able to sell at a worthwhile price. It is invariably an entrepreneurial choice. The costs he incurs are those that in his estimation he must in order to sell what he produces at the anticipated price. Every improvement in the product is introduced to make it more attractive to consumers, and certainly the product itself is produced for precisely the same reasons. All costs are in the last analysis selling costs. (p. 123)

Robbinsian incentives can be offered in nonmarket contexts. The bureaucrat, employer, or official offers a bonus for greater effort. For entrepreneurial incentives to operate, on the other hand, it is necessary for those who perceive opportunities to gain from noticing them. An outstanding feature of the market system is that it provides these kinds of incentives. ... It would be good to know more about the institutional settings that are most conducive to opportunity discovery. It would be good to apply basic Austrian theory to the theory of speculation and of the formation of expectations with regard to future prices. All this would enrich our understanding of the economics of bureaucracy and of socialism. (p. 124)

Knowledge and expectations as the driving forces of the market process:

Ludwig M. Lachmann, “On the Central Concept of Austrian Economics: Market Process”:

The market process is the outward manifestation of an unending stream of knowledge. ... The pattern of knowledge is continuously changing in society, a process hard to describe.(p. 127)

The stream of knowledge produces ever new disequilibrium situations, and entrepreneurs continually manage to find new price-cost differences to exploit. When one is eliminated by strenuous competition, the stream of knowledge throws up another. Profit is a permanent income from ever-changing sources.

In the first place, how do we determine the true origin of any particular bit of knowledge? When and how do ill-founded surmises and half-baked ideas acquire the status of respectable knowledge? ... Two things we may assert with reasonable confidence. ... we cannot have future knowledge in the present. Also, men sometimes act on the basis of what cannot really be called knowledge. Here we encounter the problem of expectations.

Although old knowledge is continually being superseded by new knowledge, though nobody knows which piece will be obsolete tomorrow, men have to act with regard to the future and make plans based on expectations. Experience teaches us that in an uncertain world different men hold different expectations about the same future event. ... divergent expectations entail incoherent plans (p. 128)

Expectations must be regarded as autonomous, as autonomous as human preferences are. To be sure, they are modified by experience, but we are unable to postulate any particular mode of change. To say that the market gradually produces a consistency among plans is to say that the divergence of expectations, on which the initial incoherence of plans rests, will gradually be turned into convergence. But to reach this conclusion we must deny the autonomous character of expectations. ... If the stream of knowledge is not a function of anything, how can the degree of divergence of expectations, which are but rudimentary forms of incomplete knowledge, be made a function of time?

Unsuccessful plans have to be revised. No doubt planners learn from experience. But what they learn is not known; also different men learn different lessons. (p. 129)

All useful knowledge probably tends to be diffused, but in being applied for various purposes it also may change character, hence the difficulty of identifying it. (p. 127)

Two possible views of the market process:

For one view the market process is propelled by a mechanism of given and known forces of demand and supply. The outcome of the interaction of these forces, namely, equilibrium, is in principle predictable. But outside forces in the form of autonomous changes in demand and supply continually impinge on the system and prevent equilibrium from being reached. The system is ever moving in the direction of an equilibrium, but it never gets there. The competitive action of entrepreneurs tending to wipe out price-cost differences is regarded as “equilibrating”; for in equilibrium no such differences could exist.

The other view, which I happen to hold, regards the distinction between external forces and the internal market mechanism as essentially misleading. Successive stages in the flow of knowledge must be manifest in both. Market action is not independent of expectations, and every expectation is an attempt “to catch a glimpse of future knowledge now.” (p. 129-30)

It might be held, however, that every process must have a direction, and unless we are able to show that every stage of the market process “points” in the direction of equilibrium, no satisfactory theory of the market process is possible. But this is not a convincing view. (p. 130)

The notion of general equilibrium is to be abandoned, but that of individual equilibrium is to be retained at all costs. It is simply tantamount to rational action. Without it we should lose our “sense of direction.” The market process consists of a sequence of individual interactions, each denoting the encounter (and sometimes collision) of a number of plans, which, while coherent individually and reflecting the individual equilibrium of the actor, are incoherent as a group. The process would not go on otherwise. (p. 131)

[T]he divergence of expectations, apart from being an obstacle to equilibrium, has an important positive function in a market economy. It is an anticipatory device. The more extended the range of expectations, the greater the likelihood that somebody will catch a glimpse of things to come and be “right.” Those who take their orientation from the future rather than the present, the “speculators,” permit the future to make its impact on the market process earlier than otherwise. They contrive to inject a glimpse of future knowledge into the emergent market pattern. Of course they may make mistakes for which they will pay. Without divergent expectations and incoherent plans, however, it could not happen at all. (131-2)

The consequences for capital theory:

Kirzner, “The Theory of Capital”:

A man’s future plans depend not only on the aggregate size of his capital stock but also very crucially upon the particular properties of the various goods making up the stock. Goods that can be used in a complementary relationship permit certain plans that a purely physical measure necessarily suppresses. ...

It is misleading to talk of a particular resource as being unambiguously associated with a definite stream of forthcoming output, in the sense that such an output stream flows automatically from the resource itself. Decisions must be made as to how a resource is to be deployed before one can talk of its future contribution to output. Because there are alternative uses for a resource and alternative clusters of complementary inputs with which a resource may be used, it is confusing to see a resource as representing a definite future output flow before the necessary decisions on its behalf have been made. (p. 139)

Lachmann, “On Austrian Capital Theory”:

The capital structure of society is never completely integrated. The competitive nature of the market process entails incoherence of plans and limits the coherence of the resulting order. A tendency toward the integration of the structure does exist. Capital goods that do not fit into any existing combination are useless to their owners, are “not really capital,” and will soon be scrapped. “Holes” in the existing complementarity pattern, on the other hand, must cause price-cost differences and thus call for their elimination. But expectations of early change in the present situation may impede the process of adjustment, and even when this does not happen, the forces of adjustment themselves may be overtaken by other forces. ...

As long as all capital is regarded as homogeneous, managers may respond to a marginal fall in the rate of interest by a marginal act of substitution of capital for labor. But heterogeneity of capital entails a regrouping of the existing capital combination; some capital goods may have to be discarded, others acquired. It is no longer a marginal adjustment that is called for but entrepreneurial choice and decision. ...

In a world of disequilibrium, entrepreneurs continually have to regroup their capital combinations in response to changes of all kinds, present and expected, on the cost side as well as on the market side. A change in the mode of income distribution is merely one special case of a very large class of cases to which the entrepreneur has to give constant attention. No matter whether switching or reswitching is to be undertaken, or any other response to market change, expectations play a part, and the individuality of each firm finds its expression in its own way. (149-50)

The subjectivity of capital value and the inevitability of fluctuations in the rate of overall economic growth:

Lachmann, “Toward a Critique of Macroeconomics”:

[E]very time [the interest rate] changes, so does capital value. True as this may be, the real reason for our inability to measure capital lies in the subjective nature of expectations concerning future income streams. (p. 153)

To opt for the market process against general equilibrium means to accept the implication that a fully coherent price system providing a basis for consistent aggregation can never exist.

We find here another reason why steady growth—uniform motion of that supermacroaggregate, the economic system—has to be regarded as absurd. Equilibrating forces in different markets, even if none is affected by unexpected change, require different time periods to do their work. This is obvious if we contrast agricultural produce markets with those for industrial goods. Steady growth, however, requires all equilibrating forces to operate within the same time period.

But the main argument against steady growth is a necessary consequence of the divergence of expectations. Equilibrium in a production economy requires an equilibrium composition of the capital stock. ... A growing economy is a changing economy. It exists in an uncertain world in which men have to formulate expectations on which to base their plans. Different men will characteristically have different expectations about the same future event, and they cannot all be right. Some expectations will be disappointed, and the plans based upon them will have to be revised. The capital invested will turn out to have been malinvested. But the existence of malinvested capital is incompatible with the equilibrium composition of the capital stock. Hence steady growth is impossible. (p. 155-6)

The role of the stock market:

In a market economy, on the other hand, we have in the stock exchange a center for the consistent daily evaluation of all the more important capital combinations. This, to be sure, is not objective measurement. The measurement of capital is forever beyond our reach. But it is something more than mere subjective evaluation. Stock exchange prices of capital assets reflect a balance of expectations. ... Stock exchange equilibrium is market-day equilibrium. Tomorrow’s set of equilibrium prices will be different from today’s. (154-5)

[T]the stock exchange, a fundamental institution of the market economy, imparts an element of social objectivity to individual stock valuations. This is by no means its only, or even its only significant, function. It facilitates the take-over bid by means of which capital resources get into the hands of those who can promise their owners a higher return. (p. 156)

Perhaps the most important economic function of the stock exchange is the redistribution of wealth by means of the capital gains and losses it engenders in accordance with the market view about the probable success or failure of present multiperiod plans. (p. 157)

The wishful thinking of the “serious Keynesian”

2011-05-14T11:19:00.004-04:00

Paul Krugman (2011):

So if you’re a serious Keynesian, you’re for maintaining and even increasing spending when the economy is depressed, even though revenue has plunged; but you’re for fiscal restraint when the economy is booming, even though revenue has increased.

Milton Friedman (1962):

When private expenditures decline for any reason, it is said, governmental expenditures should rise to keep total expenditures stable; conversely, when private expenditures rise, governmental expenditures should decline. Unfortunately, the balance wheel is unbalanced. Each recession, however minor, sends a shudder through politically sensitive legislators and administrators with their ever present fear that perhaps it is the harbinger of another 1929-33. They hasten to enact federal spending programs of one kind or another. Many of the programs do not in fact come into effect until after the recession has passed. Hence, insofar as they do affect total expenditures ... they tend to exacerbate the succeeding expansion rather than to mitigate the recession. The haste with which spending programs are approved is not matched by an equal haste to repeal them or to eliminate others when the recession is passed and expansion is under way. On the contrary, it is then argued that a "healthy" expansion must not be "jeopardized" by cuts in governmental expenditures. The chief harm done by the balance-wheel theory is therefore not that it has failed to offset recessions, which it has, and not that it has introduced an inflationary bias into governmental policy, which it has done too, but that it has continuously fostered an expansion in the range of governmental activities at the federal level and prevented a reduction in the burden of federal taxes. (Capitalism and Freedom, p. 76)

The Paradox of Chinese Censorship

2011-05-13T21:37:00.001-04:00

1. Something happens.
2. => A newspaper writes about it.
3. Chinese censors want to stop the news from spreading.
4. => They add the story to a list of banned subjects for rest of the press.
5. The list of banned subjects periodically gets leaked.
6. => Chinese centors act as aggregators of all the bad stories + they bring more attention to them.

(via BHL)

Relative prices for energy sources

2011-05-13T21:29:00.000-04:00

Electricity produced using natural gas in a combined cycle generating plant comes in at $66 per megawatt-hour. If one includes carbon capture and sequestration, basically burying carbon dioxide underground, the cost rises to $89 per megawatt-hour. In contrast conventional coal costs $95 per megawatt-hour rising to $136 using carbon capture and sequestration.

How does natural gas compare with various carbon-free and renewable energy sources? Nuclear clocks in at $104 per Mwh, offshore wind at $243 per Mwh, photovoltaic at $211 per Mwh, solar thermal at $312 per Mwh, geothermal at $102 per Mwh, and biomass at $113 per Mwh. The only renewable sources that are close to competitive with natural gas are onshore wind at $97 per Mwh and hydroelectric at $86 per Mwh. With regard to transportation, the price of compressed natural gas currently hovers around the equivalent of $2 per gallon of gasoline.

Keep in mind that the above is just a thought experiment. Junking coal-fired plants and dramatically expanding natural gas production as well as the infrastructure to burn it to generate electricity and dispense it as transport fuel would be costly. Increased demand for natural gas would also tend to boost its price.

More here, including a discussion of why environmentalists now oppose natural gas.

Natural disasters death-toll

2011-04-30T18:05:00.001-04:00

From Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention by the World Bank:

Earthquakes, storms, and other hazards killed about 3.3 million people between 1970 and 2010, an annual average of 82,500 deaths world-wide in a typical year, a small fraction of the roughly 60 million who die every year and of the 1.27 million killed in traffic accidents alone. Disasters kill many simultaneously and affect many more but evoke more attention than the numbers warrant. For example, for every person who dies in an earthquake, more than 19,000 people must die of food shortage to receive the same expected media coverage, all else equal. That the attention comes from sensational media coverage (“sell newspapers”) is a circular explanation. Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and others offer different explanations for our emotions ...

Our emotional reaction may be accentuated by a perceived lack of control over the event (Acts of God). But natural disasters, despite the adjective, are not “natural.” Although no single person or action may be to blame, death and destruction result from human acts of omission—not tying down the rafters allows a hurricane to blow away the roof—and commission—building in food-prone areas. Those acts could be prevented, often at little additional expense.

Adopting an insult as a badge of honor

2011-04-20T21:32:00.001-04:00

We need a term for the practice of adopting an insulting term for self-referral and wearing it as a badge of honor. The closest we have is “insult backfire”, but it’s not really it.

Character A makes a snide, sarcastic insult about a central and real trait of Character B's— but instead of being insulted, Character B feels flattered. Usually, this is because Character B feels the "insulting" trait is actually a virtue that they have been trying to cultivate. ...

Madmen: Anyone who tells them "You're insane!" will be met with a response such as "Thanks for noticing!"

Noteworthy examples:

Impressionism

The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari. [link]

Punk

Our English word "punk" has a derogatory meaning which often varies, applying to objects (meaning "trash", "dirt") or people (meaning "lazy", "despicable", "dirty" or also " trash "and" scum "). It is used as an ironic description of the critical substrate or discontent that contains the music. When used as a label itself, the "punks" (or "punks") set themselves apart from the adaptation to the social roles and stereotypes. [link]

Nerd

Nerd is a term that refers to a social perception of a person who avidly pursues intellectual activities, technical or scientific endeavors, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests, rather than engaging in more social or conventional activities. It occasionally carries a derogatory connotation or stereotype, especially in early use of the word. Nerds are generally considered to be awkward, shy and/or unattractive by most, although this is not always true. ...

Bryan Caplan, a professor of of Economics at George Mason University, refers to himself as "an openly nerdy man" and has written of a "Jock/Nerd Theory of History". He believes that income redistribution is a tactic by Jocks to prevent Nerds from gaining power over them.[link]

Slashdot (sometimes abbreviated as /.) is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. [link]

Hooligan

President Ion Iliescu refused to negotiate with the protesters and called them "golani" (meaning a hooligan, a scamp, a ruffian or a good-for-nothing — which later gave the protest its name) or legionnaires. ... The protesters also composed their own hymn, "Imnul Golanilor" ...

Many intellectuals supported the protests, including writers like Octavian Paler, Ana Blandiana, Gabriel Liiceanu, Stelian Tănase or film director Lucian Pintilie. Eugen Ionescu supported them by sending a telegram from France in which he wrote he was a "Golan Academician" (Hooligan Academician).[link]

However, not all attempts at adopting a derogatory term as a badge of honor succeeds.

For instance, a well-known failure is Patti Smith’s intentional attempt of adopting the term “nigger” (the failure is evident to this day in the youtube comments). In this case, the failure seems to be caused by the fact that no one would actually use this term to insult a white woman.

Another well-known failure is Ayn Rand’s attempt at rebranding selfishness as a virtue:

Rand acknowledged in the book's introduction that the term 'selfishness' was not typically used to describe virtuous behavior, but insisted that her usage was consistent with a more precise meaning of the term as simply "concern with one's own interests." The equation of selfishness with evil, Rand said, had caused "the arrested moral development of mankind" and needed to be rejected.

Critics have disputed Rand's interpretation of the term. Libertarian feminist writer Sharon Presley described Rand's use of 'selfishness' as "perversely idiosyncratic" and contrary to the dictionary meaning of the term, Rand's claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Presley believes the use of the term has caused Rand's arguments to be frequently mischaracterized.

Finally, another well-known failed attempt at backfiring the insult is “queer”. Wikipedia explains this particular failure in the following way:

This term is controversial because it was reappropriated only two decades ago from its use as an anti-gay epithet. Furthermore, some LGBT people disapprove of using queer as a catch-all because they consider it offensive, derisive or self-deprecating given its continuous use as a form of hate speech. Other LGBT people may avoid queer because they associate it with political radicalism, or simply because they perceive it as the faddish slang of a "younger generation."

The reason for these two failures at backfiring the insult is far less clear, as they seem to have a very similar structure to successful examples such as “impressionism” or “punk”: given that selfishness is a common complaint against libertarians and “queer” is a common anti-gay slur. The reason seems to be the refusal of the group itself to internalize and appropriate the term in a positive way.

I speculate that the reason behind this refusal is that the negative use of the term is considered useful even within the group by the members themselves – i.e. accusations of egotism are useful social deterrents even in interactions among libertarians, and also perhaps, under certain situations, some gays might find it useful to reject other gays as “queer” (i.e. abnormal or perhaps “politically radical”). To put it differently, there are libertarian-specific and gay-specific standards of “normality” which are enforced informally by means of negative words such as “selfish” or “queer” – which is why the backfiring of the insult would have overly-hampered some types of signaling within the group. Thus, the positive capture of the insulting word was rejected.

By contrast, impressionist painters, punkers, nerds, or hooligans don’t find very much use for the possibility of insulting each other with these respective terms. Thus, in these cases, backfiring the insult (i.e. its positive capture) had little cost within the group.

Paul Krugman on the “exploitation” of Third World countries

2011-04-16T11:59:00.001-04:00

From this article in the Slate:

A country like Indonesia is still so poor that progress can be measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat ... A shocking one-third of young children are still malnourished--but in 1975, the fraction was more than half. Similar improvements can be seen throughout the Pacific Rim, and even in places like Bangladesh. These improvements have not taken place because well-meaning people in the West have done anything to help--foreign aid, never large, has lately shrunk to virtually nothing. Nor is it the result of the benign policies of national governments, which are as callous and corrupt as ever. It is the indirect and unintended result of the actions of soulless multinationals and rapacious local entrepreneurs, whose only concern was to take advantage of the profit opportunities offered by cheap labor. It is not an edifying spectacle; but no matter how base the motives of those involved, the result has been to move hundreds of millions of people from abject poverty to something still awful but nonetheless significantly better.

Why, then, the outrage of my correspondents? Why does the image of an Indonesian sewing sneakers for 60 cents an hour evoke so much more feeling than the image of another Indonesian earning the equivalent of 30 cents an hour trying to feed his family on a tiny plot of land--or of a Filipino scavenging on a garbage heap?

The main answer, I think, is a sort of fastidiousness. Unlike the starving subsistence farmer, the women and children in the sneaker factory are working at slave wages for our benefit--and this makes us feel unclean. And so there are self-righteous demands for international labor standards: We should not, the opponents of globalization insist, be willing to buy those sneakers and shirts unless the people who make them receive decent wages and work under decent conditions.

This sounds only fair--but is it? Let's think through the consequences.

First of all, even if we could assure the workers in Third World export industries of higher wages and better working conditions, this would do nothing for the peasants, day laborers, scavengers, and so on who make up the bulk of these countries' populations. At best, forcing developing countries to adhere to our labor standards would create a privileged labor aristocracy, leaving the poor majority no better off. ...

You may say that the wretched of the earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent. But what is the alternative? Should they be helped with foreign aid? Maybe--although the historical record of regions like southern Italy suggests that such aid has a tendency to promote perpetual dependence. Anyway, there isn't the slightest prospect of significant aid materializing. Should their own governments provide more social justice? Of course--but they won't, or at least not because we tell them to. And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items.

In short, my correspondents are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.

(via David Henderson)

New data on the origin of language

2011-04-15T05:43:00.001-04:00

From this article:

Because words change so rapidly, many linguists think that languages cannot be traced very far back in time. The oldest language tree so far reconstructed, that of the Indo-European family, which includes English, goes back 9,000 years at most.

Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.

Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13. English has about 45 phonemes.

This pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa, Dr. Atkinson says in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science. ...

His study was prompted by a recent finding that the number of phonemes in a language increases with the number of people who speak it. This gave him the idea that phoneme diversity would increase as a population grew, but would fall again when a small group split off and migrated away from the parent group.

Such a continual budding process, which is the way the first modern humans expanded around the world, is known to produce what biologists call a serial founder effect. Each time a smaller group moves away, there is a reduction in its genetic diversity. The reduction in phonemic diversity over increasing distances from Africa, as seen by Dr. Atkinson, parallels the reduction in genetic diversity already recorded by biologists.

For either kind of reduction in diversity to occur, the population budding process must be rapid, or diversity will build up again. This implies that the human expansion out of Africa was very rapid at each stage. The acquisition of modern language, or the technology it made possible, may have prompted the expansion, Dr. Atkinson said.

via Marius Comper

Hayek on the evolution of ethics

2011-04-13T09:07:00.001-04:00

From a February 1983 interview with F. A. Hayek, Cato Policy Report, republished in Toward Liberty: The Idea that Is Changing the World edited by David Boaz.

These [intellectualist or constructivist ideas derived from many decades of French philosophers] taught: Don’t believe anything which you cannot rationally justify. This was at first applied to science, but then was equally applied to morals. ‘Do not regard as binding upon you any morals which you cannot intellectually justify.’ ...

Now the great merit of traditional morals is that they have evolved and developed by long-run effects which people never foresaw and understood. ... Any philosopher who says, ‘I should admit only what I can rationally justify’, must exclude effects which are not foreseeable, must refuse to acknowledge a moral code which has been evolved because of its de facto effect. The utilitarian theorists believed, and Mises strongly believed, that man had chosen his morals with an intelligent understanding of the good effects. But that is wrong. Most of the effects of the moral we can’t foresee. They are beyond our vision. ... We simply must realize that our traditional morals are not to be approved because we can show how they are beneficial to us, but only because they have been proved in a process of selection. ...

It is not the intelligence of our ancestors that has left us with more efficient morals, but—as I like to express it to shock people—our ancestors were really the guinea pigs who experimented and chose the right ways which have been transmitted to us. It was not necessarily their superior intelligence. Rather, they happened to be right, so their successes multiplied, and they displaced the others who believed in the different morals.

Carl Sagan, The God of the Pale Blue Dot

2011-04-03T18:22:00.001-04:00

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 from a record distance [6.1 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles)], showing it against the vastness of space. By request of Carl Sagan, NASA commanded the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its primary mission and now leaving the Solar System, to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space. (more)

From Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space:

Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

Jello Biafra Running for Mayor of San Francisco Again

2011-04-01T23:00:00.001-04:00

Cute April’s Fools joke by San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Some policy proposals:

“I would … declare the outlying strip on 11th and Folsom to be a music district, like they did on Sixth Street in Austin Texas, instead of having the police harass them and shut them down. This has brought in a huge amount of tax revenue for Austin, by the way.”

Biafra has a refreshing approach to ending police misconduct and promoting reform within the San Francisco Police Department. “Police officers should be an elected position,” he told the Guardian. “Every four years, you run for election, voted on by the district you patrol.”

“I think the Guardian blew it when they came out against the initiative to rename our sewage plant after George W. Bush,” he said. “I think that would be a great idea. I’ll bring that one back, too.”

Rather than minimum wage, Biafra would like to implement a maximum wage

When he ran for mayor in 1979, Biafra generated a great deal of attention with his proposal to require businessmen to wear clown suits between the hours of nine and five. But he said this required some explanation: “This is only in downtown,” he noted

Biafra said he also planned to bring back another proposal from his first mayoral bid: “Create a board of bribery, to set fair standards and public rates for liquor licenses, building code exemptions, police protection, and most importantly, protection from the police,” he explained.

The board of bribery seems like a particularly good idea for reducing transaction costs, the next best thing to deregulation :)

Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine

2011-03-26T11:58:00.001-04:00

link

The most interesting jobs

2011-03-21T16:33:00.001-04:00

The most interesting jobs are those that combine art, science and technology in a unitary fashion. I’m not talking about artistic inspired by science, science-fiction, or popularization of science and technology, but things that actually seriously involve science and technology, which you cannot do without actual scientific and technical knowledge, but which, nonetheless, are artistic in nature.

Here are two clear examples:

Architecture

Architecture is a business in which technical knowledge, management, and an understanding of business are as important as design. An architect accepts a commission from a client. The commission might involve preparing feasibility reports, building audits, the design of a building or of several buildings, structures, and the spaces among them. The architect participates in developing the requirements the client wants in the building. Throughout the project (planning to occupancy), the architect co-ordinates a design team. Structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers and other specialists, are hired by the client or the architect, who must ensure that the work is co-ordinated to construct the design.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics draws on many disciplines in its study of humans and their environments, including anthropometry, biomechanics, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, industrial design, kinesiology, physiology and psychology.

Typically, an ergonomist will have a BA or BS in Psychology, Industrial/Mechanical Engineering or Industrial Design or Health Sciences, and usually an MA, MS or PhD in a related discipline.

Lysander Spooner on the Industrial Revolution

2011-03-19T15:33:00.002-04:00

Was the Industrial Revolution in Britain a natural outcome of a market phenomenon? Kevin Carson says “no”:

There was a great deal of continuity between the Whig landed aristocracy that carried out the enclosures and other abrogations of traditional rights to the land, and the employing classes of early industrial Britain. The early industrialists of Manchester, far from being (as Mises portrayed them) an upstart class who accumulated capital through their own parsimony, were junior partners of the landed oligarchy; the latter were a major source of investment capital. And the factory owners benefited, in addition, from near-totalitarian social controls on the movement and free association of labor; this legal regime included the Combination Acts, the Riot Act, and the law of Settlements (the latter amounting to an internal passport system).
In addition, the general legal framework (as Benjamin Tucker described it) restricted labor's access to its own capital through such forms of self-organization as mutual banks. As a result of this "money monopoly," workers were forced to sell their labor in a buyer's market on terms set by the owning classes, and thus pay tribute (in the form of a wage less than their labor-product) for access to the means of production.
Lysander Spooner, a hero to many anarcho-capitalists, in Natural Law described the process in somewhat less than capitalistic language:
“In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class---who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth---began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-holding class---their former owners---for just what the latter might choose to give them. Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative---to save themselves from starvation---but to sell their labor to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that.
These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less slaves than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even more precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to preserve his life. They were liable, at the caprice or interest of the landholders, to be thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of even earning a subsistence by their labor. They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the necessity of begging, stealing, or starving; and became, of course, dangerous to the property and quiet of their late masters.
The consequence was, that these late owners found it necessary, for their own safety and the safety of their property, to organize themselves more perfectly as a government and make laws for keeping these dangerous people in subjection; that is, laws fixing the prices at which they should be compelled to labor, and also prescribing fearful punishments, even death itself, for such thefts and tresspasses as they were driven to commit, as their only means of saving themselves from starvation.”

Clay Shirky – Here comes everybody

2011-02-25T11:06:00.001-05:00

Some quotes from Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations.

On the complementarity between travel and communication tools (p. 194-5):

The assumption that communications tools are (or will someday be) a good substitute for travel assumes that people mainly gather together for utilitarian reasons of sharing information. Companies have been selling us this idea since the invention of the telegraph, and AT&T's famous Picturephone, first launched at the I964 World's Fair, was pitched as a way to reduce the need for travel. This reduction did not happen, not in 1964 or ever. If communication were a substitute for travel, then the effects would have shown up by now, but they haven't. In 1978 President Carter deregulated the airlines, causing travel prices to fall, but telecommunications stocks didn't collapse; they rose. Similarly, i n 1984 Judge Harold Greene broke up AT&T, leading to a rapid decrease in long distance phone call costs; airline customers increased that year. Communication and travel are complements, not substitutes. Chris Meyer, a globe-trotting consultant for the Monitor Group, observes that "better communications make it easier for me to keep in touch with the office, so I spend more time on the road, talking to clients."

We gather together because we like to, and because it is useful. Assuming that videophones or e-mail or virtual reality will reduce the overall amount of travel is like assuming that liquor stores will kill bars, since liquor stores sell drinks much more cheaply than bars do. In fact, the reason people go to bars is not simply to get a drink, but to do so in a convivial environment. Similarly, cities don't exist just because people have had to be nearby to communicate; cities exist because people like to be near other people, and it is this fact, rather than the mere trading of information, that creates social capital.

Social capital: bonding and bridging (p. 222; 224):

Bonding capital is an increase in the depth of connections and trust within a relatively homogenous group; bridging capital is an increase in connections among relatively heterogeneous groups. Think of the difference by considering the number of people to whom you'd lend money without asking when they'd pay you back. An increase in bridging capital would increase the number of people you'd lend to; an increase in bonding capital would increase the amount of money you'd lend to people already on the list.

Bonding capital tends to be more exclusive and bridging capital more inclusive. In Small World networks bonding tends to happen within the clusters, while bridging happens between clusters.

Where good ideas come from (p. 229-230):

In one of the more evocatively titled papers in the history of social science, "The Social Origins of Good I deas," Ronald Burt of the University of Chicago detailed his research into the relationship among social capital, social structure, and good ideas. ...

The essence of Burt's thesis comes down to a linked pair of observations. First, most good ideas came from people who were bridging "structural holes," which is to say people whose immediate social network included employees outside their department. Second, bridging these structural holes was valuable even when other variables, such as rank and age (both of which correlate for higher degrees of social connection), were controlled for. Note that this experiment was a test for bridging capital, not mere sociability-the highest percentage of good ideas came from people whose contacts were outside their own department. On the other hand, managers who were highly connected, but only to others in their department, had ideas that were not ranked as highly. Bridging predicted good ideas; lack of bridging predicted bad ones.

In Burt's analysis, a dense social network of people in the same department (and who were therefore likely to be person ally connected to one another) seemed to create an echo-chamber effect.

The effect of failure and the open-source model (p. 245-7):

The overall effect of failure is its likelihood times its cost. Most organizations attempt to reduce the effect of failure by reducing its likelihood. Imagine that you are spearheading an effort for a firm that wants to become more innovative. You are given a list of promising but speculative ideas, and you have to choose some subset of them for investment. You thus have to guess the likelihood of success or failure for each project. The obvious problem is that no one knows for certain what will succeed and what will fail. A less obvious but potentially more significant problem is that the possible value of various projects is unconnected to anything their designers say about them. ... In these circumstances, you will inevitably green-light failures and pass on potential successes. Worse still, more people will remember you saying yes to a failure than saying no to a radical but promising idea. Given this asymmetry, you will be pushed to make safe choices, thus systematically undermining the rationale for trying to be more innovative in the first place. ...

Open source doesnt reduce the likelihood of failure, it reduces the cost of failure; it essentially gets failure for free. This reversal, where the cost of deciding what to try is higher than the cost of actually trying them, is true of open systems generally. As with the mass amateurization of media, open source relies on the "publish-then-filter" pattern. In traditional organizations, trying anything is expensive, even if just in staff time to discuss the idea, so someone must make some attempt to filter the successes from the failures in advance. In open systems, the cost of trying something is so low that handicapping the likelihood of success is often an unnecessary distraction. Even in a firm committed to experimentation, considerable work goes into reducing the likelihood of failure. ...

Cheap failure, valuable as it is on its own, is also a key part of a more complex advantage: the exploration of multiple possibilities. ... When a company or indeed any organization finds a strategy that works, the drive to adopt it and stick with it is strong. Even if there is a better strategy out there, finding it can be prohibitively expensive. For work that relies on newly collapsed transaction costs, however, providing basic resources to the groups exploring the fitness landscape costs little, and the failure of even a sizable number of groups also carries little penalty.

Bonus, in praise of scribes (p. 68-9):

In 1492, almost half a century after movable type appeared, Johannes Trithemius, the Abbot of Sponheim, was moved to launch an impassioned defense of the scribal tradition, De Laude Scriptorum (literally "in praise of scribes"). In this work he laid out the values and virtues of the scribal tradition: "The devout monk enjoys four particular benefits from writing: the time that is precious is profitably spent; his understanding is enlightened as he writes; his heart within is kindled to devotion; and after this life he is rewarded with a unique prize." Note how completely the benefits of the scribal tradition are presented as ones enjoyed by scribes rather than by society.

The Abbot's position would have been mere reactionary cant ("We must preserve the old order at any cost") but for one detail. If, in the year 1492, you'd written a treatise you wanted widely disseminated, what would you do? You'd have it printed, of course, which was exactly what the Abbot did. De Laude Scriptorum was not itself copied by scribes; it was set in movable type, in order to get a lot of copies out cheaply and quicklysomething for which scribes were utterly inadequate. The content of the Abbot's book praised the scribes, while its printed form damned them; the medium undermined the message.

There is an instructive hypocrisy here. A professional often becomes a gatekeeper, by providing a necessary or desirable social function but also by controlling that function. Sometimes this gatekeeping is explicitly enforced (only judges can sentence someone to jail, only doctors can perform surgery) but sometimes it is embedded in technology, as with scribes, who had mastered the technology of writing. Considerable effort must be expended toward maintaining the discipline and structure of the profession. Scribes existed to increase the spread of the written word, but when a better, nonscribal way of accomplishing the same task came along, the Abbot of Sponheim stepped in to argue that preserving the scribes' way of life was more important than fulfilling their mission by nonscribal means.

Professional self-conception and self-defense, so valuable in ordinary times, become a disadvantage in revolutionary ones, because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession. In most cases, those threats are also threats to society; we do not want to see a relaxing of standards for becoming a surgeon or a pilot. But in some cases the change that threatens the profession benefits society, as did the spread of the printing press; even in these situations the professionals can be relied on to care more about self-defense than about progress. What was once a service has become a bottleneck. Most organizations believe they have much more freedom of action and much more ability to shape their
future than they actually do, and evidence that the ecosystem is changing in ways they can't control usually creates considerable anxiety, even if the change is good for society as a whole.

Thanks, Anca!

Albert Camus – Letters to a German friend

2011-02-12T12:26:00.001-05:00

From the Preface:

I cannot let these pages be reprinted without saying what they are. They were written and published clandestinely during the Occupation. They had a purpose, which was to throw some light on the blind battle we were then waging and thereby to make our battle more effective. They are topical writings and hence they may appear unjust. ... When the author of these letters says “you”, he means not “you Germans” but “you Nazis”. When he says “we”, this signifies not always “we Frenchmen” but sometimes “we free Europeans”. I am contrasting two attitudes, not two nations, even if, at a certain moment in history, these two nations personified two enemy attitudes. To repeat a remark that is not mine, I love my country too much to be a nationalist. ... I loath none but executioners. Any reader who reads the Letters to a German Friend in this perspective – in other words, as a document emerging from the struggle against violence – will see how I can say I don’t disown a single word I have written here.

From the first letter (July 1943):

You said to me: “The greatness of my country is beyond price. Anything is good that contributes to its greatness. And in a world where everything has lost its meaning, those who, like us young Germans, are lucky enough to find meaning in the destiny of our nation must sacrifice everything else.” I loved you then, but at that point we diverged. “No”, I told you, “I cannot believe that everything must be subordinated to a single end. There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don’t want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.” You retorted: “Well, you just don’t love your country.” ...

We had much to overcome, first of all, the constant temptation to emulate you. For there is always something in us that yields to instinct, to contempt for intelligence, to the cult of efficiency. Our great virtues eventually become tiresome to us. We become ashamed of our intelligence, and sometimes we imagine some barbarous state where truth would be effortless. But the cure for this is easy; you are there to show us what such imagining would lead to, and we mend our ways. ...

Contrary to what we used to think, the spirit is of no avail against the sword, but the spirit together with the sword will always win over the sword alone. That is why we have now accepted the sword, after making sure that the spirit was on our side. We had first to see people die and to run the risk of dying ourselves. ... One really possesses only what one has paid for. We have paid dearly, and we have not finished paying. But we have our certainties, our justifications, our justice; your defeat is inevitable. ...

We are fighting for fine distinctions, but the kind of distinctions that are as important as the man himself. We are fighting for the distinction between sacrifice and mysticism, between energy and violence, between strength and cruelty, for that even finer distinction between the true and the false, between the man of the future and the cowardly gods you revere.

From the second letter (December, 1943):

This is what separated us from you; we made demands. You were satisfied to serve the power of your nation and we dreamed of giving ours her truth. It was enough for you to serve the politics of reality whereas, in our wildest aberrations, we still had a vague conception of the politics of honor, which we recognize today. When I say “we” I am not speaking of our rulers. But a ruler hardly matters. ...

What is truth, you used to ask? To be sure, but at least we know what falsehood is; that is just what you have taught us. What is spirit? We know its contrary, which is murder. What is man? There I stop you, for we know. Man is that force which ultimately cancels all tyrants and gods. He is the force of evidence. Human evidence is what we must preserve. ... If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has meaning. ...

“I am ashamed for that man, and I am pleased to think that no French priest would have been willing to make his God abet murder.” That was true. The chaplain simply felt as you do. It seemed natural to him to make even his faith serve his country. Even the gods are mobilized in your country. They are on your side, as you say, but only as a result of coercion. You no longer distinguish anything; you are but a single impulse. And now you are fighting with the resources of blind anger, with your mind on weapons and feats of arms rather than on ideas, stubbornly confusing every issue and following your obsession. We, on the other hand, started from the intelligence and its hesitations. We were powerless against wrath. But now our detour is finished. It took only a dead child for us to add wrath to intelligence, and now we are two against one.

From the third letter (April 1944):

That idea of Europe that you took from the best among us and distorted has consequently become hard for us to keep alive in all its original force. ... Your speak of Europe but the difference is that for you Europe is a property, whereas we feel that we belong to it. ... You say “Europe”, but you think in terms of potential soldiers, granaries, industries brought to heel, intelligence under control. Am I going too far? But at least I know that when you say “Europe”, even in your best moments, when you let yourselves be carried away by your own lies, you cannot keep yourselves from thinking of a cohort of docile nations led by a lordly Germany toward a fabulous and bloody future. I should like you to be fully aware of the difference. For you Europe is an expanse encircled by seas and mountains, dotted with dams, gutted with mines, covered with harvests, where Germany is playing a game in which her fate alone is at stake. But for us Europe is a home of the spirit where for the last twenty centuries the most amazing adventure of the human spirit has been going on. It is the privileged arena in which Western man’s struggle against the world, against the gods, against himself is today reaching its climax. As you see, there is no common denominator. ...

Your Europe is not the right one. There is nothing there to unite or inspire. Ours is a joint adventure that we shall continue to pursue, despite you, with the inspiration of intelligence.

Sometimes on a street corner, in the brief intervals of the long struggle that involves us all, I happen to think of all those places in Europe I know well. It is a magnificent land molded by suffering and history. I relive those pilgrimages I once made with all the men of the West: the roses in the cloisters of Florence, the gilded bulbous domes of Krakow, the Hradschin and its dead palaces, the contorted statues of the Charles Bridge over the Ultava, the delicate gardens of Salzburg. All those flowers and stones, those hills and those landscapes where men’s time and the world’s time have mingled old trees and monuments! My memories has fused together such superimposed images to make a single face, which is the face of my true native land. ... It never occurred to me that someday we should have to liberate them from you. And even now, at certain moments of rage and despair, I am occasionally sorry that the roses continue to grow in the cloister of San Marco and the pigeons drop clusters from the Cathedral of Salzburg, and the red geraniums grow tirelessly in the little cemeteries of Silesia.

But at other moments, and they are the only ones that count, I delight in this. For all those landscapes, those flowers and those plowed fields, the oldest of lands, show every spring that there are things you cannot choke in blood. ... So I know that everything in Europe, both landscape and spirit, calmly negates you without feeling any rash hatred, but with the calm strength of victory. The weapons the European spirit can use against you are the same as reside in this soil constantly reawakening in blossoms and harvests. The battle we are waging is sure victory because it is as obstinate as spring.

And, finally, I know that all will not be over when you are crushed. Europe will still have to be established. It always has to be established.

From the fourth letter (July, 1944):

For a long time we both thought that this world had no ultimate meaning and that consequently we were cheated. I still think so in a way. But I came to different conclusions from the ones you used to talk about, which, for so many years now, you have been trying to introduce into history. I tell myself now that if I had really followed your reasoning, I ought to approve what you are doing. And this is so serious that I must stop and consider it, during this summer night so full of promises for us and threats for you.

You never believed in the meaning of this world, and you therefore deduced the idea that everything was equivalent and that good and evil could be defined according to one’s wishes. You supposed that in the absence of any human or divine code the only values were those of the animal world – in other words, violence and cunning. Hence you concluded that man was negligible and that his soul could be killed, that in the maddest of histories the only pursuit for the individual was the adventure of power and his own morality, the realism of conquests. And, to tell the truth, I, believing I thought as you did, saw no valid argument to answer you except a fierce love of justice which, after all, seemed to me as unreasonable as the most sudden passion.

Where lay the difference? Simply that you readily accepted despair and I never yielded to it. Simply that you saw the injustice of our condition to the point of being willing to add to it, whereas it seemed to me that man must exalt justice in order to fight against eternal injustice, create happiness in order to protest against the universe of unhappiness. ...

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one. This world has at least the truth of man, and our task is to provide its justification against fate itself. And it has no justification but man; hence he must be saved if we want to save the idea we have of life. ...

Our difficult achievement consisted in following you into war without forgetting happiness. And despite the clamors and the violence, we tried to preserve in our hearts the memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face. For that matter, this was our best weapon, the one we shall never put away. For as soon as we lost it we should be as dead as you are. But we now know that the weapons of happiness cannot be forged without considerable time and too much blood. ...

You are the man of injustice and, and there is nothing in the world that my heart loathes so much. But now I know the reasons for what was once only passion. I am fighting you because your logic is as criminal as your heart. And in the horror you have lavished upon us for four years, your reason plays as large a part as your instinct. This is why my condemnation will be sweeping; you are already dead as far as I am concerned. But at the very moment when I am judging your horrible behavior, I shall remember that you and we started from the same solitude, that you and we, with all Europe, are caught in the same tragedy of intelligence. And, despite yourselves, I shall still apply to you the name of man. ... I can tell you that at the very moment when we are going to destroy you without pity, we still feel no hatred for you. ...

Our strength lies in thinking as you do about the essence of the world, in rejecting no aspect of the drama that is ours. But at the same time we have saved the idea of man at the end of this disaster of the intelligence, and that idea gives us the undying courage to believe in rebirth. To be sure, the accusation we make against the world is not mitigated by this. We paid so dear for this new knowledge that our condition continues to seem desperate to us. Hundreds of thousands of men assassinated at dawn, the terrible walls of prisons, the soil of Europe reeking with millions of corpses of its sons – it took all that to pay for the acquisition of two or three slight distinctions which may have no other value than to help some among us to die more nobly. Yes, that is heart-braking. ... The dawn about to break will mark your final defeat. I know that heaven, which was indifferent to your horrible victories, will be equally indifferent to your defeat. Even now I expect nothing from heaven. But we shall at least have helped save man from the solitude to which you wanted to relegate him. Because you scorned such faith in mankind, you are the men who, by thousands, are going to die solitary. Now, I can say farewell to you.

Published in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.

We Are Robots

2011-02-02T08:30:00.001-05:00

Varianta Balanescu String Quartet

Varianta Zu

Varianta Kraftwerk (originalul)

Kubrick on the meaning of life

2011-01-30T15:08:00.001-05:00

via Stolen Moments

Bryan Caplan on the moral incoherence of redistribution

2011-01-24T11:16:00.001-05:00

The Stranger:

What are you morally forbidden to do to a stranger? You may not murder him. You may not attack him. You may not enslave him. Neither may you rob him.

What are you morally required to do for a stranger? Not much. Even if he seems hungry and asks you for food, you're probably within your rights to refuse. If you've ever been in a large city, you've refused to help the homeless on more than one occasion. And even if you think you broke your moral obligation to give, your moral obligation wasn't strong enough to let the beggar justifiably mug you. ...

One last question: What fraction of your "fellow citizens" have you actually met? Virtually zero. The vast majority of your countrymen are, in fact, utter strangers to you. ...

Even staunch anti-libertarians would be baffled if a homeless man announced, "Give me my money!" instead of asking "Spare change?" After all, the beggar is a stranger. All the libertarian is pointing out is that your other "fellow citizens" are strangers, too. You're not cold and cruel when you refuse to help; they're being pushy and totalitarian when they refuse to take no for an answer.

Peter Thiel on the technological cause of the boom-and-bust cycle

2011-01-22T20:56:00.001-05:00

From this interview:

There’ve been a whole series of these booms or bubbles in the last few decades, and I think it’s a very complicated question why there have been so many and why things have been so far off from equilibrium. There’s something about the U.S. in the last several decades where people had great expectations about the future that didn’t quite come true. Every form of credit involves a claim on the future: I’ll pay you a dollar on Tuesday for a hamburger today; I’ll buy this house, and I’ll pay off the mortgage over 30 years; and so you lend me money based off expectations on the future. A credit crisis happens when the future turns out not to be as good as expected.

The Left-versus-Right debate tends to be that the Left argues that the expectations were off because of ruthless lenders who sold a bill of goods to people and pushed all this debt on people, and that it was basically the problem of the creditors. The Right tends to argue that it was a problem with the borrowers, and people were sort of crazy in borrowing all this money. In the Left narrative, it starts with Reagan in the ’80s, when finance became more important. The Right narrative starts in the ’60s when people became more self-indulgent and began to live beyond their means.

My orthogonal take is that the whole thing happened because there was not enough technological innovation. It was not really the fault of the borrowers or the lenders; the problem was that everybody had tremendous expectations that the country was going to be a much wealthier place in 2010 than it was in 1995, and in fact there’s been a lot less progress. The future is fundamentally about technology in an advanced country — it’s about technological progress. So a credit crisis happens when the technological progress is not as good as people expected. That’s not the standard account of the last decades, but that’s the way I would outline it.

People were expecting house prices to go up 8 percent a year. That would be quite possible in a society where the GDP was growing tremendously and where there were tremendous gains in efficiency and technological innovation. But we’re not having that much innovation and, because of that, the housing bubble was unrealistic. It’s also possible that the housing bubble was very deeply linked to the tech bubble. The tech bubble was about extrapolating technological gains; it turned out that the gains didn’t materialize as quickly, or at all, and then people went back to housing and back to credit to get the 8 percent returns. But housing and credit still depend on an underlying society that is progressing, and that sort of progress was not actually happening. So, if the tech bubble was fake, then the housing bubble would almost certainly have to be fake. The real root of the problem is always technology.

Social networks: strengths and weaknesses

2011-01-22T01:34:00.001-05:00

Diagnostic

Entertainment (overall): Tumblr > Twitter > Facebook

Entertainment (visual): Tumblr > Facebook > Twitter

Entertainment (words): Twitter > Tumblr > Facebook

Information: Facebook > Twitter > Tumblr

Sense of community: Facebook > Tumblr > Twitter

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Wright & Keltner - The upside of embarrassment, the benefits of teasing

2011-01-08T12:49:00.001-05:00

from bloggingheads.tv.

Tom Healy – Si tu?

2011-01-06T18:25:00.001-05:00

Vă oferim ca dovadă
lista noastră de cumpărături -

mâzgălitura ei indescifrabilă
drept arheologie a foamei

analiză grabită
a consensului nostru

demonstraţia
că săptămâna

are o premoniţie a laptelui
sau a votkăi

a pepenului sau îngheţatei
proclamaţii micuţe

şterse pe spatele
unui plic

semnele lui şi ale mele
o monedă

cu care schimbăm capricii
şi ne menţinem în viaţă

o cronică nu doar
a confortului şi-a unor dorinţe

ordinare ci a modului
în care ne-am construit

necesitatea
salvării şi capitulării

[din What the Right Hand Knows, Four Way Books 2009, via Poetry Daily, tradusa de mine]

Roger Penrose on Quantum Mechanics and Schrodinger's cat

2011-01-05T19:58:00.001-05:00

This is one of the most honest introductions to quantum mechanics I’ve seen (apart from these four lectures by Feynman). Penrose does a pretty good job at describing:</ br>

why quantum mechanics was developed in the first place,
the key empiric puzzle of quantum things that act as particles under certain conditions and as waves under other conditions,
the way quantum mechanics tries to solve this puzzle (the weakest part of the lecture),
the fact that the mathematical model is compatible with significantly different philosophical (ontological) interpretations, and
why the standard proposed solution leads to the “paradox of measurement” (i.e. the results of measurements turn out to be non-deterministic, although both the behavior of the measured stuff and the inner functioning of the measuring devices are supposed to be governed by entirely deterministic processes).

Excerpt from Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, Lecture 3: FANTASY @ Princeton University (2003)

The only thing you won’t properly get from it is the explanation about the mathematical part. That’s explained much better by Feynman here.

Some trends in English literature

2010-12-17T09:39:00.001-05:00

obtained using Google ngram

The rise of individualism in 18th century (“I”-blue, “we”-red):

Love and death seem to go together (“love”-blue, “death”-red):

And I suppose “fuck” used to mean something else...

The classic, trousers (blue) vs. pants (red):

Post-1950 revenge of Aquinas (red) over Galileo (blue):

but Newton still destroys both of them.

Socialism (red) takes a dive since 1980s, but capitalism (blue) keeps growing:

The Swordsmen Paradox

2010-12-11T08:31:00.001-05:00

There are two swordsmen, A and B: A is attacking B. A knows that B has a weaker defense on the left side, but B also knows that A knows that he has a weaker defense on the left side. A knows further that B knows he knows about B’s weaker left side; and B knows that A has this knowledge.

At first glance, it would be rational for A to attack B on the left side. However, because B knows that A knows his weakness, it is rational to assume that B will concentrate his defending capabilities to his left side. But A knows that B will focus on his left side, thus, at second glance, it would be better to attack him on the right side after all. However, B also knows that A is making this judgment, thus, he will not concentrate especially on the left side.

The paradox consists in that A and B both have two very relevant pieces of information and yet the most rational path they can take is to act as if they wouldn’t possess these pieces of information, i.e. at random. Thus, from a purely behavioral point of view it is impossible to tell whether or not A and B have these two pieces of information. Thus, there exist beliefs, and even beliefs highly salient to the given situation, that cause an agent to act as if s/he wouldn’t have those beliefs. So, as long such beliefs exist – and indeed they do, it is theoretically impossible for a purely behavioral test to discover all the beliefs of a certain agent. Or, to put it differently, there are some cases in which it is impossible to tell whether one is lying. Even considering the goals as given and publicly known, the relation between beliefs and behaviors is not 1-to-1, but many-to-1.

Can we say that all the beliefs that entice the same behavior are in fact equivalent, despite their apparent divergence? The swordsmen paradox seems to imply a "no", as otherwise we would have to equivalate beliefs that are obviously relevant for the decision to a lack of knowledge.

Robert Wright & Kevin Kelly - A Theory of Technology

2010-12-11T06:23:00.001-05:00

Link

Kevin’s new book, “What Technology Wants”
Can technology be sentient?
How our gadgets have already made us into cyborgs
The selfishness and the generosity of our machines
Spirituality and the limits of science
Kevin’s Paradoxical God

Robert Nozick – Is ethics binding?

2010-12-01T06:43:00.001-05:00

From this interview:

Julian Sanchez: What is it, then, that evolution can tell us about ethics? Why should an evolved moral sentiment be any more normatively binding than, say, the urge to reproduce? Does explaining ethics as one more biological response suck out the normative force, the authority of morality?

Robert Nozick: Well, there are two places where I discuss that in detail. I refer to literature in the Kantian ethical tradition that's wanting a certain strength of bindingness to ethics -- including writing by my colleague Christine Korsgaard. I doubt that they can get it, and I argue that they're requiring something stronger of ethics than we have in the case of ordinary factual belief. A comparable question to that of the bindingness of ethics -- "Why should I always do what's right?" -- is "Why should I believe the truth?" In general it's a good policy to believe the truth, but in particular cases someone might actually be better off not believing what's true.

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression. They'd be better off not being convinced by this evidence. Or the literature that seems to show that optimistic or even overly optimistic attitudes towards one's chances at succeeding at something, or recovering from a disease, or something like that, actually increase the chances. Maybe not up to the level of optimism one feels, but there one would be better off not being a perfectly accurate assessor of chances. In fact there's some psychological literature that seems to indicate that when people are asked by psychologists what other people in their social circle think of them, and then the psychologists check with these other people about what they actually do think, that the people who have more accurate views of what other people think of them are less happy, less successful in life, cope less well with various things, than the people who have rosier views of what people think of them than is actually the case. Now, here's another case where one may be better off believing what's not strictly true. Parents raising children might think: "Well, do I want my child to have a disposition to believe exactly what's true about other people's opinions of him or her? Or to have, not an out-of-touch- with-reality view, but a more optimistic than is actual view, a rosier view, of what people think of them, so that their life will go smoother, more easily, and so on?"

Now, there's at least a question there. And in the case of factual truth, there's not any knockdown argument, in a particular case where one would be better off believing what's not strictly speaking true, for saying that a person is epistemically required to believe the truth. If we can't do that in the factual case, why would we expect to do, and think we have to do, the comparable thing in the ethical case? That is: have a notion of bindingness so strong that in every possible situation, it requires one to do what in general is to our benefit and right, and what we've been shaped generally to do, including to be reasonably cooperative agents in social cooperation. Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction. So I'm questioning the demand for bindingness in ethics. One, because nobody's delivered on that demand yet, and secondly, even outside of ethics nobody's delivered on the comparable demand.

JS: Which does seem to take some of the wind out of the objection? and yet we don't want ethical conclusions to just be these sort of interesting facts.

RN: Correct. I search around for something that is more binding than merely an interesting fact. I do say that self consciousness is something that's crucial to guiding one's behavior in an ethical way, at least according to norms and principles, and that self- consciousness is something that people often take as the distinguishing mark of being human. Maybe in that realm, if the distinguishing mark of being human is something we've come to have because of its usefulness in having us adhere to norms, that is enough of a punch behind bindingness to leave us in a satisfactory situation.

JS: At the risk of asking something so counterfactual it's not useful? does the emphasis there on the historical source of consciousness as something selected by evolution for this purpose mean that, say, my Swampman counterpart [i.e. an exact duplicate of me who springs into existence by chance, not through an evolutionary process], who arises as a mere fluke, has no reason to be moral?

RN: Well? there'd be all of the general reasons that we have for being moral in a society where we're not good at deceiving others and others can detect when we're being hypocrites. But is there some desert island case where somebody can get away with things and those reasons don't apply? Yes. The strongest kinds of argument people make when you look in the Kantian literature seem to have something to do with preserving one's own identity, or something like that. But that's presupposing a concern with one's identity. Why should one be so concerned about that? And if one is so concerned about one's personal identity and integrity and keeping that identity, it's hard to reconcile that with the strong attack on self-interested motives that the Kantians mount. To say that self-interested motives are insufficient to ground the normative force of ethics, but somehow it's based on a concern with one's own identity? that's an uncomfortable position, a position in tension.

Whom and what do you care about and how much?

2010-11-18T06:32:00.002-05:00

What criteria should be used to decide whom to include or exclude from a utilitarian welfare estimation? To use Peter Singer’s metaphor, how far should the circle be expanded?

For example, considering the welfare of the next, soon to be born, generation doesn't seem exaggerated. But considering the welfare of all future generations seems an unreasonable stretch (it would dwarf the consideration of our own welfare). This could be addressed by using a discount rate, but what criteria should be used for estimating the discount rate and why not others?

Similarly, many pay lip service to the idea of considering all humans as part of the circle, but as a matter of fact, that is not the case (i.e. regardless of what they say, many don't actually consider this expansion to be reasonable, as evidenced by their actions). Should we consider (some) animals as well? One inclusion criterion proposed here is the ability to suffer. But this doesn't seem to work because it follows that we should consider all future generations' welfare as equally important to our own (no discount rate).

One possible solution is sociobiological - take genetic relatedness as the basis for the discount rate (both when expanding the circle to existing beings and when expanding it into the future). Care about the immediate family more than about strangers, care about your own children more than about your great-great-grand-children. However, this leads to a very small circle - smaller than what people now normally consider.

We could consider some multiplier to genetic relatedness, but, again, what multiplier should be used and why?

A simpler question is this: if this model is correct, what is the actual multiplier that most people use? Is there just one or are there many?

One possible multiplier that immediately comes to mind is familiarity. This can be applied both to animals (even objects) as well as to humans. Many people care more about their dog than about dying children in Africa, although they are more genetically related to the latter – the familiarity is less however.

From a evolutionary point of view, the importance of familiarity can be understood by considering that, in the original hunter-gatherer environment, familiarity used to be a proxy for genetic relatedness. However, these two factors seem to be independent, as evidenced by the fact that adopted persons care to meet their biological parents (with whom they have no familiarity at all). Thus, genetic relatedness cannot be considered to be simply incorporated into familiarity.

Considering the product between familiarity and genetic relatedness can also be applied in regard to future generations. The prediction however fails. We are less familiar today with the future generations than medieval people were with their future generations, because we expect things to change radically, while they expected things to remain the same. This leads to the prediction that the welfare of future generations should have been much more salient to medieval people than it is to us. However, as it was pointed out by Gregory Clark, medieval people lived in the present to a much larger extent than we do, as evidenced by the size of interest rates then and now.

This problem could be fixed by assuming another multiplier, the present welfare of the person we’re considering. Medieval people were very poor and miserable compared to us, and, thus, they tended to care more about themselves than about others. This multiplier can be justified from an economic point of view: the means one has at one’s disposal are scarce and these scarce means are distributed to the most important goals first. The more means one has, the more goals one is able to fulfill, i.e. increased welfare implies an expansion of the area of interests, including an expansion of Singer’s circle.

What I said so far is still not enough, as it predicts that we care equally about common people and about exceptional people. As evidenced by newspaper and mass media choice of subjects, there is little demand for regular people stories as compared to the demand for stories with “celebrities” and unusual people in general. (Also, applied to objects, what I said so far, fails to account for the concept of “garbage” – something that is so abundant that one is willing to pay to get rid of it.) We can fix this by dividing to the availability of what we’re considering – the more common she/he/it is (including oneself) the less one cares about her/him/it. This might also explain why people are horrified by the idea of cloning themselves – cloning would increase their availability and thus decrease the amount they care about themselves.

Here is thus a possible formula for the amount X cares about Y:

C_X(Y) = (G_XY + 1) × K × F_X(Y) × W_X / A_X(Y)

G_XY = genetic relatedness between X and Y (a number between 0 and 1, 0 corresponding to non-living objects and 1 to oneself and one’s identical tween; parents and siblings 1/2; cousins, uncles and aunts 1/4 etc.),

F_X(Y) = X’s familiarity with Y (a number between 0 and 1), which is to be multiplied by some factor K in order to account for the fact that we care about some familiar animals more than about some unfamiliar people (i.e. familiarity and genetic relatedness don’t have the same measuring unit and K is the conversion factor),

W_X = X’s current well-being (a number between 0 and infinity),

A_X(Y) = the availability of Y to X.

There are further predictions of this formula. For example, the more one knows oneself, F_X(X), the more one cares about oneself, C_X(X). Thus, the problems of suicidal people [W_X small –> C_X(X) small] may be compounded if they are self-delusional [F_X(X) small –> C_X(X) small]. Also, people with low well-being don’t care much about anything [W_X small –> C_X(Y) for all Y]. And, conversely, the better one feels, the more one cares about everything.

We can also apply this to other things. For example, according to the above formula, the more one learns about a subject (familiarity increases with the subject), the more one starts to care about that subject. People who start studying something without much initial interest, may end up caring a lot about it. I suspect this is what happens to many students who don’t have a clear idea from the start about what they are interested. They think that are “searching” for what interests them, but it may be that in fact the interest is created rather than discovered. And those who keep “searching” never “find” – i.e. develop – any interest because they don’t get sufficiently familiar with anything. The issue of availability may also influence matters: getting familiar with relatively obscure subjects increases the likelihood of ending up caring a lot about them. The prediction thus is that one tends to become passionate about something in direct relation to the familiarity one develops with the subject and the obscure nature of that subject. This also explains why obscure artists and musicians tend to have much more loyal and passionate fans than mainstream artists and musicians.

While the above formula may work at describing how much people care about various people, animals, things and subjects, it surely does not tell what people should care about.

When will Armageddon happen?

2010-11-14T10:41:00.001-05:00

From Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin, p. 63

There are about 6 × 10⁹ people in the world. Thus, the total volume of blood is

V = 5 L/person × 6 × 10⁹ people = 3 × 10¹⁰ L

There are 1000 L in a cubic meter, so that V = 3 × 10⁷ m³ . Now let’s see how large a volume this is.

[...]

If we want to get biblical, we can compare it to the volume of blood shed at the battle of Armageddon as mentioned in the book of Revelation: “They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood ﬂowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia” Rev. 14:20 (NIV). A horse’s bridle is about 2 m high. At almost 200 m per stadion, 1600 stadia is 300 km. Now we just need the width. That much liquid will spread out a lot, especially when ﬂowing 300 km. Let’s use a width of 3 km. Thus, the volume of blood predicted to ﬂow at Armageddon is

V_Armageddon = 2 m × 3 × 10⁵ m × 3 × 10³ m = 2 × 10⁹ m³

That is about 15 times more blood than humans currently have. We guess we just need more people.

So, Armaggedon is predicted to happen when the population will reach a minimum of

P_Armageddon = 2 × 10¹¹ L / 5 L = 4 × 10¹⁰

However, according to the moderate UN projection, this will never happen, because the population is expected to level off at about 1 × 10¹⁰ around 2050.

On the other hand, considering the high estimate (an increase of about 4 billion people every 50 years), we’ll have to wait for Armageddon for only another 412 years :)

Adrian Matejka - Do the Right Thing

2010-11-08T06:19:00.001-05:00

Spike Lee is so small I didn't even
see him at first, surrounded

by Black Expo goers like a gumdrop
in a fist. When I asked him to sign

my "Free South Africa" t-shirt,
he said, You didn't buy that at this

booth. Fresh off seeing Do the Right
Thing, I crowed: "What's that got

to do with your movies?" His fans
laughed, so he edited me like my name

was Pino: Why you care? You
ain't even black. Someone behind

me said, Damn, Spike. That ain't
right. But Spike's shamed scribble

on my t-shirt didn't change the missed
free throw feeling in my chest.

Mixology, Penguin Books 2009 [via Poetry Daily]

Wright & de Waal - Primate Ethics

2010-10-16T20:15:00.001-04:00

Finding traces of human morality in non-human primates
Is morality just a “veneer” that conceals selfishness?
What believers get from their religious communities
Which came first, morality or religion?
Frans vs. Al Sharpton on God and morality
Are humans too nice to be products of natural selection?

Link

Jacques Prévert – Iubire post-industrială

2010-08-31T18:11:00.001-04:00

Un bărbat scrie la maşină o scrisoare de dragoste şi maşina îi răspunde de mînă în locul destinatarei

Maşina e teribil de perfecţionată

maşina de spălat cecurile şi scrisorile de dragoste

Şi bărbatul confortabil instalat în maşina lui de locuit citeşte la maşina de citit răspunsul maşinii de scris

Şi în maşina lui de visat cu maşina lui de calculat el îşi cumpără o maşină de făcut dragoste

Şi în maşina lui de realizat visele el face dragoste cu maşina de scris la maşina de făcut dragoste

Şi maşina îl înşală maşinal

cu un oarecare comic şi banal

care-i şoptea suav sub lună:

Sînii tăi tineri străluceau sub lună

dar el a aruncat

o pietricică rece

piatra de gheaţă-a geloziei

pe oglindirea frumuseţii tale

care dansa pe ape în neclintirea serii

dansa cu unduiri domoale şi era goală în splendoarea verii

Şi ea era la fel de mică

dar încă de pe-acum vorbea în ea ceva bătrîn ca lumea

de pe acum ştia lucruri cumplite

ştia de pildă că trebuie să n-ai încredere în nimic

şi se uita la ied şi iedul se uita la ea

şi ea aproape că plîngea

El e ca mine

a spus ea

e trist un pic şi vesel tot un pic

Pe urmă a pornit să plimbe iedul prin livadă

şi a zîmbit şi n-a mai spus nimic

şi ploaia a-nceput să cadă şoptind timid:

„Maşina este foarte perfecţionată.”

[mixaj „Dragoste á la robot”, „Gîrla”, „Nori” folosind traducerea lui Gellu Naum]

Dan Gardner – The Science of Fear

2010-08-21T10:27:00.001-04:00

Haidt & Graham - Planet of the Durkheimians, Where Community, Authority, and Sacredness are Foundations of Morality

2010-08-16T10:32:00.001-04:00

How to start an academic paper:

It has not yet been revealed to the public, but we have it on good authority that intelligent life was recently discovered on a planet several light years away. The planet has been given an unpronounceable technical name, but scientists refer to the planet informally as “Planet Durkheim.” Judging by the television signals received, Durkheimians look rather like human beings, although their behavior is quite different. Durkheimians crave, above all else, being tightly integrated into strong groups that cooperatively pursue common goals. They have little desire for self-expression or individual development, and when the requirements of certain jobs force individuals to spend much time alone, or when the needs of daily life force individuals to make their own decisions or express their own preferences, Durkheimians feel drained and unhappy. In extreme cases of enforced individualism, they sometimes commit suicide. Durkheimians have a biological need to belong to tight groups with clear and widely-shared norms for behavior.

Given this need, it is not surprising that Durkheimian ethics revolves around groups. For any action they ask: does it undermine or strengthen the group? Anyone whose actions weaken social cohesion is evil and is ostracized. For first offenders the ostracism is brief, but for the most serious offenses the offender is tattooed with the word “Individualist” and is expelled from the group. Durkheimian societies are hierarchically organized by hereditary occupational castes, and most of the ostracism cases involve individuals who fail to perform their caste duties. These individuals seem to prefer their own comfort or own projects to the needs of their highly interdependent groups.

Within a few weeks of the discovery of Planet Durkheim, Google found a way to translate and index all Durkheimian academic journals. We used Google Durkheim to examine the state of social psychology research, and we found a fascinating debate taking place over the puzzle of “The Dissenters.” The Dissenters are a social movement that disagrees with the frequent use of permanent ostracism. The Dissenters point out that the penalty is applied overwhelmingly to members of the lower castes, for whom work is often dull or dangerous. They argue that these individuals are not traitors, they are innocent victims who should be given compassion, more societal resources, and better work. The Dissenters even suggest that society should be changed so that each individual rotates through all the high and low caste positions. The Dissenters acknowledge that such rotations would be less efficient than the current system of lifelong specializations assigned at birth, but they say it would be somehow right or good to do it anyway.

The Dissenters are a puzzle because most of them come from the upper castes. Why would an upper caste Durkheimian press for a change to society that would harm not just him or herself (through loss of privileges) but also society as a whole (through loss of efficiency)? There is no justification for such a position within Durkheimian morality, so Durkheimian social psychologists recently proposed a theory – called “Victim Justification Theory” – to explain the unconscious motives that impel Dissenters to defend traitors and challenge the legitimacy of the social system.

The paper: link.

Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration

2010-08-08T09:02:00.001-04:00

a TED talk from 2005

Wright v. Yudkowsky: Does life on Earth have a purpose

2010-08-07T21:29:00.001-04:00

Wright’s argument: Suppose you’re a Martian and you’re given a fertilized cell. You have never seen anything like it. You have no idea how it came to be (simply by chance or designed either by a natural selection process or by a conscious designer). You look at it and you see it grow and develop into a duck. Would you conclude, on the basis of this single data point, that it is a designed thing (rather than something that appeared by chance)? If yes, isn’t the entire Earth eco-system just like that? It started from something very simple and gradually evolved into something very complex. I.e. shouldn’t we take more seriously the idea that perhaps the entire process of evolution has a meta-purpose (such as building complexity and intelligence)?

Yudkowsky’s argument: No, the analogy is weak because internal elements in the eco-system have cross-purposes, e.g. a fox chases a rabbit, rather than cooperating for a single meta-purpose etc. while all the organs in the duck observed by the Martians work for a single purpose.

Wright argues that 1) the Martians, on the basis of seeing just that single duck, don’t really have very strong evidence supporting the idea that the duck has an optimized design, 2) similar correlations can be seen within the eco-system (e.g. plants produce oxygen for animals etc.), and 3) one cannot easily dismiss the idea that the observed cross-purposes (such as the fox/rabbit example) don’t have a higher optimization role.

The discussion: link

The old discussion with Dennett on the same subject referenced by Wright: link

Hayek about pleasure and civilization

2010-08-07T11:20:00.001-04:00

Excerpt from an 1979 interview of Friedrich Hayek by Bob Chitester:

CHITESTER: it seems to me that individuals, in coming at the questions of value, questions of society, the question of enjoyment has to be in there.
HAYEK: Oh, yes.
CHITESTER: And it seems it is so often corrupting. Why is it corrupting?
HAYEK: Because our instincts, which of course determine the enjoyment, are not fully adapted to our present civilization. ... Let me put it in a much more general way. What has helped us to maintain civilization is no longer satisfied by aiming at maximum pleasure. Our built-in instincts -- that is, the pleasure which guides us -- are the instincts which are conducive to the maintenance of the little roving band of thirty or fifty people.
The ultimate aim of evolution is not pleasure, but pleasure is what tells us in a particular phase what we ought to do. But that pleasure has been adapted to a quite different society than which we now live in. So pleasure is no longer an adequate guide to doing what life in our present society wants. That is the conflict between the discipline of rules and the innate pleasures, which recently has been occupying so much of my work.
CHITESTER: That suggests that we're outgrowing the usefulness of our native instincts.
HAYEK: Yes, yes. And it does raise the question whether the too-rapid growth of civilization can be sustained -- whether it will mean the revolt of our instincts against too much imposed restraints. This may destroy civilization and may be very counterproductive. But that man is capable of destroying the civilization which he has built up, by instincts and by rules which he feels to be restraints, is entirely a possibility.
CHITESTER: Yes, that's a kind of a terrifying thing.
HAYEK: Oh, yes.
CHITESTER: It suggests that there's no way out.
HAYEK: Well, there is no way out so long as -- It's not only instincts but there's a very strong intellectual movement which supports this release of instincts, and I think if we can refute this intellectual movement -- To put it in the most general form, I have to revert to [the idea that] two things happened in the last hundred years: on the one hand, an always steadily increasing part of the population did no longer learn in daily life the rules of the market on which our civilization is based. Because they grew up in organizations rather than participating in the market, they no longer were taught these rules.
At the same time, the intellectuals began to tell them these rules are nonsense anyhow; they are irrational. Don't believe in that nonsense. What was the combination of these two effects? On the one hand, people no longer learned the old rules; on the other hand, this sort of Cartesian rationalism, which told them don't accept anything which you do not understand. [These two effects] collaborated and this produced the present situation where there is already a lack of the supporting moral beliefs that are required to maintain our civilization.
I have some -- I must admit -- slight hope that if we can refute the intellectual influence, people may again be prepared to recognize that the traditional rules, after all, had some value. Whereas at present the official belief is, "Oh, it's merely cultural," which means really an absurdity. That view comes from the intellectuals; it doesn't come from the other development.

Zgomot

2010-08-04T20:47:00.001-04:00

Imaginează-ţi o cutie cu lacăt. Toată viaţa ai avut-o cu tine, dar n-ai cheia. Nu contează până la urmă că nu o ai. Ai cutia dintotdeauna aşa că ai ajuns să ghiceşti aproape perfect ce-i înăuntru doar din ce zgomote face când o mişti sau din cum îşi schimbă greutatea dintr-o parte în alta. Sau aşa îţi imaginezi – că ai ghici corect ce-i înăuntru. Ideea e că la un moment dat găseşti pe cineva care are cheia. Atunci vei putea descoperi şi mai bine cine eşti. Dar trebuie să descoperi persoana care să fie curioasă să încerce să-ţi deschidă cutia. Această metaforă sună poate bine dar n-are nici o legătură cu realitatea. Imaginează-ţi că nu există nici o cutie, şi nu există nimic ascuns în ea, dar există totuşi ceva de descoperit, există ceva ce tu nu ştii, şi există altcineva care are un fel de cheie. Imaginează-ţi un mesaj secret. Ai purtat dintotdeauna cu tine acest mesaj, dar habar n-ai cum să-l descifrezi. Ţi s-a spus că este important pentru că ar conţine instrucţiunile despre cum să te comporţi în fiecare situaţie posibilă astfel încât să obţii întotdeauna maximul din ceea ce poate fi obţinut. Trebuie să fi în armonie cu persoana care eşti de fapt. La ce bun să ai mesajul dacă nu ai codul? Dar pe măsură ce îţi trăieşti viaţa reuşeşti treptat să ghiceşti părţi din mesaj, comparând cu ce-ţi iese şi ce nu. Înveţi din experienţă şi încerci să prinzi fire din mesaj. Este şi o chestie de inteligenţă. Unii reuşesc să-şi descifreze porţiuni mai mari din propriul mesaj decât alţii. Alţii în schimb şi-au băgat pula, au renunţat, este prea greu, este obositor, este plicticos, au ales să trăiască de pe o zi pe alta ghidaţi doar de ce pare să le ofere plăcere la un moment dat. Alţii au ales să creadă că toţi avem acelaşi mesaj şi că nişte oameni deştepţi din trecut l-ar fi descifrat deja – iată vestea bună: codul se cunoaşte, tot ce trebuie să faci este să crezi că ce ţi se spune e adevărata descifrare, să te supui şi să admiţi că alţii au fost mai deştepţi decât tine chiar şi în ceea ce te priveşte pe tine însuţi. Da, chiar şi de înainte să te fi născut. Nu-i nimic de mirare, lumea are un plan, iar tu faci parte din el. Şi ăştia şi-au băgat de fapt pula în mesajul lor. Acum încearcă să şi-o bage şi-n al tău. Să te convingă să li te alături. Să înlocuieşti realitatea cu imaginaţia. Povestea cu cutia a fost o minciună, o poveste pentru copii sau o telenovelă pentru cei care rămân copii în sensul prost de a rămâne copii. Ceea ce-i ascuns nu-i un lucru, ci o informaţie, şi, îmi pare rău, nimeni n-are cheia pentru mesajul tău. Dar nu-i totul pierdut, altceva e disponibil. Chiar dacă nu avem toţi acelaşi mesaj, realitatea e că fiecare are o bucată dintr-un singur mesaj mai mare. Da! E un mare puzzle. Cu cât găseşti mai multe piese şi le combini, cu atât ai şanse mai mari să-ţi descifrezi propria bucată. Şi să-i ajuţi şi pe ăilalţi în încercarea lor de a se autocunoaşte. Dar n-ai ce face cu piesele care nu ţi se potrivesc. Iubirea universală face parte din balivernele ălora care cred în mesajul unic. Dar nici nu suntem toţi unici. Nu pleca acum în pădure „să fi liber” ca Thoreau. Aia nu-i libertate. Vorbim aici de un puzzle foarte redundant. Nimeni nu-i de neînlocuit. Găseşte piesele de lângă tine, nu renunţa, în cel mai rău caz eşti la margine şi ai doar o opţiune posibilă, dar măcar una tot ai. Alege să fi ceea ce eşti. Imaginează-ţi că nu există de fapt nici un mesaj. Te-am minţit din nou. Dar de data asta chiar îţi voi spune adevărul. Nu de alta, dar nu cred că ai rezista la mai mult de trei încercări. Ai un instrument muzical. Habar n-ai cum să cânţi la el. Alţii îţi zic că parcă-parcă ar mai fi văzut ceva de genul ăla dar nici ei nu se pricep să-l folosească. Cică străbunică-tu se pricepea să cânte la aşa ceva. Păcat că a murit anul trecut. Se poate cânta şi de unul singur, însă nu se poate spune că te pricepi cu adevărat decât dacă reuşeşti să te ţii de armonia altuia. De multe ori nu afli cât de prost de pricepi să-ţi foloseşti propria fiinţă decât experimentându-ţi incompetenţa direct. În mintea ta liniile melodice par că s-ar potrivi perfect, dar când le auzi suprapuse de-adevăratelea te îngrozeşti. Notele nu sunt suficiente. Dimpotrivă, uneori pot mai mult să încurce. Trebuie să se potrivească şi timbrul. De exemplu pianul se potriveşte cu clarinetul dar nu şi cu chitara. Şi nu poţi să înveţi să cânţi la propriul instrument doar după note. Cică să exersezi! Nu merge. E vorba aici de ditamai orchestrele de măcar doi oameni. Foarte rar se găsesc între ei mai mult de doi odată. Muzica e grea. Dacă cântă toţi acelaşi note ca papagalii nu se pune. Aia nu-i orchestră e programa decretată de ministerul învăţământului. Şi cu atât mai rău e că nu există nici o partitură. Nimeni nu poate ţine minte melodiile. Pe bune. Poate că la un moment dat se va inventa vreo tehnologie pentru stocat oamenii, dar momentan nu există aşa ceva. Să-ţi povestesc despre cineva. E o prostie desigur, e ca şi cum ţi-aş cânta Liszt la chitara electrică. Nu zic că nu sună bine, doar că-i altceva. Acum vreo sută de ani artiştii intraseră mai toţi în psihoza asta în care-şi închipuiau că arta ar funcţiona ca mijloc de stocare a persoanelor lor. O tragică înşelătorie. Ce se păstrează e doar mahmureala de a doua zi. După cum ziceam, nimeni nu ştie cum să păstreze melodiile. Creativitatea nu-i o virtute, e o inevitabilitate. Memoria nu există, lucrurile sunt reinventate şi nu ne amintim diferenţele – de-aia credem că ne amintim. Nici măcar tu însuţi nu te poţi reţine pe tine însuţi. Tot ce poţi face e să inventezi alte melodii, altele şi altele şi altele. Dacă ai cu cine. Şi omenirea, o să întrebi. Zgomot. Muzică industrială de cea mai bună calitate.

Bryan Caplan on the dynamics between ideas and economic growth

2010-07-31T14:28:00.001-04:00

An interesting essay from 2004: The Idea Trap

Imagine that the three variables I just named—growth, policy, and ideas—capture the essence of a country's economic/political situation. Then suppose that three "laws of motion" govern this system. The first two are almost true by definition:
1. Good ideas cause good policies.
2. Good policies cause good growth.

The third law is much less intuitive:
3. Good growth causes good ideas.

The third law only dawned on me when I was studying the public's beliefs about economics, and noticed that income growth seems to increase economic literacy, even though income level does not. In other words, poor people whose income is rising—like recent immigrants—have more than the average amount of economic sense; rich people whose income is falling—like the Kennedy family—have less.

This bare-bones model has a surprising implication: There is more than one outcome with staying power. The good news is that you can have favorable results across the board. Good ideas lead to good policy, good policy leads to good growth, and good growth reinforces good ideas. The bad news is that you can also get mired in the opposite outcome. A society can get stuck in an "idea trap," where bad ideas lead to bad policy, bad policy leads to bad growth, and bad growth cements bad ideas.

This also predicts that economic recessions generate the spread of bad ideas which, in turn, hamper recovery.

Bart Wilson on the Meaning of "Fair"

2010-07-31T05:51:00.001-04:00

Moral relativism as a function of culture

2010-07-29T21:39:00.003-04:00

The irony is that postmodernists cannot distinguish between 1 and 3, while natural rights theorists cannot distinguish between 2 and 3.

Robert Wright – Deception and self-deception

2010-07-22T13:48:00.001-04:00

Some quotes from The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are, chapter 13, “Deception and self-deception”:

Men and women may mislead each other — and even, in the process, themselves — about the likely endurance of their commitment or about their likely fidelity. There are two other large realms in which the presentation of self, and the perception of others, has great Darwinian consequence: reciprocal altruism and social hierarchy. Here, as with sex, honesty can be a major blunder. In fact, reciprocal altruism and social hierarchy may together be responsible for most of the dishonesty in our species — which, in turn, accounts for a good part of the dishonesty in the animal kingdom. We are far from the only dishonest species, but we are surely the most dishonest, if only because we do the most talking.

Leaving a good impression

People don't seek status per se. They don't chart out their desired ascent and pursue it as methodically as a field general prosecutes a war. Well, okay, some do. Maybe all of us do sometimes. But the quest for status is also built more finely into the psyche. People in all cultures, whether they fully realize it or not, want to wow their neighbors, to rise in local esteem. ...

In Victorian England, boasting was frowned on, and Darwin was an expert on how not to do it. Many modern cultures share this taste, and in them "excessive boasting" is merely a phase through which children pass. But what is the next phase? A lifetime of more measured boasting. ... Presumably, how much blatant boasting you do depends on the credible means of self-advertisement in your social environment (and was probably calibrated by feedback from kin and peers early on). But if you don't feel even some urge to disseminate news of your triumphs, however subtly, and some reluctance to talk widely about your failures, you aren't functioning as designed.

Does such self-advertisement often involve deception? Not in the grossest sense. To tell huge lies about ourselves, and believe them, would be dangerous. Lies can be found out, and they force us to spend time and energy remembering which lies we've told to whom. ... There are kinds of lies that, being slight, or hard to discredit, are hard to get tangled up in, and these are the sorts of lies we should expect people to tell. ...

The assignment of blame and of credit, an area where objective truth is elusive, offers rich terrain for self-inflation. The tendency to attribute our successes to skill, and our failures to circumstance — luck, enemies, Satan — has been demonstrated in the laboratory and, anyway, is obvious. In games where chance plays a role, we tend to chalk up our losses to the luck of the draw and our victories to cleverness.

And we don't just say this; we believe it. Darwin was an enthusiastic backgammon player and, not surprisingly, he often won when playing against his children. One of his daughters recalls that "we kept a list of the doublets thrown by each, as I was convinced that he threw better than myself." This conviction is familiar to losing backgammon players everywhere. It helps preserve our belief in our competence and thus helps us convince others of it. It also provides a steady source of income for backgammon hustlers.

Self-aggrandizement always comes at the expense of others. To say that you lost a game through luck is to say that your opponent won through luck. And even leaving aside games and other openly competitive endeavors, to toot your own horn is to mute other horns for status is a relative thing. Your gain is someone else's loss.

And vice versa: someone else's loss is your gain. This is where the unconscious pursuit of status can turn nasty. In a small group (a group, say, the size of a hunter-gatherer village), a person has a broad interest in deflating the reputations of others, especially others of the same sex and similar age, with whom there exists a natural rivalry. And again, the best way to convince people of something, including their neighbors' shortcomings, is to believe what you're saying. One would therefore expect, in a hierarchical species endowed with language, that the organisms would often play up their own feats, downplay the feats of others, and do both things with conviction. Indeed, in the social psychology laboratory, people not only tend to attribute success to skill and failure to circumstance; they tend to reverse the pattern when evaluating others. Luck is the thing that makes you fail and other people succeed; ability works the other way around. ...

The keen sensitivity with which people detect the flaws of their rivals is one of nature's wonders. It takes a Herculean effort to control this tendency consciously, and the effort must be repeated on a regular basis. Some people can summon enough restraint not to talk about their rivals' worthlessness; they may even utter some Victorian boilerplate about a "worthy opponent." But to rein in the perception itself — unending, unconscious, all-embracing search for signs of unworthiness — is truly a job for a Buddhist monk. Honesty of evaluation is simply beyond the reach of most mortals.

If advertisement is so deeply ingrained in people, why are there self-deprecators? One answer is that self-deprecation is without cost when everyone knows better, and can actually have some benefit; a reputation for humility boosts the credibility of subtle boasting. ... The third answer is the most interesting: social hierarchy has, via natural selection, had some ironic effects on the human mind. There are times when it makes good evolutionary sense to have a genuinely low opinion of yourself and to share that opinion with others.

The whole origin of status, remember, lies in the fact that some neighbors — some of a chicken's fellow chickens, say — are too formidable to challenge profitably. Genes that build brains that tell the animal which neighbors are worth challenging, and which aren't, flourish. How exactly do the brains convey this message? Not by sending little "Challenge" or "Don't Challenge" subtitles across the eyeball. Presumably, the message travels via feeling; animals feel either up to the challenge or not up to it. And animals at the very bottom of the hierarchy — animals that get pummeled by all comers — will get the latter feeling chronically. You could call it low self-esteem.

In fact, you could say that low self-esteem evolved as a way to reconcile people to subordinate status when reconciliation is in their genetic interest.

Don't expect people with low self-esteem to hide it. It may be in their genetic interest not only to accept low status, but, in at least some circumstances, to convey their acceptance of it — to behave submissively so that they aren't erroneously perceived as a threat and treated as such. ...

The anthropologist John Hartung, who in 1988 raised the possibility of self-deceptively lowering self-esteem — "deceiving down," he called it — has come up with another kind of example. Women, he suggested, may sometimes falsely subordinate themselves to men. If, say, household income depends partly on the husband having high self-esteem at the workplace, a woman may find herself unwittingly "building her husband's self-confidence by providing a standard of lower competence." ...

Where does truth belong on the spectrum of self-esteem? If one month, following a string of professional and social successes, you're fairly brimming with serotonin and feel enduringly competent, likable, and attractive, and the next month, after a few setbacks, and some serotonin slippage, you feel enduringly worthless, you can't have been right both times. Which time were you wrong? Is serotonin truth serum or a mind-numbing narcotic?

Maybe neither. When you're feeling either very good or very bad about yourself, it probably means that a large body of evidence is being hidden from view. The most truthful times come between the extremes.

Anyway, maybe "truth" is best left out of this altogether. Whether you're a "good" or a "worthless" person is a question whose objective meaning is, at best, elusive. And even when "truth" can be clearly defined, it is a concept to which natural selection is indifferent. ... Truth and honesty are never favored by natural selection in and of themselves. Natural selection neither "prefers" honesty nor "prefers" dishonesty. It just doesn't care.

Strong yet sensitive

Reciprocal altruism brings its own agenda to the presentation of self, and thus to the deception of self. Whereas status hierarchies place a premium on our seeming competent, attractive, strong, smart, etcetera, reciprocal altruism puts its accent on niceness, integrity, fairness. These are the things that make us seem like worthy reciprocal altruists. They make people want to strike up relationships with us. Puffing up our reputations as decent and generous folks can't hurt, and it often helps. ...

Our repertoire of moral excuses is large. Psychologists have found that people justify their failure to help others by minimizing, variously, the person's plight ("That's not an assault, it's a lover's quarrel"), their own responsibility for the plight, and their own competence to help. ...

Michael Gazzaniga, who conducted some of the split-brain experiments, has said that language is merely the "press agent" for other parts of the mind; it justifies whatever acts they induce, convincing the world that the actor is a reasonable, rational, upstanding person. It may be that the realm of consciousness itself is in large part such a press agent — the place where our unconsciously written press releases are infused with the conviction that gives them force. Consciousness cloaks the cold and self-serving logic of the genes in a variety of innocent guises. The Darwinian anthropologist Jerome Barkow has written, "It is possible to argue that the primary evolutionary function of the self is to be the organ of impression management (rather than, as our folk psychology would have it, a decision-maker)."

Dubious accounting

The warping effect of reciprocal altruism goes beyond a general belief in our own uprightness. It can also be seen in our skewed social accounting systems. Central to reciprocal altruism is the monitoring of exchanges — the record of whom you owe, who owes you, and how much is owed. From the gene's point of view, monitoring the two sides of the record with equal diligence would be foolish. If you end up getting slightly more than you give, so much the better. But if you give more than you get by even the smallest increment, that's an increment of loss. ... [P]eople keep closer track of what they're owed than of what they owe ... So there is reason to suspect an innate basis for biased social accounting. The bias appears to be universal, and seems intuitively to be a corollary of the theory of reciprocal altruism.

[People] simply find themselves constantly in touch with all the evidence supporting their position, and often having to be reminded of all the evidence against it. Darwin wrote in his autobiography of a habit he called a "golden rule": to immediately write down any observation that seemed inconsistent with his theories — "for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. " The reason the generic human arguing style feels so effortless is that, by the time the arguing starts, the work has already been done. Robert Trivers has written about the periodic disputes — contract renegotiations, you might call them — that are often part of a close relationship, whether a friendship or a marriage. The argument, he notes, "may appear to burst forth spontaneously, with little or no preview, yet as it rolls along, two whole landscapes of information appear to lie already organized, waiting only for the lightning of anger to show themselves."

The proposition here is that the human brain is, in large part, a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing others that its owner is in the right — and thus a machine for convincing its owner of the same thing. The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue. ...

One might think that, being rational creatures, we would eventually grow suspicious of our uncannily long string of rectitude, our unerring knack for being on the right side of any dispute over credit, or money, or manners, or anything else. Nope. Time and again — whether arguing over a place in line, a promotion we never got, or which car hit which — we are shocked at the blindness of people who dare suggest that our outrage isn't warranted.

Darwinian liberalism

2010-07-21T14:17:00.002-04:00

I'm enjoying the conversation at CATO Unbound about Larry Arnhart's ideas about the connection between Darwinism and liberalism. It seems to me that Arnhart is on to something, but that he is not presenting the argument very well, and thus the other contributors (PZ Myers, Lionel Tiger, and Herbert Gintis) have failed to appreciate it properly. Here is how I would reframe it (and perhaps change it’s conclusion a bit?):

Given the relatively unchanging human nature, various types of social order (i.e. different sets of formal+informal institutions) are not equally conducive of a particular social goal X; i.e. one cannot manufacture the “ideal human nature” for advancing social goal X, but instead has to take human nature as it is and search for institutional reforms that lead to X. Whether or not social goal X is better achieved by institutions A or B is an objective fact (although sometimes, due to the complexities involved, it is difficult to demonstrate A or B). This objectivity stems from human nature’s lack of malleability, as Arnhart argues and the others seem to agree.

The problem now is that there are many possible social goals that people may consider, and there's no consensus about which are “really” more important than others. This is where Arnhart’s weak point in the argument seems to be. He seems to be saying simply that, given human nature as it is, certain worthy social goals (e.g. welfare) are best achieved via classical liberal institutions. However, this isn’t enough to conclude that liberalism is a necessary consequence of human nature because other people may rather focus on different social goals (e.g. more equality, respecting tradition etc.). Various social goals are in conflict and there’s no objective way in which we can decide how to make the trade-offs between them. All we can hope for is a negotiation process among various people with different views, i.e. politics.

There is thus a problem if one wants to derive a normative position from the Darwinian theory of human nature. However, one doesn’t need to push for a normative position, and the above relativist argument actually fails to push Darwinism to its natural limits. There is a particular social “goal” that is objective, in the sense that it is derived from an application of the weak anthropic principle to the evolution of institutions: present institutions are here because they have survived (so far) in the competition with other institutions. In other words, any social goal X that one might favor has to obey a higher Darwinian “goal”: the institutions conducive of goal X have to be able to survive in the competition with other institutions.

Institutions survive and spread due to three possible reasons:
1) they further the average interests of individuals (classical sociological individualist functionalism and economics, e.g. see Mises for a rather extreme idealization of this position);
2) they further the power of the group (classical sociological group functionalism, and, notably, Hayek, David Sloan Wilson);
3) they simply spread, regardless of whether they actually bring any individual or group benefits, because people find them intuitive due to their evolved social instincts (Cosmides & Tooby, Sperber, Richerson & Boyd, Boyer, Atran).

To put it differently, institutions spread either because they are imitated from one society to another (and they’re imitated because of 1 or 3) or because a society conquers another and imposes new institutions to it (i.e. 2, a task somewhat difficult but not unseen).

Thus, from a purely descriptive point of view, asking what follows from the existence of a universal and inflexible human nature means asking: what ensemble of institutions furthers average individual interest better (the average being hypothetically computed by weighting the interest of each individual according to its power and influence within the group), makes society more powerful relative to other societies (such that it resists being conquered or it succeeds in conquering them), and is relatively in-sync with our evolved social and moral intuitions?

So, how does classical liberalism fare this test? Is it really the kind of institutional system we would expect to see spreading and conquering all others? First of all, it has a real intuition problem (especially because it conflicts with our intuitions about equality, bad luck, and strangers). Arnhart acknowledges this, which is why he sides with a liberal-conservative fusion, rather than with pure libertarianism. This intuition problem is compensated to some extent by the fact that a) liberalism increases individual welfare faster than any other system, b) it diminishes conflicts with other societies due to free trade, albeit c) greater wealth also translates into greater military power. Thus, at least prima facie, it seems that what we should expect to see spreading is basically the US-EU institutional model – i.e. a somewhat protectionist social-market economy with a strong military. And of course, this, rather than classical liberalism, is precisely the system that’s spreading (to China etc.).*

* my own liberal/libertarian normative beliefs are not exactly along the lines of this conclusion, but, heck, what can I do?

Philip Rieff - “Because we have no real churches, we can have no reformations”

2010-07-18T20:04:00.001-04:00

Some interesting quotes from The Triumph of the Therapeutic, by Philip Rieff.

In the natural beginning were the impulses; in the historic beginning were the repressions. Political history began when some of the repressed discovered how to use repressions to their own material gain. (p. 130)

To speak of a moral culture would be redundant. Every culture has two main functions: 1) to organize the moral demands men make upon themselves into a system of symbols that make men intelligible and trust-worthy to each other, thus rendering also the world intelligible and trust-worthy; 2) to organize the expressive remissions by which men release themselves, in some degree, from the strain of conforming to the controlling symbolic, internalized variant readings of culture that constitute individual character. (p. 199)

No culture of which we are aware of has yet escaped the tension between the modalities of control and release by which every culture constitutes itself. Cultures achieve their measure of duration in the degree that they build releasing devices into the major controls. These are the devices that modern psychotherapy seeks to develop; it is this development which gives to psychotherapy its present importance in the history of our culture. ...

A cultural revolution occurs when the releasing or remissive symbolic grows more compelling than the controlling one; then it is that the inherent tensions reach a breaking point. (p. 200)

(Here is a very similar view from Zizek: video)

This view of culture is a generalization of Rieff’s view of religion and of the function of faith:

It is essential to the understanding of the function of religion that it presents jointly and in fusion two analytically discernible alternatives: either a therapeutic control of everyday life or a therapeutic respite from that very control. On the one hand, faith is doctrinal, and that doctrine is internalized thus becoming functionally anti-instinctual. On the other hand, faith is ecstatic, or erotic; there is a relative absence of doctrinal internalization, and the religious mood covertly provides an opportunity for the instincts to express themselves more directly, for example, in orgiastic behavior, or in mystical states of mind which release the subject from traditional authority.

Defined as control of conduct in everyday life, faith tends to be methodical and systematic. Defined as remission of that control, faith tends to be anti-methodical and unsystematic. To the extent that a system of faith spreads, the line between usual and unusual religious experience grows fuzzy. (p. 27-8)

In the past, religion achieved its therapeutic function via “therapies of commitment”. “Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased” (p. 19)

In time of public philosophies and social religions, the great communities were positive. A positive community is characterized by the fact that it guarantees some kind of salvation to the individual by virtue of his membership and participation in that community. That sort of community seemed corrupt to economic man, with his particular version of ascetic ideal tested mainly by self-reliance and personal achievement. The positive community was displaced, in social theory, by the neutral market. Now, in the middle of 20th century, the market mechanism appears no so much corrupt as a fiction to psychological man, with his awareness of how decisions are made in the social system. (p. 43)

From Plato and Aristotle, through Burke and de Tocqueville, the therapeutic implication of social theory is remarkably consistent: an individual can exercise his gifts and powers fully only by participating in the common life. This is the classical ideal. The healthy man is in fact the good citizen. The therapeutic and the moral were thus connected in the Western tradition of social theory. (p. 56)

Ultimately the community cures. The function of the classical therapist is to commit the patient to the symbol system of the community, as best he can and by whatever techniques are sanctioned (e.g. ritual or dialectical, magical or rational). All such efforts to reintegrate the subject into the communal symbol system may be categorized as “commitment therapies”. Behind shaman and priest, philosopher and physician, stands the great community as the ultimate corrective of personal disorders. (p. 57)

In short, security cured; and security came through membership in an “organic” community. This was the basis of conservative and radical political theory alike: community cures through the achievement by the individual of his collective identity. To cure a man, one need only to return him to his community or construct a new one. (p. 59)

Moreover, the “religious therapeutic elites” acted to protect the “moral demands” and to promote “commitments” to a unique model of the good life. They were even willing to go as far as to engage “in the absurd task of trying to teach contended people how discontented they really are” (p. 207). This is no longer the case:

Therapeutic elites before our own were predominately supportive rather than critical of culture as a moral demand system. Admonitions were expectable predicates of consolations; that is what is meant, nowadays, by “guilt” culture. Whenever therapeutic elites grow predominately critical then a cultural revolution may be said to be in progress. Ours is such a time. (p. 11)

Thus, according to Rieff, we are in the middle of a major cultural revolution, characterized by growing individualism and a loss of communal goals.

An endemic individualism, such as that in the United States, whether doctrinally elaborated or not, may prevent a commitment therapy from taking full effect. Because of this preventive, long culturally dominant, another kind of therapeutic effort has become necessary, uniquely modern, and different in kind from the classical therapies of commitment. This new attitude underlying the therapeutic effort may be termed “analytic”. The chief and greatest of these therapies is the Freudian. The analytic therapy developed precisely in response to the need of the Western individual, in the Tocquevillean definition, for a therapy that would not depend for its effect on a symbolic return to a positive community; at best, analytic therapy creates negative communities. The distinction between positive and negative communities, in the usage here intended, is as follows: positive communities are characterized by their guarantee of some kind of salvation for the self; and by salvation is meant an experience which transforms all personal relations by subordinating them to agreed communal purposes; negative communities are those which, enabled to survive almost automatically by a self-sustaining technology, do not offer a type of collective salvation, and in which the therapeutic experience is not transformative but rather informative. Commitment therapies can prove efficacious only in positive communities; this kind of therapy would also be transformative, as in various kinds of religious conversion, when personality is supposed to undergo profound changes, so that even the name of the subject may be changed. This may happen, however, as we are aware, also in various secular revolutionary movements. ...

Advanced industrial communities are no longer culturally positive. Under this general condition, controls must be established in a way other than that of transformative experiences. The ways suitable to modern culture are generally classifiable as “informative”, aiming at strengthening of ego-controls over inner conflicts. (p. 61)

In the age of psychologizing , clarity about oneself supersedes devotion to an ideal as the model of right conduct. (p. 46)

But why did this revolution get started? I.e. what is the origin of “modernity”?

What happens, however, if the community itself is disordered? Plato and his successors faced this question. They tried to construct models for a re-ordering of the community and, therewith, for that of a personal life worth living. They assumed that personal and moral perfection would go parallel with insight into the right social order. Yet, suppose there occurred some disorder so fundamental in nature as to destroy the therapeutic function of the community per se? Suppose, for a variety of examined reasons, the community were no longer able to supply a system of symbolic integration? Here, then, in the destruction of all idealizations upon which traditional and classical communities were based, in theory and practice, is to be sought the origin of modernity. (p. 57)

The main cause of this “fundamental disorder”, and, thus, of the present cultural revolution, is economic and technological. “What happens if an entire society grows rich, technologically loaded with bribes, and is dominated by preoccupations that may be best defined as anti-creedal?” (p.213). What happens is that the commitments to a unique model of the good life are simply no longer perceived as necessary to the preservation of social order (negative communities “survive almost automatically”):

With their secondary needs automatically satisfied, men may no longer need to have something in common, as an end to love. The organization of indifference may well succeed the organization of love, producing a culture at lower cost to individual energies. (p. 204)

The strange new lesson we have begun to learn in our time is how not to pay the high personal costs of social organization. The revolution continues in a remissive direction, beyond that rationalism Max Weber called “disenchantment”, toward the dissolution of old systems of moral demand, with their requirements of almost total social cooperation in order to survive the hard reality in a world characterized by scarcity. The present swing in the direction of release may not be orbital but more extended and historically more permanent, based on the automaticity and ease with which an infinity of created needs can now be satisfied. ...

[T]he modern cultural revolution ... is deliberately not in the name of any new order of communal purpose that it is taking place. On the contrary, this revolution is being fought for a permanent disestablishment of any deeply internalized moral demands, in a world which can guarantee a plenitude produced without reference to the rigid maintenance of any particular interdictory (and counter-interdictory) system. (p. 205)

Our cultural revolution has been made from the top, rather from the bottom. It is anti-political, a revolution of the rich by which they have lowered the pressure of inherited communal purpose upon themselves. ...

[C]ultural revolutions before our own have asserted some limit on the race for status and satisfaction, and have promoted interdicts to limit and displace the dynamics of acquisitive appetite. Western culture has been dominated by an ascetic modal personality. Even the Calvinist bourgeois was to have his capital as if he had it not. Ours is the first cultural revolution fought to no other purpose than greater amplitude and richness of living itself. Is this not what is meant by the “revolution of rising expectations”? ...

For the culturally conservative image of the ascetic, enemy of his own needs, there has been substituted the image of the needy person, permanently engaged in the task of achieving a gorgeous variety of satisfactions. (p. 206-7)

Confronted with the irrelevance of ascetic standards of conduct, the social reformer has retreated from nebulous doctrines attempting to state the desired quality of life to the more substantial doctrines of quantity. The reformer asks only for more of everything – more goods, more housing, more leisure; in short, more life. This translation of quantity into quality states the algebra of our cultural revolution. Who will be stupid enough to lead a counter revolution? Surely, even the rich are now emancipated enough from ascetic symbol systems to concede more of everything to everyone, without serious loss to themselves. They cannot be threatened by a doctrine that merely asks for more, for this presupposes that quantity determines the quality of life – and this very assumption expresses the religion of the rich. (p. 208)

Not trained in a symbolic of obedience – indeed, entertaining the category merely as a convenience – Western man could be free at last from an authority depending upon his sense of sin. Even now, sin is all but incomprehensible to him inasmuch as the moral demand system no longer generates powerful inclinations toward obedience or faith, nor feelings of guilt when those inclinations are overridden by others for which sin is the ancient name. (209-10)

So, what happens when this concept of “more is the definition of better” is applied to human relationships? Here’s Rieff’s premonition of Facebook and social networking :)

Crowded more and more together, we are learning to live more distantly from one another, in strategically varied and numerous contacts, rather than in the oppressive warmth of family and friends. A culture of contacts is, at last, an historically accomplishable fact. (p. 208)

While close friendship is replaced by “contacts”, intimacy is replaced by superficiality:

All objects of commitment [are rendered] instrumental to the therapeutic process itself. ... To be truly free and yet social means to cultivate detachment, as opposed to alienation. The therapeutic, even in erotic action, can do without attachment – indeed, he can do with and do without it, simultaneously, for relations that are too near and too fixed may lead to symptoms that destroy the capacity of an individual to live out his own life in ways of his own choosing. This is not to say that to live thus, detachedly, implies an absence of erotic company, or even an absence of the erotic manner. On the contrary, the therapeutic treats love instrumentally. He is more likely to be more circumspect and better behaved than his ascetic forebear, who was subject to mood fluctuations between wild passion and accidie, due in part to the rigid system of controls and over burned devices of release. With a shift in the system, giving greater amplitude to the releasing devices, the subject personalities are likely to develop more measured, calculated capacity in the use of their spontaneity. (p. 50)

The faith in the external things, rather than in the externalization of feeling, has had the effect on making man think less and less highly of himself rather than more and more so. (p. 172-3)

The presumed enemy of this cultural revolution is traditional religion. However, it has been co-opted as they failed to mount a worthy opposition or present a credible alternative. Thus the triumph of the therapeutic – religion itself has been reinterpreted in individualistic therapeutic terms.

Faith is better than knowledge if it works; but knowledge is better if faith be only an escape from knowledge. (p. 83)

Truth is a matter of achieving therapeutically useful opinions. (p. 82)

Freud taught lessons which Americans, prepared by their own national experience, learned easily: survive, resign yourself to living within your moral means, suffer no gratuitous failures in a futile search for ethical heights that no longer exist – if they ever did. Freud proclaims the superior wisdom of choosing the second best. He is our Crito, become intellectually more subtle than the sick and old Socrates, who was still foolish enough to justify his own death sentence rather than escape from the prison of his own inhibitions about the sanctity of the state, which he mistakes for his father. Freud appeals to us because his wisdom is so cautious. (p. 48)

Emancipated from an ethic of hard work, Americans have also grown morally less self-demanding. They have been released from the old system of self-demands by a convergence of doctrines that do not resort to new restrictions but rather propose jointly the superiority of all that money can buy, technology can make, and science can conceive. (p. 216)

Nowadays, the world is full of tame Christians; in consequence, the churches are empty of life, if not of people. (p. 84)

[P]reaching, which once communicated revelatory messages, is a dead art, wrapping empty packages in elaborate solecisms. (p. 218)

Certain naive ascetic doctrines, which once did contain spiritual perceptions of great depth, such as that of holy poverty, now embarrass the churches, competing as they do for pride of place in a culture of affluence. Such perceptions are practically taboo subjects, specially among Americans, except negatively, when clergymen complain that they do not receive salaries commensurate with their status as professional men. ... Grudgingly, the Roman [Catholic] churchmen must give way to their Western laity and translate their sacramental rituals into comprehensible terms as therapeutic devices, retaining just enough archaism to satisfy at once the romantic interest of women and the sophisticated interest of those historical pietists for whom the antique alone carries that lovely patina they call faith. (p. 216)

On the other hand, the therapeutic has arisen out of a rejection of all therapies of commitment, precisely by persuading halfway the recalcitrant among those who submitted to the old commitment therapies that they have acted out of denials of knowledge and pleasure that no longer contribute to their spiritual health but, rather, to their mental disease. (p. 217)

[Western society] can develop no new (or renewed) system of interdicts from the therapeutic parody of a moral demand system; in consequence, all attempts at connecting the doctrines of psychotherapy with old faiths are patently misconceived. At its most innocuous, these psychotherapeutic religiosities represent a failure of nerve by both psychotherapists and clergymen. (p. 218)

The aim of psychoanalysis is the aim of science – power; in this case a transformative technology of the inner life. Where science is, technology will be. This ultimate technology aims at increasing the range of choice. Yet, without a parallel range of god-terms from which choices may be derived or ordered, choice itself may become a matter of indifference or man will become a glutton, choosing everything. There is no feeling more desperate than that of being free to choose, and yet without the specific compulsion of being chosen. After all one does not really choose; one is chosen. This is one way of stating the difference between gods and men. Gods choose; men are chosen. What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely the sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility. (p. 79)

The scientists are a curious case. By tradition and training they are intractably modest. Claims to spiritual perception rarely occur explicitly in their work. Profoundly as that work has affected modern culture, the scientists have been non-combatants in the culture class war. With rare exceptions, they still accept the Rtschlian distinction between statements of fact and judgments of value. They make fact statements; the task of making value judgments belongs to other specialists, those elites that won exclusive custody over culture even as they gave up pretending they had authoritative knowledge of nature. (p. 218)

The scientific community aspires to be supra-cultural, and is not qualified therefore to supply creedal dynamic to than new laity, the non-scientists. In this sense, the scientific endeavor in its entirety, representing as it does the effort to create a non-moral culture, embodies the moral revolution. With a commitment that is strictly vocational, the scientist personifies the latest phase in the Western psycho-historical process, one that refrains from laying down guidelines of moral intervention for the society as a whole. Whatever his professed intention, the scientist acts, therefore, as a spiritual perceptor to modern man. The therapeutic has everything – and nothing – to learn from the scientist, for, in the established sense of the word, the scientist, as such, has no culture. (p. 219)

That a sense of well-being has become the end, rather than a by-product of striving after some superior communal end, announces a fundamental change of focus in the entire case of our culture – toward a human condition about which there will be nothing further to say in terms of the old style of despair and hope. (p. 223)

Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception

2010-06-29T12:03:00.001-04:00

Jose Saramago - “Ignoranta ne apara de falsele cunoasteri”

2010-06-27T17:14:00.001-04:00

Povestea unei vaci, din Calatoria Elefantului:

Despre ce poveste e vorba, intreba comandantul, Istoria unei vaci, Vacile au istorie, intreba din nou comandantul, zambind, Asta, da, are, douasprezece zile si douasprezece nopti in muntii din galicia, pe frig, si ploie, si gheata, si noroi, si pietre ascutite ca niste hangere, si hatisuri cu unghii, si scurte intervale de odihna, si lupta si atacuri, si urlete si mugete, istoria unei vaci care s-a ratacit pe camp cu vitelul ei de lapte si s-a pomenit inconjurata de lupi timp de douasprezece zile si douasprezece nopti, si a fost obligata sa se apere si sa-si apere puiul, o nesfarsita batalie, spaima de a fi la un pas de moarte, un cerc de dinti, de gatlejuri cascate, salturile bruste, coarnele care nu puteau sa dea gres, teroarea de a trebui sa lupte pentru sine si pentru un pui care nu se putea apara singur, si, de asemenea, momentele cand vitelul cauta ugerul mamei, si sugea lent, in timp ce lupii se apropiau, cu spinarea incordata si urechile ciulite. Subhro respira adanc si urma, Dupa dousprezece zile, vaca a fost gasita si salvata, plus vitelul, si au fost dusi in triumf in sat, dar povestea nu se termina aici, a continuat inca doua zile, pentru ca invatase sa se apere, pentru ca nimeni nu mai putea s-o stapaneasca si nici macar sa se apropie de ea, vaca a fost omorata, nu de lupii pe care ii invinsese in douasprezece zile de lupta, ci chiar de oamenii care o salvasera, poate chiar de stapanul ei, incapabil sa inteleaga ca, invatand sa lupte, animalul, pe vremuri pasnic si impacat cu soarta, nu se va mai opri niciodata.

O tacere respectuoasa domni cateva secunde in marea sala de piatra. Soldatii prezenti, desi fara mare experienta de razboi, e de ajuns sa spunem ca cei mai tineri nu mirosisera niciodata praful de pusca de pe campurile de bataie, se minunau in sinea lor de curajul unei creaturi irationale, o vaca, inchipuiti-va, care aratase ca are sentimente atat de umane ca iubirea de familie, darul sacrificiului personal, abnegatia dusa la extrem. Primul care a vorbit a fost soldatul care se pricepea la lupi, Povestea ta este frumoasa, ii spuse lui subhro, si vaca asta ar merita cel putin o medalie pentru curaj si merit, dar, in relatare, sunt unele lucruri neclare, ba chiar cam dubioase. De exemplu, intreba cornacul pe un ton bataios, De exemplu, cine ti-a povestit intamplarea, Un galician, Si el de unde o stie, Trebuie s-o fi auzit de la cineva, Sau s-o fi citit, Nu cred ca stie sa citeasca, A auzit-o si a tinut-o minte, E posibil, eu n-am facut decat s-o repet cat de bine am putut, Ai memorie buna, cu atat mai mult cu cat povestea e spusa intr-un limbaj putin curent, Multumesc, spuse subhro, dar acum as vrea sa stiu ce lucruri neclare si cam dubioase ai gasit tu in povestire, Primul este ca se se da de inteles, sau, mai bine zis, se afirma clar ca lupta dintre vaca si lupi a durat douasprezece zile si douasprezece nopti, ceea ce inseamna ca lupii au atacat vaca indata, in prima noapte, si s-au retras, probabil cu pierderi, in ultima, N-am fost acolo, n-am putut vedea, Da, dar cei care stiu cate ceva despre lupi stiu ca aceste animale, desi traiesc in haite, vaneaza singuri, Unde vrei sa ajungi, intreba subhro, Vreau sa spun ca vaca n-ar fi putut rezista atacului combinat a trei sau patru lupi, nu zic douasprezece zile, dar nici macar o singura ora, Atunci, in povestea vacii luptatoare, totul e minciuna, Nu minciuna, exagerare, zurgalai de limbaj, jumatati de adevar care vor sa treaca drept adevaruri complete, Atunci, ce crezi tu ca s-a intamplat, intreba subhro, Cred ca vaca intr-adevar s-a pierdut, a fost atacata de un lup, a luptat cu el si l-a obligat sa fuga, poate grav ranit, iar apoi a ramas pe loc pascand si dand sa suga vitelului, pana cand au gasit-o, Si nu se putea intampla sa mai vina inca un lup, Ba da, dar asta ar insemna prea multa imaginatie, pentru a justifica medalia de curaj si merit, e de ajuns un singur lup. Asistenta aplauda gandindu-se ca, la urma urmelor, vaca galiciana merita adevarul, tot atat cat medalia.

It seems I’m a psychological reductionist :)

2010-05-31T16:35:00.001-04:00

The Personal Identity Game

Your choices are consistent with the theory known as psychological reductionism. On this view, all that is required for the continued existence of the self is psychological continuity. Your three choices show that this is what you see as central to your sense of self, not any attachment to a particular substance, be it your body, brain or soul.

Jose Saramago despre dumnezeu si teoria jocurilor

2010-05-31T10:11:00.001-04:00

Din Calatoria elefantului de Jose Saramago:

Hamalii s-au pus deja in mișcare. Conviețuirea cu militarii ii făcuse, aproape fara sa-si dea seama, sa capete anumite obiceiuri de disciplina precum cele care pot rezulta din ordinul de încolonare, de exemplu, invatasera sa se organizeze intr-o coloana formata din doua sau trei rânduri, pentru ca nu e indiferent cum sunt dispuși oamenii, intr-un caz, coloana ar avea cincisprezece rânduri, o întindere exagerata, usor de dezorganizat la cea mai mica tulburare personala sau colectiva, in alt caz, ea ar fi redusa la un solid bloc de zece rânduri, căruia nu i-ar lipsi decât scuturile ca sa semene cu țestoasa romana. Cu toate acestea, diferența e mai ales psihologica. Sa ne gândim ca oamenii au înaintea lor un marș îndelungat si ca e firesc ca, in cursul lui, sa stea de vorba ca sa treaca timpul. Or, doi oameni care trebuie sa meargă împreuna timp de doua sau trei ore fara oprire fara oprire, chiar imaginandu-ne ca e mare dorința de comunicare, vor sfârșit in mod fatal, mai devreme sau mai târziu, prin a cădea intr-o tăcere stânjenitoare, mai știi, chiar urandu-se. Cate unul s-ar putea sa nu fie in stare sa reziste tentației de a-l arunca pe celalalt in râpa. Au dreptate, așadar, cei care spun ca trei a fost socoteala pe care a făcut-o dumnezeu, numărul păcii, numărul concordiei. In trei, cel puțin, oricine va putea sa tacă timp de câteva minute fara sa bata prea mult la ochi. Cel mai rau ar fi daca unul care s-a gândit sa-l elimine pe altul ca sa-i ia mâncarea, de exemplu, l-ar invita pe al treilea sa colaboreze la condamnabila lui acțiune, iar acesta i-ar răspunde cu teama, Nu pot, i-am promis sa-l ajut sa te omoare pe tine.

De la Craig Venter la genomul Neandertalienilor

2010-05-29T10:32:00.001-04:00

Topics:

Craig Venter’s artificial life
Christina on the future of synthetic biology
John on the decoding of the Neandertal genome
How much like Neandertals are we?
A primer on fossil forensics
Paleoanthropology and synthetic biology: the hidden connections

The non-aggression principle

2010-05-26T17:02:00.001-04:00

A woman hired somebody to mow her lawn. The hired person accidentally hurts himself very badly with the lawn mower. The woman, under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic drug, gets out of the house and just watches the man from a relative distance as he is suffering. The contract between the two did not stipulate anything about such a situation. However, a neighbor observes the suffering man and tries to come to his help. After a warning, the woman shoots the neighbor down for trespassing on her property. After two hours, the injured man has bled to death. The woman decides that, after all, she likes better the grass growing freely. She returns to the house and calls the morgue. The market value of her property and of neighboring properties diminishes slightly, but justice will be served: she is suing the lawn mower producer for damages.

In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. (Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness)

“No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.” (Murray Rothbard, The Myth of National Defense)

Rules should be judged by the incentives they create, but there are no objective criteria for judging. Social experiments matter, while rational deduction can never really be distinguished from rationalization.

Robotics Revolution and the Future of Evolution

2010-05-16T13:04:00.002-04:00

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Inclusivitate

2010-04-08T14:08:00.002-04:00

Musafirii ce vin si pleaca, fiecare simtindu-se altfel,
Se aseaza la masa de la marginea drumului si se ridica:
Si fiecare dintre vietile lor face la fel
Cazeaza cate-un suflet si-l hraneste cu ceva nou in fiecare zi.
Ce om s-a aplecat peste fiul sau care dormea, meditand
La felul cum acel chip il va veghea pe-al sau, inert si rece?
Ori s-a gandit, cand propria-i mama il saruta pe ochi,
La felul cum saruta ea mai demult, cand insusi tatal sau ii facea curte?

N-ar putea aceasta antica-ncapere sa-ti adaposteasca
In suflete separate bucuria si durerea?
Nu, ea poate fi zugravita simplu in orice colt
In care Raiul expune imaginea vreunei vieti petrecuta bine;
Si poate purta amprenta unei amintiri cu totul fara rost
Acolo unde e privita de ochiul fara pleoapa al Iadului.

[1870]
[Mai multe poeme aici]

Behavioral economics and the rethinking of scarcity

2010-03-26T17:24:00.002-04:00

- Why exactly wouldn’t you buy a $5 latte?
- For the poor, every day is exam day
- Sendhil is ambivalent about payday lending
- “Stability tax”: a shocking fact about how the poor spend money
- How a single mom on welfare is like an air-traffic controller

Women, the best firewall in the world

2010-03-24T16:55:00.001-04:00

From reddit:

One human cell contains 75MB genetic information.
One sperm contains a half of that; that is 37.5MB.
One ml of semen contains 100 million sperms.
In average, ejaculation lasts for 5 sec and contains 2.25 ml semen.
This means that the throughput of a man's member is equal to (37.5MB x 100’000’000 x 2.25) / 5 = 1’687’500’000’000’000byte/second = 1.6875 Тerabyte/sec

This means that the female eggcell withstands this DDoS attack at 1.5 terabyte per second, and only lets through one (!) data package, thereby being the best freaking hardware firewall in the world!

The downside of it is that this only small data package that it lets through, hangs the system for the whole of 9 months!

Comments:

- No man, it hangs the system for 20+ years.

-- Sounds like someone needs to call helpdesk.

--- nah, you just need a reboot.

- It better be good it took 3.5 billion years to program.

-- You misspelled '7 days' and 'create'.

--- I think the 7th day was compile time.

- It's not a firewall, it's the worst router ever. I mean 99.999999999% packet loss is pretty bad.

- "5.This means that the throughput of a man's member is equal to ... 1.6875 Тerabyte/se" But it's mostly redundant data. Women are such TERRIBLE biological routers that you have to send hundreds of millions of packets just to get the signal through.

- The throughput is only that high because the transmission protocol is so inefficient. If you broke down the man's 75MB source code into its 46 fundamental segments and indexed them, you could fully describe each individual sperm with a 3 byte key. That reduces the bandwidth by about seven orders of magnitude.

-- That's fucking brilliant. Why haven't you cured cancer yet?

Live Free and Die of Boredom

2010-03-20T07:00:00.001-04:00

based on Nick Gillespie, Live Free and Die of Boredom, the Index of Economic Freedom and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.

The Milky Way is already colonized

2010-03-05T16:44:00.001-05:00

The universe is about 14 billion years old. The Milky Way is about 13 billion years old. Our solar system is only about 5 billion years old.

If intelligent life appeared elsewhere in the galaxy as well, perhaps many times, it probably happened many billions of years ahead of us.

Ergo: unless all civilizations die off for some strange universal reason, the galaxy is already colonized by others (or their robot descendents). (I doubt you need more than a billion years to colonize the entire galaxy, even without faster than light spacecraft.)

Ruben Brulat – Primates & Immaculate

2010-02-28T10:35:00.003-05:00

despre Ruben Brulat:

"Ruben Brulat bought his first camera just two years ago. But in spite of this relatively late start, something just clicked. ‘I discovered my real passion, and I have not stopped since. I went out all night long, experimenting. I needed to do it – it quickly became something vital for me and I could not stop taking photographs.’

For Brulat, photography is about capturing humanity … ‘I want to understand why people groups and societies behave the way they do.

What shocked me with Immaculate was that this neighbourhood lived just for a system, and when at night there is no one to activate that system, it dies. There is absolutely no love, no happiness, no sadness. Just nothing.

I am fascinated by places where the beauty of human beings has gone.’

Metoda stiintifica pentru a intelege ceva e sa vezi ce se intampla cand dispare, si respectiv cand il pui acolo unde nu e. Pozele astea (autoportrete ale lui Brulat) par ca folosesc exact metoda stiintifica pentru a intelege umanitatea. Immaculate iti arata mediul urban in absenta oamenilor (doar cu “cadavrul” lui Brulat sau cu Brulat ramas ultimul om), iar in Primates Brulat este adaugat intr-un mediu natural virgin.

Immaculate

Primates

Mai multe poze.

9000 - You

2010-02-28T02:19:00.002-05:00

more stuff from 9000

Banii din Zimbabwe

2010-02-27T15:37:00.002-05:00

O discutie interesanta despre originea razboiului

2010-02-27T14:07:00.002-05:00

si ce poate fi facut pentru a-i scadea probabilitatea.

Link

Setul Mandelbrot zoomat de 10^214 ori

2010-02-10T23:40:00.001-05:00

Tot filmul de mai jos e inclus in formula "z(n+1) = z(n)^2 + p", cu z si p numere complexe. Un punct p = (x,y) din grafic e negru daca recurenta plecand de la z(0) = 0 tinde la zero - adica z(infinit) = 0; un punct e colorat daca recurenta tinde la infinit, culoarea indicand cat de repede merge z spre infinit. Graficul obtinut nu are nici o continuitate, motiv pentru care oricat de mult e zoomat se obtin detalii suplimentare. Cu exceptia unor puncte speciale din grafic, procesul de zoomare nu aduce din nou si din nou aceeasi imagine, ci aduce imagini perpetuu diferite (chiar daca uneori seamana intre ele). Ceea ce e spectaculos e ca toata aceasta creativitate literalmente infinita se gaseste intr-o formula matematica atat de simpla.

Despre film:

The final magnification is 10^214. Want some perspective? A magnification of 10^12 would increase the size of a particle to the same as the Earth’s orbit! 10^21 would make a particle look the same size as the Milky Way and 10^42 would be equal to the universe. This zoom smashes all of them all away. If you were "actually" traveling into the fractal your speed would be faster than the speed of light.

You might like to know that this animation took me about two days to set up. My computer then rendered day and night non-stop for just over a month to produce the animation.

Mandelbrot Fractal Set Trip To e214 HD from teamfresh on Vimeo.

Daniel Dennett – De ce exista teologia

2010-02-08T13:06:00.001-05:00

Cat de mare-i universul

2010-02-01T07:17:00.001-05:00

Joanna Klink, I Would Remain by Night with You

2010-01-25T07:17:00.001-05:00

I would remain by night with you
who, having held me once, wrapped everything I knew
into my sleeping body's hold and held fast and stayed.
You shuttled in sleep against me and away, not sleeping,
beached and exhausted by wine and rushes from
another life whose body my body meant to alter.
But I am wayfaring and recently wrecked;
I understand the cost of pulling free from what once loved you.
I would remain by night with you, if the night is clear enough
to see by, and the wind light enough to draw the stars
in the skin's skies open, and the waves you sensed
through the dress in the wind are real, and only mine.

Boston Review
January / February 2009

de la Poetry Daily

Robert Sapolsky - The Uniqueness of Humans

2010-01-21T08:23:00.001-05:00

Cum functioneaza cenzura in China si cum se raspandeste la noi

2010-01-20T07:42:00.000-05:00

Rebecca MacKinnon, Are China's demands for Internet 'self-discipline' spreading to the West?

In China, all Internet and mobile companies are held responsible for everything their users post, transmit, or search for. The Chinese call it "self-discipline." In Anglo-American legal parlance, it's "intermediary liability," which in China is taken to its logical extreme with no public accountability or due process. "Intermediary liability" means that the intermediary, a service that acts as "intermediate" conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do. ...

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know. ...

Meanwhile in the Western democratic world, the idea of strengthening intermediary liability is becoming increasingly popular in government agencies and parliaments. From France to Italy to the United Kingdom, the idea of holding carriers and services liable for what their customers do is seen as the cheapest and easiest solution to the law enforcement and social problems that have gotten tougher in the digital age — from child porn to copyright protection to cyber-bullying and libel.

I'm not equating Western democracy with Chinese authoritarianism — that would be ludicrous. However, I am concerned about the direction we're taking without considering the full global context of free expression and censorship. ...

I'm not saying that we shouldn't fight crime or enforce the law. Of course we should, assuming that the laws reflect the consent of the governed. But let's make sure that we don't throw the baby of democracy and free speech out with the bathwater, as we do the necessary work of adjusting legal systems and economies to the Internet age.

Edward Cornish despre timp

2010-01-14T05:08:00.001-05:00

Edward Cornish in 'The study of the future' (p. 97-8):

Most people are almost totally preoccupied with their immediate concerns. Thinking about what might happen five or 10 years from now seems to them merely idle speculation. But the fact is that the problems of today did not appear suddenly out of thin air; they have been building up, often for many years, and might have been dealt with fairly easily if they had been tackled earlier. The crisis we face today is generally the minor problem we neglected yesterday.

In addition to discounting the future, most people tend not to recognize gradual change. For example, a 2% increase per year in air pollution might attract little notice, yet it means that air pollution will double in 34 years! The doubling of the population of a city over the course of a generation means a drastic transformation of the life of that city for better or worse. Futurists generally want to identify such gradual changes, so that they can be monitored and timely action taken to avoid painful crises.

When a problem reaches the crisis stage – that is, when the pain of the situation has become unbearable – it generally gets attention. But at that point it can be solved only with fantastic expenditures of time and money, and in many cases it simply cannot be solved at all. The damage has been done, and people just have to live with it. On the other hand, a small change that is wisely introduced today can result in major improvements in the years ahead. Such a change may be likened to a seed that is planted in good soil and grows, almost by itself, into a great tree. Thus, time is a crucial element that can make things easy to accomplish – or impossible.

Don't mess with Islam

2010-01-13T04:55:00.001-05:00

explicatia:

de ce nu functioneaza iubirea asa cum trebuie

2010-01-06T23:48:00.001-05:00

celor carora nu le place de ei insisi
le e frica sa lase pe altii sa-i cunoasca
dar o viata in spatele unei masti
inseamna a trai in minciuna si singuratate

cei care se judeca pe ei insisi
o fac prin raportare la iluzia unui ideal exterior
dar binele e orice iti sustine viata
si judecate trebuie sa fie doar idealurile insele

vietile celor care traiesc in spatele mastilor
sunt rezultatul unei confuzii conformiste
iar claritatea cu care aud ei vocea celorlati in mintile lor
e iluzia ce-i impiedica sa afle ce se vrea cu adevarat de la ei

Too See the Invisible Man

2010-01-02T16:50:00.001-05:00

un episod din Twilight Zone dupa o povestire de Robert Silverberg:

Richard Rorty on the End of Inquiry

2009-12-30T17:18:00.001-05:00

Bertrand Russell on God

2009-12-30T16:45:00.001-05:00

Despre limita lui Liiceanu

2009-12-28T06:57:00.001-05:00

Citesc pe blogul lui Patrascanoiu ca ar fi citit cartea lui Gabriel Liiceanu Despre limita pe cand era student si ca “este una dintre cartile pe care le-am ‘masacrat’ cu sublinieri si cu adnotari in creion”. Mi-am adus aminte ca am facut si eu acelasi lucru acum 6 ani, tot pe vremea cand eram student (doar ca nu cu creionul, ci pe calculator pentru ca aveam cartea in format electronic piratata de undeva). Iata rezultatul lecturii mele de atunci:

Libertatea gravitaţională (din Despre limită de Gabriel Liiceanu)

Aşa cum zborul nu e cu putinţă în afara gravitaţiei

îmi pare rău să fiu cîrcotaş de la început, dar zborul este cît se poate de posibil şi în afara gravitaţiei – mai ales zborul prin spaţiul cosmic – ce legătură e între zbor şi gravitaţie??!!

libertatea nu are sens decît în condiţiile existenţei limitei.

Ăsta a fost un argument?

Libertatea reală este libertate gravitaţională şi ea trebuie distinsă de libertatea idealizată şi „pură“.

Adineauri spunea că libertatea nu are sens în afara limitei, acum spune că totuşi există o libertate care are sens şi în afara limitei, aia “idealizată, «pură»”, doar că această libertate “nu e reală”. Chiar nu poate să facă o distincţie între a avea sens şi a fi real ?! Balaurii au sens dar nu sînt reali – e o distincţie foarte simplu de înţeles.

Într‑un spaţiu al libertăţii non‑gravitaţionale se poate întîmpla orice. Dar tocmai pentru că se poate întîmpla orice, într‑un asemenea spaţiu nu se întîmplă nimic.

Asta e greşit logic! Ceva nu e posibil pentru că e posibil. Sau: ceva nu e posibil pentru că sînt posibile şi alte lucruri. De unde pînă unde sînt cei doi termeni legaţi prin “pentru că”?!

Nimicul este spaţiul libertăţii non‑gravitaţionale, este „spaţiul“ în care totul e cu putinţă şi în care nu se întîmplă de fapt nimic.

De ce nu a pus în ghilimele şi prima dată cînd a scris „spaţiu”? Mă nedumereşte. Şi ce se poate înţelege din “nimicul este «spaţiul» în care nu se întîmplă nimic”??!!

Spaţiul libertăţii non‑gravitaţionale este spaţiul pre‑fiinţei.

Ce-i aia „pre-fiinţă”?!

Prima limită care face cu putinţă existenţa libertăţii este însuşi faptul de a fi. O dată cu faptul că ceva este, în loc să nu fie, apare limita ca o condiţie de manifestare a libertăţii gravitaţionale, a libertăţii care trebuie, ca să se poată manifesta, să depindă, să atîrne de ceva.

Încerc din răsputeri să cred că există o semnificaţie a celor spuse aici, doar că mi se pare total aiurea, a fi nu e o limită, ci invers, limita defineşte ceea ce este – domnul L. confundă cauza cu efectul. Sau altfel, limita este modul prin care descriem ceea ce este – caz în care domnul L. confundă cunoaşterea cu existenţa. Iar a spune că pentru ca să poţi fi liber trebuie ca mai întîi să exişti mi se pare o afirmaţie pseudo-filozofică, tautologică, o glumă de prost gust.

Fiinţa creează cadrul de referinţă al libertăţii, ea este însăşi condiţia ei gravitaţională. Ceva ajunge să fie înseamnă: ceva a ieşit din indeterminarea absolută a nimicului, din nelimitarea lui, şi a primit limita fiinţei. Drumul care deschide către libertatea gravitaţională începe astfel cu însuşi faptul de a fi.

Complet aberant. Lasă să se înţeleagă că ceva există înainte de a exista. Înainte de a exista el există într-o stare de „indeterminare absolută”. Înainte de a exista nu există şi cu asta basta. În realitate, ceva nou apare pentru că altceva s-a schimbat, s-a reorganizat. De exemplu copilul apare pentru că mama mănîncă şi materia respectivă este organizată în interiorul uterului ei în forma copilului după planul ADN conţinut în ovulul fecundat de spermatozoid.

Aşa se face că – agent al libertăţii gravitaţionale

Acum e vorba de un agent?!

– prima limitaţie pe care trebuie să o suport

Cine s-o suporte? ăla care nu există încă?!

este tocmai faptul de a fi. Dar faptul de a fi, la rîndul său, este, în el însuşi, o pură indeterminare. A fi ce?

Ce se nimereşte. Domnul L. are cumva împresia că „a fi” este un fel de obiect care există separat de celelalte obiecte? Sau că „a fi” este un „fapt” concret la fel cum este să zicem un fulger? Sau crede că obiectele reale se construiesc din nişte piese de lego, iar una dintre aceste piese de lego este piesa numită „a fi”? Sau crede că toate lucrurile se fac dintr-un lucru iniţial numit „a fi” care după ce „apare” din „nimic” se şlefuieşte şi devine acel ceva particular care este? Are impresia că oamenii şi toate lucrurile apar la fel cum apare o sculptură din bucata de marmură neşlefuită? Că există „un agent” care ne şlefuieşte din „starea noastră iniţială indeterminată”? Nu-nţeleg cum poate cineva să ajungă să creadă şi pe deasupra să şi scrie asemenea idioţenii. Am un sentiment de deja-vu: de ce nu mergeţi mai bine şi citiţi comentariul lui Carnap la Heidegger?

Acest „ce“ este limitaţia suplimentară care, ea abia, scoate fiinţa din indeterminarea ce ar face‑o să se confunde cu nimicul. Faptului de a fi pur şi simplu trebuie să i se adauge acela de a fi conştient de faptul de a fi pentru ca libertatea gravitaţională să poată lua naştere.

Deci o altă piesă de lego este „faptul de a fi conştient”?

Fiinţa şi conştiinţa fiinţei sînt condiţii de existenţă ale libertăţii gravitaţionale:

Faptul că o condiţie necesară a libertăţii este conştiinţa este ceva extrem de discutabil şi nu este admis să fie afirmat în felul acesta dogmatic [întîmplător nici nu sînt de acord cu ideea asta – de exemplu un cîine, cu toate că nu e dotat cu conştiinţă (i.e. nu se recunoaşte în oglindă), este totuşi dotat cu libertate pentru că acţiunile sale nu pot fi prevăzute cauzal, ci pentru ca să-i prevedem acţiunile trebuie să-i atribuim scopuri şi intenţii – deci voinţă, deci libertate; situaţia este deci exact invers decît spune G.L.: libertatea este o condiţie necesară a conştienţei şi nicidecum invers]

„a fi“ şi în speţă „a fi conştient de faptul că eşti“ sînt limite prin care se operează transferul de la libertatea „pură“ la libertatea gravitaţională.

Începe să mă enerveze tot mai tare: este pur şi simplu incoerent: mai întîi a spus că “libertatea «pură»” nu are sens, dup-aia s-a răzgîndit şi a spus că are sens dar că nu există, iar acum tot bălmăjeşte despre cum libertatea asta “pură” (care, reamintesc, nu există) se transformă treptat în “libertatea reală” prin “limitele” care i se impun.

Însă la rîndul lui faptul de a fi conştient pretinde o nouă limitaţie.

Cum adică „pretinde”?! cine pretinde? sau dacă înţelegem metaforic pe „pretinde” şi nu îl interpretăm intenţional, atunci dacă „pretinde” nu ştiu ce, nu înseamnă că acel lucru pretins există deja? deci că nu e vorba de adăugarea unei „limitări” suplimentare, de „o nouă limitaţie”?

Căci altminteri, faptul de a fi conştient de faptul că eşti este şi el, chiar dacă nu în măsura în care era simplul fapt de a fi, o pură indeterminare.

De ce să fie „pură”? nu îi aplicase deja o „limitare”?! „pura indeterminare” nu era „nimicul” ăla de la „început”?!

A fi conştient de faptul de a fi se aplică deopotrivă unui zeu, unui înger sau unui om.

Acum vorbim despre zei şi îngeri?!

A fi conştient de faptul că eşti – cum? Infinit, sempitern

(ce-o mai însemna şi cuvîntul ăsta?! bună treabă: bagăm la bătaie noua limbă de lemn – nu sîntem în stare să spunem nimic însă, iată! o putem face cu cuvinte ciudate, aşa că poate cititorul se simte intimidat şi ne crede deştepţi)

sau finit? Finitudinea este, alături de fiinţă şi conştienţă, a treia condiţie limitativă a libertăţii ca libertate gravitaţională. A fi, a fi conştient că eşti şi, în speţă, a fi conştient că eşti finit circumscriu condiţia libertăţii gravitaţionale ca libertate umană.

Acum a mai băgat o expresie magică: „libertate umană”. Deci avem „libertate pură”, „libertate gravitaţională” şi „libertate umană”. Avem „libertatea pură” pe care nu a definit-o deloc dar i-a dat nişte sinonime răuvoitoare, „nimic”, „indeterminare totală”, „lipsă de sens”. Apoi, a început să-i aplice „libertăţii pure” tot felul de „limitări”, 1, 2, 3, limitări rămase complet nedefinite (şi după toate aparenţele domnul L. nici nu este la curent cu problema libertăţii şi a conştienţei în filozofia contemporană pentru că în mod inconştient a tras oblonul în mod dogmatic peste nişte chestii controversate), şi a transformat-o astfel în „libertatea gravitaţională”. (De asemenea nici ce-i aia o „limitare” în general în contextul ăsta lingvistic complet aberant pe care-l construieşte nu a definit.) Dup-aia ne-a spus că această glorioasă „libertate gravitaţională” este o formă de „libertate umană” – ceea ce evident ne-a băgat în ceaţă încă şi mai tare decît ne imaginam că ar mai fi posibil. Adică acum se subînţelege că mai există şi alte tipuri de libertăţi în afară de „libertatea umană” şi în acelaşi timp se presupune că mai există şi alte tipuri de „libertăţi umane” în afară de „libertatea gravitaţională”. Nu pot decît să trag concluzia că în această carte se încearcă desfiinţarea conceptului de libertate. Tactica adoptată nici măcar nu e originală, este pur şi simplu introducerea unei inflaţii de expresii golite de sens prin care se creează iluzia unor „distincţii” importante şi relevante – în realitate este vorba de un şir de incoerenţe şi pseudo-probleme. În loc să se concentreze pe conţinutul problemelor se concentrează pe formă şi se pierde în cuvinte.

Dar faptul de a fi om continuă să rămînă o pură indeterminare. Ce fel de om? Bărbat sau femeie? Alb, negru sau galben?

Acum sper că n-o fi şi rasist!!

Născut în ce secol, în ce ţară, din ce părinţi şi aparţinînd cărei caste?

Cărei caste?! Mai are puţin şi începe să vorbească despre lupta de clasă.

Vorbind ce limbă şi aparţinînd cărei religii? Laolaltă cu fiinţa, conştienţa şi finitudinea – sexul, rasa, epoca, locul, ascendenţa

ce ascendenţă? sîngele? la asta se referă??

casta

casta?!

limba şi religia

de ce nu şi naţionalitatea? sau codul genetic? sau horoscopul? sau întîmplările din copilărie? de unde a scos chestiile astea complet arbitrare? de ce nu-mi spune de ce le-a ales tocmai pe astea?

alcătuiesc cercul limitelor dinlăuntrul căruia se exersează libertatea gravitaţională ca libertate condiţionată.

Dar ce, n-am libertatea să-mi schimb religia?! sau locul sau limba?

Căci toate aceste limite constituie condiţiile ei de exersare, terenul ferm de pe care ea se ridică, sistemul de îngrădiri din mijlocul căruia ea se manifestă ca libertate.

Nu-i întîmplător că l-au acuzat ăştia că e fascist! Gabriel Liiceanu chiar este fascist!! Înţelegeţi ce spune? Tocmai a spus că oamenii se nasc într-o anumită „castă” şi cu o anumită „ascendenţă” și că libertatea lor nu se poate manifesta decît în interiorul acestei „caste” şi „ascendenţe”. Ce-nseamnă „nu se poate manifesta”? De ce să nu se poată manifesta şi în afara ei? E clar, că fizic vorbind se poate. Dar atunci de ce nu? Evident pentru că nu i se permite să se manifeste. Și eu care aveam impresia că francezii ăia exagerau.

Caracteristica tuturor acestor limite – fiinţa, conştienţa, finitudinea, sexul, rasa, epoca, locul, ascendenţa, casta, limba, religia – este faptul că ele vin de dinaintea alegerii noastre: nu am ales să fiu, să fiu om, să fiu bărbat, să am pielea albă, să mă nasc în cutare zi, în cutare loc, din cutare părinţi, să mă cheme în cutare fel, să vorbesc limba pe care o vorbesc şi să aparţin cutărei religii. Nu am ales nimic din toate acestea.

Dar ce te împiedică scumpi să alegi ce limbă să vorbeşti, ce religie să ai etc. Şi ce importanţă are limba ta maternă? Sau că ai pielea albă?!

Şi nealegînd să fiu şi să fiu om, nu am ales să fiu liber.

Propagandă fascistă clară: liberalismul este autocontradictoriu pentru că spune că trebuie să faci ceea ce ce alegi, dar tu nu alegi să alegi, deci n-ar trebui să alegi nimic – consecinţa evidentă: trebuie să te supui statului, să alegi ceea ce consideră statul că e bine pentru tine.

Acesta este paradoxul libertăţii gravitaţionale: libertatea vine, laolaltă cu limitele care o fac cu putinţă, de dinaintea alegerii mele.

E paradox, aşa a scris! Fantastic! Şi eu mă gîndeam că am exagerat adineauri! Era cît pe ce să şterg!

Libertatea este un dat şi ca atare ea nu poate constitui obiectul unei elecţiuni ulterioare.

Ceea ce a fost dat a fost dat!! acuma e legionar! acuma începe să-i dea si cu Dumnezeu! Preferam dacă rămînea la nazişti! Dar să nu ne grăbim, să vedem cui trebuie să fim recunoscători pentru acest „dar”, lui Dumnezeu sau statului? Asta-i întrebarea.

nu poate fi refuzat

cum să nu poată?! e suficient să te sinucizi. Poate că vrea să spună că nu ai dreptul să-l refuzi, ceea ce e o cu totul altă mîncare de peşte

şi, laolaltă cu toate celelalte limite ce alcătuiesc cercul în care ea se manifestă, libertatea are un caracter natural:

să-i mulţumim naturii deci

ea este rezultatul unei conferiri neprovocate şi a unei primiri nelibere. Omul primeşte libertatea de dinaintea libertăţii sale.

Clar. Mai citiţi încă odată propoziţia de adineauri pentru că e tare.

Liber în esenţa sa, el nu este liber la nivelul instituirii sale ca fiinţă liberă.

Încă şi mai clar. Cred că pînă şi Iliescu l-ar invidia pentru perlele astea.

El este un produs liber, şi astfel – nicicum amestecat în conferirea propriei sale libertăţi.

Mare căcat. Gigantic. În capitolul următor va urma probabil să spună că mai există încă în continuare o „indeterminare”: Care este forma pe care o ia libertatea? Nu vreau să mă gîndesc ce-o să mai spună. Şi eu care pînă acum aveam o impresie mai bună despre Liiceanu! Ce-ar fi ca mai departe să citiţi mai bine Ortega y Gasset şi s-o lăsăm baltă cu „elitele” româneşti? Pe bune.

Franz Liszt - Liebestraum (Love’s Dream)

2009-12-25T23:20:00.001-05:00

originalul:

interpretarea din Lisztomania:

Strange Beliefs: Edward Evans-Pritchard

2009-12-21T15:52:00.001-05:00

Part of a television series 'Strangers Abroad', shown on television in the 1990s. Details of the programme, including producer, director and other credits are at the end of the film.
The film centres on the work of E.E.Evans-Pritchard, particularly his work on Azande Witchcraft. For interviews with other anthropologists and further materials, please see www.alanmacfarlane.com

de la Vaughan

Dan Ariely - Are we in control of our own decisions?

2009-12-12T09:45:00.001-05:00

The Department of Mad Scientists

2009-12-12T09:13:00.001-05:00

Robert Trivers - Deception and Self-Deception

2009-12-08T16:06:00.002-05:00

Marketing tricks

2009-11-30T16:22:00.001-05:00

Computerele au inceput sa inteleaga ce spunem

2009-11-21T06:09:00.002-05:00

Link

Speedi.ly takes a piece of content, or grabs the content from a URL, and analyzes it. It does this very fast and it outputs some key data. Speedi.ly tells you the language of the content, categorizes it (topics, keywords), and additional metadata. … Here’s what Speedi.ly returns for this story we wrote on the Skype/eBay sale:

Speedi.ly successfully categorizes the story as about technology. Not bad for on the fly and human-free categorization. You’ll see the field for entities as well, which is currently blank. Speedi.ly will soon turn that on as well.

Acum mai trebuie si un algoritm de inventare de categorii, nu doar de categorisire corecta a continutului.

Alte doua exemple:

Trollii si legea lui Postel

2009-11-20T05:04:00.002-05:00

Din articolul asta:

In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel’s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.