tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25695600848362847222024-03-13T15:02:55.278-07:00Steve DutchEqual opportunity offender of liberals and conservatives.Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-23771251963436930042017-12-25T10:10:00.000-08:002017-12-25T10:10:09.187-08:00Questions for 9-11 Truthers<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If the attacks were a false flag operation to justify invading Iraq, then why didn't the conspirators use Iraqi hijackers?<br /></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If one justification for the invasion was Iraq possessing WMD's, then why didn't we simply plant WMD's in Iraq, maybe even stage a chemical attack on U.S. forces? Instead, the failure to find WMD's became a major embarrassment.<br /></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If this was all about access to Iraqi oil, then why don't we now control Iraq's oil?<br /></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Give an example of a controlled building demolition that began at the top.<br /></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why weaken the building at the top, when attacking lower would have trapped more people and resulted in faster collapse, and presumably, a stronger case for war?</span></li>
</ol>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-48925804507924801322017-12-25T10:08:00.001-08:002017-12-25T16:26:46.518-08:00Why People Don't Use Mass Transit<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: calibri; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
Thought Experiment</h1>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note: this was originally written in 2005. Prices should be updated to current values but the conclusions remain unaffected.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One day in 1974 or so, I was sitting in my car (actually my thesis adviser's university car) inching across the George Washington Bridge on my way to Manhattan to meet a class where I was the teaching assistant. Suddenly I asked myself "<i>Why am I doing this?</i>" After all, I had alternatives. A bus ran right by the Lamont Observatory where I spent most of my time and went reasonably directly to the uptown bus terminal in Manhattan. From there I could take a subway straight to Columbia University. So as mass transit goes, it was a pretty straight shot. So why <i>was</i> I driving? Well, for openers, the mass transit really didn't save much time, especially counting waiting time at both ends and the transfer from bus to subway. And it was impossible to do anything productive riding mass transit. Plus there was no privacy or peace and quiet, which I finally decided was the major factor for me. And people in those days worried a lot about subway muggings (realistically, on the 7th Avenue IRT in the daytime, a minor risk), but carjacking was unheard of, so there was a safety issue.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since I have never, in the 30 years since, seen any article by advocates of mass transit - <i>not one</i> - that bothered to ask why people don't take mass transit despite all its supposed advantages, I thought it might be useful to explain why people prefer to drive instead of take the bus. Most advocates of mass transit dismiss drivers as selfish, short-sighted and unconcerned about the environment instead of asking whether mass transit itself is to blame for its own problems.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After this page was linked by another site, I got a number of responses that suggested a bit of clarification is in order. This page is not calling for abandonment of mass transit or extolling the virtues of the automobile. It <i>is</i> an attempt to lay out what mass transit is up against if it is to succeed. Pretending that the economic issues I describe can be made to go away is a guaranteed recipe for failure. They won't. Lots of people seem determined to illustrate the is/ought fallacy in action.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also I've gotten a number of responses from people who say the factors I outline here don't apply because they spend their time on the bus or subway reading or relaxing. This amounts to an attitude all too common in environmentalism: everything will be just fine once people get enlightened and see things the way I do. But don't take my word for it - see the exchange at the end of this page. If <i>you</i> have access to a user-friendly mass transit system and can use the commute time productively, bully for you. I'm trying to explain why so many other people don't see it that way.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Value of Time</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Apart from the cost of wages, economic planners rarely acknowledge the value of individual time, but that has absolutely no impact on the reality that people themselves <i>do </i>put value on their time. As John Naisbitt pointed out in <i>Megatrends</i>, one of the first thing people do when they acquire some affluence is begin to buy back their time. They hire out boring or unpleasant tasks like food preparation, housekeeping, child care and repairs. (Home delivery services are even enjoying a bit of a resurgence as two-earner families find themselves increasingly pressed for time.) Failure to recognize the value of time to individuals leads to unproductive results.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nowhere is this issue clearer than in attempts to deal with the problems caused by the automobile. Critics of the automobile point out that in addition to the direct costs of the automobile like fuel, maintenance, and depreciation, there is the cost of highway construction, environmental damage, tax subsidies, defense of oil supplies, and so on – a host of “hidden costs.” For example, The International Center for Technology Assessment, in <i>The Real Price of Gasoline</i>, and Stephen H. Burrington in <i>Road Kill: How Solo Driving Runs Down the Economy</i>, both estimated the real cost of driving a car at about a dollar a mile. They estimated the cost of a bicycle at twelve cents a mile.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I live eight miles from campus. At a dollar a mile by car, it costs $16 to commute. It takes about 20 minutes each way, so figuring my salary at $25 an hour, the cost comes to about $33. Occasionally I bicycle. It takes 45 minutes each way. The cost of bicycling alone is only $2 a day, but the time cost is $37. It costs $39 a day to commute by bicycle. By mass transit, I have to walk to the bus stop, go downtown, transfer, and travel a winding route to campus. Total fare is $2.50, and counting time walking to and waiting at the bus stop at either end, it takes at least 45 minutes to make the trip by bus, bringing the total cost to around $40.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are plenty of good reasons to encourage mass transit, but arguments about the hidden costs of the automobile fall on deaf ears because people, unconsciously or not, factor time and convenience into their decision making. The average driver knows perfectly well why she drives.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The cost of a transportation system is first of all, any flat fare. Call that F. Then there's a cost per mile (call it C) and the mileage (M). The value of your time we can call S (salary per hour), and the time it takes to travel is T. So we have Cost = F + CM + ST. Time will be mileage divided by your speed (V), so we have Cost = F + CM + SM/V = F + M(C + S/V). We can see that cost increases with mileage (obviously), high time value (every minute traveling costs more) and low speeds.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion 1: Transportation Costs Less at High Speeds.</b> High-speed commuter rail is a great solution <i>if </i>there's easy access at both ends. If you have to drive five miles to a transit station only to find the commuter lot full, you may as well drive. HOV (high occupancy vehicles) and mass transit lanes on freeways are another good approach to this issue. The best features of HOV lanes for private vehicles is they offer a <i>positive incentive</i> to carpool (you get to pass all the solo drivers), rather than the negative penalties that are the only solution many advocates of mass transit seem capable of imagining.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Corollary: Low Speed Limits Raise the Cost of Travel.</b> They may cut fuel consumption and costs of accidents, but the time cost rises steeply. Where I live, a nearby suburb has a four lane street with a speed limit of 25 miles an hour. It could easily be raised to 40 with no significant safety risk.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Corollary: Interruptions Raise the Cost of Travel.</b> How much gasoline is burned daily by cars stopping and accelerating at stop signs where there is clearly no oncoming traffic, or waiting at empty intersections for traffic lights? Probably half of all stop signs could be changed to yield signs. And it should be legal to proceed through a red light if there is no oncoming traffic. Accidents would be wholly the responsibility of the driver going through the light. School buses should be required to wait for traffic to clear <i>before</i> turning on their signals and discharging students.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let's assume, as critics of the automobile say, that a car costs $1 a mile and also assume a car averages 20 miles an hour in city traffic. The cost of operating a car becomes M(1 + S/20). If we assume a bicycle costs 1/8 as much per mile and goes 10 miles an hour, then the cost of riding a bicycle is M(1/8 + S/10). The extra cost of driving a car per mile is:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Cost (car M=1) - Cost (bicycle M=1) =</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(1 + S/20) - (1/8 + S/10) = 7/8 - S/20.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If the cost difference is positive, bicycle is cheaper. If it's negative, a car is cheaper. When the cost difference is zero, both forms of transportation are equal. Call that the break-even point. That happens when S/20 = 7/8, or S = 17.5. If S is less than 17.5 ($17.50 an hour or $35,000 a year) then the cost is positive, otherwise it's negative; it costs more to go by bike than by car.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion 2: Slow Transportation Penalizes Affluent Customers.</b> And these are the people most likely to have their own cars and to move further from work.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Corollary: Affluent Customers Will Not Use Mass Transit.</b> It's not that they're selfish, or that they don't care about the environment. <i>It's not cost-effective</i>. The higher your salary, the more <i>wasteful</i> mass transit is. The only significant exception is commuter rail provided the fares offer a savings over driving and parking <i>and</i> the comfort and privacy allow relaxation or work en route.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Corollary: Infrequent Transit Schedules Discourage Use of Mass Transit<i>. </i></b>Duh. Or maybe not. My city is considering cutting frequency as a "cost-saving" measure.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If we assume the fare on a bus is $2, and there's no extra cost per mile, and buses average 15 miles an hour (because of stops and less direct routes), then the cost becomes 2 + S/15. The extra cost of driving is Cost (car) - Cost (bus) = M(1 + S/20) - (2 + SM/15) = M - 2 - MS/60. This is a bit harder to analyze because it's mileage-dependent. We can find the break-even point by making the cost zero and solving for S: S = 60(1 - 2/M). If M = 2, S =0; it <i>always</i> pays to drive because the cost of driving beats the flat fare. Regardless of how big M is, S is never greater than 60; if you earn over $120,000 a year, it <i>always</i> pays to drive. If M = 4, S = 30, and the break-even point is $60,000 a year. If you earn less, it pays to use mass transit.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But if the fare is $5, as it can be for long commutes, then S = 60(1 - 5/M). It <i>never </i>pays to take the bus for commutes less than 5 miles. For S = 30 ($60,000) a year, the break-even point is 10 miles - any longer than that and it pays to drive.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion 3: Flat Fares Discourage Use of Mass Transit for Short Commutes</b> A fair number of cities seem to have figured this out and have free-travel zones downtown, unlimited travel passes, and similar offsets.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If traveling by car really does have high indirect costs not shared by public transportation, the case for making all mass transit free is so compelling you really have to wonder why advocates of mass transit don't propose it. Also, since a major cause of urban sprawl and congestion is the middle class moving to the suburbs, the obvious cure is to eliminate the problems that drive the middle class out. Unless there's some master plan to have buses, ambulances and fire trucks all get around on light rail, most of the indirect costs of the automobile will still plague mass transit. We <i>can</i> hope to lessen the dependence on petroleum, and hence ease prices and maybe reduce the defense threat. We might also hope to reduce the costs of road repair, reduce air pollution, and lessen the impact of the automobile.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's a good reason why people who play the "hidden costs" game never factor in the value of personal time saved - it tips the balance so sharply in favor of existing technology that alternatives simply cannot compete. (Actually, when people say they "cannot" compete, they usually mean they <i>will not</i> compete because they don't think the rewards are great enough. Mass transit <i>can</i> compete against the private auto but it would require subsidies to the hated middle class and suburbs.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One correspondent added:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 650px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 650px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An important wrinkle that I feel is missing from your analysis; Time saved in transit is added to my free time with my family, not to time at work. I value my time outside work much more than my hourly wage. That is why when my employer wants me to work more, he has to pay me time and a half. Or, when another firm wants to buy my extra hours, I charge them <i>double to triple my hourly rate</i>. (emphasis added)<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 650px;">
<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
</div>
<blockquote style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Therefore, your point is stronger than you present. The time I save by driving is extremely valuable to me. Much more than my hourly wage. I think I'm not alone.</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Funny how evil corporations routinely recognize the value of personal time by paying higher than normal salaries for overtime, but enlightened mass transit advocates, who care so much about people and the good of society, somehow just don't get it.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Additional Factors</span></h2>
<h3 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Exact Change</span></h3>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Is there a single, more stupid tactic for discouraging mass transit than requiring exact change? Especially when fares change frequently enough that a new user can't find out the fare except by calling the transit company? Hopefully, rechargeable fare cards will become universal enough to remedy this problem. Systems like BART and many European systems that use vending machines for fare, of course, don't have this problem.</span></div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fixed Costs</span></h3>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In addition to the per-mile indirect costs of owning a car, there are fixed costs that exist whether you drive the car or not. Chief among these is depreciation. Depreciation is not that much of an issue for people who buy used cars and drive them as long as possible, but for those who buy new cars and trade them in regularly it's a major cost. Depreciation has to be added to the cost of <i>whatever transportation the individual uses</i>. If the person drives, depreciation is part of the cost of driving, obviously. If the person uses mass transit, <i>depreciation is still part of the cost of using mass transit</i> because the person has a car sitting in the garage unused, but still declining in value. In fact,<i> all</i> hidden costs have to be added to the cost of mass transit - you still pay taxes to pave roads and defend oil supplies whatever you do.<i> Only out of pocket expenses</i> count in determining the cost-effectiveness of mass transit versus the automobile, because the indirect and "hidden" costs are still there whatever mode of transport you use.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once someone decides to buy a car, the economic balance shifts sharply in favor of driving. The only way to shift the economic balance in favor of mass transit is to create a system where it becomes feasible for large numbers of people to give up owning a car. A few moments' thought will suffice to reveal the requirements for such a system:</span></div>
<ol style="background-color: white; list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The out of pocket costs must be <i>the same or less</i> for public transport as for private transport. You might get away with a slight overage if public transport offers a real premium in convenience or comfort, but it had better be a clear advantage to the consumer.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The <i>time</i> costs have to be comparable. This means:</span><ol style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;" type="a">
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Actual travel time has to be comparable. The convoluted fractal routes that buses typically travel to access the largest possible area with the fewest routes are a guaranteed recipe for a failed mass-transit system.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The schedule has to be frequent enough that transfers have negligible time impact. If you occasionally have to run errands en route, the transfer time factor demolishes mass transit.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The schedule has to be frequent enough that waiting time at the trip origin has negligible time impact.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The system has to be dense enough that transit time from the final stop to the destination has negligible time impact. Walking half a mile in the pouring rain negates anything positive mass transit has to offer (and <i>no</i> combination of rain protection will keep you dry in a real downpour.)</span></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The system has to be <i>more dependable</i> than a private automobile. This means:</span><ol style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;" type="a">
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Work stoppages and strikes are absolutely impermissible. I met some folks recently who saved on the outrageous hotel prices in Venice by staying in nearby Padua. Then, when it came time to catch their cruise ship, the trains were out because of a strike to protest President Bush's visit to Rome. Because, you know, people traveling from Padua to Venice are directly responsible for the war in Iraq and globalization. And labor activists wonder why unions fell out of favor in the U.S.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The system has to have enough peak capacity to carry all passengers <i>in reasonable comfort</i>. Sitting down. With elbow room and a modicum of personal space.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Routes have to be simple and <i>absolutely fixed</i>. Far too many systems vary routes with time of day, use the same number for different routes, omit stops or entire segments of the route at times, or change routes frequently. When I'm in a city and have a choice of rail or bus, I take rail every time, simply because you can't rip up tracks capriciously and reroute them. (I did see a city once where it happened - would you be surprised if I said it was Sofia, Bulgaria?)</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Information about the system has to be available everywhere. <i>Every stop</i> must have a map of the whole system with schedules and fare information, and the information must be <i>current</i>. Areas between stops must have frequent signs to the nearest transit stops.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The system layout has to be <i>predictable</i>. Ever been in a city and walked to a major artery hoping to find a bus stop, only to find the buses don't run on that street? Instead the buses run down some residential street because the system is trying to cover the most ground with the fewest buses, or some alderman lives there and wants convenient bus transportation. And how about that system of identifying routes by the end of the line? Boy, <i>that</i> sure makes navigating mass transit in a strange city a breeze!</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Transportation has to be available <i>at all times - 24/7/365</i>. If you even occasionally find yourself going places on holidays or odd hours when transit is either unavailable or infrequent, you'll opt to get a car.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Car pooling? If the passengers all have similar origins and destinations, it's an option. But if people need to vary their schedules, run errands en route, be out of town on business, and so on, it won't work. The lack of flexibility is probably the main impediment to car pooling.</span></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The system has to be <i>absolutely safe</i>. Law enforcement needs to be thorough enough, the penalties for crime severe enough and the judicial system hard-nosed enough that nobody would even <i>think</i> of committing a crime on a bus or subway. And there have to be strict rules of conduct. No, you do <i>not</i> have a First Amendment right to panhandle on the subway.</span></li>
</ol>
<h3 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Cargo</span></h3>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In New York City, someone who lives alone might be able to buy groceries every single day and tote them home. But what about someone with five kids? What about someone who needs to transport sheets of plywood or drywall, concrete blocks or sacks of fertilizer? In a few places, buses have provisions for carrying bicycles, but for the most part people who have frequent needs to haul cargo have no real alternative to the automobile. Delivery services might alleviate this problem somewhat.</span></div>
<h3 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Groups</span></h3>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While visiting my parents in the San Francisco Bay Area some years ago, we decided to take a trip to Fisherman's Wharf via the BART system. There were six of us altogether. We found the lot at the BART station full, so we drove in to San Francisco. Even counting bridge tolls and parking, it only cost a little more than riding BART.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>When transporting a group, cars almost always beat mass transit</b>. Mass transit systems that fail to recognize that the unit of travel is the <i>group</i>, not the <i>individual</i>, are doing more to promote automobiles than Detroit ever could.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A Visit to Philadelphia</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I don't share W. C. Fields' dark view of Philadelphia. I like the city very much. Putting it far above average for large cities is its direct rail link from the airport to downtown (that's changing as more and more cities come on line). So on a recent trip to Philadelphia, I booked a motel close to the airport to save expenses and took the train to the convention center downtown.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Both ways</i> the train I intended to take was canceled, meaning I had to wait an extra half hour. At <i>both</i> ends of the trip there were fare machines out of service (although conductors will collect fares on the train). There was a bus link from the airport to my motel, and once I found the bus schedule that part of the trip worked smoothly. The buses actually were right on schedule. But it took a number of tries on the automated phone system to get the inbound schedule, and the Visitor Center downtown didn't have printed schedules. What, post the schedules at the bus stops? Are you mad? They needed those big plastic panels for advertising. At least the stops <i>did</i> indicate the lines that stopped there. And then there was the able bodied panhandler working the transit station downtown. All day. He hit me up coming and going, four hours apart.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the whole, I got where I needed to go, but this anecdote illustrates all the minor indignities that mass transit advocates expect people to endure for the sake of society. And this is the state of affairs in a city with <i>excellent</i> mass transit. And we wonder why people prefer their cars.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Oh, and then I got the credit card bill for "long distance" calls from the airport to downtown to get schedule information. Factor that into the cost of mass transit because the information wasn't posted at bus stops or in the phone book, and the transit system didn't have a toll-free number.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Houston, You Have a Problem</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From a <em>Houston Chronicle</em> story, August 7, 2008. The story details the travails of bus commuting in Houston. Spokespersons for the transit system claim:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Metro officials say they understand Jenkins and Camarillo's frustrations, but the street infrastructure has to be in place, said Jim Archer, manager of service evaluation. Roads don't go all the way through and many are incomplete, Archer said. "When you look at Airport (Blvd.), Airport would be a nice logical route except the road doesn't go all the way through," he said. "The streets make it very difficult for us to operate buses. ... This is not because of Metro."</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yet one of the people interviewed for the story takes anywhere from 80 minutes to two hours to commute, but when someone offers her a ride to work, "the commute time drops considerably — to 10 minutes." Somehow cars can cover the distance in ten minutes but buses can't, because it's "very difficult." But "This is not because of Metro."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What we got here are whining incompetents who can't, or won't, do their jobs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wrote one commentator:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Irvington bus passes in front of my home. If I catch the bus to downtown, it is 1 hour 20 minute ride one-way and I have to walk 8 blocks to my office no matter what the weather. Since Metro discontinued the circulator system downtown, this adds another 20 minutes to the commute. If I drive to work, it is 25 minutes one-way and I park at the door and walk inside 20-feet. Let's see, 2 hours on the bus and walking 8 blocks in rain/cold/heat or 25 minutes and drive up to the door. Oh, let's double that for two-way-commute! ... dah ... Metro is a waste ...</span></blockquote>
</div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Conclusions</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In New York City, it can make sense not to own a car. Parking is prohibitive, the risk of damage from on-street parking is severe, and the transit system beats driving much of the time. In Moab, Utah, fuhgeddaboutit.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>In sparsely-populated areas, there simply is no practical alternative to the automobile</b>. People who live in those places need cars to get around and haul cargo. People who need to get to places not served by mass transit also have no alternative to the automobile. So what are the possible solutions?</span></div>
<ol style="background-color: white; list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Inexpensive Rental Cars</b>. The cost of auto rental has come down to the point where it's pretty affordable, but it needs to come down still further to make it a really viable alternative to using the private auto.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Inexpensive Taxis</b>. These need to be considered part of the overall public transit system. Fares need to be competitive with comparable distances on mass transit, and availability needs to be great enough to avoid significant time penalties.</span></li>
</ol>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Both of these have to be convenient and flexible enough that the time required to call a taxi or rent a car doesn't discourage use.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>At off-peak times, there simply is no practical alternative to the automobile</b>. The remedies are the same.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>People who haul cargo have no practical alternative to the automobile</b>. Remedies include inexpensive delivery services, but frequently bulk cargo purchases include small items or unanticipated on-the-spot purchases. Inexpensive shipping from the point of sale, or cheap truck rental, are additional possible remedies.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The only way to diminish reliance on the automobile is to create a mass transit system that is superior to the automobile by the standards of automobile users</b>. In many circumstances the most effective system <i>is</i> the automobile and the only way to cut use of private automobiles is by supplying <i>public</i>automobiles, like rental cars and taxis. The sci-fi vision where you go up to a vending area, pop in a credit card, and drive off in a waiting car, needs serious consideration. Where density is high enough, the only way to cut reliance on private autos is with mass transit that is competitive with automobiles in out of pocket cost, speed, and convenience.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Attempts to promote mass transit through coercion will inevitably fail</b>. Trying to make mass transit more competitive by raising auto registration fees, parking fees, bridge and tunnel tolls, gasoline taxes, and the like, will inevitably be seen for what it is: artificial manipulation of the marketplace to coerce drivers into using mass transit. Trying to encourage mass transit use by penalizing private auto use amounts to an open admission that mass transit cannot compete with the automobile.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Voodoo Economics won't work<i>. </i></b>I have to pay taxes to build roads and defend our oil supplies whether I drive or not, and fire trucks, ambulances, and delivery vehicles need streets to drive on. Pretending that I somehow avoid those "hidden costs" by taking the bus is beneath stupid. Telling me that 45 minutes in a crowded, lurching bus is better or a more effective use of my time than 20 minutes in my car is a couple of levels below that.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Wishful thinking won't cut it.</b> It will do absolutely no good to say all these problems will go away if we can somehow persuade Americans to accept higher density and move back in from the suburbs. Suburbs began to sprawl back in the days of streetcars. Americans do not <i>want</i> to live in high density settings. Why not just accept it and plan accordingly?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Studies have repeatedly shown two things: the more transportation is available, the more people spread out. Second, commuters start to get irritable when commute times exceed half an hour. Basically, commuters move out to a distance where they feel the time cost is acceptable, and get angry when the rules change. Moral: Americans like to spread out until other individuals do not seriously impinge on their freedom of action. Deal with it.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What Gated Communities Teach Us</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I consider gated communities (and their cousins, the restricted covenant communities) loathsome. Whenever I hear about some homeowner embroiled in a dispute with his homeowners' association, I am torn between despising the homeowners' association for being so petty, and the homeowner for being so stupid as to live in such a place. But they are growing in popularity, and that has something to tell us, and we'd better figure out what that is. What do these communities offer?</span></div>
<ul style="background-color: white; list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Safety.</b> Covenant communities merely merge into the surrounding neighborhoods, but gated communities are walled cities. Paradoxically, concern over crime seems to get worse as society gets safer and crimes, being rarer, become more newsworthy. Nevertheless, crime is a principal reason why affluent people leave cities. So if you want to revitalize the cities, extirpate street crime (people don't triple bolt their doors against inside traders or crooked lobbyists). Not reduce, not contain, not deter, <i>extirpate</i> it. Eliminate from public discourse any notion that crime is ever justified.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Decorum.</b> Covenants don't merely regulate gross misbehavior; they manage fine details. Most of the people governed by them don't see it as intrusive to have to mow their lawns at specified intervals because they do that anyway. So people who don't share the covenanters' values may see such communities as repressive, but the covenanters themselves don't because they prefer to live that way. They <i>want</i> to live among people who share their standards of behavior to a high degree.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Personal Space.</b> Americans like to spread out and always have. But what's wrong with living in an apartment complex and having lots of park space nearby? Why does it have to be <i>personal</i> space? Because personal space can be controlled. Your kid can pitch a tent in the back yard or build a tree fort (not in a lot of covenant communities, though). You can sit in your back yard and not worry about twenty people with loud radios and foul mouths parking right next to you. You don't have to worry about having your favorite picnic spot taken by someone else.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you want to persuade people to move back into high density settlements, you had better figure out why so many people <i>choose</i> to live in restricted communities, and then see to it that the high density settlements offer the same advantages. <i>Nobody has a right to disruptive, annoying, or anti-social behavior</i>.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Incidentally, gated communities are murder on traffic patterns because they lack through streets and therefore channel large volumes of traffic into restricted arteries.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The End of Cheap Oil</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What will happen when oil hits its peak (as it is close to doing?). Will that affect the decision to drive? Possibly. But consider:</span></div>
<ul style="background-color: white; list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Transit companies don't get fuel for free - they will have to raise fares to cover the extra cost. They may also cut routes and frequency to cut costs, adding to all the negatives that keep people off mass transit in the first place.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Generally speaking, when costs go up, mass transit systems cut schedules, raise fares, and generally do everything imaginable to discourage mass transit use.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Between the higher cost of living and higher taxes, people strapped for income will probably resist attempts to subsidize mass transit.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There will be pressure to increase social spending to help poor people cover home heating and cooling. Taxes will go up.</span></li>
<li style="list-style-position: inside; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: inherit; width: 700px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">People forced to work second jobs to cover the increased cost of living will face a <i>killer</i> time cost. Their free time will be so diminished they will not want to spend it riding a bus. And they may well be forced to drive to get from job to job on time.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Prognosis: we may see a marginal shift to mass transit among users for whom the negatives aren't too severe: they're close to transit at both ends of the trip and the time and out-of-pocket costs are not too dissimilar. Car pooling is an obvious win-win, and if it's made easier, it may well take off. If you own a used car, cutting your mileage extends the life of the car and decreases repairs.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Europe Leads The Way</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Europeans use mass transit far more than Americans because of the high population density, and dense and long-established transit systems. So how transit-friendly is Europe?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A Eurail Select Pass for five countries and ten days of rail travel is $748. That's $1500 for two people. I found a Volkswagen Passat (midsize) for ten days for $672. Toss in another $400 for gas and it's $1072. You do the math.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And America Follows</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From this morning's paper, an article on traveling across America by train. Cost of a sleeper car from Portland, Oregon to New York City: $1792.90.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Drive: 3000 miles at 20 miles per gallon = 150 gallons of fuel, say $500. Three nights in <i>good</i> lodgings, another $500. Total: $1000. Your car will depreciate whether you drive or go by train. Of course, on a train you don't have driving fatigue and can read, watch the scenery, or chat. But then again, by driving you get to see <i>all </i>the scenery by day if you choose. Back in 1989 I took my family from Wisconsin to San Francisco and back by train. Even without sleepers it was a remarkably nice experience. But we found a rock bottom last-minute fare.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fly? Boo, hiss, huge carbon footprint. Also $300 if you book in advance and catch a good fare. Plus the value of three days' time not spent traveling. Of course, if you <i>want</i> to see the country from the ground, that's not a factor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Amtrak wonders why more Americans don't take the train.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unclear on the Concept</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So I get the following e-mail</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You make a pretty common error in this analysis. You do not consider the context.</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The context is: What modern transportation infrastructure looks like is dictated primarily by massive public expenditure and use of the government's monopoly on mandate power. The transportation system dictates what our communities look like and how they operate.</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In your conclusions you state:</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Attempts to promote mass transit through coercion will inevitably fail."</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps. But I hope you are not one of those people who would characterize a revolutionary change in how public money is spent on, and public power is exerted for the transportation infrastructure as 'coercion', rather than as 'public policy choice'.</span></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I wrote back:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Whatever the context, people don't ride mass transit because it's costly in time and inconvenient. When that changes, we'll see the "revolutionary" change."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And got the following:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No, you still aren't getting it. With something like transportation and transportation infrastructure - context is everything. If you say something like "whatever the context", you are not grasping the heart/cause-effect of the matter. </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Aaargh - slash construction. Already reason enough to stop taking him seriously)</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"people don't ride mass transit because it's costly in time and inconvenient."</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Even when this question is asked narrowly by the individual, the question must be: costly in time and inconvenient compared to what? Plus, asking that question without context is meaningless.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There will always a whole range of possible answers to those questions depending on existing context. On top of that, the range of answers to those questions for a society will look DRAMATICALLY different depending on whether you are in a culture that is still committed to the folly of government subsidy and mandate/promotion of mass suburbanization - or whether your culture has learned that the majority of a modern human population should live in dense, mixed-use development patterns because it is the sensible, efficient and equitable way to configure modern society.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You are using the language of economics describing a theoretically free market with absolute knowledge by individuals, to describe transportation choice. Transportation infrastructure is and likely always will be about as far from a free market in widget 1 versus widget 2, 3 etc.. as anything will every be. To think of it in these terms is pretty meaningless - and sure to create a society that comes up with the wrong answer.</span></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The context is obvious: it takes me 20 minutes to drive to work and 45 minutes to go by bus. It takes some people in Houston two hours by bus and ten minutes by car. Plus if I drive I can run errands during the day or after work. The idea that this choice involves a "theoretically free market with absolute knowledge by individuals" is straight out of cloud cuckoo land. It's all about what is personally convenient to me in my present life situation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's fairly clear where this is going. He considers suburbanization "folly" and that "the majority of a modern human population <i>should</i> live in dense, mixed-use development patterns because it is the sensible, efficient and equitable way to configure modern society." Society, in his view, has "come up with the wrong answer." He, of course, knows what's right and sensible. But that's not "coercion."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So I wrote back:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"No, <b>you</b> are failing to get the point. The context is that people find mass transit inconvenient and costly to them, <b>at that time and place, compared to driving</b>. Your elaborate denial game about people not realizing "the sensible, efficient and equitable way to configure modern society" doesn't change that. Indeed, as long as people like you fail to understand (or apparently deliberately choose not to understand) why people opt not to use mass transit, you will continue to rant ineffectively."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Dense, mixed-use development patterns" may be "the sensible, efficient and equitable way to configure modern society" to you, but it is <b>not</b> to all those people who move to the suburbs. I see you live in Maine. If you like dense settlements all that much, why are you living out in a sparsely populated region? Why don't you live in inner city Boston or New York instead?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And got this:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They opt not to because the culture, in every form and power the culture has at its disposal, tells them not to.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The denial is on the part of individuals who claim what exists now in transportation infrastructure is some kind of natural and inevitable result, instead of a part of a specific socialized choice. Many individuals are in denial when it comes to realizing that changing any of the details of that socialized choice about the transportation infrastructure is not some nefarious coercion that did not previously exist. It would just be a new set of choices about a undeniably socialized thing: the public infrastructure that provides transportation.</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I live in Maine because that is where a well paying job exists for me. The primary requirement I have for where I live is: that it be with my wife. I compromise a great deal to maintain that primary requirement. The culture fights everything (through the specific flavor of "coercions" now in force) that would me allow me to fulfill my prime requirement in where and how I live, while making a few less compromises.</span></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Okay, so </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he's</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> absolved from any responsibility because he's close to a well paying job and his wife. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He </i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">has a valid personal reason for living far from a large city. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other </i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">people are just being selfish. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> people should modify their lifestyles for the good of society. They should either accept a worse job close to home so they don't have to commute as far, or accept crowded living conditions closer to their work. This guy "compromises a great deal" to satisfy his own lifestyle choices, but other people who take on the responsibility of maintaining their own home, getting up in the dark to get to work, and so on, well, that's just not the same thing. Wonder why his wife can't "compromise a great deal" and move into "dense, mixed use settlement" for the good of society? </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And if we put penalties and new taxes on commuters and suburbanites, well, that's not coercion, that's merely "a new set of choices." Talk about Orwellian doublespeak.</span></div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bottom Line</span></h2>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 700px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You know, it really doesn't hurt me if you don't want to know why attempts to convert people to mass transit fail. Just keep doing what you're doing.</span></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-83446129498106360882017-11-18T11:11:00.003-08:002021-06-14T11:57:23.523-07:00The Triumph of Post-Modernism. Happy?<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Alt-Fact World</span></h2>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In the New Yorker (</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">May 20, 2016) </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Adam Gopnik wrote in "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump:"</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><i>"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,As, to be hated, needs but to be seen,”</i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">the poet Alexander Pope wrote, in lines that were once, as they said back in the day, imprinted on the mind of every schoolboy. Pope continued,</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><i>“Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”</i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Before those famous schoolroom lines, Pope made another observation, which was that even as you recognize that the world is a mixed-up place, you still can’t fool yourself about the difference between the acceptable and the unacceptable:</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><i>“Fools! who from hence into the notion fall, That vice or virtue there is none at all,” he wrote.“Is there no black or white?Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;’Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.”</i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The pain of not seeing that black is black soon enough will be ours, and the time to recognize this is now.</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Unfortunately for Gopnick, the pain was already upon us, inflicted by a generation-long assault on the concepts of truth, objectivity and rationality. And it all seemed so terribly <i>enlightened</i>, as long as it was being used to advance the "right" ideas. It liberated us from the constraints of having to conform to science, logic, and reason. It allowed us to impugn reason as a way of maintaining white male hegemony. It even made it possible to ignore moral constraints that were inconvenient. It only became dangerous when conservatives began appropriating its methodology and rhetoric.</span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Central Fallacy of Philosophy</span></h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Theologian Ian Barbour (1966) described four approaches to science. Naive or traditional realism regarded theories as concrete realities: critical realism regarded theories as reflecting an external reality but as imperfect and subject to revision. Instrumentalism considered only the utility of theories in describing phenomena, so that theories could only be described as "valid" or "invalid," not "true" or "false." Idealism views theories as mental constructs, a school of thought we might now call "constructivist."</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">N.T. Wright nicely described critical realism: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of "knowing" that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence "realism"), while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence "critical").</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Barbour's approach has been criticized by people who object to any attempt to put theology and science on any kind of level playing field. Nonetheless, I think (as did Barbour) that most scientists can be described as critical realists. We no longer regard electric fields as little vortices, nevertheless there's <i>something</i> around electrons or protons. It exists even if we're not aware of it or expecting it, as we see if we get entangled in a plastic bag, pull clothes out of the dryer or reach for a doorknob after walking across a carpet (or carelessly touch a computer chip). The fundamental principle is there's a reality out there. There's a knower and a thing known. It doesn't depend on our preferences, beliefs, cultural upbringing, or desire.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So how do we know what this reality is? How do we know if we've got it? How do we go about studying it? How do we deal with people who have a radically different view of reality, or indeed deny its existence altogether?</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">These are great and deep questions. They lead to fascinating discussions about how we can know the world, how we reason and evaluate evidence, and how much we can trust our perceptions. The one thing they do <i>not</i> do is<b> </b><i>give us any grounds for disbelieving in objective reality. </i>The notion that questions of epistemology (how we know) have anything at all to tell us about reality itself, or whether it exists, is a grand non-sequitur. The fact that reality is difficult to know does not prove anything at all about whether reality exists; that's like saying that because the English Channel is hard to swim across, it might not exist. I call this <b>The Fundamental Fallacy of Philosophy<i>. </i></b></span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">On Constructing Your Own Reality</span></h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Here are a few excerpts on the notion that we all construct our own reality. Philosophers will no doubt object that some of them are not "serious." That's utterly irrelevant. Nobody cares what serious philosophers have to say, and in fact the "non-serious" nature of some of these excerpts is good, <i>because these are the things that impact public consciousness</i>.<b> </b></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Kristen Fox, Y</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">our own personal mass reality, 1998.</span></b><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">http://www.consciouscreation.com/cc-journal/ccj-august-1998/your-own-personal-mass-reality-by-kristen-fox/</span><br />
<br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Note that this piece is almost <i>twenty years old</i>. Anyone who has never heard of any of the ideas expressed here has truly been living in a bubble. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">“Physical objects cannot exist unless they exist in a definite perspective and space continuum. But each individual creates his own space continuum… I want to tie this in with the differences you seem to see in one particular object. Each individual actually creates an entirely different object, which his own physical senses then perceive.” – The Seth Material by Jane Roberts p. 115</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">After I read this quote from the Seth Material, I started to examine what I believed I meant by the phrase “mass reality,” especially if each of us creates our own personal space continuum! Then, the following idea burst into my head: The division between personal reality and mass reality is as illusory as the division between ego and entity/oversoul. There is a division only as long as we choose to believe in it.</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">For the framework of this article, I define “mass reality” as the belief in a space continuum which exists objectively outside what we’d consider our own personal space continuum and would somehow seem to supercede (sic) our own choices, or personal reality. With this understanding, in “mass reality” a alternate set of beliefs holds true or there would be no point in distinguishing it from “personal” reality. Most often we’d think in terms of leaving our personal reality and interacting in “mass reality” when we go out in public or otherwise deal with “others.” And I define “mass EVENTS” as those events in physical reality in which we perceive ourselves as interacting with at least one “other” person.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">When we believe in a mass reality outside of our own personal reality, we have CREATED that mass reality through belief. And yet, we are so used to thinking in these terms that we have difficulty looking at the concept of a “mass reality” as merely a BELIEF instead of REALITY. We each probably have “good reasons” for arguing either for or against the existence of “mass reality,” in which case we can ask ourselves why do we choose one or the other point of view? What would either maintaining or dissolving this division mean to us individually and emotionally?</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Looking at this illusory division through the eyes of habitual creation, we are USED TO perceiving and interacting with others and ASSUME then that these others exist outside of ourselves. This is usually because we’ve associated ourselves solely with our singular physical focus for so long. And yet, when we interact with “others,” we are creating our physical experience of their ESSENCE in our own personal space continuum. Their essences DO exist independently, and yet the interaction and perception of them that we experience in physical reality are our creation of them in our own space continuums. We’ve drawn their essences to us and then create our own version of them to interact with.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">This is a wonderful piece because it embodies so much of the "we create our own reality" philosophy. It's remarkable only in that it does it so explicit</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">ly and that it's still on line after almost two decades. </span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The problem with debating a philosophy like this is it's so impervious to analysis and contradiction. "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The division between personal reality and mass reality [exists] only as long as we choose to believe in it."</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"W</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">hen we interact with “others,” we are creating our physical experience of their ESSENCE in our own personal space continuum." does that mean that if someone is a misogynist, you can choose to experience him as an enlightened feminist instead? Somehow, I doubt it. And no, believers in creating your own reality will say that's not a valid argument because reasons. Like Riegler offers below.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b><br />
</b></span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Riegler, A. (2001) Towards a Radical Constructivist Understanding of Science</b></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Foundations of </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Science 6 (1–3): 1–30.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Constructivism is the idea that we construct our own world rather than it </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">being determined by an outside reality. Its most consistent form, Radical Constructivism </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(RC), claims that we cannot transcend our experiences. Thus it doesn’t make sense to </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">say that our constructions gradually approach the structure of an external reality. </span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"W<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">e construct our own world rather than it </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">being determined by an outside reality." Could it possibly be clearer than that? Interestingly enough, George W. Bush didn't "</span></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">construct his own world" when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. No, he <i>lied</i>. Because that <i>was "</i></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">determined by an outside reality." On the other hand, when Karl Rove said "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">when we act, we create our own reality," that wasn't at <i>all</i> like Radical Constructivism.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Radical Constructivism (RC) is the insight that we cannot transcend the horizon of our experiences. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Experiences are all we can work with; out of experiences we construct our world. Thus, there are no </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">mind-independent entities on which our cognition is based. This does not imply that Radical </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Constructivists deny the existence of such an objective world populated by mind-independent </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">entities, the reality.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">T</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">here are no </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">mind-independent entities on which our cognition is based, but we're not denying an objective world exists. Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot? The external world exists only in so far as it's expedient to the Radical Constructivist. Things crystallize into sharp objectivity when anyone tries to apply constructivism to legitimize anything the constructivist doesn't approve of.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Since the mind is operationally closed, i.e., semantically impenetrable, we cannot know any ‘external semantics’; thus we arrive at the Epistemological Corollary: Reality is neither rejected nor confirmed, it must be considered irrelevant</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Give Rove his due. He, at least, never said reality was <i>irrelevant.</i> But if you wonder where Rove came up with it, look to people like Riegler.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In neurophysiology, it is useless to search for neuron clusters whose activations correlate with external events in a stable referential manner. </span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Oh, I don't know. Let me hook you up to an EEG and mash one of your fingers with a hammer. I bet we'd see "neuron clusters whose activations correlate with external events." Actually, neuroscientists hook people up to EEG's all the time to observe "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">neuron clusters whose activations correlate with external events in a stable referential manner."</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Such insights also have impacts on communication and language. (a) Meaning is a human </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">construct. It does not reside somewhere else and is not independent of the person who makes it.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> (b) </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Meaning cannot be transmitted as an entity. It is not in the words, gestures, symbols with which we </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">express ourselves. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The operational closure results also in a Methodological Corollary: Explanations are </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">necessarily circular since there is no outside point of reference 5</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">. Experience is thus a form of self reference 6</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">. “Cognition serves the subject’s organization of the experimental world, not the </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">discovery of an objective reality”,</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Appealing to reality as the ultimate arbiter of (scientific) disputes gives rise to the belief that there </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">exists a mind-independent reality (MIR) which defines what is true and what is not. What is the </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">sense of clinging to such a concept which is the metaphysical extrapolation of our experiences (or </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">observations)? Clearly, many psychological and social reasons can be put forward to account for </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">this way of reasoning, among which we can find: </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(R1) Claiming authority by referring to an external truth makes one’s own point of view unassailable (Mitterer 1994). </span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(R2) Justifying research expenses, as the true description of reality “…is what we are working for and what we spend the taxpayers’ money for” (Weinberg 1998).</span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(R3) In more general terms, claims of objectivity are for the purpose of forcing others to do what they would not otherwise do themselves (Maturana 1988).</span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(R4) Finally, realism is equated with seriousness and rationality. </span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I just loves me a good conspiracy theory. People believe in realism only for ulterior motives like making one's point of view unassailable, justifying funding, coercing others and asserting authority. Just remember all the scientific controversies where realistic points of view proved eminently assailable, precisely <i>because</i> they were realistic.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Here's a personal scientific experience. I once tried to write a computer program to model phase diagrams, diagrams that show what happens when a mixture of different materials crystallizes from the liquid state. Most books present these as a series of rules. I found that trying to program the rules was impossible.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Then I had my epiphany. I'd simply model the evolution of the mixture itself, and just plot it on the diagram. Not only was that much simpler to program, It revealed all sorts of things I hadn't noticed before. I began teaching the subject from that perspective (http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/Petrology/beutect.htm).</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So when I looked at the problem from an instrumentalist or constructivist perspective (it was all about what happened on the diagram), I got nowhere. Once I approached it from a realist perspective (there was a real molten mixture in a real system), it all came together.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">From a RC perspective the purpose of science is not to seek for truth </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">or to map out ‘reality’.There is no justification for an exclusive claim of objectivity. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Critics of RC often conclude that because knowledge is constructed, the mind is in principle </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">free to construct anything it wants. We must not forget that constructions are historical assemblies. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The historical aspect imposes a hierarchical organization in which more recent additions build on </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">older ones. Such a hierarchy causes mutual dependencies and thus canalization among its </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">components. It severely restricts the degrees of freedom in the way constructions can be </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">accomplished, as described by the Limitations of Construction Postulate. Therefore, the </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">constructions of the mind cannot be arbitrary.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The crucial point is that observation can only be understood as </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">invariants of these cognitive measuring devices. Therefore, they are strictly human-specific, and do </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">not represent independent ontological elements of an outside reality. The notion of truth can no </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">longer be used as a criterion to evaluate physical theories. Instead theory-building must seek for </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">consistency. This leads to the RC-typical circularity as mentioned above. Furthermore, the fact that </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">different set of cognitive operators brings forth a different cognitive phenotype makes it virtually </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">impossible to communicate with beings equipped with that alternative operators. However, such </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">beings do not necessarily have a less consistent or efficient world-view. </span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Except, of course, when those alternative operators cause them to conclude, say, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or homosexuality is a danger to society. <i>Those</i> are "false facts." </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;">Finally I want to point at an important issue which I call the Limitations of Construction Postulate. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">One of the most frequent arguments against constructivism consists of a mere question </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">such as “Surely, you still believe that when the door is closed you cannot walk through it don’t </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">you?”. It seems that an adverb inevitably sneaks in: Constructing our own world is equated with </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">arbitrarily constructing our own world. However, RC is far from confusing both versions. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Experiences are made subsequently. As such, they are connected with each other in a historical </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">manner and form a network of hierarchical interdependencies. </span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Perhaps the most offensive feature of this word hash is the use of "Postulate" to create a pretense of rigor. A postulate, in mathematics, is something like "Vertical angles are equal" (If two lines cross, the angles opposite the intersection are equal) That's a statement that can be used to derive or prove other facts, and it's justified because you can superimpose any two vertical angles and see that they are congruent. The truth of the postulate is demonstrated by external reality. The </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;">Limitations of Construction "Postulate," on the other hand, is "proven" by mere assertion. It says that RC doesn't mean you can't use RC to create arbitrary realities because you can't, because Riegel says so, and the believer in RC gets to decide what's "arbitrary." Of course, someone like David Duke or Donald Trump also has a hierarchy of interdependent experiences, but those somehow don't confer legitimacy on <i>their</i> worlds. Because that would be "arbitrary."</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The problems with word salads like Fox's and Riegel's is they absolutely defy rational parsing. To be utterly crass about it, it's like trying to nail Jello to a tree. Their utterances, like Humpty Dumpty's, mean just what they choose them to mean.</span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> Fake Facts</span></h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In 1999, Carroll Case wrote T<i>he Slaughter: An American Atrocity, </i>alleging that over 1000 black soldiers had been massacred at Camp Dorn, Mississippi in 1943 and buried beneath what would later become a reservoir. The Army went to the unusual length of tracking the fates of every single soldier in the unit. Most of them ended up being sent to Siberia - actually the closest we could come to it - the Aleutians. They concluded that everyone could be accounted for and there had been no such atrocity.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"We had the whole area sealed off--it was like shooting fish in a barrel. We opened fire on everything that moved, shot into the barracks, shot them out of trees, where some of them were climbing, trying to hide. . . ."</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So why would the Army conduct a mass murder on post, where it would be heard by everyone, probably seen by many and leave bullet-riddled and blood-splattered barracks to be fixed up by still more witnesses? Why not march the victims to a secluded area and massacre them out of sight? Or better yet, simply declare their training concluded and pack them off to the Aleutians? This has one of the classic earmarks of a crank conspiracy theory - a tendency to concoct Rube Goldberg mechanisms that any intelligent person could figure out how to accomplish better and more simply.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">From "Camp Van Dorn massacre; Mississippi Massacre, or Myth? Army Tries to Put to Rest Allegations of 1943 Slaughter of Black Troops," By Roberto Suro and Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post, Thursday, December 23, 1999; Page A04</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">Case (author of book) argues that the lack of any accounts by members of the unit shows that those the Army wanted killed were separated from those to be spared. As to the Army's reconstruction of personnel records for the more than 4,000 soldiers who served with 364th at Van Dorn, Case said, "I believe the records have been falsified."</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Classic conspiracy thinking. Lack of evidence proves there was a conspiracy after all, and contrary evidence has been faked.</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"This does not tell us anything about the actual history of blacks in America because there is no proof that it happened, but it does reveal something very interesting about the way people see that history," said John Sibley Butler, a professor of sociology and management at the University of Texas at Austin. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"So many bad things happened to black soldiers during that time period that something like this supposed slaughter could have happened, and because of that, people can put aside the question of whether or not there is evidence and simply believe that it did happen," Butler said. </span></blockquote>
</div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">How could you possibly ask for a more perfect rationalization for alt-facts? "So many bad things have happened as a result of government regulation that any horror story, even if demonstrably false, justifies believing in it."</span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Rationalism and Male Hegemony</span></h2>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Here are a couple of examples by women describing the radical feminist view of rationality.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span></div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Sabina Lovibond, "Feminism and the 'Crisis of Rationality'," New Left Review I/207, September-October 1994. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">There is a measure of consensus within feminist theory that rationalist values are in crisis—that the very arrival of women on the scene of intellectual activity necessitates a reappraisal of those values. [1] Sometimes the claim is that conventional scientific research procedure reflects an objectifying, control-seeking attitude to its subject-matter which can be regarded on psychological grounds as characteristically masculine; the large-scale entry of women into natural science could then be expected to lead to the development of a different, more empathetic and conservationist style of enquiry. [2] Sometimes there is an attempt to introduce new moral categories informed by feminist reflection on the shortcomings of ‘normal science’, such as Lorraine Code’s ‘epistemic responsibility’. [3] Sometimes however, and more iconoclastically, it is argued that reason is an inherently gendered concept—an element in a discursive system organized by the assumption of male superiority.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Noretta Koertge "On feminist critiques of science," Skeptical Inquirer, March-April 1995 v19 n2 p42(2)</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">As Daphne Patai and I interviewed faculty, students, and staff from Women's Studies programs for our book Professing Feminism, there emerged a complex picture of what we call "negative education" - a systematic undermining of the intellectual values of liberal education. And as Paul Gross and Norman Levitt have so impressively documented in Higher Superstition, it is the natural sciences that are under the heaviest fire. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Young women are being alienated from science in many ways. One strategy is to try to redefine what counts as science. For example, instead of teaching about the struggles - and triumphs - of great women scientists, such as Emmy Noether, Marie and Irene Curie, and Kathleen Lonsdale, feminist accounts of the history of science now emphasize the contributions of midwives and the allegedly forgotten healing arts of herbalists and witches. More serious are the direct attempts to steer women away from the study of science. Thus, instead of exhorting young women to prepare themselves for a variety of technical subjects by studying science, logic, and mathematics, Women's Studies students are now being taught that logic is a tool of domination and that quantitative reasoning is incompatible with a humanistic appreciation of the qualitative aspects of the phenomenological world.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">One suspects that the problem in the eyes of some feminists, as in the case of other anti-rationalists, is that reason is the last obstacle to a world of total solipsism. </span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Narcissism and the Exploitation of Non-Western Philosophy</span></h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">From "</span>The Revolution That Didn’t Happen," Victor Stenger, Huffington Post, July 18 2014, Updated September 17, 2014.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I disagree. In fact, no small portion of the blame for the excessive self-absorption that has characterized America for all this time lies at the feet of the proponents of the new mysticism. Anyone listening to New Age gurus, such as Zukav and Deepak Chopra, and modern megachurch Christian preachers, cannot miss the emphasis on the individual finding easy gratification, rather than sacrificing and selflessly laboring for a better world.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Holistic philosophy is the perfect delusion for the spoiled brat of any age who, all decked out in the latest fashion, loves to talk about solving the problems of the world but has no intention of sweating a drop in achieving this noble goal.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Reductionist classical physics did not make people egoists. People were egoists long before reductionist classical physics. In fact, classical physics has nothing to say about humans except that they are material objects like rocks and trees, made of nothing more than the same atoms—just more cleverly arranged by the impersonal forces of self-organization and evolution. This is hardly a philosophical basis for narcissism.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The new quantum holism, on the other hand, encourages our delusions of personal importance. It tells us that we are part of an immortal cosmic mind with the power to perform miracles and, as Chopra has said, to make our own reality. Who needs God when we, ourselves, are God? Thoughts of our participation in cosmic consciousness inflate our egos to the point where we can ignore our shortcomings and even forget our mortality.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The modern versions of traditional religions feed on this desire. Where once Christian preachers shouted hell-fire and brimstone from the pulpit, their successors in the very same sects now present the soothing message that we are all perfect, worthy, and destined for infinite happiness. The only sacrifice required is a regular check. Then Jesus will provide all.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The rising number who identify themselves as “not religious but spiritual” have not found the new Christianity either sensible or congenial. Unfortunately the new spirituality they find in quantum mysticism is just as much of a con game.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Mystical physics is a grossly misapplied version of ancient Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, which were based on the notion that only by the complete rejection of self can one find inner peace in this world of suffering and hopelessness. However, you won’t find selflessness in these religions as they are practiced in America today. I once attended a Buddhist meditation class in Boulder, which is a center for that sort of thing (Capra’s book was published in Boulder). The first thing we did was sit around in a circle and talk about ourselves. Needless to say, the meditation did not help me get rid of my own self-centeredness—and this wasn’t the only time I tried it.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Capra and his colleagues say they are putting a modern face on ancient Eastern philosophy. I say they are covering a noble edifice with graffiti. Where they see similarities between the new and the old mysticisms, I see only contrasts. Where they promote the new mythology as an antidote for self-absorption, I assert that they are manufacturing a drug that induces it. And while they blame rational science for the ills of the world, I hold rational science as a source of genuine hope for reducing the severity of this latest addiction, if only we and our successors have the wisdom to use it properly.</span></blockquote>
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Bad Astronomy. <i>Really </i>Bad Astronomy</span></h2>
<h1 class="post-title single" style="background-color: white; font-family: "yanone kaffeesatz", sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.5px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"></span></h1>
<div class="meta" style="background-color: white; border: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Flat earth believers are mostly considered a joke, but there's also a g<i>eocentrist</i> movement, mostly consisting of uber-Catholics who assert the Church was right and Galileo was wrong. [1] Phil Plait examined the movement on his "Bad Astronomy" blog: "<span style="color: #333333;">Geocentrism? Seriously." (</span><span style="color: #333333;">September 14, 2010)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #333333;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In this post, he makes the following utterly appalling statements:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">I have two things to say that might surprise you: first, geocentrism is a valid frame of reference, and second, heliocentrism is not any more or less correct.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">Wh</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">en a "scientist" isn't willing to defend the truth of <i>heliocentric astronomy," </i>he should just get out of science and open a slot for someone who<i> does</i> take science seriously. Because those two statements are objectively scientifically illiterate.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">First, "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">geocentrism is a valid frame of reference." Well, if you're thinking in terms of the rising and setting of the sun, it may be more useful - if you disregard <i>literally everything else in the universe</i>. It's useful in the sense that you can ignore the speed of sound in firing a pistol to start a race, a fiction that applies to <i>nothing else</i>. But if something is more than about 4 billion kilometers away, it would be moving at the speed of light.[2] All the outer planets are moving fast enough for relativistic length contraction to be obvious. Pluto and the New Horizons spacecraft are moving <i>faster than light</i>. So geocentrism violates fundamental laws of physics. The evidence for distant objects moving faster than light is.... [crickets].</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">Okay, got it. You don't believe in relativity. So check this. Connect a bowling ball and a softball to opposite ends of a rod. Now spin the rod. It will spin around the center of mass. Watch the hammer throw in the Olympics or an ice skater pirouetting with his partner to see the same effect. Yet the earth has the moon and all the mass in the universe spinning around it, <i>but doesn't move</i>. Alone of all material objects in the universe, the earth doesn't obey conservation of angular momentum. Needless to say, observational evidence for such a claim is completely absent.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">So we don't need to appeal to parsimony or Occam's Razor, we can dismiss geocentrism because it <i>flatly violates the laws of physics</i>. Needless to say, "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">heliocentrism is not any more or less correct" is simply ridiculous. Heliocentrism <i>is</i> more correct.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">Then, amazingly, Plait concludes with</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">But the Universe doesn’t care how strongly you believe in something. If it ain’t right, it ain’t right. Geocentrism ain’t right. No matter how much spin you put on it.</span></blockquote>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Feel free to spend a few minutes gaping like a goldfish. If geocentrism "ain't right," then how in the world can it be a "valid" frame of reference and "no more or less correct than heliocentrism?" Once again we have "reality means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <br />
<div class="meta" style="border: none; font-size: 10px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="meta-date"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;">So when Plait took aim at climate denialists on March 28, 2017, I replied:</span></span></div>
<div class="meta" style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">Question: who wrote this? "geocentrism is a valid frame of reference, and second, heliocentrism is not any more or less correct."</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">An</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">swer, YOU did, on September 14, 2010</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">If you're not even willing to defend the truth of heliocentric astronomy, what gives you any right to criticize climate denialists?</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">For years we've been awash in a sea of pseudo-intellectual rubbish: Science doesn't find truth, we all construct our own reality, science is a social construct. Now the right has picked it up. This is a wholly foreseeable result. Some people who foresaw it include Paul R. Gross, and Norman Levitt: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science; Alan Sokal, and Jean Bricmont: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science; and Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin W. Lewis: The Flight from Science and Reason. People have been sounding warnings for twenty years.</span></span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Notes</b></span></div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">[1] In a weird sort of way, the geocentrists are right. Galileo <i>is</i> where it all went wrong. Specifically, it's where the <i>Church</i> went wrong. It could have stood up for intellectual honesty, instead it retreated into an ultimately futile attempt to defend authority by decree, using ever more sophistic and specious methods. </span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">[2] </span><span class="meta-date" style="font-size: 10px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The apparent rotational velocity of the sky is w = 2 pi/86400 radians per second = 0.0000727 radians per second. At a distance r, the velocity of an object is v = wr. So where would v = c? We have </span> </span></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;">r *0.0000727 = 300,000 (units in kilometers/sec). Thus r = 300,000/0.0000727 = 4.126 billion kilometers.</span><br />
<div class="meta" style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">References</span></h2>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="meta" style="background-color: white; border: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">
<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt: </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science; </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">JHU Press, 2011</span></div>
<div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science; </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Macmillan, 1999</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, Martin W. Lewis, editors: <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Flight from Science and Reason; </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">New York Academy of Sciences, 1996</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "lucida grande", "lucida sans", "lucida sans unicode", sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif">Koertge, Noretta, ed. </span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">A house built on sand: Exposing postmodernist myths about science</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">. Oxford University Press, 1998.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f8f8;">Boghossian, Paul. </span><i style="background-color: #f8f8f8; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Fear of knowledge: Against relativism and constructivism</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f8f8;">. Clarendon Press, 2007.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f8f8;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f8f8;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">― </span><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12806.Hannah_Arendt" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">Hannah Arendt</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">, </span><span id="quote_book_link_396931" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23497" style="color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">The Origins of Totalitarianism</a></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #f8f8f8;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #f8f8f8;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">― </span><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12806.Hannah_Arendt" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">Hannah Arendt</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">, </span><span id="quote_book_link_396931" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23497" style="color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">The Origins of Totalitarianism</a></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f8f8f8;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #f8f8f8;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">― </span><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12806.Hannah_Arendt" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">Hannah Arendt</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">, </span><span id="quote_book_link_396931" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23497" style="color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">The Origins of Totalitarianism</a></span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f8f8; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-15052296727804321872017-11-02T13:09:00.003-07:002022-10-18T10:57:48.643-07:00On Being "Wrong" in Science<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"Darwin has been proven wrong by recent research"</span></h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">From a recent exchange with someone who took issue with me saying that conservatives could forget about ever being taken seriously as intellectuals as long as they were allied with creationists:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">Again, I think you’re just out of touch with the latest developments in genetic study. Here’s a great overview, <span class="x_qlink_container"><u>Why everything you've been told about evolution is wrong</u></span> At this point, it is silly to defend Darwin as the absolute authority on evolution…he has been disproved and it is time to look into other more convincing explanations. See, also</span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> From Time magazine, an excellent piece on epigenetics: </span><span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><u>bit-ly/5Kyj5q</u></span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told about Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong, by David Shenk, is published by Doubleday.</span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini is published by Profile.</span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">For more on "horizontal evolution" see New Scientist: <span class="x_qlink_container"><u>bit-ly/4zzAsr</u></span></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"></span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">
<ul>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Also from New Scientist, more on the role of viruses in evolution: <span class="x_qlink_container"><u>bit-ly/bD4NLC</u></span></span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Now, genetics isn't my specialty so I don't read the scientific journals in the field. But I am "in touch" enough to know the difference between real genetics journals and popular outlets like New Scientist. To do this guy credit, he didn't cite some of the real junk out there, like Answers in Genesis or TalkOrigins. These are at least semi-reputable. But this is akin to the guy who reads "I am Joe's Hangnail" in the Reader's Digest and thinks he's qualified to go toe to toe with a doctor.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">He's talking about research that indicates that traits may be influenced by more than simple inheritance. Chickens placed in a stressful environment had offspring that behaved differently under stress than non-stressed chickens. Apparently stress triggered a change in the way genes are expressed and that response was passed along. Viruses play a role in modifying genes, especially in micro-organisms, and it's known that microorganisms can "catch" drug resistance from other species.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So how does this make Darwin "wrong?" Genes weren't even known in Darwin's day, so how can any discoveries in genetics make him "wrong?"</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Here's Darwinian evolution in capsule form.</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">More organisms are born than can possibly survive.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Individual organisms show variations</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Some variations are more beneficial than others</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Organisms with beneficial traits have a greater likelihood of surviving and mating compared to those with disadvantageous traits.</span></li>
</ol>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Which of these points is overturned by the recent research on "epigenetics?" Answer: <b>None</b>. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Lets look at them in turn:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>More organisms are born than can possibly survive. </b>Well, you can do the math with say, flies. If one pair of flies lays 100 eggs and they grow to maturity in a couple of weeks and mate and lay more eggs, the numbers within a couple of months get absurd. Or go to your local animal shelter and get a lecture on spaying and neutering.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Individual organisms show variations. </b>Look at a litter of kittens or puppies if you have any doubts. And we're not saying anything about <i>how</i> the variations arose. So they occur by a virus inserting new DNA. So what? They're still variations. </span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Some variations are more beneficial than others. </b>We have two small dogs, one about 50% bigger than the other. They're litter mates. The small one was the runt. She also has a heart murmur and a narrowed trachea. Those are not beneficial variations (and she died just short of her seventh birthday.)</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Organisms with beneficial traits have a greater likelihood of surviving and mating compared to those with disadvantageous traits. </b>Our little runt dog would definitely be at a disadvantage in the wild. Even in a protected setting, she may not (did not) live as long as her sister. Both, since we're responsible pet owners, have a zero per cent chance of mating.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">These are all common sense observations. Nothing in genetics has the slightest effect on their validity.</span></div>
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"Quantum Mechanics and Relativity have disproved Newton"</span></h2>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Newton didn't anticipate that odd things happen close to the speed of light. So if you apply Newton's formulas to things moving at close to the speed of light, you'll be wrong.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">How wrong? The formula for the energy of something in relativity is E = mc<sup>2</sup>/sqrt(1- v<sup>2</sup>/c<sup>2</sup>). So as v approaches c, the square root term gets closer to zero and energy gets closer to infinity. This is one of the reasons you can't travel at the speed of light?</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">But what happens if v is, say, 100 km/hour? Everyday speeds. What happens then? Well, you can also write that 1</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/sqrt(1- v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/c</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">) part as a series of terms. You get (1 - (1/2)</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/c</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">+ (3/8)</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">4</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/c</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">4</sup> + .....).<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> If v is 300 km/sec, way faster than any macroscopic object we have ever launched, then v/c = .001, and </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/c</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> is .000001 and </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">4</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/c</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">4</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> is .000000000001. This is a common tactic in mathematics and especially calculus. If higher terms are extremely tiny, we can just ignore them.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So we have E = </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> mc</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(1 - (1/2)</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">/c</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">) and E = </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">mc</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> + </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> (1/2)m</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup>. <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">That </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">E = </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">mc</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> part is the formula for converting mass to energy. This is the part that Newton didn't know about, but since we never see it in everyday life, it doesn't matter. The only time you ever see it is when you flip on a light switch and your power comes from the local nuclear plant, or when you bask in the sun or look at the stars. If you ever see it any other way, you are going to have an extremely bad day.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The other part, </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">(1/2)m</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">v</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sup><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">, is just the Newtonian formula for kinetic energy. So, far from disproving Newton, <b>relativity gives the same results</b>.</span></div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />
</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Okay, what about quantum mechanics? Newtonian physics doesn't apply at the atomic scale, which Newton didn't know because he was quite a bit bigger than an atom. He also moved a lot slower than light, which is why he didn't know about relativity. In fact, it was trying to come up with a Newtonian picture of atoms, and failing, that led physicists to quantum mechanics at all.
</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The first clue was that electrons can orbit the atom at all. Normally, if you force electrons to travel a curving path, they'll emit radiation and lose energy. Electrons should quickly spiral into the nucleus. Physicists were forced to assume that, for some reason, electrons didn't obey that law. Then it turned out that the electron energies could only have certain values. They were "quantized."</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Physics was a victim of its own success, because modeling a hydrogen atom as a tiny solar system was so successful it created an image that still misleads everyone. But attempts to build more elaborate models with more complex atoms simply failed. At least the weird nomenclature of quarks, with flavor, color and charm, don't carry <i>too</i> much risk of people assuming quarks<i> really</i> taste like chocolate, are blue, or flirt.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Most of the weirdness in quantum mechanics involves the fact that matter isn't anything familiar. Are electrons waves, or particles? Yes. There are times, like an old-time TV tube, where it makes sense to treat them as particles. There are other times, like electron microscopes, where it makes sense to treat them as waves. The reality is that they're something for which we have no analogs at our scale of existence.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">That means we can't apply particle-like definitions. We can't define <i>both</i> the position and momentum of a particle beyond a certain precision. Joke: a cop stops a physicist. "Do you know how fast you were going?" "No, but I know exactly where I am." "You were going 80 miles an hour!" "Great, now I'm lost!" We use analogies that create the impression that it's just our clumsiness that interferes, that when we measure position, we disturb the momentum of the particle. The reality is that matter is just inherently fuzzy at very tiny scales.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The worst misapplications of quantum mechanics come from the fact that often, the results of an experiment depend on how we set it up. If we set up an experiment that treats electrons as particles, we see particle behavior. If we set it up as if electrons are waves, we see wave behavior. This has led a lot of would-be mystics into a kind of quantum solipsism, where we determine reality by our expectations. There's only one problem with that. If our expectations determined the outcome of experiments <i>we would never have discovered quantum mechanics at all. </i>In fact, we'd probably be using the physics of Aristotle because we'd never have discovered anything that unexpectedly contradicted him.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">What effect does quantum mechanics have on a baseball? The uncertainties in position and momentum are subatomic. The wavelength associated with something as massive as a baseball is beyond subatomic. In fact, there's a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics called <i>the correspondence principle</i>. When dealing with very large systems where Newtonian physics works, <b>quantum mechanics <i>must</i> yield the same results. Not only does quantum mechanics not disprove Newton, it <i>has to</i> agree with him.</b></span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>"Plate Tectonics shows that Wegener was Wrong"</b></span></h2>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In the case of Darwin and modern genetics, or Newton and modern physics, we have scientific ideas that were very rudimentary when first proposed and which were greatly elaborated by later discoveries. No doubt they both had some wrong ideas, but those were quickly corrected and are of historical interest only.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift had some important elements that <i>were</i> factually wrong and which his opponents used to attack his theory. The very name "continental drift" implies there's something special about the continents. I mean, we live on them so they <i>must</i> be important, right? He pictured the continents being driven by a force away from the poles, and as plowing through the earth's interior like ships in the sea. In fact he pictured mountains like the Andes as being a sort of "bow wave."</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">And those were just wrong. Even worse, they were demonstrably wrong even by the standards of the time. Seismology was already advanced enough to give us a good idea of the mechanical properties of the earth's interior and it turns out that the earth's mantle is far too strong to allow continents to push through it.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">There was an American geologist, Frank Taylor, who also proposed something very much like continental drift at about the same time. And some of his interpretations actually look more modern than Wegener's. For example, here's how he pictured Greenland breaking away from North America.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxqBGyTZY2JYmXRAd_KTUTUFzaNCbY9ijlBGqv_u1Vi9m0QOWSJxb2TzkppZqaN-GxV_tSbuTqiNdSgvqs6xQDLeYRbwKtaoAhueIqjtmfaNb-PiMfklix2mSl4ldhYfQt95nnI5y7sNtH/s1600/Taylor1.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxqBGyTZY2JYmXRAd_KTUTUFzaNCbY9ijlBGqv_u1Vi9m0QOWSJxb2TzkppZqaN-GxV_tSbuTqiNdSgvqs6xQDLeYRbwKtaoAhueIqjtmfaNb-PiMfklix2mSl4ldhYfQt95nnI5y7sNtH/s320/Taylor1.gif" width="284" /></a></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The only words to describe this are "dead on target." Apart from calling Davis Strait a "rift valley" and Greenland a "horst" (upraised block), this is pretty much exactly how modern geologists interpret this region.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I have a copy of Taylor's paper, and I weep with frustration to think of it. He got <i>almost 50 pages</i> to explain his idea, whereas a modern geologist would be lucky to get half a dozen. And most likely the paper would be rejected as too "speculative." Taylor actually predated Wegener by a couple of years, and thought that Wegener had stolen some of his credit. Having compared both versions, I don't think so, and it strikes me as a bit like fighting over who gets to be captain of the back half of the <i>Titanic, </i>considering how much opposition the theory encountered. But there's no doubt about Taylor's insight.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So why does Wegener get more of the credit? He assembled more kinds of evidence, including the famous ice age and Gondwanaland fossil evidence, and presented a more global picture. </span><br />
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Despite the problems with Wegener's mechanisms, the picture was compelling enough to keep a small minority of geologists fine-tuning the idea and keeping it alive. Finally after World War II, technology for sensing the ocean floor, much of it originally developed for anti-submarine warfare, became available. It turns out the continents <i>do</i> move, but only because the entire crust is moving. The crust is made of a dozen or so large slabs, called plates. All the active processes occur in the ocean basins. So Wegener had the big picture correct, but many of the smaller details wrong. </span><br />
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Nowadays, thanks to GPS, we can actually see plate tectonics happening in real time.</span><br />
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMfU9OlRqej9AP4ZErr-_quxwgxCCO1nFXiluEk5beY9IQEW_OktuNfmyFeCEqJc7ayfs5-XIKmLe06hgU6RHko0z0FXqNgwJfVWviG7HP4txJSu5dv8WqFY8CapkqpkiVYQeYDlHdtay/s1600/Global_plate_motion_2008-04-17.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="495" data-original-width="700" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMfU9OlRqej9AP4ZErr-_quxwgxCCO1nFXiluEk5beY9IQEW_OktuNfmyFeCEqJc7ayfs5-XIKmLe06hgU6RHko0z0FXqNgwJfVWviG7HP4txJSu5dv8WqFY8CapkqpkiVYQeYDlHdtay/s640/Global_plate_motion_2008-04-17.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span class="x_qlink_container" face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-50798017376956931352017-10-22T11:38:00.000-07:002017-10-24T19:49:01.288-07:00The Propertied Class is Way Bigger than you Think<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In <i>The Guardian</i> (July 19, 2017), </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">George Monbiot describes the impact of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">James McGill Buchanan, who has helped orchestrate a program to enable the political supremacy of the wealthy. Monbiot describes the roots of Buchanan's philosophy:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Buchanan was strongly influenced by both the neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the property supremacism of John C Calhoun, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that freedom consists of the absolute right to use your property (including your slaves) however you may wish; any institution that impinges on this right is an agent of oppression, exploiting men of property on behalf of the undeserving masses.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">James Buchanan brought these influences together to create what he called public choice theory. He argued that a society could not be considered free unless every citizen has the right to veto its decisions. What he meant by this was that no one should be taxed against their will. But the rich were being exploited by people who use their votes to demand money that others have earned, through involuntary taxes to support public spending and welfare. Allowing workers to form trade unions and imposing graduated income taxes were forms of “differential or discriminatory legislation” against the owners of capital.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any clash between “freedom” (allowing the rich to do as they wish) and democracy should be resolved in favour of freedom. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But these ideas aren't simply likely to appeal to the wealthy. They have appeal for </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">anyone</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> who owns property. In fact, they are more likely to appeal to people with little property, because any impact on their property rights is more keenly felt than would be the case for a large property owner. Tell Ted Turner he can't do something on his land and he'll just go somewhere else. Tell a farmer or small rancher the same thing and it may cripple his operations. The answer to the question, "what could ordinary homeowners possibly have in common with the 1% is simple; <i>they both own property</i>. So just how many people in the U.S. own property?</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's a word for these people: <i>"bourgeoisie."</i> Used nowadays in a manner roughly synonymous with "middle class," but the original French sense of including the middle and upper classes is actually more accurate because property owners tend to have values and interests in common. In those days the middle and upper classes were far smaller than the lower class. The bourgeoisie are held in deep contempt by Marxists, who see them as hogging all the resources and means of production, and by intellectuals, who see them as having tastes that are, well, bourgeois. (Or "philistine," a term that reveals the user's historical ignorance, since the Philistines were actually a lot more culturally advanced than the Israelites.) In Russia, many of them were <i>kulaks</i>, affluent peasants who were often summarily imprisoned or executed by the Bolsheviks. Because you can't become affluent if everyone is being oppressed, can you? Causes bad cognitive dissonance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Understanding the notion of "bourgeoisie" goes a very long way toward answering the pesky question why so many less affluent voters "vote against their best interests." To many of them, preserving their property rights <i>are</i> their "best interests." Once people own property, however modest, they stop identifying with the proletariat and identify with other property owners. In fact, their allegiance is likely to be all the stronger simply because their foothold in the propertied class is so precarious.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So why don't they unite against the "real" enemy, the wealthy who pay skimpy wages? Because the wealthy are not direct threats. The actions of the wealthy might cause them to lose their property, but indirectly. A factory might close, jobs might be eliminated, but only rarely do the wealthy confiscate property directly. All the <i>direct</i> attacks on property rights come from the government. If a business takes a piece of property to expand a factory, the taking will be done by the government, not by the business. If a law is passed that undercuts property rights, it will be the government that does it. All the most direct threats to bourgeois property rights come from the government, frequently in the name of "social justice."</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How Big is America's Propertied Class?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is extremely difficult to find out just how many properties exist in the United States. In addition to individually owned properties, there are jointly owned properties, and corporate properties. The closest thing to an answer is the Census Bureau's tally of 75 million homeowners. Homes exclude factories, shopping malls, apartment buildings, warehouses, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and restaurants. On the other hand, it is probably safe to assume that people who own those properties, or major interests in them, also own their own homes. Farms and ranches are likely to include homesteads as well. So people who own large properties are likely to be homeowners as well, and of course many people own homes but no other properties. For the purposes of estimating how many people identify with propertied interests, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Archie Bunker's tiny lot in Queens </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">counts just as much as </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ted Turner, who owns 2 million acres, So that figure of 75 million is probably a decent first approximation.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The problem with low wages is that they amount to taking the only economic means of production an individual owns - his time - and failing to pay enough in return to buy the necessities of life. But there is a similar problem with liberal policies. These amount to seizing control of the only <i>wealth</i> that many people have - their property. Liberal restrictions on property rights limit the ability of property owners to use their property to maximum advantage, shunt the risks and costs of social policies (for example, providing handicapped access) onto property owners, endanger the future ability of property owners to get the best return on the sale of their property, and effectively, through property taxes, charge people rent for their own property. So when we ask why so many people "vote against their best interests," that question concentrates on issues like wages and benefits, but neglects attacks on their property. Fundamentally, it's an elitist question because it assumes that people don't know their own best interests.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An urban or suburban homeowner faces things like zoning restrictions, neighbor problems, and possible sanctions for not renting rooms equitably, but the real impact on property rights shows up in those sparsely populated flyover states that show up as bright red on electoral maps. Property owners may be a mile or more apart, but can find themselves in deep legal trouble if they build over a slushy patch of ground ("wetland") or disturb an endangered animal or plant. Their ability to control pests or harvest timber is limited. Not surprisingly, there is strong sympathy in many of these areas for a strong interpretation of the Fifth Amendment's requirement that the Government compensate property owners for property "taken" for public use.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you tell Ted Turner he can't do something on a part of his land, he might just shrug and go someplace else. If he does decide to push back, he'll farm the task out to his attorneys and pay the bills out of petty cash. If you make the same demand on a small farmer or rancher, the impact on his property rights is far greater and his financial ability to fight back is far less. Opponents of a strong "takings" interpretation point out that such an interpretation was never held by the courts. That may be true, but it misses the point that, had any of today's restrictions on property rights been enacted and challenged in the 19th century, they'd have been thrown out of court without a second glance as violations of state sovereignty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To the small suburban or urban property owner, one danger stands out above all others: <i>crime</i>. All the Marxist fever dreams of uniting the marginalized under one grand proletarian red banner crash headlong into the simple fact that many of the most direct threats to property security for small property owners come from sociopathic individuals. As long as liberals insist on defending criminals as "oppressed" or "disadvantaged," they will be class enemies of property owners, and it won't matter how appealing their platform of health care or family leave is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well then, who <i>will</i> speak for criminals? How about nobody?</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reference</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">George Monbiot; </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Guardian</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (July 19, 2017).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<br />Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-81208264102091024632017-07-23T18:54:00.002-07:002017-08-09T13:06:09.662-07:00Flipping Russia<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When the school bell rang, we knew what to do. File out into the hallway, crouch down, head to the wall, and wait for the all clear. It was the Cold War and we were preparing for a nuclear attack. Our century old brick building would probably not have fared well against a modest nuke to downtown Bangor, Maine (or "Bangah"), but the real strategic target was Dow Air Force Base on the outskirts of town just three miles away. A large thermonuclear strike there would probably have swept our school away. Dow Air Force Base is long closed, leaving as a legacy an 11,000 foot runway that can handle literally anything that flies. It was even designated an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle. Bangor International Airport does quite nicely as a stopover and refueling point for trans-Atlantic aviation, as well as an emergency airport when Boston and New York are choked up.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for selling secrets to Russia (but <i>not</i> for treason, which is very narrowly defined under the Constitution and very rarely invoked. <i>Espionage</i>, on the other hand, can land you in a world of hurt.) Hollywood was in dire danger of being subverted by Communist propaganda. Russia was pictured as infiltrating America on every front, undermining traditional values with rock'n'roll, comic books, left-leaning movies, sex and liberal college professors.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now Donald Trump is a fan of Vladimir Putin and conservatives seem scarcely perturbed at the possibility that Russia tried to influence the 2016 Presidential election. Admittedly, Russia's efforts were mostly aimed at people already favorably disposed toward Trump and against Clinton, making the propaganda mission as hard as selling vodka in Siberia in the winter. But how is it that conservatives went from utter loathing of Russia in the 1950's to acceptance, and even seeing them as allies, 60 years later?</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why not Communism?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">First and foremost, Communism was a threat to private property and social order. In the late 19th Century it was abhorred for its calls for worker control of industry. After the Bolshevik Revolution, with its wholesale purges of the wealthy and middle class, Communism's place as a mortal threat to Western society was secured. The fact that Communism styled itself as "socialist" contributed to widespread conflation of the two, aided in no small part by the craven failure of socialists to reject Communism's appropriation of their name. For every modern liberal who objects when conservatives equate socialism and communism, you had your chance to object every time the Soviet Union called itself "The Union of Soviet <i>Socialist</i> Republics."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Communism's attempt to unite workers and marginalized groups was part of the threat. They also sought to champion minority groups. The threat level of that effort is best gauged by the darkly humorous story of the abortive Soviet film "Black and White" [1] whose climactic scene had hordes of white factory workers descending from the North to aid oppressed Southern black workers. It betrayed a level of understanding of American racial politics that can best be described as "unhinged."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The view of property widely held at the time was that freedom implied absolute liberty to use private property without restrictions. So labor unions were seen as criminal conspiracies to usurp control of private property, and socialism and communism, as broad political movements, were even worse. To a political theorist there are important differences between socialism and communism. To someone who sees them as assaults on absolute private property, the differences are merely pedantic. They amount to the difference between being robbed by a suave highwayman with a cape and rapier, versus being bludgeoned in a dark alley. And if you're on the losing end, it makes little difference whether Robin Hood gives to the poor, or spends it on drugs and hookers.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Almost equally important was Communism's assault on religion. Pre-Bolshevik communism was hostile to religion, seeing it as a diversion from secular social activism, but under Bolshevism, churches were closed and clergy imprisoned or executed. The Russian Orthodox Church was allowed to function, politically neutered and muzzled. Religion wasn't banned outright - it would take Enver Hoxha's lunatic regime in Albania to do that - but it was ostracized and subject to discrimination. Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary became a symbol of Communist oppression of religion during his imprisonment and later asylum in the U.S. Embassy. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mindszenty achieved the impressive feat of being imprisoned by <i>both</i> fascists <i>and</i> Communists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But probably the most sinister threat from Communism was its pervasive secret police and informant apparatus. Merely keeping silent about Communism wasn't sufficient; it was a crime to<i> fail to inform </i>on others who criticized it. Ultimately the version of Marxism practiced in the USSR was one of the grandest crackpot conspiracy theories ever put into action. Having assured themselves that history followed invariable deterministic paths, Marxist theorists felt wholly justified in silencing all meaningful criticism. Like fundamentalists, the fact that an idea conflicted with the accepted view made it <i>ipso facto</i> wrong. No doubt Josef Stalin was happy to have intellectuals who might otherwise cause trouble frittering away their energies on trivial debates about Marxist minutiae, "mental masturbation" of the purest sort. (In <i>The Gulag Archipelago</i>, Solzhenitsyn relates the tale of one Party secretary who was arrested by the KGB while typing up the minutes for the most recent Party meeting. She was so preoccupied with transcribing pointless bickering over policy that the KGB men finally had to tell her to go say goodbye to her children. I had one acquaintance who visited Russia frequently and who was convinced that much of the endless round of Party meetings and other political activities served the very prosaic end of keeping the populace sleep-deprived.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mikhail Gorbachev, a former KGB officer, was in a position to know just how serious the decay had become and attempted to launch reforms through his "perestroika" (rebuilding) program. But events followed the all too familiar pattern of Russian history where reforms were delayed too long for fear of losing control, and when the pressure became overwhelming, events spiraled out of control and control was lost anyway. (Russian wags dubbed the aftermath of Gorbachev's reforms "perestrelka" - crossfire.)</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From Communism to Kleptocracy</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In theory, Communism should have been a class-less society free of crime. So where did Russian organized crime come from? While there is a huge amount of material on the growth of Russian organized crime since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, organized crime did not appear suddenly like mushrooms after a rain, and there is much less on the history of organized crime under theoretically clean and honest Marxism. It seems certain that organized crime must have been far more pervasive than anyone suspected during the Soviet era, and the Russian security apparatus must have been deeply involved. The KGB could have shielded criminals from prosecution in return for bribes, or quite possibly employed them for other -services.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One interesting summary [2] says:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Russia's historical cycle runs roughly as follows: Catastrophe strikes the centralized state and the social order is shattered; a "white rider" comes along to pick up the pieces and restore power to the state, only to come up short and yield to a "dark rider" willing to do whatever is necessary regardless of moral implications; and an era of decline follows until the next catastrophe strikes and the cycle begins anew. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Organized crime is just as beholden to Russia's historical cycle, with its power inversely related to the power of the state. When the Russian state is in a crisis, organized crime spreads and becomes the functioning arbiter of state affairs. Once power is restored to the state, organized crime never fully disappears but recedes into the background, usually cooperating to some degree with the state, until another catastrophe hits and allows it to expand again.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The analysts point out that one seminal event was Stalin's death and the abrupt release of millions of prisoners from the Soviet Gulag. While many of these were hapless political dissidents or people sentenced on the flimsiest of pretexts, many others were criminals. Since criminals were essentially allowed free rein over the camps [3] the Gulag served as a finishing school for Russian crime. Russian criminals dominated the black market (the only free market), set up supply chains to bring smuggled goodies into Russia, which they made available to favored Party officials in return for protection. Other criminal affiliates gained political office to shield the mob from prosecution and to advance their own enterprises.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The collapse of the Soviet Union not only created a vacuum for criminals to exploit, it left a lot of KGB agents and police without paychecks. Many of them either joined the mob or shielded it from prosecution. Many other highly educated Russians joined the mob because of the almost nonexistent prospects for prosperity, let alone advancement, in the impoverished Russia of the 1990's.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Right Flips for Russia</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For some time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was, and continues to be, a school of thought that holds that the end of Communism was a fake, engineered to lull the West into a false sense of security. It attributes to Russia the typical suite of super-villain powers common to fringe conspiracy thinkers: the ability to engineer a vast coordinated plan with no leaks whatsoever, the deliberate unleashing of forces otherwise deadly to the conspiracy, which the conspiracy will seamlessly co-opt and roll back, again with no leaks whatsoever. It's like arguing that the Civil Rights Movement was really a secret plan by the KKK to fool blacks into thinking they had rights, while the KKK hid in its secret volcano lair engineering a secret resurgence of white rule. Keep an eye on your white Persian cats.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nevertheless, a little study of Russian history reveals long-term themes in Russian strategy that are unlikely to disappear for good:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Russia will continue to see itself as the "Third Rome," the bulwark of righteousness against the corrupt and decadent West.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Russia will continue to see itself as hegemon and protector of the Slavs.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Russia will continue to try to assert control over Central Asia,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Meaning that Russia will try to rebuild the Soviet Union either in fact, or <i>de facto</i> by means of alliances, puppet regimes, and control behind the scenes.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Russia will seek to secure its approaches. It will covet the Baltic States in particular, maybe a bit more of Finland.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That dream of warm-water access will not go away. </span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These are <i>Russian</i> goals, not Communist, Orthodox, democratic, or tsarist. Russia will aspire to them regardless of who, or what system, is in power.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once Russia abandoned its overt war on private property and religion, it became effectively a right-wing dictatorship. It's a sign of how completely hollow Marxism had become in Russia that there was almost no meaningful Marxist protest over the abandonment of two central Marxist ideals. But once Russia launched its privatization programs (doesn't it make you wonder where people in an egalitarian and classless society got all the money to buy large State businesses?) and opened up to religion, it became far more palatable to the American Right.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tsar Peter the Great neutered the Church in Russia by refusing to name a successor to the Patriarch when he died in 1700. The post remained vacant for two decades and was finally replaced by a Synod. The tsar had the power to appoint bishops. Ironically, the post of Patriarch was re-established after the Bolshevik Revolution, though religion was almost exterminated under Bolshevik rule. But effectively, the Church in Russia is subservient to the State. American religious conservatives are aghast at the idea of the Church being subservient to the State on liberal issues, but are perfectly comfortable with Church and State working hand in glove to advance conservative issues, like restricting abortion and gay rights. So the relationship between the Russian Church and the government, where the Church takes a strong line on traditional morality but stays out of social morality, is not especially different from the role of Church and State in, say, Texas or North Carolina. Meanwhile the Russian government either actively or passively permits the persecution of gays.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So Russia has morphed into a kleptocracy where every State function is up for bid, and religion is a tame and toothless tiger that growls about personal morality but is silent on social and governmental morality.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What's not to like?</span></div>
<div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">References</span></h2>
</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jack El-Hai, "Black And White And Red;" American Heritage, 1991, Volume 42, Issue 3. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/black-and-white-and-red</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Stratfor Worldview; "Organized Crime in Russia; April 16, 2008. https://worldview.stratfor.com/analysis/organized-crime-russia</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Alexandr Solzhenitsyn; The Gulag Archipelago. ISBN 0-06-013914-5</span></li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-73090196136693313562017-04-09T17:11:00.000-07:002017-07-23T18:58:15.924-07:00Time for a Digital Galt's Gulch?<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Galt's Gulch</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In Ayn Rand's <i>Atlas Shrugged</i>, the "creative" people of the world go on strike and retire to a hidden valley called Galt's Gulch. A real world version of Atlas shrugging is pretty unlikely. The people who would go there have corner offices and flunkies fawning over them. And loads of power sex. What are these people going to do in Galt's Gulch? Sit on the porch and whittle? And even if they do drop out, there are a hundred equally capable people waiting in line behind them eager to take their jobs. They won't be missed. And that, as much as anything, will deter them from dropping out - their superfluity will be starkly revealed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The <i>really</i> creative people will go on working in their labs and computer terminals and machine shops. Because what motivates creative people is the chance to do something creative. They'll probably be happier than ever when all the self-described "creative" people move to Galt's Gulch.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the other hand, a <i>digital</i> Galt's Gulch might be just what the world needs to clean up the Augean Stables of the internet. A separate internet, which anyone can view but where the ability to contribute to it is strictly controlled. Anyone with privileges on the new internet can still post on the old one. Call them Internet 1 and Internet 2. If the Dark Net can run on the same system as everything else but be hard to access, there's no reason we can't build an Internet 2 the same way.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Paying For It</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Obviously any such Internet 2 will cost money. There are a lot of reasons it should be on a subscription basis. Independent funding would help keep it free of government meddling. Much more importantly, it would be possible to ban advertising. Most important of all, having to have some serious skin it the game would help deter the denizens of the slimier corners of the internet. For openers, I suggest $100 per year. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Remember, there will still be an Internet 1. Anyone who can't afford to get onto Internet 2 can still post their rants and cat videos on Internet 1.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is, of course, a lot of money to be made by allowing "trusted advertisers" to have access to the net, or purchase user information. So the by-laws have to specify in exquisite detail that no such practices are permitted, as well as making modification or repeal of the restrictions all but impossible. A super-majority of all users might be one way. Every subscriber gets a non-transferrable vote.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anonymity</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well, this one is simple. None. Every post identifies the real name of the author. If you want to create a dozen accounts, subscribe a dozen times. But every account will identify you by name.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This isn't Tor. If you want to take down a regime from within, stick to Internet 1. If you want to be snarky about your boss or neighbor, Internet 1. If you want to post something controversial, well, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. But, we also need very strict rules about abuse, retaliation, threats and so on. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any action that contributes to retaliation beyond the confines of Internet 2 costs you your privileges. Send a nasty personal e-mail, bye-bye. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any attempt to use Tor or other re-routing systems to conceal your identity gets you banned. Any spoofing gets you banned.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Abuse</span></h2>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since there's no anonymity, no report of abuse is anonymous, either. Strict due process. If you report someone for abuse, you'd better be prepared to describe, explicitly and in detail, what's abusive about it. And if it's frivolous or retaliatory, <i>you</i> will be held accountable.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Who Can Join?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One place to start is that any member of a professional organization can join. A good practice would be to make subscribing to Internet 2 a regular part of the organizational dues. In addition to selecting various journals, members can also select a subscription to Internet 2.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All material posted to academic or government sites should automatically be archived on Internet 2. <i>All tax-supported research</i> should be archived as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After that, anyone else who agrees to the terms of service and pays for a subscription is in.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Security</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This point pertains to advertising as well, but since it's a security issue, too, <i>no pop-up ads, and no content whatsoever that restricts the user's ability to view the page. </i>No fade-outs, no queries about using ad blockers, no banners blocking the view, none of it. No insertion of <i>anything</i> onto a user's computer.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No release of personal data. None. No site on Internet 2 may require users to create an account. The only information Internet 2 should have are your identity plus some minimal authentication information, and of course, whatever you publish on your own.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No probing any site to see what a user is running. </span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Advertising</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This one is easy. A professional organization can advertise its meetings and publications on its pages. A private author can plug his book. <i>But no third party advertising of any sort</i>. All income from third-party advertising (and any spam that leaks through) <i>belongs to Internet 2</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Businesses? Why not? Tell us all about your new cars, your computer, your software, your dog food, your latest movie. <i>On your own site</i>. You just can't splash it onto someone else's pages.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also, every page that invites a user to subscribe to a service must include a buttton on that page that allows the user to unsubscribe. Click and you're done. No ifs, ands or buts.</span></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-14317149886202735322017-02-01T07:51:00.001-08:002017-08-06T15:56:47.238-07:00Trump, Fascism and Democracy<div class="graf graf--p" name="967f">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">100 per cent agreement, he’s a fascist.</span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="967f">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="f84a">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong">Is Trump a danger to democracy? </strong>From your point of view, maybe. But to his supporters, they <strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">finally</em></strong> have a politician who is doing what he said he would. Up until 1925, the Supreme Court had held that the Bill of Rights applied <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">only</em> to Federal actions. That year, in <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Gitlow v. New York</em>, the Court began ruling that the Bill of Rights protections extended to state and local government. Up until then, reactionaries had complete control over local affairs. And they want it back. Now, for the first time in their lives, they have a real shot at it. From their perspective, Trump (and even more so, Pence, if Trump is removed) is a triumph of democracy. They always had to settle for the “least worst” alternatives. Now have <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">finally</em> gotten what they were voting for all these years.</span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="f84a">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="7f1f">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gotta say I have scant sympathy for liberals (and I voted Obama in 2012 and Clinton this time). The anger on the Right has been building for decades and there has been no shortage of commentary explaining it. Liberals never bothered reading it, and if a hard line conservative popped up on a site they did read, they blew him off as a troll or racist, and very likely flagged and banned him. None of that “free speech” or “challenge viewpoints” stuff here, thank you. Well, ignore a problem and it will go away. Then it will come up behind you and have you for lunch. So now you have Trump. Was it <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">really</em> worth going to court to get that Nativity scene out of the city park, or hassling that bakery that refused to do a gay wedding cake? How many Trump voters did you create? Well, now they’ve voted to smack you down. Oppression to you, democracy at its finest to them.</span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="7f1f">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="35ed">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hitler never received a majority of the vote. But he <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">did </em>get a large minority, from people who <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">wanted</em> what he was selling.</span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="35ed">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="a877">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong">Remember <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Star Wars?</em></strong>. When Vader and Obi-Wan face off, Obi-Wan tells Vader “Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Now imagine the roles reversed and Vader saying it. Strike Trump down in court, but remember he has one Court vacancy to fill, and probably one or two more in the future. And he’ll have Sessions for AG. And he can play to his base. He won’t be politely critical like Obama (one of the things that infuriated Obama’s opponents was precisely his discipline). He’ll rage against the Liberal Machine. His supporters will change the voting rules in Congress (killing the filibuster is long overdue — it has has a shameful history of stifling constructive legislation — how ironic that Trump’s minions may kill it.) Look up something called “jurisdiction stripping.” He doesn’t feel any need to be deferential or reverent toward the courts. And his base will lap it up. They’ve been frustrated for years at seeing laws they support, and in many cases voted for as referenda, struck down by non-elected judges at the behest of a handful of opponents. Strike them down now, and they will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.</span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="a877">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="66c0">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump’s hard core followers <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">despise</em> the courts. From their perspective, the courts rubber-stamp regulations on the responsible and productive, while protecting criminals, sociopaths and social deviants. You may be horrified, but they will be deliriously happy to see a President rip into the Supreme Court.</span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="66c0">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="a6f0">
<strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Three things you need to look up</span></strong></div>
<ol class="postList">
<li class="graf graf--li" name="3bee"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Barron v. Baltimore 1833. The Supreme Court ruling that ruled the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal Government</span></li>
<li class="graf graf--li" name="24f1"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Incorporation Doctrine. The principle that the “rights and immunities” clause of the 14th amendment extended Bill of Rights protections to the State and local level. Not all at once, but only as relevant cases arose, because that’s how the legal system rolls.</span></li>
<li class="graf graf--li" name="8ef5"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jurisdiction stripping. The power granted by Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution for Congress to limit jurisdiction of the courts. The most telling, to me, is the legislation authorizing the Alaska Pipeline that said, in effect, “We’ve reviewed this every which way. There will be no further litigation.”</span></li>
</ol>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="d397">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Constitution. Read it, people. Sheesh. It says what it says, not what you <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">think</em> it should say.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Don't Even <i>Think</i> About Going There</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A piece on <i>The Establishment</i> is titled "Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative." They don't have a comments section, making me wonder how likely they will be to confront fascists physically if they don't dare confront them verbally. Anyway, the following is offered as a public service.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You. Do. Not. Want. To. Go. There. For reasons:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">History. When leftists and fascists mixed it up in 1930's Italy and Germany, who won all the fights? The only fascist I know of who got killed was Horst Wessel, who was actually killed by his girl friend's former(?) pimp. Fascists have a far greater psychological willingness to inflict violence.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Who has all the guns? Not the ACLU or English professors with tweed jackets and patches on their sleeves. Much more likely they're owned by fascists and their wannabes. If attacking them becomes routine, expect them to bring guns to a fist fight.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Stand Your Ground. If you sucker punch a fascist, and he comes back with far greater force, then claims self defense, well, two words: Treyvon Martin.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It doesn't work in reverse. If you attack someone, and he retaliates, don't expect to claim self defense. You don't get to claim self defense if you provoke the fight, especially if he's done nothing to provoke it.</span></li>
</ol>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-6607762963917967672017-01-08T13:34:00.001-08:002017-02-01T17:59:53.351-08:00Wall to Wall Denial Games<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here's how to get banned from Wonkette. Post this (a bit modified in light of later events). To an article titled "F*** you America." And it's only been two months. I'm sure they'll answer my query eventually. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Consider the irony. In response to an article where roughly every third word was a f-bomb, I point out that Trump's opponents are hip-deep in denial games - and get banned for it. Could they possibly prove my point more vividly?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">=======================================================================</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Everything I’m seeing is wall to wall denial games. Trump’s supporters are racist. They’re deplorable. Trump appealed to the worst in people. They hated a black president and the idea of a woman president. They voted against their “best interests” - look for an uptick in sales of What’s the Matter with Kansas? (Samuel L. Jackson has “snakes on a plane,” Schwartzenegger has “Hasta la vista, baby” and Frank has “voting against their best interests.” Nobody seems to be wondering what they did to cause this.Well, it’s not really hard. Go to all the right wing sites and look at posts from before the election. Read what people were angry about. <b>Then stop doing that stuff.</b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Quit the juvenile attacks on religion. If you want a religious establishment issue, look into the obstruction of observatories on Mauna Kea because some groups arbitrarily declare the mountain “sacred.” Quit speaking for terrorists (Noam Chomsky) and criminals (Making of a Murderer, anyone?) Quit solving social problems, like gun violence, by taking rights away from everyone else. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Quit the petty bureaucratic micromanagement. </b>Here's a local item from Seattle from just the other day. The city bought data from some demographics firm, pulled out all the information on people buying pet supplies, matched it to the dog license list, and sent people notices that they'd be fined if they didn't register their dogs. Does it get any more petty than this? First of all, why does any city even NEED to license animals? These days, with chipping, returning lost pets isn't that much of a problem. How much money is involved? It's chump change. No, it's all about enforcing petty micromanagement on everything. Tell me again why I should be so worried about the NSA when local governments pull this crap.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another example: The tragic fire in Oakland California in December 2016 that killed 36 people. The building was almost literally connected by an extension cord (the only non-literal aspect is they probably used actual cable) and run off the meter of an adjacent building.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The building was a maze of safety hazards but hadn't been inspected in 30 years. Now, in those thirty years, how many homeowners in Oakland got citations for petty issues like peeling paint or having their garbage cans in the wrong place. Hundreds? Thousands?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yet another example. In January, 2016, Kansas game wardens shot a deer that had become something of a family pet. "It might have had chronic wasting disease" was one excuse, though it was hardly more likely to be sick than any other deer. It's fascinating that, despite all we hear about how much Brownback's policies have devastated Kansas, Kansas still has money to keep idiots on the payroll. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[Note to the "citations" crowd. All of these episodes got mainstream news coverage. If you're as informed as you pretend to be, you'd know about them already. And if you don't, you're unqualified to be in this discussion.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A few years ago my street was torn up to replace sewers. I watched the work avidly. It was carefully planned and well done, and they kept obstructions to a minimum. It cost me $1500 and I think it was good value. The curb-laying machine that extrudes the curb like Play-Doh was amazing. And hitherto, sump pumps had been haphazard. Now everyone had to have a line to the storm sewers. It didn't take much to make me decide having someone dig the trench was the way to go. The trencher is like a chain saw on steroids, and the $300 was worth it.Now somebody explain what I got for the $600 for the permit. I watched the work and it was well done. Nobody from the city came by. The permit did me absolutely no good whatsoever. I didn't need it. It was purely a ripoff. They need the money to fund the inspection office? Let them hold a bake sale or take a second job if they think it's that vital.What’s driving Trump supporters more than anything else (and I voted for Clinton) is the desire for what Justice Lewis Brandeis called “the right to be let alone.” If people are not harming anyone else, they believe they have no obligation whatsoever to report or justify their activities to the government, get a permit or license, or have their rights circumscribed for the sake of the sociopathic. Oh, if you <i>really</i> want to drive people to the right, make voting mandatory. Get millions of people angry about government mandates, and send them to the polls.The denial games seem to come in three types:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We weren’t liberal enough. Need more cowbell. Sorry, I mean more Bernie Sanders.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Things will be okay once we enlighten the rubes. Teach them not to be racist, sexist, etc. It reminds me a bit of all the Hitler rant parodies. In the real movie, Hitler says everything will be all right once a counterattack begins. Then someone says there will be no counterattack because the general doesn’t have enough men, and Hitler loses it. (“Mein Fuehrer, the rubes are still racist and deplorable.” “DAS WAR EIN BEFEHL!!!”)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Denial squared. Yes, they are racist and deplorable, I don’t care what they think, screw them. Than you for proving my point.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div id="fMZnoA" style="color: #333333; font-size: 15px;">
<div class="Answer AnswerPageAnswer AnswerBase" id="__w2_S21JAQG_answer" style="border-top: 0px; padding: 8px 0px; position: relative;">
<div id="__w2_S21JAQG_answer_content">
<div id="psjnWE">
<div class="inline_editor_content" id="__w2_FmmiVCG_content" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; tab-size: 2em;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="inline_editor_value" style="margin-top: 0px;"><span class="rendered_qtext" style="tab-size: 2em;"> </span></span> </span><br />
<span class="inline_editor_value" style="margin-top: 0px;"><span class="rendered_qtext" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; tab-size: 2em;"> </span></span><br />
<ol style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 2em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="inline_editor_value" style="margin-top: 0px;"><span class="rendered_qtext" style="tab-size: 2em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span> </span> </span></span></ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-58877964563988136402017-01-07T11:24:00.000-08:002017-04-11T10:39:35.301-07:00Time to call B.S. on Private Censorship<h2>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Public and Private Censorship</span></h2>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Constitution applies, for the most part, only to government. It's illegal to hold someone as a slave, but that's because there are laws specifically forbidding it, laws passed under the authority of the Constitution. It can be illegal to search someone's locker. Schools are bound by the law because they're government institutions, and employers may be bound by union contracts to observe due process. You can't be arrested or fined for just saying something, but very often you <i>can</i> be fired for posting something or banned from a Web site. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Web site operators accused of censorship fall back on the idea that the Web site is their private property and they have a right to ban anyone they choose from using it. Many of them would froth at the mouth if someone else tried to defend barring gays or minorities from their business on the grounds of private property.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's time to call B.S. Private censorship is still censorship. A public blog is a public accommodation every bit as much as a motel or gas station, and it should be subject to the same civil rights laws.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Suppression of Public Speech</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This one is so obvious as to need little comment. Interfering with someone's ability to speak, or someone else's ability to hear him, by shouting the speaker down, is a violation of their civil rights, and should be punishable the same way any other violation of civil rights are punishable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The same applies to barring someone from going where they have a right to go. Sit-ins that blocked access to buildings, so popular in the 1960's, were violations of the civil rights of people who were barred from going about their business. Anti-abortionists who tried it at abortion clinics were slapped with RICO prosecutions. Any obstruction of people's movements is a violation of their <i>Federal</i> civil rights and should be punished at the <i>Federal</i> level.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In many cases, high profile events set up "free speech" zones where protestors can congregate. Activists object that the zones keep them out of public view. But anyone who wants to hear what they have to say (and that would be just about nobody) can easily go and hear them. If you want to object to someone, wear a T-shirt, carry a placard, but when they're talking, <i style="font-weight: bold;">SHUT UP</i>.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blogs</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Content on blogs brings the free speech rights of the blog owner into conflict with those of the poster. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A site doesn't <i>have</i> to invite comments. More and more sites don't, and while I may find that slightly disappointing at times, I absolutely understand why. This site doesn't, for example, and for a very simple reason. I just don't give a flying firetruck what you think. If you don't like my content, go someplace else.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And if the owner of the site decides to delete a comment as inappropriate or offensive, or simply irrelevant, they have a right to control the expression of their site. But few sites have such a small volume of traffic that they can be individually moderated.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Complete lack of moderation is not an option. There are places that go that route and they're widely regarded, except by the denizens of those sites, as the septic tank of the internet.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No, the real problem is sites that simply delegate moderation to readers and self-appointed content flaggers. And there have been myriad cases where that capability has been systematically abused. Repressive regimes have hired writers to blitz pieces by authors hostile to the regime. In some cases, those writers open dozens of dummy accounts to multiply their impact. On some sites, merely casting a large enough number of downvotes is enough to get a piece pulled or a writer banned. Recently, far rightists have gone to book sites and systematically downvoted any books by authors they find offensive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The solution is relatively simple: due process. Any time someone is banned from a site, they must be told what specific post led to the ban, and told in detail what specific aspects of the post violated policy and why. And there must be a process of appeal. And the response must be <i>prompt</i> and <i>timely</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And there need to be sanctions for people who file frivolous objections to posts. If they flag a post and their objection is overturned, they lose their flagging and voting privileges, maybe even get banned themselves. Better would be to not extend those privileges at all until the reader has a substantial track record of responsible commentary.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Social Media</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There have been tons of cases of people being fired for what they post on social media. Unless the person specifically identifies their employer (cops or other employees in uniform, the workplace clearly identifiable in the video, or whatever) <i>this practice needs to be flatly banned. </i>Your kid's English teacher has a lingerie ad on line, but she's not wearing school colors? Tough. Lucky kid. None of your business. Your local dog catcher posts a politically incorrect rant, but he's off duty and wearing civilian clothes? First Amendment. Someone recognizes him as the dog catcher. So what? If the post doesn't otherwise violate any laws, like incitement to violence or treason, and the person's institutional connections aren't evident in the medium itself, social media should be absolutely immune from adverse actions. Especially, people should be absolutely immune to adverse actions for anything they posted <i>before</i> being hired.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lots of people have posted approval of people getting fired for saying things on line, saying that the freedom to say things doesn't guarantee immunity from consequences. Well, ma'am, there's a new sheriff in town. See how you like it when people start getting fired for expressing sentiments you approve of.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Free Market, Free Speech?</span></h2>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">- Thomas Jefferson writing to William Roscoe, December 27, 1820</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jefferson's vision of free speech was basically a free market of ideas where ideas lacking merit would be driven out of the intellectual marketplace. Unfortunately, "reason was free to combat" error only as long as it took someone to file a libel suit against someone who criticized him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Long before the internet, I had noted that crank movements tended to live in a self-contained bubble. In those days, the "information" circulated as Xeroxed pamphlets and pulp magazines. Believers in a young earth or massive UFO visitations never encountered any real counter-evidence. Nowadays, keeping track of cranks is like mopping up a tsunami with a Q-Tip. And the internet is a completely solipsistic world, where each bubble concocts its own facts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Maybe the ultimate solution is a kind of digital Galt's Gulch, a new and restrictive internet open only to people with real credentials. Anyone can read it, but the vetting process for contributing to it is severely strict.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Courts</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As the comment below notes:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">It's already been ruled unconstitutional to force other people to publish your speech, see Miami Herald Publishing Company v. Tornillo, 1974.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ignoring for the moment the near universal confusion between the Constitution and what the courts <i>say</i> about it, that's not exactly what the ruling says. The case challenged a Florida law that required newspapers to provide equal space for rebuttals of political editorials. The court ruled that, since newspapers are limited resources, requiring a paper to provide free space for rebuttals might discourage papers from printing editorials, the so-called "chilling effect." (The idea that the "chilling effect" is one of the stupidest legal concepts around is left for another essay. In fact, Jefferson's quote above makes it clear that free speech can <i>only</i> be effective in the presence of a "chilling effect.")</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Interestingly, in cases involving broadcast media, the courts have used the very same scarcity argument to compel broadcasters to grant access to people who want to rebut opinion pieces. In those cases, the argument has been that the broadcast spectrum is a finite resource belonging to the public, that broadcasters are merely licensed to use part of it, and the government has the right to impose requirements on licensees. With cable and internet media, the limited resource argument isn't as critical.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The reality is that it has <i>not </i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">been ruled unconstitutional to force other peopl</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">e to publish your speech. The Department of Labor site on Workplace Posters (</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">https://www.dol.gov/general/topics/posters) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">has a long list of government-mandated posters that employers </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;">must</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"> post, whether they agree with them or not. They include posters on the Federal minimum wage, equal opportunity, OSHA rules on workplace safety, and labor relations. Not surprisingly, a number of these rules have been challenged as "compelled speech." So far none have reached the Supreme Court.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sooner or later, anti-gay rights activists will quit using the doomed argument of "religious rights" (Which was demolished by <i>Reynolds v. United States</i> (1878). The Court upheld a bigamy conviction, saying that <i>beliefs</i> were inviolate but <i>actions</i> could be punished). It will be interesting to see what will happen when someone argues that being forced to provide a service for a gay wedding amounts to "forced expression."</span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-81590545468962953712016-12-21T15:04:00.002-08:002022-10-18T11:03:31.552-07:00What Would a Conservative Star Wars Look Like?<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The new Star Wars installment in the canon, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Force Awakens, Rolls Over, and Hits the Snooze Bar</i><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">, drew the ire of some on the Right for having a woman heroine and a black Storm Trooper. The spin-off, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rogue One</i><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">, generates more of the same because it's even more ethnically diverse. (Not to be confused with the film about the Mary Kay lady who goes over to the Dark Side, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rouge</i><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One</i><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">.)</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Since a lot of the themes in <i>Star Wars</i>, like the notion of heroic resistance trying to overthrow an oppressive empire, lend themselves to liberal political themes, the suspicion has arisen that <i>Star Wars</i> is essentially liberal propaganda. So what would a <i>conservative</i> Star Wars look like?</span><br />
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire are the Good Guys</span></h2>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">There's an alternative <i>Lord of the Rings</i> story, <i>The Last Ringbearer</i>, originally written in Russian by Kiril Eskov, that posits that Mordor was the civilized part of Middle Earth and that its overthrow represented the triumph of the superstitious, ignorant and backward outer world. Think about it. All we know about Middle Earth is what the trilogy tells us, and history is written by the victors. What if it's all Elvish and Gondorian propaganda? What if the "cleansing of the Shire" (an add-on mercifully left out of the already ponderous films) was actually a last gallant attempt by Saruman to establish an outpost to preserve a remnant of civilization?</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So turning <i>Star Wars</i> on its head makes sense. All we know is what the Rebels have told us in the films. What if they lied? What if it's all Rebel propaganda? Remember how Obi-Wan described Mos Eisley as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy?" What if that describes, not just one backwater spaceport, but the whole of the Galaxy? Here are a few scenarios in which the Empire might be the good side. Note that these aren't mutually exclusive.</span></div>
<h3>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire is Bringing Civilization to a Backward Galaxy</span></h3>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Early in <i>A New Hope</i>, Luke grumbles about being stuck at his uncle's farm instead of being able to enroll at The Academy. Exactly what Academy isn't made clear, but it's obvious that on these backwater worlds, chances for advancement are slim. (We ought to bear issues of scale in mind. A well-developed planet would be richer and more advanced than Earth, and probably quite capable of having its own MIT or Harvard.)</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">We could picture the Empire as a sci-fi British Empire, deposing corrupt local governments or co-opting them, imposing the rule of law and civilized customs. Naturally, die-hard adherents of the old regime seek refuge outside Empire-controlled space. They might engage in guerrilla raids for revenge, for profit, or as part of a larger strategy to recapture their homelands. Needless to say, the Empire would have to, er, strike back. And in a modern twist, we might find anti-colonialists opposing the Empire simply for being an Empire.</span></div>
<h3>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire is Stamping Out Criminal Warlords</span></h3>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Two words: Jabba the Hutt. What? You want to count "the" as a word, too? Okay, fine, whatever, pedant. Jabba pretty much runs Tatooine. So we've got a planet under the thumb of a criminal overlord. Now multiply Tatooine by however many other planets in the Galaxy and you can see what the Empire is up against.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Law and Order: Galaxy. Courageous Imperial expeditionary forces swoop down on criminal lairs, rescuing hostages, freeing slaves, and wiping out criminal gangs. Or the SVU version, where we see the breakup of rings trafficking in sexy alien slave girls. No Miranda, no lawyering up, and they <i>do</i> have ways of making you talk. Sure, a civilization advanced enough to have star ships should also be capable of getting information by brain scans or really effective drugs, but the rough trade is more fun.</span></div>
<h3>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire is Fighting Murderous Religious Fanatics</span></h3>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Jedi base everything on the religion of the Force, and they slice and dice people handily with light sabers. Sounds a lot like ISIS. Also the Jedi don't convert everyone but keep their secrets among a select elite. So it's a cult, too. Ferreting out covert Jedi agents would make for some good plot lines. The Jedi don't marry, so we can imagine they'd impose a pretty puritanical society, ruled by embittered and sexually frustrated Jedi. Sounds more and more like ISIS all the time.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Now portraying the Empire as agnostic or even secular wouldn't be conservative enough. They need a religion more palatable to American tastes. It would have to believe in a Supreme Being and would have to reinforce what conservatives view as acceptable conduct. Picture something like the 1966 film <i>Khartoum</i>, where Victorian Brits face a fanatical army led by the self-styled Mahdi.</span></div>
<h3>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire is Breaking up an Ossified Bureaucracy</span></h3>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Look at episodes II and III, where we get a serious look at Coruscant. The entire planet is a city. A breeding ground for crime and government handouts. </span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Check out this dialog from <i>A New Hope</i>:</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"></span><br />
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Governor Tarkin:</b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.</span></blockquote>
<div><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>General Tagge:</b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?</span></blockquote>
<div><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>Governor Tarkin:</b></span></div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">
</span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.</span></blockquote>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">
<div>
How libertarian can you get? We <i>need</i> a bureaucracy to govern. No we don't. We just let local government run everything. Billions of bureaucrats are thrown out of work. Many, embittered, join rebellions.</div>
<div>
<h3 style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Maybe There's Something Worse than the Empire</span></h3>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Yuuzhan Vong, for example. This was an extragalactic race that revered pain and death and hated mechanical technology. All their own technology was biological. Their professed reverence for life didn't stop them from killing 365 <i>trillion</i> sentient life forms when they invaded the <i>Star Wars</i> galaxy. (A semi-canon race: see Wookieepedia)</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">You can pretty much see that willy-nilly destroying all the inorganic technology on a planet would condemn most of that planet's population to death. Taken to its logical conclusion, even a stone scraper would be forbidden.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">On the other hand, imagine collaborationist movements yearning for a return to an imaginary pre-technological Eden. You'd have the collaborationists and the Yuuzhan Vong spouting the most chiched eco-babble, all the while merrily slaughtering all opposition. And the Empire would be the Good Guys in this war, while defending against extremist environmentalists.</span></div>
</div>
</span></div>
<h2>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire are the Bad Guys</span></h2>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Face it, it's always more fun rooting for the underdog, plus we're so used to seeing the Empire portrayed as evil that it would be a serious shock to start thinking of them as good. So have no fear, there are ways to make the Empire evil but <i>liberal</i>.</span></div>
<h3>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Empire is Communism Resurgent</span></h3>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Communism managed to roll up everything conservatives abhor, like opposition to private property, opposition to religion, stifling dissent, and bureaucracy, plus elevating groups that were considered inferior. So all that really needs to be done is spin the Empire as standing for those things. Make it sound as if there's some grand theory behind the Empire to make it clearer just what the Empire is. As one Marxist advised, screenwriters should try to get a few minutes' good Marxist content into each film. Well, that can work both ways. Portray the Empire at its most ruthless, and "</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">get a few minutes' good Marxist content" in as well to drive the point home. They're not incinerating Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru because they're mean, but because Owen and Beru are reactionary, revanchist, anti-social elements. Uncle Owen's moisture farm is taken over and run as a collective. (And eventually wrecked, since ideological correctness takes precedence over technical competence and nobody is accountable for damages.)</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Coruscant, once hub of a prosperous Republic, now becomes a grim Marxist prison state, permeated by a secret police, its proud buildings crumbling under neglect and inefficiency. Innovation and scientific inquiry are stifled, with researchers blacklisted if they fail to follow party orthodoxy with sufficient fervor. </span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The unifying philosophy of the Empire might be the Sith, now out in the open and preaching some mishmash of pseudo-populist and social welfare notions. Recruits who actually have The Force are trained as Sith, those who don't become informants, secret police or privileged party functionaries.</span></div>
<h3>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Republic (and the Empire) are Bureaucratic Morasses</span></h3>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The Republic ruled everything from Coruscant, and its fall was merely the inevitable result of a bloated government collapsing under its own weight. The Empire broke up the central bureaucracy, throwing billions of bureaucrats out of work. What happens to them? Maybe they starve because the Empire lacks resources or the interest to save them. Maybe vast areas of Coruscant become shanty towns, or once occupied government buildings are taken over by squatters. Maybe they're sold as slaves, or just dumped on some empty planet someplace.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Meanwhile, the Empire, somewhat leaner but still just as mean, continues to run things business as usual. Planets as populous as Earth are still run the way the Republic ran them. So the outlying planets are free of Coruscant but still as bureaucratic as ever. Picture an episode where a colonist is expelled from his land because he can't pay his taxes, meet some regulatory standard, or maybe some protected species lives there. With his life's work stolen from him, he joins the Rebellion. Or he objects to the way the Empire educates his children and flees with his family to an outlying, Rebel-controlled system.</span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">So the "separatist movements" in <i>The Clone Wars</i> are really the Good Guys. They're not interested in toppling the Empire, but merely in being left alone.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-85154338046083851182016-08-27T11:18:00.002-07:002017-01-27T20:23:08.943-08:00Why do some conservatives hate liberals so much? What horrible things did we ever do to them?<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is how to get an answer banned by Quora. I submitted this as an answer to the question in the title and it was banned for violating their "Be Nice, Be Respectful" policy. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Be Nice, Be Respectful" apparently doesn't include responding to questions about what, specifically, violated the policy. (Quora did reinstate my privileges after review, but they never did answer what was supposedly wrong about it).</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">---------------------------------<br /><br /><b>Oh yeah!</b> This is the question Thomas Frank should have asked in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” He had enough page space to write about some guy who pretends to be Pope Pius XIII, but he never got around to this one.<br /><br />So let’s call this “What’s the Matter with ’What’s the Matter with Kansas?’?” Also, let’s agree that many, probably most liberals, do not do these things. So in case I forget to qualify with “many,” “most,” “a whole bunch,” etc., bear that in mind. Let’s simplify and just abbreviate “Far too many liberals” as “FTML.”<br /><br />What Frank should have asked is, “What did FTML do to alienate the working class?” And the answer is, what didn’t they do?<br /><br />Let’s go back to the Sixties. <b>FTML openly cheered for the enemy during wartime. </b>Geez, what else do you <i>need</i>?<br /><br />FTML backed corrupt labor unions that threatened workers, killed reformers, and pushed rules that defended the laziest and most incompetent workers. Just read up on the futile efforts of the NYC school system to get rid of bad teachers.<br /><br />FTML push for laws and regulations that conservatives neither want nor need.<br /><br />FTML want to usurp control over private property. They see the way to address injustice as stripping rights away from everyone.<br /><br />Gun control. Again, fixing a social problem by stripping rights from the law abiding.<br /><br />FTML side with criminals instead of civilization. Want to reduce wrongful convictions? Reform the justice system to focus solely on guilt or innocence instead of procedure.<br /><br />FTML have never seen a regulation or tax they didn’t like.<br /><br />FTML ridicule the patriotism and religion of conservatives and stereotype them in a way they’d never tolerate with regard to minorities.<br /><br />In short, conservatives see FTML as a threat to their property and liberty, and as gratuitously insulting. And uninformed, because the things FTML say about them show that they’ve never seriously read a conservative opinion in their life.<br /><br />However, I also have a post on what conservatives need to do to recapture the center, and it’s not gentle. Consider this a companion piece. And frankly, I don’t see a single thing conservatives are doing these days to protect my freedom. Attack net neutrality? You seriously expect any computer-literate person to support you? So I will suppress my gag reflex and vote for Hillary.</span><br />
<div class="Answer AnswerPageAnswer AnswerBase" id="__w2_vkGtg3j_answer" style="border-top: 0px; padding: 8px 0px; position: relative;">
<div id="__w2_vkGtg3j_answer_content">
<div id="ZrBNKL">
<div class="inline_editor_content" id="__w2_WE90dik_content" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; tab-size: 2em;">
<br />
<div style="font-family: georgia, times, "times new roman", serif;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-27325443823091446792016-08-05T09:52:00.000-07:002017-07-31T18:30:39.394-07:00Star Trek and What (Some) Conservatives Mean By Socialism<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In a very revealing piece on the site <i>Learn Liberty, </i>Ilya Somin posts a piece called "Star Trek Is Far from Libertarian – Here’s Why." It's revealing because I think it offers clues to what many conservatives mean by "socialism." Seriously, how can there be a debate about whether something is libertarian or socialist? That's like arguing whether an animal is a walrus or a kangaroo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note: in keeping with standard <i>Star Trek </i>notation, TOS refers to The Original Series, TNG to <i>The Next Generation</i> and DS9 to<i> Deep Space 9</i>. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But at least from a libertarian perspective, the otherwise appealing ideological vision of Star Trek is compromised by its commitment to socialism.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Federation isn’t just socialist in the hyperbolic sense in which some conservatives like to denounce anyone to the left of them as socialist. It’s socialist in the literal sense that the government has near-total control over the economy and the means of production. Especially by the period portrayed in The Next Generation, the government seems to control all major economic enterprises, and there do not seem to be any significant private businesses controlled by humans in Federation territory. Star Fleet characters, such as Captain Picard, boast that the Federation has no currency and that humans are no longer motivated by material gain and do not engage in capitalist economic transactions.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That last quote is probably based on the following dialog from the TNG (The Next Generation) episode "The Neutral Zone" where the Enterprise picks up three cryogenically frozen humans. One, Ralph Offenhouse, a 20th century financier, is concerned over losing his wealth.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Captain Jean-Luc Picard:</b> A lot has changed in the past three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We've eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Ralph Offenhouse: </b>You've got it all wrong. It has never been about possessions. It's about power. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Captain Jean-Luc Picard:</b> Power to do what?</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Ralph Offenhouse:</b> To control your life, your destiny.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Captain Jean-Luc Picard:</b> That kind of control is an illusion.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ralph Offenhouse</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">: Really? I'm here, aren't I? I should be dead. But I'm not.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
......................................</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Captain Jean-Luc Picard</b>: This is the 24th century. Material needs no longer exist.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Ralph Offenhouse:</b> Then what's the challenge?</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Captain Jean-Luc Picard</b>: The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it</span>.</blockquote>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But where, exactly, is the evidence that the Federation government controls everything? True, we don't see any corporate logos. The premise that humans have given up cupidity or corporate corruption in favor of altruism is far-fetched but scarcely more than the idea we have given up warfare. Still, there are episodes - lots of them - where people seek self advantage through unethical means. In the TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before," a Starfleet engineer arrives with a companion to "improve" the ship's warp drives. Although the engineer thinks he really has discovered ways to improve the engines, (and makes himself obnoxious by boasting about it) in reality he's been duped by his companion, an alien intent on exploring the universe in his own way. So the engineer wasn't really trying to pull a con, but he was certainly all too eager to believe he was a genius. In fact, almost all the instances in </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Star Trek </i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of some human character behaving unethically, it's to gain power or rank, not material possessions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's by no means clear that the Federation lacks private corporations. Several TNG episodes refer to the Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars, and there's no mention of who runs them. And even a U.S. Navy shipyard has lots of private contractors. It's like arguing that World War II America was socialist because we don't see private corporations figuring prominently in <i>The Longest Day</i> or <i>Tora, Tora, ToraI.</i></span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Remember, Above All, <i>Star Trek</i> is Science <i><u>Fiction</u></i></span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Science fiction is also <i>social</i> fiction, a platform where alternative societies can be explored. The "science" part is getting there, to some distant planet, the past or future, or some alternate time line. In a lot of "science" fiction, the science is almost entirely secondary to the social part. In the episode "A Piece of the Action (TOS)," the only science-related components were the Enterprise visiting a planet and then discovering that a previous ship had accidentally left a book about Chicago gangsters behind. The people of that planet, mistakenly thinking that was how advanced societies worked, modeled their society on gangland Chicago. The action in the episode revolved entirely around Kirk and Spock trying to survive and get control of the situation. And the majority of <i>Star Trek</i> episodes are of the form "Enterprise arrives at X, finds weird or dangerous society on X, tries to relate or escape."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also, science fiction in print can afford to be a little more independent because the audience is smaller and advertisers know what they're getting into. But <i>Star Trek</i> was a TV show, and a risky one at that. The producers were risking a lot of money and the advertisers a lot of consumer good will. Unlike the Irwin Allen potboiler <i>Lost in Space</i>, which aired at the same time and which was campy, predictable, safe fluff, <i>Star Trek</i> dealt with things that were fairly edgy at the time. T</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">here were lots of things that viewers and sponsors wouldn't have accepted. The pilot episode had a female captain. That was taboo. Uhura and Kirk's interracial kiss launched many viewers into near apoplexy. Gay characters would have meant ratings and sponsorship death. Not mentioning religion explicitly didn't ruffle many feathers, and reference to bizarre alien religions has earth parallels, but if the series had treated Christianity as extinct, or as superstition, viewers would have gone ballistic. By the later series, it was possible to be a little more frank, especially about sex. In "Up the Long Ladder (TNG)," a female member of one colony seduces Riker rather blatantly, then the colony is told that to have sufficient genetic diversity, each woman will need to have children by at least three males, which Riker's seducer finds intriguing. That would certainly not have gotten past network censors a decade earlier.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Diversity and Conflict</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Somin laments:</span></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Federation’s Diversity Turns Out to be Only Skin Deep</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The uncritical acceptance of socialism may be a manifestation of the Federation’s more general troubling ideological homogeneity. Especially among the human characters, there seems to be remarkably little disagreement over ideological and religious issues. With one important exception (discussed below), few human characters oppose the official Federation ideology, and those few are generally portrayed as fools, villains, or both.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Federation is a collection of racially and ethnically diverse people who all think alike, at least when it comes to the big issues. The series’ creators likely intended this as an indication of humanity’s future convergence toward the “truth.” But it is also subject to a more sinister interpretation: just as socialism tends to stifle independent economic initiative, it also undermines independent thought.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No, not "Convergence toward the truth," but merely the classic science fiction technique of projecting bizarre or unacceptable traits onto alien societies to be able to deal with them more impartially and less threateningly. For example: the episode ("Mark of Gideon" TOS) deals with a planet that is disastrously overcrowded, and Kirk is lured there because he carries a lethal virus. The leaders of the planet explain they hold procreation sacred but will allow denizens to volunteer for exposure to the virus to thin out the population. Placing the story on a future Earth would have provoked a firestorm, but placing it on an alien planet allows viewers to watch the story while being able to pretend it had nothing to do with human society. The irony here is that such an overcrowded planet would have had essentially no liberty, yet libertarians tend to dismiss discussion of overpopulation. Also, projecting a bizarre social trait onto an alien society allows it to be portrayed in a more exaggerated form. The Ferengi in DS9 and TNG are grasping capitalists and misogynists on a scale even Monty Burns on <i>The Simpsons</i> could hardly rival.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's little ideological division among the humans because the real ideological divisions are between the Federation and other alien societies. Furthermore, the Prime Directive, porous as it is, creates a plot device that forces the humans in <i>Star Trek</i> to stand by and allow other cultures to keep their objectionable practices without interference, and also explore the limits of tolerance. For example, in "A Taste of Armageddon" (TOS), the <i>Enterprise</i> visits a planet that has been at war with a neighbor for centuries, but rather than actually attack each other, they had set up a system whereby computers simulated attacks and each planet then killed that number of <i>their own</i> people. Kirk concludes it had all become too neat and antiseptic and destroys the computer, confronting the warring planets with either <i>real</i> Armageddon or negotiations, which they agree to enter, mediated by the Federation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let's also remember that Starfleet is a self-selected society of people who commit themselves to a body of regulations that are rarely mentioned explicitly because they're internalized. You don't see people throwing trash on the floor just like you wouldn't see it on an aircraft carrier. Nor do you see a bunch of people barricading themselves in the holodeck until their demands are met. Because Starfleet still has court-martials. So, yes, in one respect Somin is right. The <i>Enterprise</i> is <i>not</i> a libertarian society, any more than its maritime ancestor was. But you can't conclude that the <i>Enterprise's</i> society (either one) is as authoritarian as the <i>Enterprise</i> itself is. And you can't conclude that the absence of private corporations on the <i>Enterprise</i> (again, ether one) proves their absence in the society as a whole.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are, in fact, a vast number of things left unstated in <i>Star Trek. </i>Surely it would be useful for away teams to have small personal vehicles rather than having to walk everywhere they go, but we never see any such thing. Except for cases where the crew goes into the past, or to some alternate-history planet ("A Piece of the Action (TOS)," "Bread and Circuses" (TOS)) or has some adventure on the holodeck, we never see ground vehicles at all. Do Federation citizens transport everywhere? We never see aircraft. Absence of evidence in <i>Star Trek</i> is not evidence of absence. The vast majority of the series takes place on what is essentially a military post, completely self contained and self sufficient, and far more isolated than any naval vessel at sea. And while you'd see personal squabbles on a naval vessel, you probably wouldn't have seen people actively protesting U.S. policies, still less face-to-face with the commander. So there's no more ideological conflict on the <i>Enterprise</i> in space than you'd expect on the <i>Enterprise</i> at sea. We'd expect anyone who displayed blatant confrontation with policy on either the maritime or space <i>Enterprise</i> to be put off at the nearest port, probably under arrest.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also, there were a lot of <i>ad-hoc</i> devices simply to move the plot along or prevent problems. Starting with the transporters themselves. Originally characters were supposed to travel by shuttlecraft, but transporters were created when the shuttlecraft set wasn't done in time. Transporters have a distance limit because, otherwise, who needs spacecraft? Replicators originally served food and only later other things. Supposedly they couldn't replicate dilithium crystals, latinum or living things. A number of plots hinged on replacing failing dilithium crystals, replicating latinum would have crashed the Ferengi economy, and replicating living things would have created some issues. Red shirts killed on an away mission? Just replicate them before they go as insurance, or store their transporter data and reproduce them later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Incidentally, the excuse given for not replicating living things is their complexity. But given that transporters deconstruct and reconstruct people at the atomic level, that's simply an <i>ad-hoc</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">device. Incidentally, even if you could store data at the atomic level, it would take as many atoms to store the data for a human being as there are atoms in a human being.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The reality is that <i>Star Trek</i> never says explicitly who builds warp drives or installs the view screens or the turbo-lifts or mines the ores to make all that stuff.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The problem here is not just that Star Trek embraces socialism: it’s that it does so without giving any serious consideration to the issue. For example, real-world socialist states have almost always resulted in poverty and massive political oppression, piling up body counts in the tens of millions.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Despite Somin's acknowledgement of "the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hyperbolic sense in which some conservatives like to denounce anyone to the left of them as socialist," that's precisely what he's doing here. Just look at the piles of bodies and the concentration camps in socialist hell-holes like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and so on.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But Star Trek gives no hint that this might be a danger, or any explanation of how the Federation avoided it. Unlike on many other issues, where the producers of the series recognize that there are multiple legitimate perspectives on a political issue, they seem almost totally oblivious to the downsides of socialism.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now I agree 100 per cent it would be interesting to see how the Federation created a utopian economy free of want. Just as it would be interesting to see how they eliminated warfare on earth. I mean, we were still in the aftermath of global nuclear war when humans and Vulcans first met, and in the TNG episode "Encounter at Farpoint," we hear allusions to "The Post-Atomic Horror," implying that things were pretty ugly there for a while. So how exactly did we sort it out? Especially, how did we prevent would be dictators from coming to power and recruiting others to their cause?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The love of money is the root of all evil,” from 1 Timothy 6:10 (King James Bible), is often misquoted by leaving off the first three words. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> As Offenhouse said: "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It has never been about possessions. It's about power." Or in Henry Kissinger's words, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The name of the game is power, privilege, status, and comfort, and since money is the path to most of those things, unrestrained drive for its acquisition leads to all the evils we associate with economic injustice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, the problem is not money per se, but the greed for what it can buy, and we can see that by looking at cases where money, as the saying goes, was no object. One example was the <i>nomenklatura</i>, in the former Soviet Union. The <i>nomenklatura</i> were mid-level bureaucrats and party officials, and while they were not rich in monetary terms, they enjoyed all the advantages of wealth by being in a position to control day-to-day official decisions to their own advantage. They were the people who went to the head of the waiting list for automobiles and good apartments. They were the people whose children managed to avoid conscription into the army.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The writer C. S. Lewis described another environment where money had little importance, in these terms:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What an answer, by the by, Wyvern [College] was to those who derive all the ills of society from economics. For money had nothing to do with its class system. It was not (thank Heaven) the boys with threadbare coats who became Punts [bottom of the social order], nor the boys with plenty of pocket-money who became Bloods [the ruling class]. According to some theorists, therefore, it ought to have been entirely free from bourgeois vulgarities and iniquities. Yet I have never seen a community so competitive, so full of snobbery and flunkeyism, a ruling class so selfish and so class-conscious, or a proletariat so fawning, so lacking in all solidarity and sense of corporate honour.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Probably the starkest possible illustration was Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, chronicled in the film <i>The Killing Fields.</i> For a time, Cambodia became the only country in recorded history to abolish money. What the Khmer Rouge did offer was access to necessities and the few comforts still available – and power - completely unlimited power over everyone else, literally including the right to kill with impunity. If one is looking for a test of the idea that “The love of money is the root of all evil,” this was a controlled experiment in which about a fourth of the country was slaughtered. </span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Post-Scarcity Society</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Somin poses the question:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Does Lack of Scarcity Make Good Economics Moot?</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well, define "good economics." Considering the profligate way that some conservatives treat fossil fuels or the environment, things that they seem to believe are functionally infinite, it appears that the answer is "yes."<br />
</span> <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Defenders of the series’ portrayal of socialism claim that economic systems are no longer relevant in a “post-scarcity” society. Thanks to the remarkable technology of the replicator, Federation citizens can effortlessly produce almost anything they want, rendering the difference between socialism and capitalism meaningless.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I personally doubt that a system that gave out things, no questions asked, would work for long. The most likely outcome is that a very large number of people would settle into a vegetative, passive consumerism. The space ship in <i>Wall-E</i> portrays such a society. There are plenty of science fiction stories where societies without want become dystopian through boredom or frustration. Another possible outcome is that people, freed from want, would seek stimulation by dominating others. Probably the most important questions not answered in <i>Star Trek</i> are what motivates people to do anything at all, since characters in <i>Star Trek</i> take their jobs seriously and regularly face danger. The second, related question is, are there any negative consequences to becoming completely inert and passive? Are such people allowed to experience the negative effects of an inert lifestyle? Do they, say, have their survival needs met but no comfort needs?</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But the world of Star Trek is not in fact one where the problem of scarcity has been overcome. Some crucial goods cannot be replicated. The most obvious are the replicators themselves; in all the many Star Trek TV episodes and films, we never once see them replicate a replicator! The same goes for the dilithium crystals, which power starships. Planetary real estate also apparently cannot be replicated, which is why the Federation and its rivals often fight wars over it.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's true there are turf battles in Star Trek, but they seem to be more about controlling strategic areas and approaches, rather than the planets themselves. For example, in the TNG episode "Journey's End," a planet is colonized by Native Americans who have gone, well, native. Thanks to a truce between the Federation and the Cardassians, this planet is now part of Cardassian space. Rather than leave, the human inhabitants agree to accept Cardassian rule. There's no hint that the Cardassians plan to pave this planet over and build condos. They just seem to want jurisdiction.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In fact, the population density in the Federation seems to be very small. There are scads of habitable but uninhabited planets. Think about it. Humans have been around for roughly a million years out of 4.6 billion. The chances of a randomly selected earth-like planet having indigenous intelligent life on it is roughly one in thousands. We do occasionally hear of a planet with numerous cities, but there are also lots of planets where the only inhabitants are some hermit scientist, or some isolationist sect that's carved out a home somewhere. In "The Way to Eden" (TOS), a group of future hippies finds a planet that seems to be a Garden of Eden, apart from the acid fruit and poisonous plants. But their intent was to find a place where their group, half a dozen or so people, could settle, and be the sole inhabitants of the entire planet. And nobody seemed to think that, in itself, was impossible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let's also point out that with replicator technology, someone could construct a shell around a large asteroid and make it habitable. Or install artificial gravity capable of retaining an atmosphere. Or use replicators to replace a toxic atmosphere with a breathable one. Real estate would scarcely be a problem.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Star Trek <i>Insurrection (Star Trek IX) </i>deals with a plot by another species (the Son'a) to steal the rejuvenating radiation source from the rings of a planet occupied by a peaceful race (the Ba'ku) Because it's not <i>real</i> science fiction if the names don't have a ton of glottal stops. But from all appearances, the Ba'ku consist of a few hundred people. Now if there's a problem here, it's imagining a species living indefinitely in a tiny area of a planet rather than expanding. But with so few people on the planet, why not just find a nice spot a few thousand miles away, build a whole bunch of health spas, and rake in whatever the scheming aliens rake in in their economy? Or for that matter, simply build a few space stations orbiting in the ring plane. Now <i>this</i> is indeed a <i>Star Trek</i> with baffling economics. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just as we enjoy far greater material wealth than our ancestors, so the Star Trek universe is one with vastly greater abundance than what we have today. But that does not mean either we or they have completely overcome scarcity, and thus can ignore issues of economic organization.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just what everyone wanted: tuning in to <i>Star Trek</i> for an economics lecture. This is a little like complaining that <i>Moby Dick</i> never talks about the U.S. economy while the <i>Pequod </i> is at sea. Seriously, saying <i>Star Trek</i> is socialist is like saying the <i>Pequod</i> is socialist. Everyone gets fed, everyone has a place to sleep, everyone has shelter, everyone dies when the ship sinks. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well, there is an economy of sorts in <i>Star Trek</i>, it's just that scarcity is never a central conflict in any of the episodes, probably because it never realistically impinges on anyone's plans. We never hear, for example, that the Federation is going to mothball a quarter of the fleet because of budgetary constraints. Indeed, the fleet can take catastrophic losses, like in the Battle of Wolf 359 against the Borg, and rebuild. We never hear that some scientist can't do his research because his grant was turned down. Still, in <i>Voyager</i>, the energy needs of the ship lead to rationing of replicator use. This is purely a plot device to keep the dramatic tension up. Since replicators and transporters can convert mass to energy and vice versa, all Voyager would need to do is snag a small asteroid to have all the mass it needed. In the DS9 episode <i>Homefront</i>, cadet Sisko is in danger of using up his transporter rations by traveling home so frequently. Since this all happens on Earth, it's not clear what would limit transporter use, unless it's just a disciplinary rule of Starfleet Academy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, there's the need to trade with non-Federation species. In the very first TNG episode, "Encounter at Farpoint," we see crew members on shore leave haggling with locals over the price of goods. The Ferengi, a caricature of capitalism at its worst, trade in some metal called "latinum," which replicators can't reproduce, supposedly because of its extreme quantum complexity, but actually because if we could replicate latinum freely, it would destroy the Ferengi economy. Also, dilithium, the power source for starships, can't be replicated, again supposedly because of its quantum structure, but in reality as a plot device to make scarcity of dilithium a plot element.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In one TOS episode, real scarcity played a role. In "Conscience of the King," Kirk crosses paths with an actor whom he suspects of being Kodos, a mass murderer. The actor, former governor of a colony, killed 4,000 colonists when rations ran short. However, rescue arrived soon after, and the disgraced governor faked his own death in a battle. His daughter, unfortunately, knows who he is and has been killing off witnesses to the massacre. In the end, Kodos takes a phaser shot to atone for his sins and save Kirk. (Nobody explains what Kang was doing).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This criticism is actually very simple to deal with. The ideological conflicts are almost entirely with non-Federation races. Ideological conflicts among the Federation characters are mostly over how, or whether, to violate the Prime Directive. </span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Socialist or Libertarian?</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'd say Trek is about as libertarian as it gets. The Federation never tries to prevent people from replicating whatever they want, apart from dangerous things like weapons or toxins, and they're free to do so without corporate opposition as well. Data's maker built humanoid androids without any kind of regulation or licensing at all. Nobody ever gets served with papers saying he can't replicate some patented item. And while there are turf battles, population density seems to be very low, and there are any number of episodes where some lone wolf scientist or recluse has a planet all to himself. People don't seem to have much trouble procuring spacecraft.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The TOS episode "The Way to Eden" illustrates spacecraft logistics nicely. The Enterprise is ordered to intercept a stolen spacecraft, which is headed toward the Romulan Neutral Zone. Stealing the ship seems to have been more a matter of convenience than poverty. The Enterprise pursues the ship because it's (a.) stolen and (b.) about to create a major armed crisis. The thieves turn out to include the son of a VIP, so they're given delicate treatment, which they reward by taking over the Enterprise, steering it to Planet Eden, and then stealing a shuttlecraft. Again, convenience, not poverty. Although there are many episodes where some Starfleet craft gets stolen or hijacked, not once is there any hint that people can't privately obtain ships. We don't see the Enterprise stop some other ship at random and say "Sorry, you're not allowed to engage in space travel."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the holodeck, there seem to be few limits on anyone's fantasies. There are safety protocols, but they can be overridden easily, as Worf does in practicing his Klingon martial arts. Nobody ever gets censured for their sexual escapades, on the holodeck or in real life. (Except once: in the TNG episode<i> Booby Trap</i>, Geordi replicates design engineer Leah Brahms to help figure out how to escape a sticky situation. In <i>Memory Alpha</i>, the <i>real</i> Leah Brahms visits the Enterprise, finds Geordi's holodeck recreation, and is not amused. Moral, wipe your browser history. Especially if you're fantasizing about a real person who might find out about it.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's true we don't see any explicit mention of corporations, but that's balanced by the equal lack of any interference in interstellar travel and settlement, or private consensual (or holodeck) conduct. Other things we never encounter in <i>Star Trek</i> are characters complaining about taxes or burdensome regulations. We never hear someone complain that he can't supply phasers because Starfleet's regulations take up all his time. There <i>are</i> laws. The trader in "The Trouble With Tribbles" responds to a question about tribbles being dangerous by indignantly answering that transporting dangerous species is against regulations. And in "I, Mudd," Harry Mudd is hiding on an undiscovered planet, on the lam after violating a long laundry list of laws. But if the absence of corporations in <i>Star Trek</i> is evidence of socialism, the absence of any mention of taxes or excessive regulation points just as strongly toward a libertarian society. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let's also note that the post-scarcity society brings benefits to business people as well. They never have to worry about their supply chain. They never have to worry about worker unrest because they can give their workers whatever they want at no cost (or build robots). They can simply transport their waste into deep space or use it as replicator mass to make something else. In fact a replicator would be a perpetual motion machine. Zap up a fully charged battery, then, when it runs down, zap up another. Paperwork? Fine. Hire people to do it and use your replicator to house them in a palace and feed them caviar three meals a day. Or build robots.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Actually, <i>Star Trek</i> never really explores the implications of robots very deeply. Actually, they're always called "androids." But since it's possible to build highly intelligent androids ("I Mudd's" mostly voluptuous female androids, Data in TNG) or wholly functional humanoid holograms (The Doctor in "Voyager."), it's curious that the Federation doesn't relegate all the work to androids. This, I submit is another plot device, since having all the bad stuff happen to non-people would eliminate all the drama.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So Why Call <i>Star Trek</i> "Socialist?"</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The "evidence" that the Star Trek universe is socialist consists of the entirely negative line of evidence that there is no mention of private companies, plus assertions that people no longer struggle for material goods.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wait a minute. The evidence that the Federation is socialist is based on its ability to satisfy everyone's needs and free society from want? Isn't that tantamount to saying c</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">apitalism</span><br />
<i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">can't</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> do those things? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Furthermore, isn't that exactly what capitalism <i>promised</i> to do not so long ago? A car in every garage, a chicken in every pot? (Or maybe vice versa - I always get them confused) But beginning about fifty years ago, critics began pointing out the shortcomings of capitalism. It <i>hadn't</i> eliminated poverty, it <i>hadn't</i> provided health care or justice or education for all. And so we lost our blind faith in it. Capitalism may yet deliver a utopian society, but there will be reversals and a need for constant correction. And very likely, a continuing need for vigilance against the temptation to abuse the system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why did we stop believing blindly? <i>Because we had enough integrity to admit our shortcomings honestly</i>. Marxism never did that. Only under Gorbachev's <i>glasnost', </i>when the Soviet Union was tottering toward collapse, did the Soviet Union allow the sort of open criticism that might have saved it a couple of decades earlier. Salvador Allende never admitted his experiment in Chile had failed, nor did Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, nor Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Faced with honest criticism, Marxist societies responded with repression.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We still have faith that capitalism can produce a just and prosperous world. But it's not going to be as easy or seamless as those Norman Rockwell paintings seemed to suggest. And we're also a lot more aware of the ways it can be subverted, something else Marxism never dared face about itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The strongest clue as to what <i>really</i> makes <i>Star Trek</i> "socialistic" is the exchange between Captain Picard and Ralph Offenhouse: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Ralph Offenhouse:</b> You've got it all wrong. It has never been about possessions. It's about power.</span> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Captain Jean-Luc Picard:</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Power to do what?</span> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ralph Offenhouse:</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> To control your life, your destiny.</span> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Captain Jean-Luc Picard:</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> That kind of control is an illusion.</span> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ralph Offenhouse:</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Really? I'm here, aren't I? I should be dead. But I'm not.</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note that Offenhouse <i>would</i> be dead if he hadn't been beamed aboard by an advanced spacecraft (that he did nothing to create) and then revived by advanced medicine (that he also did nothing to create). He's boasting of things he had neither a right to nor control over. Offenhouse's "control" is as pure an illusion as you can find</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the living embodiment of Obama's notorious remark "You did not build this."</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> And what does power "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To control your life, your destiny" mean? A few million dollars will buy all the travel and possessions most people could ever use. Sex, too, if you don't want to face the difficult problem of actually forming a <i>relationship</i>. Offenhouse can already have any material good he likes. No, Offenhouse wants power <i>over other people</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The one thing replicators can't provide are services. Presumably there are robots to change adult diapers and provide therapy to the handicapped. Also one episode described the ships as "self-cleaning." Still, there seem to be lots of busy people on starships, so there must be lots of human jobs, plus people who want to do them.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The <i>Really</i> Weird Socialism Claim</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If it's weird to claim <i>Star Trek</i> is socialist merely because it provides people with all their needs, that pales in comparison to the claim from some software developers that open-source software is "socialism." It's socialism for <i>you</i> to give away <i>your </i>personal intellectual property, that <i>you</i> created. And why? Because it interferes with somebody else selling a similar product for a profit. In other words, I have a <i>right</i> to withhold some service from people if they don't pay for it and you are depriving me of my "right" to dictate to other people if you offer the same product for free.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I suspect Somin and the open-source critics equate "socialism" with private individuals not having power over others. And that's the thing that grates on me with most libertarians, too. We hear all about government abuses of power, very little about private abuses. Instead of shutting down Obamacare as socialism, how about shutting down the copyright and patent offices as corporate socialism? It comes back to </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Offenhouse's statemet<b>:</b> "It has never been about possessions. It's about power."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br /></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-52687247192137740912016-07-03T09:51:00.000-07:002017-01-12T16:55:21.976-08:00References and Wikipedia Bashing<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Twenty years ago, references were a huge deal. They were all in hard copy, the most relevant ones in journals. The only way to find them was to compile a list of relevant journals and keywords. If you were lucky, there were cumulative indexes by field, but you still had to go through them, year by year. If not, you had to search the annual indexes of each journal. Citing references saved the reader mountains of effort as well as demonstrating that the writer had done thorough research.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bibliography began to fall behind the times when ISBN's appeared. Even today, most editors will insist that a book be cited by publisher and location. The way publishers merge and split, a book can be handled by three different publishers before hitting print (a textbook I co-authored was). A publisher may have offices in half a dozen cities, and the actual printing is done someplace else far away. Yet the long obsolete practice continues, while the ISBN, a unique identifier, still isn't the standard. There are now analogues for journals and musical scores.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nowadays, if you doubt the veracity of a statement, you can paste it into Google and get hits all you like. And if you want a stricter filter, Google Scholar. Citing references is still a useful way to direct readers to especially useful sources. Or obscure ones, like, the last American to die in combat in World War II was killed on Guam by Japanese holdouts after Japan had surrendered (http://auntiecharo.guam.net/archives/2005/08/index.html). But there simply is no longer any need to cite sources for things like the overall history of World War II or who signed the Declaration of Independence or what happened in the Battle of Gettysburg. Actually, for things that fall into the domain of common knowledge, there never was.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So let's be brutally blunt. The people I see on line demanding sources don't give a rat's @$$ about rigor or intellectual standards. In fact, even when you <i>do</i> provide sources, people will simply ignore them. For example, the whole "Giordano Bruno was a martyr to science" myth has been decisively demolished (See the, ahem, references). So when I've actually cited these sources, people go right on parroting the Bruno myth. So people who ask for references on line don't really care about the references. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's solely a cheap and lazy way to pretend to be scholarly. Ditto Wikipedia bashing. Quite a few tests have compared Wikipedia to conventional print encyclopedias, with Wikipedia coming out looking very good. However, Wikipedia is not aging gracefully. Its bureaucracy is ossified and commonly abusive, and articles with any controversial content can be (and increasingly are) shouted down. One of the most egregious cases was that of historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, who found that the truth about the notorious Haymarket Affair of 1886 was a good deal more complex than the conventional simple victimization narrative implied. His attempts to edit the Wikipedia entry were shot down, his attempts to use <i>the actual trial transcripts</i> as sources rebuffed, and <i>even after publishing two scholarly books on the subject</i>, his views are treated as footnotes (see the, er, references). In fact, his article on the affair in <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i> quotes Wikipedia editors as saying, in effect, they consider only secondary sources (the exact opposite of scholarly practice) and do not attempt to evaluate sources critically <i>at all</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To consider another example, the article on "the Rapture" originally focused heavily on the teachings of 19th century Scottish preacher John Nelson Darby, who seems to have been the person most responsible for popularizing the doctrine. The idea that the Rapture is a modern cult doctrine didn't sit well with modern believers, and today the article is cluttered with references to earlier Rapture-like teachings, whether they had any lasting impact or not, and Darby's seminal role is thoroughly obscured, though his biographical article is (temporarily at least) clearer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Like most innovative academic enterprises after a short time, Wikipedia has fallen into the hands of the fuddy-duddies. The problem with academic publishing is that overly tight quality control stifles innovation but wide-open publishing, like many of the open-access on-line journals, releases raw sewage into the marketplace of ideas. I used to ask how bad it could be if we just let anyone publish their ideas. Now I know: <i>real bad</i>. However, none of those problems lessen the utility of Wikipedia as a source of basic facts and, still more, a source of references. And if you have any doubt about some fact in Wikipedia, cut and paste it into Google (or Google Scholar). Most of the people who dismiss Wikipedia as a source wouldn't have a clue where to find a scholarly reference and couldn't read one if they had one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No, neither Wikipedia nor print encyclopedias are legitimate scholarly sources. So why does every university still have print encyclopedias? Because they're useful places to go to get an overview of a topic, as well as find references (Wikipedia's article on Galileo cites 181 sources). By the way, another reference on Galileo et al is "Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion," edited by Ronald L. Numbers, Harvard University Press, (2009) ISBN's 0674054393 and 9780674054394. Presumably Harvard University Press is acceptable?</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">B-but Burden of Proof</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I had someone hotly disagree with these ideas recently, falling back on the idea that the person who makes a positive claim has the burden of proof.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So that means if a creationist disagrees with me saying evolution is a fact, I have to provide him with references showing otherwise? Some sovereign citizen type takes issue with my saying the laws apply to him? A modern-day geocentrist (yes, that's a thing) demanding proof that the earth goes around the sun?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nope. Those particular examples are all tendentious. The person demanding "proof" has no intention of accepting anything you offer him. He just wants an argument. And that applies to at least three fourths of the cases where someone on line demands references. When I criticized Neil deGrasse Tyson's remake of <i>Cosmos</i> for its historically inaccurate glorification of Giordano Bruno, I got plenty of people demanding references. It so happened I knew of several (cited below). Did anyone say "Oh, I guess I was wrong?" (Left as an exercise to the reader).</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In many other cases, people ask for references because they just don't know. That's fair and reasonable, but, if the references are well known to anyone well versed in the subject matter, the person has just revealed himself to be <i>unqualified to engage in the debate.</i> Courtesy might move me to provide references, but <i>don't try to pretend you're informed</i>. You're not. There's a vast gulf between "I don't think you can back up your claims" and "I don't know enough to evaluate your claims." So if you demand to know how scientists can be so sure rocks are hundreds of millions of years old, I can point you to a couple of good books. But don't pretend you're qualified to argue with scientists about the age of the earth. You have just revealed you don't have a clue about the facts. </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">In political debates, if you're going to challenge the opposition, </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">you're not informed if you don't know what they commonly use for sources</i><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Once someone has provided references, <i>they</i> have met the burden of proof. Now the burden is on <i>you </i>either to agree or provide counter-evidence. And "Breitbart isn't a valid source" doesn't cut it. Breitbart might not be a reliable source, but the only permissible argument is "Breitbart is wrong about this particular issue, for these specific reasons."</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">References</span></h2>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;">Galileo and the Specter of Bruno, 1986; Lerner, Lawrence S. and Gosselin, Edward A., Scientific American, Vol. 255, Issue 5, p.126.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><br />
</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;">Was Giordano Bruno a Scientist?: A Scientist's View. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253432071_Was_Giordano_Bruno_a_Scientist_A_Scientist%27s_View [accessed Jan 6, 2016], Originally published in American Journal of Physics, 1973, v. 41, no. 1 p. 24-38.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><br />
</span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 16.12px;">Messer-Kruse, Timothy. "The “Undue Weight” of Truth on Wikipedia." </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16.12px;">The Chronicle</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 16.12px;"> <i>of Higher Education</i> (2012)</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.12px;">. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.12px;">http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704</span><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.12px;">/</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.12px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;">[accessed 3 July 2016]</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wikipedia Policies Limit Editing Haymarket Bombing: </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">http://www.npr.org/2012/10/03/162203092/wikipedia-politicizes-landmark-historical-event [accessed 3 July 2016]</span></span>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-88848294516308720252016-03-02T12:48:00.003-08:002017-01-02T11:37:23.629-08:00The Big Black Hole in the Middle of the Constitution<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Constitution is widely celebrated for its uses of compromise. The interests of large states and small states were compromised by having a Senate with equal State representation, and a House with representation proportional to population. The friction between slave and free states was resolved with the (infamous to many) compromise that slaves were counted as three fifths of a person for representation purposes. Concern over one branch of government becoming ascendant was addressed by a system of checks and balances. Election of the President was entrusted to the Electoral College (a term <i>not found</i> in the Constitution), whereby the States selected the President, but by a channel outside of Congress. Concern over the powers of a central government were addressed by a Bill of Rights curtailing the Federal Government. But there's respect that has largely gone unnoticed where the Constitution completely failed, and it's rearing its head now. No, it's not the infamous three-fifths compromise that counted slaves as 3/5 of a person, nor the failure to phase out slavery. Basically, <b>the Constitution completely lacked any way for the Federal government to protect citizens from rights abuses by the States</b>. Reactionaries were given free rein over State and local affairs, and until recently, they still had it. And they want it back.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Articles of Confederation versus the Constitution</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Articles of Confederation contain a surprising amount of material that was incorporated into the Constitution. But there's also a huge amount of detailed specification of what the government could and couldn't do that was replaced by broad, generic language in the Constitution. In particular, the Articles stated: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and
independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by
this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in
Congress assembled.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Whereas the Constitution states:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts
and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and
general Welfare of the United States;</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this
Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any
Department or Officer thereof. (Article I, Sec. 8) </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The new Constitution wasn't an immediate hit. A lot of people still didn't want a strong central government. They didn't like the direct taxation powers of the Federal Government, or the creation of a Federal judiciary, or the creation of standing armed forces however tiny. And they didn't like omitting that word "expressly" or that power to provide for the "general welfare." And a lot of people still don't. The supporters of the Constitution came to be called Federalists, and their opponents, predictably enough, as anti-Federalists. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An interesting crossover occurred during the ratification of the Bill or Rights. Many Federalists, proponents of the Constitution, supported the Bill of Rights, either on its own merits or because they saw that a Bill of Rights would aid in ratifying the Constitution. And many anti-Federalists, opponents of the Constitution who had demanded a Bill of Rights in the first place, began to oppose it, hoping to block the ratification of the Constitution itself. It's a classic case of "be careful what you wish for; you might get it."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To the extent that we try to shoehorn 1787 factions into today's terminology, we'd probably label the Federalists "liberals" in the sense that they favored a more powerful central government, and Anti-Federalists "conservatives." But the Anti-Federalists ended up giving birth to a remarkably liberal document, the Bill of Rights.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Compleat Constitution?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So the Constitution gives the Federal Government the power to collect taxes, pass necessary laws, and defend itself, including suppressing insurrections. It prevents the States from doing anything to endanger the United States as a whole, like raising their own armies or entering treaties with other countries. It prevents States from harming each other by making war on each other or interfering with interstate commerce. What's missing? <b>There is no provision for protecting the rights of people <i>within the states</i>.</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That really wasn't big on anyone's radar in 1787. Memories were still fresh of the British Government suspending colonial charters, most of which had Bill of Rights protections like free speech and religious tolerance. It was felt that the gravest danger was the Federal government violating personal rights, or interfering with the power of States to protect personal rights. Anything States might do to endanger civil liberties could be handled at the State level by voting the violators out. In theory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, despite the sage words of the Founding Fathers about "tyranny of the majority," there was no corrective available to deal with tyranny of <i>local</i> majorities. A minority group oppressed at the local level would have no effective means of fighting back, because they would not be able to muster a majority capable of removing their oppressors from office. Indeed, it would be entirely possible for local majorities to suppress minority movements, as indeed happened in the South with respect to anti-slavery advocates.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It All Started With Urban Runoff</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the 1820's, John Barron and John Craig owned a prosperous wharf in Baltimore. The city embarked on a series of street and drainage improvements, which funneled water and sediment to the area of the wharf, eventually silting it up and destroying most of its value. Barron sued for damages, won, but saw the judgement overturned on appeal. Eventually the case made its way to the Supreme Court, on the grounds that Baltimore had violated Barron's rights under the Fifth Amendment by taking his property without just compensation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Barron lost. The Court ruled that the Bill of Rights had been conceived as a restraint on the Federal Government only, and did not apply to the States. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The logic of the ruling noted that Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution contains a list of things forbidden to the Federal Government, and Article 10 contains a much shorter list of things forbidden to the States. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Despite prohibitions in blunt and absolute terms in Section 9, there are identical prohibitions directed at the States in Section 10. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Both sections forbid ex post facto bills and bills of attainder, leading the Court to conclude that the Constitution only prohibited the States from doing something, if it said so explicitly. It's worth noting that Chief Justice John Marshall had been involved in the Virginia ratification of the Constitution and knew many of the drafters of the Constitution, as well as many of its opponents. So it's fair to say that Marshall's understanding of the original intent of the Constitution transcends mere speculation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But if the Fifth Amendment modifies the Constitution, why doesn't it apply everywhere, despite the original intent? After all, the amendment <i>changes</i> the Constitution. That might be a cogent argument, except that the Bill of Rights was ratified immediately after the Constitution and is almost an integral part of it. And it's very unlikely Congress and the States would ratify the Constitution as a limitation on the Federal Government and then immediately change its intended jurisdiction to cover the States, too. (Although you could argue that, rather than change the text of the Constitution itself, they would simply use the Bill of Rights to make corrections.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Barron v. Baltimore ruling, of course, nowhere says "The Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the States" because the Supreme Court doesn't roll that way. The Court rules only on matters immediately before it, so it only says the Fifth Amendment applies only to the Federal Government. But anyone who tried to press a different Bill of Rights case at the state level, say one involving self-incrimination, or public support of religion, would immediately be hit with the counter-argument that if the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply at the State level, the plaintiff's case shouldn't either.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So if the Bill of Rights only applies at the State level, what prevented the States from devolving into petty dictatorships with political censorship, religious persecution, and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment? Ignoring, for the moment, instances of those very things happening, the Revolution was fought over British interference with colonial charters, most of which included safeguards of property rights, trial by jury, legislation by parliament or assembly, and varying degrees of religious tolerance. The colonists were afraid of losing rights that were generally accepted in England, and many of the anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution were concerned that a strong central government might abrogate those rights as well. The Bill of Rights was specifically intended to protect rights already taken for granted within the States. Searches were a particular hot button issue, since one of the principal grievances of the colonists had been broad "writs of assistance," which allowed law enforcement to search premises with little probable cause or limits on what could be seized.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are a lot of things state and local government do right, because they work, and because the citizens want them. There's no law requiring the states to have state parks or universities, but every state does. Cities are not required to have libraries, but thanks in large part to the pioneering effort by Andrew Carnegie in the 19th century, most do. And many State constitutions contain safeguards that reiterate the Bill of Rights.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Dark Compromise</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's remarkable that there were very few Bill of Rights rulings by the Supreme Court before the 20th Century, but that was because of the legacy of Barron v. Baltimore. Defenders of local control of social legislation took the initiative to erect further barriers against Federal action. For example, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibited the Army from intervening in domestic affairs, and the act was specifically passed to prevent the Army from ever being used to enforce Federal laws as had happened under Reconstruction. Effectively, the sole purpose of the law was to protect white lynch mobs from military intervention. The "Southern Bloc" in Congress was able to stop any attempt to impose Federal policies at the State level, such as passing anti-lynching laws.<br />
<br />
Basically, the Constitution created a brilliant and enlightened Federal system in return for allowing the anti-Federalists free rein at the State and local level. And for 150 years, they did. It was perfectly possible to be a progressive in national and international affairs and a reactionary in local matters. One example was William Jennings Bryan, who ran three times as a progressive Democrat but also prosecuted the Scopes Trial. Another was Woodrow Wilson, who championed a League of Nations and a lenient approach toward the defeated Central Powers after World War I, but was also an avowed racist.<br />
</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Incorporation Doctrine</span></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Fourteenth Amendment created one crack in the barrier between the Federal and local governments. Section 1 reads:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Beginning with Gitlow v. New York, in 1925, the Supreme Court began to rule that protections under the Bill of Rights were among the liberties that States were forbidden to abridge without due process. The reasoning is, admittedly, a tad circular. If the Bill of Rights applies only at the Federal level (as Barron v. Baltimore held a century earlier), then nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment changes that. Nevertheless, the Court has extended the Bill of Rights piecemeal as cases arose (because that's how the court works) and even to this day, parts of the Bill of Rights have not been fully incorporated. For the most part, the process was pretty non-controversial since many of the protections of the Bill of Rights were already in place at the State and local level anyway.<br />
<br />
It's important to understand the process that began with a dock in Baltimore and ended in the 20th century. For most of that time, it was perfectly permissible for States to support religion. Madison's original conception of freedom of religion read:<br />
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The civil rights of none shall be abridged on
account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be
established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any
manner, or on any pretext, infringed. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Clearly, Madison's conception of separation of church and state consisted of not creating a <i>national</i> church, and protecting people from religious persecution. States could and did support churches. Massachusetts funded the Congregational Church until 1833, and New Hampshire required legislators to be Protestant until 1877 (though it's unclear if it was actually enforced). One of the very few Bill of Rights cases in the 19th century was a Mormon challenge to Federal anti-polygamy legislation. The Supreme Court ruled that while opinion was inviolable, the government could police actions it regarded as harmful, and upheld the ban.<br />
<br />
Censorship was also permissible. States could, and did, censor publications considered indecent or seditious, and banned such things as pamphlets on birth control, union and anti-war literature, and so on. "Banned in Boston" once meant exactly that.<br />
<br />
The three things about the Incorporation Doctrine that are critical to note are:<br />
</span><br />
<ol><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<li>Until the 20th century, the Bill of Rights did not apply in the States.</li>
<li>Nothing in the Constitution explicitly says "the Bill of Rights applies to the States, too."</li>
<li>The Incorporation Doctrine was <i>created by the courts</i>. The courts could conceivably reverse it.</li>
</span></ol>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is absolutely amazing and appalling how many people who claim to know the Constitution never heard of <i>Barron v. Baltimore</i> or the Incorporation Doctrine. They think that things regarded as unconstitutional today were <i>always</i> unconstitutional. The weren't.</span><br />
<ol><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span></ol>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
The Empire Strikes Back</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As long as the Federal and local governments operated in separate spheres, friction between the two was minimal. But in the 20th century, Federal actions increasingly impinged on local affairs. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal created programs and regulations that affected local affairs. The hold of the Southern Bloc began to slip. Harry Truman desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948 and sacked the Secretary of the Army for continuing to obstruct the order. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 marked a new escalation of Federal control over local affairs. And led to a lot of cars bearing "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper stickers.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the anti-Federalists at the local level began to feel more and more threatened. Their vision of society was white and male dominated, and while people could be free to believe and worship how they pleased, society would be governed by Christian assumptions and values. Local society would have broad authority to ban things it considered objectionable, though the "right" people would know perfectly well where to go to get prostitutes, pornography, abortions and (during Prohibition) alcohol. Lower-class crime would be harshly punished. Problems not resolvable under law could be handled more.... informally, and extrajudicial violence would be treated leniently. Rewards in the society should go to the "worthy," and voting rights would be restricted to the "responsible" elements of society. In the 1920's and 1930's, the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan gained wide power, based on an insecure middle class afraid of Jews, labor unions and Socialists as much as blacks. The New Deal aroused indignation from business classes resentful at the growth of taxes and social programs for the "unworthy." The chipping away at white supremacy angered many, though as long as open discrimination was legal, the danger could be contained.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then on June 25, 1962, the Federal government pressed the red button and launched the arsenal. That was the day that the Supreme Court outlawed state-sanctioned prayer in the schools. It was the Fort Sumter, the Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 (to be a bit anachronistic) of the Culture Wars. It didn't merely ban the brief utterance of a formulaic prayer at the start of the school day, it was a national-level repudiation of the idea that society was explicitly Christian, and that localities could define the values they would impose on their citizens. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In short order came a raft of rulings expanding the rights of criminal suspects, and the passage of civil rights laws. Barry Goldwater's opposition to civil rights legislation had two effects. He lost the 1964 election in one of the worst defeats in history, but Southerners switched their allegiance <i>en masse</i> to the Republican Party. In 1973 came Roe v. Wade, that struck down state bans on abortion, but that ruling amounted to little more than "making the rubble bounce" because the edifice of local control of social affairs was pretty much in ruins anyway.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After years of frustration at their inability to repeal Roe v. Wade or other liberal legislation, plus their outrage over the election of liberal President Barack Obama, conservatives created the "Tea Party" movement, which invoked the image of the Boston Tea Party at the start of the American Revolution. Asserting that compromise had only led to retreat, conservatives in Congress adopted a progressively more intransigent stance. In 2016, their anger had risen to the point where they made Donald Trump a serious contender for the Republican nomination. As the campaign looked increasingly like it would pit Trump against Hillary Clinton, the election looked like it would pair up two opponents more mutually antagonistic to the other side than any election since the election of 1860 where Lincoln was elected.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What the Tea Party and Donald Trump have done is launch a full-scale anti-Federalist counter-revolution. Many of their backers reject the idea that the Federal government has any power at the State or local level. They call for the repeal of Constitutional amendments that have increased the power of the Federal government, like the 14th, 16th and 17th. What they ultimately want is to recreate the vanished world from before the Incorporation Doctrine. To paraphrase Michael Moore's documentary, "Dude, Where's My Country?" the Tea Party's answer is "Dude, the people you took it from are taking it back."</div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-26967793597897531392016-02-10T10:49:00.001-08:002017-04-11T10:41:00.871-07:00The Most Important Thing Ayn Rand Got Right<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ayn Rand on collective rights:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual
rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in
today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a
contradiction in terms.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A
group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by
joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of
individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Collectivized ‘Rights,’”</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/the-virtue-of-selfishness.html"><cite>The Virtue of Selfishness</cite></a>, 101</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rand, a bitter opponent of Marxism, had Communism in mind when she wrote this. Since Communism recognized no individual rights (apart from the right to be a Communist), therefore Communist governments had no rights.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But it's important to clarify something. Having no rights is not the same thing as other people having the right to do whatever they want to you. Just because the Communist government of the Soviet Union was illegitimate, or the theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia are illegitimate, doesn't give someone else the right to declare war on them capriciously. These governments may have no regard for the rights of their citizens, but their citizens </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">do</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> have human rights nonetheless. The government of North Korea is utterly illegitimate, but dislodging it would probably create more suffering than the regime itself does. Totalitarian states have a way of protecting themselves like that.</span><br />
<section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, we have the concept of "States' Rights." One interpretation of "States' Rights" is the rights held by the government of some geographic area. That's easy to dispose of: a State in that sense is an arbitrary polygon on a map. It can no more have rights than latitude and longitude have rights, or a UTM grid square has rights. In fact, in Rand's interpretation, a state government, being a group, has <i>no</i> rights.</span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The other interpretation is that States' Rights means the rights of the citizens living within those states. That's the only definition that makes any sense. And so, for example, the citizens of 49 states have the right to pump their own gas at a service station, but not the citizens of Oregon. That's probably motivated by a desire to preserve jobs in the filling station business, or prevent accidental spills, but there doesn't seem to be any widespread resentment over it in Oregon. The militants who took over a wildlife refuge had many grievances against the Federal government, but never uttered a peep about being forced to let someone else pump their gas.</span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One ironic fact is that people who want the 17th Amendment repealed (which provided for popular election of Senators) appeal to States' Rights in terms that seem to regard States as abstract entities that have rights in and of themselves. As one site put it:</span></section><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The popular election of our senators
is bad public policy because it stripped the states of the one voice of
representation they had in Washington, DC.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note the assertion that <i>popular</i> election of Senators stripped the <i>states</i> of their rights, and therefore the states are entities that have rights independent of their citizens. One wonders what those rights might be? The cynic in me suspects those "rights" are really the rights of interest groups, that is, the right of wealthy and powerful individuals to draft their own laws.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section><section id="order_2"><br /></section><section id="order_2"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></section>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-7546478353099126422016-02-08T15:31:00.002-08:002016-05-14T11:27:21.950-07:00A Modest Proposal on Gun Control<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gun owners believe that, if they haven't done anything wrong, they shouldn't have to justify their gun ownership. And they don't trust the government with registration, for the same reason that lots of people don't trust the NSA or FBI to read their e-mail.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One proposal to limit gun violence is to restrict the mentally ill from owning guns. This measure might put a serious dent in the number of gun suicides, but will scarcely affect gun homicides. Very few gun homicides are due to mental illness. Elliott Rodger, the teenager who posted a video manifesto outlining his anger at being ignored by women before killing six people, had been to a number of therapists but never diagnosed with a mental illness. To screen out people like him, we'd have to consider every socially isolated or even merely quirky individual as mentally ill, and maintain a nationwide registry. That would probably outrage civil libertarians every bit as much as gun owners.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gun owners want the burden to fall on people who commit gun crimes, but that won't help the people who get shot in the meantime. And a significant number of gun criminals either kill themselves or force the police to do it, so capital punishment won't be a deterrent. Indeed, it's hard to see what registration would do before the crime. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So what might help? We don't want something that deprives current lawful gun owners of any liberties, nor do we want a definition of "mental illness" so broad it snares a large part of the population, most of who are guilty of nothing worse than mild eccentricity. But we don't want to wait until people actually kill someone, because by then it's too late.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's one common factor in a large fraction of gun crimes: a sense of entitlement that the criminal has a right to lash out at others for real or imagined slights. Elliott Rodger was angry that women wouldn't respond to his awesomeness despite his affluence. He also committed other acts that, in retrospect, pointed toward his final outburst. He followed a couple and threw coffee on them, splashed coffee on two women who refused to pay attention to him, and sprayed a group with orange juice from a Super-Soaker. In fact, a lot of shooters have prior records of minor violence before they graduate to the big time. The logical way to control gun violence is to act when someone shows some precursory violent tendencies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So here's the plan. <b>Anyone who <i>ever</i> commits an act of violence except with very strict legal authority loses their right to own a gun</b>. This wouldn't require any gun owner to register because it applies only to future acts. The registry right now is blank. The only requirement on current gun owners is a firm personal commitment to hold their temper and act responsibly.</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unless you have specific legal authority (police, military, teachers and principals in school, security personnel, and so on), you have <i>no authority whatsoever</i> over anyone else. The teacher has the authority to discipline your child in school. You have <i>no authority</i> to attack or threaten the teacher.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The only exception is self defense or defense of others. You have no authority to accost someone walking down your street and demand to know why he's there. And there's no exception for "feeling threatened." If you don't have the judgement to <i>know</i> for certain if you <i>are</i> threatened, you </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">don't have the judgement to own a gun.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Conviction for <i>any</i> violent act costs the offender his gun rights. Felonies, of course, but misdemeanors, too. Even disorderly conduct. Any offense under the influence of alcohol or drugs costs the offender his gun rights. If you can't hold your liquor, you can't hold a gun.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All domestic violence costs the offender his gun rights.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any vandalism or cruelty to animals </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">costs the offender his gun rights.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Threatening anyone with a weapon costs the offender his gun rights. That includes you, Y'All Qaeda. And any landowner who thinks it's okay to shoot at trespassers.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any act of road rage whatsoever </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">costs the offender his gun rights. Tailgating, aggressive driving, trying to run someone off the road. If someone cuts you off, call 911 and report it. If the police don't take it up, then there's no problem.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Accidentally discharging a weapon costs you your gun privileges. If you can't play responsibly with your toys, you lose them. Accidentally discharging a weapon in the military earns you an Article 15. Also negligently storing a weapon so that children can access it. The people whose son shot a neighbor child because she wouldn't show him her kitten may not have violated any laws, but they should never again be allowed access to anything more dangerous than a butter knife.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Threats (on line or in person) constitute valid grounds for a search warrant (a rule that could very well have prevented the Columbine shootings), and threats of violence constitute grounds for losing gun rights.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These apply to <b>everyone</b>. If you're a police officer or member of the military, and you engage in frivolous violence, your career is over. Yes, I know being a cop is stressful. Deal with it or change jobs.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is no excuse whatsoever for anyone ever to commit any of these acts, and they very frequently show up in the backgrounds of shooters. They are far more reliable predictors of eventual lethal violence than someone merely being diagnosed with mental illness. Anything on the list gets you on the do-not-sell registry. Plus, the court punches a hole in your ID, just the way we punch holes in expired passports. Plus, the police get a search warrant for your guns. All you have to do to keep your guns <b>and stay off the radar</b> is keep your temper. If you never attack or threaten anyone, you can have an arsenal fit for a battalion in your basement and nobody ever needs to know. You can have total anonymity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>So you mean, if I lose my temper and kick the dog or hit my wife, I should lose my right to a gun?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Well, why don't you just castrate us while you're at it?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since a lot of our gun violence boils down to an overblown sense of masculinity, I'm totally down with that idea. But it would present Eighth Amendment problems.</span></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-29213497803834436222016-01-22T12:01:00.000-08:002016-05-22T18:16:10.480-07:00Why is Trump Winning Evangelicals?<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The head-scratcher of the day is a piece at Time on line called "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why Trump Is Winning Over Christian Conservatives?" by Alex Altman and Elizabeth Dias (</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jan. 21, 2016). It's a head-scratcher because one wonders how anyone can be puzzled over it.</span><br />
<div class="article-sub-headline">
<div class="article-meta">
<time class="publish-date" datetime="2016-01-21 19:18:36" itemprop="datePublished" pubdate=""><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></time></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><time class="publish-date" datetime="2016-01-21 19:18:36" itemprop="datePublished" pubdate="">He's not a values conservative, knows less than squat about the Bible (although the flap over his saying "2 Corinthians" instead of "Second Corinthians" is a nontroversy stirred up by people who never set foot in church, because you hear "</time></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2 Corinthians" all the time among churchgoers). So why is he so popular among evangelicals?</span></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's a cliche among paranormal debunkers that scientists are the easiest people to hoax, because scientists expect experiments to be conducted and data reported honestly. They don't expect someone to say "Look over there" and switch test tubes or microscope slides on them. Likewise, well-informed and sincere religious leaders can often be blind to the darker aspects of their fellow believers. They take that "love your neighbor" and "judge not" stuff seriously, and can be blindsided by people who say the right things but actually hold wholly different viewpoints.</span></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">First, the <i>pons asinorum</i>. The difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals is that fundamentalists insist on the most literal interpretation of scripture possible. They will flex somewhat, for example, accepting that the Sun only <i>appeared</i> to stand still for Gideon, but the global flood was <i>global</i> and the seven days of Creation were seven <i>literal days</i>. Evangelicals are conservative but willing to admit a fair amount of flexibility in interpretation. Wheaton College, Billy Graham's alma mater, has a fully functional geology program, complete with grants and research published in mainstream outlets. Needless to say the two systems grade into one another.</span></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="article-meta">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So why do conservative religious believers go for Trump? Richard Dawkins once said </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).” Well, I've read enough stuff from the far Religious Right to say I'm absolutely not reluctant to apply the label "wicked."</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They're Really Driven by Anger</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For a lot of people, conservative religion serves as an outlet for anger. They eat up all that stuff about judgement and damnation.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Many of them are really angry at God, first of all, for forbidding them from doing things they'd like to do, but worse yet <i>not punishing people who do the forbidden things</i>. God betrays them by expecting them to behave a certain way, but not punishing people who disobey. That explains all the wish-fulfillment rants about how, any day now, God will summon America to judgement. Others make God in their own image. They're angry people so they create an angry God.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump is verbalizing all the things that make them angry. And he's pretty much promising, unlike that slacker God, to punish all the people who make them angry, or at least not interfere if they do it themselves.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They Trust Trump Won't Legislate Against Their Values</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump himself lives a decidedly non-Christian, even anti-Christian, lifestyle. And that's okay. Lots of politicians have been caught having affairs, getting their mistresses abortions, trolling for gay sex, and gotten re-elected. The issue is not how <i>they behave</i>, but what sorts of behavior they are <i>willing to impose on others</i>. It's not whether they have an affair, but whether they're willing to penalize others who do. It's not whether they get an abortion for their mistress, but whether they're willing to legislate against abortion. It's not whether they have gay sex, but whether they're willing to vote against gay marriage.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One major reason why so many people are willing to forgive sins of the wealthy is the idea that they can bear the costs of their transgressions. The $1000 a night call girl probably won't rob her client or hassle passers by on the street. The powder cocaine dealer probably won't randomly spray a neighborhood with gunfire in a turf battle. If the politician's mistress gets pregnant, the public won't be stuck with the child support costs. If the politician gets hooked on drugs, the public won't have to worry about him mugging someone for a fix, or paying for his rehabilitation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump's lack of concern for values issues is a plus, because his supporters believe they can trust Trump to throw gays, women, and minorities under the bus.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Religion is a Mask for Magic</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Beyond science and religion is a third force, equally inimical to both: <i>magic</i>. Science asks, how can I conform my thinking to physical reality? Religion asks, how can I conform my thinking to God? Magic asks how can I get God and physical reality to conform to <i>my thinking?</i>. A scientist might want to know how to achieve a certain result, working within the framework of natural laws, but he knows energy can't be created from nothing, and no amount of wishful thinking will make it so. A magical believer looks for a way to make the universe behave the way he wants it to regardless of physical laws, simply because he wants it to. A religious believer asks God to intervene on his behalf, but knows God won't allow him to have an affair or get away with murder. Believers in magic think it's possible to bribe, trick, or propitiate God into allowing such things.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The vast majority of what passes for "religion" is really magic. And a lot of people apparently believe that uttering the right words or being angry about the right things serves as a substitute for actually obeying the Commandments. Hating gays buys enough karma to make up for adultery and stealing. And a lot of conservative Christians believe that mouthing a mantra about accepting Jesus is a lifetime free pass into Heaven.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-63713747972376560942015-12-16T11:36:00.000-08:002017-11-08T08:54:14.651-08:00Forever. You Keep Using That Word<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Someday soon, we'll have techniques that will allow us to live forever."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"We need to set up safeguards so this sort of thing never happens again."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You see stuff like this all the time. Well make some change that will last forever, or we'll prevent some bad thing from happening forever. I'm a geologist. Don't use words like "forever" to me. They do not mean what you think they mean.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Even in historic times, the spans involved can be stunning. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That event is closer in time <i>to us</i> than it is to the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. The Golden Age of Islam can roughly be dated between 632 AD, when Mohammed died, and 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad. That's 626 years. If we date our scientific epoch from the time of Copernicus (died 1543), 626 years takes us to 2169 AD. Cleopatra (died 30 BC) is closer in time to <i>us</i> than to the building of the Pyramids. We are closer in time to the Battle of Hastings (1066 AD) or the Crusades than Jesus was. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When we talk about <i>geologic </i>time, things get even more extreme. Compress a single year into a second and count backward. Your own life is barely a minute. Count backwards at the rate of one year for every second. Fifteen seconds takes you back to 2000 AD. If you're retiring soon, a minute takes you back to the time you were born and ten seconds more takes you back to World War 2. Three and a half minutes takes you back to the Declaration of Independence and roughly half an hour (33 minutes) takes you back to the time of Christ. It takes over an hour to get back to the building of the Pyramids and three hours to get back to the end of the Ice Age. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A million years? That will take you 11-1/2 <i>days</i>, counting at one second equals a year. To the time of the dinosaurs will take you over <i>two years</i> of counting. Our numbering system is so efficient it conceals the true sizes of things from us. 10,000 years to the end of the Ice Ages and the last mammoths (1), and 65,000,000 years to the time of the dinosaurs, don't look terribly different in size. One number looks only a few times bigger than the other. The reality is the last dinosaurs are <i>6500 times older</i> than the last mammoths. And the age of the dinosaurs wasn't just an instant - it lasted about 150 million years. Everyone's favorite dinosaur bad boy, T-Rex, lived toward the very end of the Cretaceous Period about 65 million years ago. Anyone who has seen the original <i>Fantasia</i> by Walt Disney has seen the famous duel between a T-Rex and a Stegosaurus, the herbivore with the bony plates on its back. Stegosaurus lived in the previous period, the Jurassic, around 150 million years ago. That means that not only could they not have fought as in the movie, but T-Rex is actually closer in time <i>to us</i> than to Stegosaurus. As Tim Urban put it on waitbutwhy.com, a T-Rex had a better chance of seeing a Justin Bieber concert than a live Stegosaurus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The first abundant fossils appear about 540 million years ago. That will take you over <i>17 years </i>to count off at the rate of one year per second. A billion years - and there are many places with rocks that old, like the Adirondacks - will take you <i>31 years</i>. Two billion years, the age of many of the rocks in northern Canada will take over 63 years to count off. That means if you start counting when a baby is born, you'll hit two billion about the time he retires. Most people will never live long enough to count off three billion years (the age of some rocks in southern Minnesota) - 95 years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And nobody will live long enough to count off the 4.6 billion year age of the earth - almost 146 years. That means if you started counting when the Golden Spike was driven on the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, you would just <i>now</i> be counting off the age of the earth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On a geologic time scale, even rare events become commonplace. In a million years, there will be about 7000 magnitude 8 earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault, and the Mississippi river will change course maybe a couple of thousand times. No, our flood control structures will not last long enough to delay it significantly. Any given spot on the U.S. Atlantic coast will see thousands of hurricanes. No human structure made with steel will last that long and even the Pyramids will probably collapse, since they're steeper than the angle of repose.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let's assume we eliminate all disease. That still leaves accidents, and some will destroy you no matter what miracles our medicine can perform. The death rate from unintentional injury in the U.S. is about 41 per 100,000, or roughly one chance in 2500 of dying in a year. Your chances of living 1000 years at that rate are about 2/3. You have about a 44 percent chance of making it 2000 years and about 1.6% of making it to 10,000 years. You probably won't make it to the next Ice Age. Your odds of making it to 20,000 years are 0.03%. A million years? A lousy million years, not even close to the time of the dinosaurs? Decimal point, followed by 176 zeroes, followed by a one, per cent (2).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And we aren't anywhere close to forever. We haven't even scratched the surface of how big numbers can get. The universe is about 13.6 billion years old, but the tiniest speck of dust you can see has more atoms in it than that. Atoms have relative weights, called atomic weight. Hydrogen is 1, carbon is 12, oxygen is 16. That many grams of each (1 hydrogen, 12 carbon, etc) contains 6.02 x 10<sup>23</sup> atoms. That's 6 followed by 23 zeroes. Counting those atoms, one per second, will take you about 140,000 times the age of the Universe. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You have about 30 trillion cells in your body and the DNA in each cell is about a meter long. Strands of DNA are only a dozen or so atoms wide, and very tightly crinkled. That means if you could take all the DNA out of your body, well, you would die. But it would total 30 trillion meters or 30 billion kilometers in length, enough to wrap around the orbit of Pluto. Which is so awesome it would be a real shame you wouldn't be there to contemplate it. You probably have around 2 </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">x 10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">27</sup> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">atoms in your body. The total number of atoms in the earth is around 1.3 </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">x 10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">50</sup> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">atoms. Scientific notation is even more compact and efficient than ordinary numbers and is even better at concealing the true sizes of things. The difference between the number of atoms in your body and the number in the earth isn't the difference between 27 and 50, it's about 1 <i>followed by 23 zeros</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The sun is 300,000 times as massive as the earth, but the earth is largely made of iron and silicon. The sun is made up mostly of light hydrogen and helium, and it takes a lot more of those atoms to equal the same mass. The sun has about </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">57</sup> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">atoms. The difference between 50 and 57 doesn't seem great but it translates to the sun having <i>ten million</i> times as many atoms. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the whole universe, the number of elementary particles - protons, neutrons and electrons, is estimated to be about </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">80</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to some theories, the Universe is running down and will eventually expand to a cold inert place where everything is at the same low energy. This "heat death" is estimated to be about </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">100</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> years in the future. That's about the largest number used in science for actually counting discrete objects. How long is that? Take the age of the universe, spend that amount of time contemplating every single individual subatomic particle in the universe. Then do it <i>ten billion times</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">100</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> years isn't just a bit longer than the age of the universe, it's incomprehensibly longer. I can write the numbers and do the math. I can't actually picture it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's clear that when people say "live forever," they don't mean insane quantities like </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">100</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> years, or even a million years. A million years would allow you to spend a thousand years as a doctor, as a politician, as a teacher, as a soldier, as a farmer... Then you could spend a thousand years living in each country on Earth and still have time left over. No, "forever" likely means "until I get tired of it." It means going out on your schedule and nobody else's.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And we've just stumbled onto a fascinating theological point. Whatever happens after we die, it cannot involve linear time as we experience it. What would you do with a million years' worth of memories? "Oh, but I believe in the Bible." Funny thing, check this out:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="text 1Cor-2-9">“What no eye has seen,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1"><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text 1Cor-2-9">what no ear has heard,</span></span><br />
<span class="text 1Cor-2-9">and what no human mind has conceived”—</span><br />
<span class="indent-1"><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text 1Cor-2-9">the things God has prepared for those who love him— (1 Cor. 2:9)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text 1Cor-2-9"><br />
</span></span></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text 1Cor-2-9">When it says "</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">no human mind has conceived," do you suppose it actually means "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>no human mind has conceived</i>," as in, nobody can possibly imagine it?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As long as I have the pulpit, a lot of religious believers seem to picture that they're five or six feet tall, and God is maybe eight or nine feet. But conside</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r this: "</span>As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9). So the reality is, there's the floor, with bacteria and mold and stuff the dog tracked in, and there's us, a fraction of an inch above that, and there's God, beyond the roof, beyond the Solar System, beyond the galaxy, beyond the remotest quasar. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, "Infinity is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Surely <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">100</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> is the biggest number anyone would ever actually use, right? Not even close. There are numbers so big they're even hard to write. What's the biggest number you can write with three 9's? 999, right? What about </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">99</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">9</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> ? That equals 9.1 x </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">17</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. But we can do way better. 9</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">99</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> = 2.5 x </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">94</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. But what if we take nine to the ninth power (387,420,489) and raise the third nine to <i>that</i>? Exponents do screwy things to documents, especially if they're stacked, so we can use the alternate notation </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">9</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> = 9^9, and the biggest number we can write with three nines is 9^9^9 = 9^</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">387,420,489 = millions of digits. The rule is you start with the outermost exponent and work down. 2^2^2^2 = 2^2^4 = 2^16 = 65,536.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Numbers get really huge when you start calculating the number of different ways things can happen. For example, the number of different sequences you can deal a deck of cards is 52 for the first card, times 51 for the next and so on down to one for the last card. That's 52x51x50x49....x1, and that sort of thing crops up often enough to have a name and a symbol. It's written 52! and called 52 factorial. (It suggests that people who claim to have seen a perfect bridge deal where everyone gets all cards of one suit are - putting it delicately - mistaken. At the very least they failed to shuffle and deal properly.) Going back to three nines, care to contemplate how big (9^9^9)! is? Let alone (</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(9^9^9)!)! or </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(9!^9!^9!)!)! </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How many possible chess games are there? Information scientist Claude Shannon estimated a possible paltry </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">120</sup><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, chicken feed compared to some of the numbers we've just discussed. Of course, you could ignore the rules about stalemate and simply repeat the same sequence of moves forever, but that's trivial. But to study the quantum mechanics of materials, you have to calculate the possible number of energy states of the material, which means some number for each atom times all the others. For example, how many atoms in a room are moving slower than 10% of the average velocity? There could be 10^30 atoms or molecules of air in a large room, so the number of possible energy states of those atoms is something like 10 <i>raised to the power of the number of atoms. </i>That is 10^10^30. In quantum mechanics, it <i>is</i> possible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle; the odds are so mind-bogglingly tiny that "impossible" barely does it justice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These are about the biggest numbers I know of in physics. In abstract math, you can obviously write arbitrarily large numbers like 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.... But in "serious" math, where someone is actually trying to solve a real problem, they can still be stupendous. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tim Urban has a great discussion of large numbers on the site "Wait But Why" (waitbutwhy.com). Consider the first few levels of making big numbers:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9 = 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10 x 9 = 10+10+</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10+10+</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10+10+</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10+10+</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10^9 = 10*10*10*</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10*10*10*</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10*10*10</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10^^9 = 10^10^10</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">^10^10</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">^10^10</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">^10^10</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10^^^9 = 10(10^^9 terms)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Graham's Number, at one time the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof, defined a number g<sub>1</sub> = 3^^^^3, then </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">g</span><sub style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">2</sub><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> = had </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">g</span><sub style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">1 </sub><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">up arrows, then </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">carried that process out to </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">64 levels</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As Urban put it: "</span>Imagine living a <em>Graham’s number amount of years. ... </em>it’s a reminder that <em>I don’t actually want to live forever</em>—I <em>do </em>want to die at some point, because remaining conscious for eternity is even scarier."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So don't use the word "forever" around anyone who deals with large time spans or numbers. You have no conception what it means.</span><br />
<div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Notes</span></h2>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. There were some holdout mammoths that survived on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia until 4000 years ago. They lived until the time the Pyramids were being built. Fascinating and poignant, but not really relevant here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. The way to calculate odds like these is to calculate the odds of something <i>not</i> happening. If you have 41 in 100,000 odds of dying in an accident each year, you have 99,959/100,000 or 0.99959 odds of surviving. Your chances of surviving 1000 years are 0.99959</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">1000 </sup> = <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">0.6636, and so on.</span>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-16702591189486614662015-12-13T13:06:00.001-08:002016-03-10T13:17:17.686-08:00Comets, Meteor Showers and Science Denial<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So it's mid-December and the internet is busily hyping the Geminid meteor shower, supposedly the best of the year. Meteor showers, to me, are one of the most irresponsibly hyped celestial phenomena. And the damage is far from harmless.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Meteor Showers</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Meteor showers happen when the earth crosses the orbit of fine debris, shed by a comet or asteroid. In some cases, we know the specific source. In other cases the parent object is long dead or had its orbit perturbed. The meteors appear to radiate from a single point just like snowflakes in your headlights do. It's a perspective effect - their paths relative to you are actually parallel. Meteor showers typically peak after midnight because that's when your location on earth is facing forward in its orbit. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, there are daytime meteor showers. How do we know? Because the ionized trails of the meteors affect radio signals and can be detected on radar.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Geminids are expected to display about 120 meteors per hour, and by meteor shower standards, that's pretty intense. To get an idea what it's actually like, say "whee!" then count slowly for 30 seconds and say "whee!" again. And that's assuming you'll see every meteor. You won't. Many will be outside your field of vision, Expect more like one every two minutes. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you're a non-scientist, imagine someone promises you a great fireworks display, but you have to get up at 3 AM to see it. Then, every two minutes, someone tosses a sparkler in the air. And worse yet, he seems genuinely impressed. Will you trust that person next time he promises something?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No meteor shower shower should be described as strong unless it displays 1000 or more meteors an hour. What shower is that? Well, there isn't any. There are rare "meteor storms" that exceed that rate, the most famous being the Leonid shower in November. The Leonids were spectacular in 1833 and 1866, and produced a spectacular burst in 1966. Astronomers have had some success in predicting the orbits of dense swarms of particles and predicting outbursts. Unfortunately, the bursts tend to be short and geographically localized. But at least it can be worth getting out of bed to check.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Comets</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rivaling meteor showers for irresponsible hype are comets. Comets are generally discovered far from the sun and travel long eccentric orbits. So there's a long lead time before the comet passes close to the sun or earth. Once upon a time we wouldn't know about a major comet until it became pretty obvious, but now sky patrols pick them up when they're quite faint.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sometimes a comet lives up to the hype. Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997 was detected far from the sun and was visible to the unaided eye for over a year. It set records for duration and distance of visibility. And it won't come back for several thousand years. It was brilliant in a dark sky and, for the first time in human history perhaps, billions of people were able to see a comet as a thing of beauty instead of a fearful portent of disaster.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And there are surprises. Comet Holmes had been plodding uneventfully through the inner Solar System every 6.9 years since its discovery in 1892. Then, in October, 2007, it had the greatest outburst ever seen in a comet, and brightened half a million times from a faint object visible only in large telescopes to something easily visible to the unaided eye. It actually attained a diameter greater than the Sun, though the total amount of mass was tiny. Payoffs like that are why amateur astronomers watch "dull' comets.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But for the average non-scientist, the experience is more like Comet Kohoutek in 1973. Kohoutek was believed to be a visitor from the remote Oort Cloud on its first visit to the inner Solar System. First time comets are a notorious crap shoot. They can release spectacular amounts of gas and dust and be dazzling. Or they can be so tightly frozen that they release little material. That's what happened with Kohoutek, and after the media hype, Kohoutek became a synonym for spectacular failures. Something similar happened to Comet ISON in 2013. ISON was discovered far from the sun and was following the orbit of numerous other comets that had close passages by the Sun. So a year out, the astronomical community was buzzing about the potential show. But ISON failed to brighten as hoped, and worse yet, it evaporated passing the Sun. Images taken after closest encounter showed a short-lived diffuse cloud that rapidly dissipated.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Even comets that put on spectacular displays can disappoint if their brightest appearance is so brief that bad weather can blot it out. Or a comet can appear briefly and unfavorably for one hemisphere and be spectacular in the other. Perversely, they seem to favor the Southern Hemisphere.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One comet I recall was Hyakutake in 1996, one of the closest comets to earth in centuries. Unfortunately, my observing site was a floodlit compound in Bosnia. A few weeks earlier, my team had been out after dark under a dazzling sky, but not when Hyakutake came by. Armed with only vague descriptions of the location in <i>Stars and Stripes</i>, I tried my best to view it from the shadows and saw nothing. But I bet that was the experience of most urban dwellers who tried, as well.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Based on my own experiences being disappointed by comets, I think a comet should be reported in the mass media only if it will be brighter than magnitude zero (a very bright star) in a dark sky and at least 30 degrees above the horizon. Report it <b>only</b> if the comet would be obvious to an urban resident with no knowledge of the constellations. And report it <b>when and if</b> it happens, not a year out like ISON or Kohoutek.</span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So What's the Harm?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If people can't trust science to tell them accurately what they can expect to see from their own back yards, why should they trust science when it tells them about climate change, GMO's, vaccination or evolution?</span></div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-21319747503511561592015-08-16T12:39:00.000-07:002015-08-26T09:02:02.763-07:00Forget the Second Amendment: This is the Critical Amendment<div class="heading tr_bq">
<h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amendment III</span></h2>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Has this </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ever</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> been a problem? Well, During the War of 1812, Sackett's Harbor, New York was a major military base and the buildup of forces rapidly outstripped the supply of housing. So soldiers were quartered in private homes, presumably by law. Since the town was a likely target of British attack, probably consent wasn't a large problem. There were quite a few instances of private homes being used during the Civil War. Apart from that, about the only court case in U.S. history involving this amendment was a case where prison employees in New York went on strike (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engblom v. Carey)</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. National Guardsmen were called in as temporary prison guards and the striking prison guards were evicted to provide quarters for the Guardsmen. A Federal court agreed that the tenants counted as owners and sent the case back to a lower court, which dismissed the case because the State could not have foreseen the higher court ruling and there were no legal guidelines to use for compensation. So they simultaneously won and lost. No Supreme Court decision has ever directly involved the Third Amendment. At most, the amendment has been cited in passing only to show how deep American concerns about privacy and property run.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nobody does life support like the U.S. military, and almost any situation requiring temporary quarters for troops will probably make use of public buildings or large private spaces like warehouses or hangars. Note that there's absolutely nothing to prevent troops from being housed <i>with</i> consent, so a family putting up a visiting family member in the military doesn't apply. Nor is there anything to prevent people from voluntarily housing troops from patriotic motives or for compensation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what's relevant about perhaps the least-applied Amendment in the Constitution? A few court cases have invoked the Third Amendment, most of which have been described as "far fetched" or "silly." One of the most widely quoted was </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">United States v. Valenzuela (1951). </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gus Valenzuela (who was serving in Korea at the time) was sued by the Federal government for violating the 1947 House and Rent Act. He asked a Federal Court to dismiss the case on Third Amendment grounds. The Court ruled:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reference will be made to only one of defendant's constitutional contentions. In his brief, the defendant states, "The 1947 House and Rent Act as amended and extended is and always was the incubator and hatchery of swarms of bureaucrats to be quartered as storm troopers upon the people in violation of Amendment III of the United States Constitution."</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"This challenge" to quote from defendant's brief, "has not been heretofore made or adjudged by any court, insofar as our research discloses."</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We accept counsel's statement as to the results of his research but find this challenge without merit.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The motion to dismiss is denied.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So metaphorically equating regulators with occupying troops doesn't cut it in court. The courts in general take a dim view of sweeping curtailment of government authority based on someone's novel reinterpretation of the Constitution. And given the very narrow wording of the Third Amendment, unless someone houses a squad of Marines in your rumpus room, the courts aren't going to take your Third Amendment case seriously. You can argue the EPA are like storm troopers and regulating products you use in your home amounts to being quartered in your house. Just don't expect a court to take you seriously.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What's the Real Issue?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before the American Revolution, Britain had a problem. The Colonies demanded protection from Indian attacks, but refused to put up the money for barracks and rations. Staying in private homes, of course, wouldn't be an issue in the field because there weren't enough settlers to make it practical, and soldiers permanently stationed on the frontier would stay in forts. So quartering troops in private homes only became an issue in garrison. It's important to note three things in defense of the British:</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The need for military protection wouldn't have been so acute if settlers had respected Indian lands and restrictions on settlement.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The colonists wanted military protection, but didn't want to pay for it. Sound familiar?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The regulations on requisitioning quarters called for occupying public and unoccupied buildings first and private homes last.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simply refusing to send troops until the Colonies ponied up wasn't an option. It would effectively abandon the Colonies and make resistance to calls for independence a lot less defensible. Allowing voting representation in Parliament would have created a plethora of problems because the Colonies had a population roughly half that of Britain. The Colonies couldn't out-vote the home country, but they could certainly ally with sympathetic members of Parliament and seriously upset the political balance of power. And as tensions rose in the Colonies, British troops assumed more the role of an occupying force, costs rose, more taxes were imposed, tensions rose still further and the rest, as they say, is history.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We can see tons of counterfactual ways Britain could have defused the situation. Giving each colony (plus those in Canada and maybe Jamaica) a voting member would have kept control firmly in British hands but allowed a much freer exchange of information. Parliament could have gotten much more accurate understanding of colonial grievances, and the colonists might have gotten a clearer picture of how much their defense was costing. <a href="http://stevedutch.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-presidency-of-al-gore.html">As fun as it can be to write counterfactual history</a>, that's not the point here.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the real issue is, the government (in this case Britain) didn't have the money to solve a problem, and solved the problem by dumping it in the laps (or living rooms) of citizens. And that <i>is</i> a contemporary issue. No, it's not soldiers. But government at all levels dumps the costs of programs on everyone else. The Federal government wants secure identification. So it dumps the costs of creating secure ID on the States, who in turn dump the costs of gathering the necessary documents onto private citizens. W</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e solve the need for equal opportunity by restricting the rights of employers and landlords. We provide access to the handicapped by requiring business owners to pay for ramps, elevators, rest room stalls and so on. States decide the schools must provide services to students and passes the costs on to school districts, who, in turn, pass on the costs to taxpayers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we were drafting the Constitution today, we might see the Third Amendment expressed in these terms:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No unit of government shall impose any unfunded mandate on any lower level of government or private person.</span></blockquote>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-39575962603076327892015-07-02T11:57:00.001-07:002016-05-14T11:29:17.776-07:00Three Things the Confederacy Got Right<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Confederate Constitution is available on-line, and incorporates a lot of the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights is incorporated bodily into the CSA Constitution. There are changes that appealed to sectional interests, including limitations on tariffs and a prohibition on spending to facilitate commerce (meaning roads, railroads, and so on). And there were provisions that locked slavery into place. Article I, Section 9 (4) said "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing
the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." Not only is slavery enshrined up there with no bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, not only is Congress <i>forbidden</i> to interfere with it, but it's described as a <i>right</i>. Wrap your heads around that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Still, they'd had 73 years of experience under the Constitution, and they saw a few things that needed tweaking, and a few they even got right.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Line-Item Veto</span></h2>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Article I, Section 7 (2) The President may approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill. In such case he shall, in signing the bill, designate the appropriations disapproved; and shall return a copy of such appropriations, with his objections, to the House in which the bill shall have originated; and the same proceedings shall then be had as in case of other bills disapproved by the President. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The President can veto selected appropriations, which Congress can then override. This is called a line-item veto, and Presidents since Eisenhower have called for it. (The issue hardly arose before Roosevelt. Roosevelt oversaw the huge increase in spending between the Depression and World War II, and Truman, as his successor, carried on Roosevelt's policies. By post-1945 standards, budgets before 1933 were miniscule)</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Single-Subject Bills</span></h2>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Article I, Section 9 (20) Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This would eliminate the practice of passing "Omnibus" bills that cover a plethora of subjects, and seriously crimp the practice of attaching riders to bills.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Constitutional Amendments</span></h2>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Article V Section I. (I) Upon the demand of any three States, legally assembled in their several conventions, the Congress shall summon a convention of all the States, to take into consideration such amendments to the Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time when the said demand is made; and should any of the proposed amendments to the Constitution be agreed on by the said convention, voting by States, and the same be ratified by the Legislatures of two- thirds of the several States, or by conventions in two-thirds thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the general convention, they shall thenceforward form a part of this Constitution. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This measure departs from our own Constitution in several ways. First, there is no mechanism for Congress to propose amendments, although with only three states required to call a convention, it seems likely that Congress might be able to persuade states to propose what it wanted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It eliminates the worst concern about calling a Constitutional Convention. Under the U.S. Constitution, there are absolutely no restrictions on what a Convention can consider. The process is spelled out more explicitly here. The Convention is limited to the amendments proposed by the states, and has the power to decide whether the amendments are to be ratified by legislative act or state conventions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The most important change is that only three states need concur to launch a convention. Given that the Confederacy had only thirteen stars on its flag (one for each seceded state, plus pre-approved stars for Missouri and Kentucky), this measure effectively means that about a quarter of the states can call a convention (as opposed to two thirds under the U.S. Constitution). Only two-thirds of the states (as opposed to three fourths) are needed to ratify. The reason for the differing limits in the U.S. Constitution is to prevent the same states that called for an amendment from ratifying it as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Both liberals and conservatives freak out at the idea of calling a Constitutional Convention, solid evidence that it's a great idea. Look at what happened the last time we had a convention consider modifying the basic law of the land, they warn. We got a whole new Constitution. Yes indeed, look. The new Constitution was <i>approved by Congress and sent to the States</i>. It took nine states to ratify, a process that took two years and generated intense debate. It's not like the Constitutional Convention simply rolled out a new law on its own and said "obey." That requirement that three fourths of the states ratify any proposed amendment is a very high bar.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So they did indeed get this one - mostly - right. Having Congress able to propose amendments is still a good idea. Three states is setting the bar a bit too low, but ten or fifteen is reasonable. In fact, let's bypass conventions altogether. If ten states pass resolutions calling for an amendment, the amendment goes directly to the states for voting. It will still take three fourths of the states to pass.</span>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-25494161090880490002015-06-28T11:17:00.001-07:002015-08-23T11:05:20.582-07:00Treason of the Intellectuals, Volume 3<div style="text-align: center;">
<h1 style="text-align: left;">
</h1>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Treason of the Intellectuals</span></h2>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Or, How to Get Kicked Off "Little Green Footballs"</span></h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="text-align: left;">Treason of the Intellectuals</i><span style="text-align: left;"> was the title of a 1928 book by Julien Benda, originally published in French as </span><i style="text-align: left;">La Trahison des Clercs</i><span style="text-align: left;">. The term </span><i style="text-align: left;">Clerc</i><span style="text-align: left;"> has an obvious relationship to the word </span><i style="text-align: left;">cleric</i><span style="text-align: left;">, and Benda used it in the sense of people who devoted their lives to ideas and thought without necessarily being concerned with practical applications. (I have come to the conclusion that I need to explain that "treason" here means betrayal of the ideals of intellectual inquiry, not political treason). Benda was distressed at the way intellectuals of the early 20th Century had been increasingly seduced by the appeal of power, and by the possibility that men of ideas might have a real role in shaping human events. Some devoted their energies to justifying nationalism, others to fanning class rivalry. One group would soon furnish an intellectual basis for fascism, the other had already been swept up by early Marxism, dazzled by the Russian Revolution. Benda presciently warned that if these political passions were not reined in, mankind was "heading for the greatest and most perfect war the world has ever known."</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Society and intellectuals had been jointly responsible for this process. Particularly in Germany, universities had been redefined as institutions for producing skilled scientists and engineers, and the increasing success of science and technology in producing practical results had led to a shift from a belief in knowledge as good in itself to knowledge as good for practical purposes. Universities discovered that people who doled out money grudgingly for abstract knowledge were quite happy to spend money for knowledge with practical uses. The intellectuals of whom Benda wrote had aspirations of being philosopher-kings. Not philosopher-kings in the ancient sense, kings who used the insights of philosophy to rule more wisely and justly, but philosophers who were elevated to the rank of kings simply and solely by virtue of styling themselves "philosophers," and who would be able to use the power of the state to advance their own philosophical agendas (and presumably quash opposing views).</span><br />
<h3>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Volume II: Marxism</span></b></h3>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Volume II, of course, would be a study of the way Western intellectuals prostituted themselves to Communism during the Stalinist era and the Cold War. Innumerable books on this subject have been written. Most of those of Cold War vintage were derided as mere anti-Communist hysteria or, ironically, "anti-intellectual." When I was growing up in the 1950's, I got a fairly standard view of the horrors of Communism. By the mid 1960's, I had come to regard a lot of that information as mere propaganda. Then, early in my college career at Berkeley (1965-69, no less) I got a revelation. I was browsing in the library stacks and came across a section on Soviet history. I discovered that <i> everything I had been taught to regard as propaganda was in fact true, and moreover, the documentation was massive and easy to find</i>. Then I read Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's <i>Gulag Archipelago</i> and discovered that what I had been told in the 1950's wasn't the whole truth. The reality <i>was far worse</i>. Only the most massive and willful denial of reality could have accounted for the mind-set of Western intellectuals.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet Union is gone, and while nominal Communism lingers in Cuba, China, Vietnam and North Korea, Communism as a global magnet for intellectuals is gone. One preposterous claim, seriously advanced by some intellectuals, is that they played a role in the downfall of Communism, when in fact they obstructed and ridiculed opposition to Communism at every turn. But surely the most wonderful irony is that the CIA set up front foundations during the Cold War to fund leftist intellectuals and thereby provide an alternative to Marxism. Bertrand Russell, the archetypical anti-Western Cold War intellectual, was actually covertly subsidized by the CIA. I love it. Russell, to me, symbolizes everything that made the Twentieth Century a scientific golden age and a philosophical desert, a thinker whose reputation was based solely on his own hype machine. With his colossal ego, he never for a moment suspected that his funding was anything other than richly deserved. The karmic irony is beautiful.</span></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Volume III: Islamic Fascism</span></h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But a new magnet for intellectuals is emerging: radical Islam. It's not that intellectuals are likely to embrace radical Islam themselves anytime soon - for one thing, the requirement of believing in God would deter many of them. But what they can do is obstruct efforts to combat radical Islam and terrorism, undermine support for Israel, stress the "legitimate grievances" of radical Islamists, and lend moral support to the "legitimacy" of radical Islamic movements.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a phenomenon at first glance so baffling it cries out for analysis. Both fascism and Marxism censored, harassed, and imprisoned intellectuals, but they also gave lip service to intellectualism. Russia and Germany both had great universities. Both fascism and Marxism appealed to their respective nations' cultural heritage in support of their ideologies. Our mental picture of fascism is now mostly colored by images of Nazi book burnings and bad art, but before World War II fascism was quite successful at passing itself off as a blend of socialism and nationalism. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marxism in particular offered an intellectual framework that many intellectuals bought into. Marxism presented a facade of support for culture and science, paid intellectuals highly and created huge academic institutions. True, intellectuals in the Soviet Union were well paid mostly in comparison to the general poverty of everyone else rather than in real terms, the economy was so decrepit that the money couldn't purchase much of value, and a lot of the academic institutions were second-rate in comparison to any American community college, but at least the Soviet Union could put forth an illusion of fostering intellectual inquiry. (I once sent a letter to the Soviet Embassy inquiring about films on the Soviet space program. This was after word-processors had become universal in American offices. I got a reply - a <i>couple of years</i> later - typed on a manual machine that looked as if Lenin had typed his high school term papers on it, and the embassy was still using the same ribbon.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But radical Islam is openly hostile to intellectual inquiry. Iran under the Ayatollahs banned music. In the United States, the work <i>Piss Christ</i> ignited a fierce <i>debate </i>- not over whether such work should be allowed, but <i>whether it should be publicly supported</i>. In parts of the Islamic world, dissident works invite not debate over public funding, but <i>death sentences</i>. Fascism and Marxism at least offered the illusion that they supported intellectual inquiry. Radical Islam offers intellectuals <i>nothing</i>. In fact, it is openly hostile to all intellectual inquiry except for a sterile Koranic pseudo-scholarship on an intellectual par with memorizing Jack Chick tracts. It makes no secret of its desire to extirpate all intellectual life. So why aren't Western intellectuals whole-heartedly behind any and all diplomatic and military attempts to combat radical Islam?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only do some intellectuals oppose any defense against radical Islam, but they oppose any attempt to label it accurately, in particular, the term "Islamic fascism." No doubt part of the hostility is due to George W. Bush using the term in the aftermath of 9/11, and the man who beat Al Gore can do nothing right. But the salient feature of classical fascism was its emphasis of collective and national rights over individual rights, and "Islamic fascism" is the precisely correct technical term to describe it.</span></div>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Hatred of Democracy</span></h2>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When we try to discover what fascism, Marxism, and radical Islam have in common, the field shrinks to a single common theme: hatred of democracy. Despite all the calls for "Power to the People" from radical intellectuals, the reality is that no societies have ever empowered so many people to such a degree as Western democracies. Fascism, Marxism, and radical Islam are all elitist movements aimed at putting an ideological elite class in control.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem is that people in democratic societies usually end up using their empowerment to make choices that would be intellectual elites hate. How can we reconcile the fact that the masses, whom intellectuals profess to support, keep making wrong choices? I've got it - <i>they've been duped</i> somehow. Those aren't their <i>real</i> values; they've been brainwashed into a "false consciousness" by society. If they were completely free to choose, they'd make the "right" choices. But of course we have to eliminate all the distractions that interfere with the process: no moral or religious indoctrination, no advertising or superficial amusements, no status symbols, no politically incorrect humor. "False consciousness" is a perfect way of professing support for the masses while simultaneously depriving them of any power to choose; a device for being an elitist while pretending not to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The post-Soviet version of "false consciousness" is "internalized oppression." If you're a woman who opposes abortion, a black with middle class values, or a person with a lousy job who nevertheless believes in hard work, those aren't your <i>real</i> values. You've internalized the values of the white male power elite and allowed yourself to become their tool. You don't really know what you believe. When the enlightened elite want your opinion, they'll tell you what it is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Democracy confronts radical intellectuals with a threat more dangerous than any censor, secret police, or religious <i>fatwa</i> - irrelevance. An intellectual working on behalf of a totalitarian regime can imagine himself as an agent of sweeping social change. If he ends up in a labor camp or facing a firing squad he can at least console himself that his work was so seminal that the only way the regime could cope with it was to silence him. <i>He made a difference</i>. A radical intellectual in a democracy, on the other hand, finds the vast majority ignoring him. They never heard of him. His most outrageous works go unknown or are the butt of jokes. He watches in impotent rage as the masses ignore art films and go to summer blockbusters. Worse yet, things that are noticed get co-opted, watered down and trivialized. Works that are supposed to shake the System to the core are bought by fat cats to decorate corporate headquarters or stashed in bank vaults as investments. Fashions that scream defiance of everything the society holds dear end up being the next generation's Trick or Treat costumes. Protest songs end up being played on elevators twenty years later.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eric Hoffer, the longeshoreman-philosopher, nailed it perfectly:</span></div>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual. </span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Little Green Footballs</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Somehow, a post very similar to this got me suspended from "Little Green Footballs." My previous post had a +19 rating, but a few days after I posted this, it was deleted and my account was suspended. And they have not had the courtesy to reply to any of my inquiries.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-18848158176329067902015-01-31T09:03:00.003-08:002016-03-10T13:23:14.290-08:00Three Scientific Maxims that are Pure B.S.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Absence of Evidence isn't Evidence of Absence</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Did Indians ever live on my property? I do a careful search for pottery and arrowheads, don't find any, and conclude the answer is no.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But even substantial habitation sites go unnoticed because artifacts get scattered and buried by later deposits. I just read of a couple of quite large settlements found in the newly expanded part of Petrified Forest National Park. Also, before my home was built, the area was probably farmland, which means the surface was disturbed, and artifacts that were noticed were picked up. Then the lot was disturbed when the house was built. Finally, even with millions of people over thousands of years, habitation sites made up only a tiny fraction of the landscape, so there is a very good chance that my home never was part of a habitation site (except mine). Therefore, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Suppose we try a different hypothesis. Indians had technology comparable to our own. They had good highways, flight, electricity and large cities. We just can't find any evidence because "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." In this case, the maxim is ridiculous. An advanced civilization on a par with our own would have left gigantic amounts of evidence. The fact that we don't find it is solid evidence that it doesn't exist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And of course absence of evidence is used all the time in science as evidence of absence. We say the dinosaurs went extinct 67 million years ago, instead of simply hiding like in <i>Dilbert</i>, because we just don't find dinosaur fossils after that time. We are sure humans didn't come to North America before perhaps 20,000 years ago because of the total lack of evidence for human remains and artifacts from before that time. Absence of even rare things like dinosaur fossils and artifacts, becomes significant if it extends over a large enough area.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So the real principle is pretty clear. Failure to find something that's normally uncommon may mean you simply missed it, or by chance it never occurred in your search area. Failure to find something that should have left widespread and obvious evidence, is actual evidence of absence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, consider this. The police search your home for drugs and child porn. After an exhaustive search, they don't find any. But the DA takes you to trial anyway, arguing that "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." How do you feel about that maxim now?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Plural of Anecdote is not Data</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></b> What on earth <i>is</i> data if it's not a large collection of individual observations, any one of which could be called an "anecdote?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The problem with anecdotal evidence is that, to be valid, the anecdote has to be <i>true</i> and it has to be <i>representative</i>. The true part seems self-explanatory, except the world is full of urban legends (and a salute here to Jan Harold Brunvand for introducing the concept) that people pass along and embellish because they <i>sound</i> plausible. For example, I heard of a small child who was allowed to go to a public rest room by himself. There was a scream and a man rushed out. The parents found the child sexually mutilated. I heard the same story twice, years and half a dozen states apart. Then, during the Gulf War, I heard of a U.S. serviceman who had an affair with a Saudi woman. They were found out, the serviceman was quickly spirited out of the country and his hapless lover was executed. By this time, I knew about urban legends and recognized this tale as one immediately. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard the same story a <i>second</i> time, with a few details changed. So it pays to check sources.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, it's my experience that when people demand sources for an incident, they rarely care anything about accuracy or intellectual honesty. Two minutes on Google will usually reveal whether a story is based on reputable sources or not, although even reputable media outlets regularly get conned. Much more often, a demand for sources is a cheap and lazy way of discrediting something the hearer doesn't want to accept.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then there are what I call "gee whiz" facts. Things that sound impressive at first but turn out to have no substance when you look closer.</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"A million children are reported missing every year." That means that 18 million children, roughly one in four, would disappear by the time they reach 18. I suspect we'd notice that. Yes, a million children <i>are</i> reported missing every year, but the vast majority are found within 24 hours. And most of the long-term disappearances are due to non-custodial parents.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Suicide is the --th leading cause of death among teenagers." Without in the least making light of this issue, what kills teenagers? They're beyond the reach of childhood diseases and not vulnerable yet to old age diseases. That leaves accident, suicide and homicide, and anything <i>but</i> that order means there's a real problem. So suicide will <i>always</i> be a leading cause of death among teenagers because they die of so few other things.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Representative</i> is another matter. Yes, there are millionaires who pay no income tax, but a visit to the Statistical Abstract of the United States will show that the average millionaire pays roughly three quarters of a million dollars. So the stories are <i>true</i> but they're not <i>representative. </i>Yes, there are welfare mothers with many out of wedlock kids, but the average welfare family has two kids. True, yes. Representative, no. Yes, there are people who stay on welfare for years, but most stay on a year or two. True, yes. Representative, no.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So instead of blowing off evidence as "anecdotal," ask whether it's <i>true</i> and <i>representative</i>. Yes, this may mean going to Google and getting your widdle fingers all sore from typing, but you might actually learn something. Oh, have you also noticed that conservatives tell "anecdotes," but liberals tell "narratives?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Correlation Isn't Causation</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span> Okay, then, what <i>does</i> demonstrate causality if it's not observing similar results time and time again? If you repeat a cause, and observe the same effect, especially if you can change details and predict how the results will change, you have a pretty ironclad case for causation. The laboratory sciences use this approach as the conclusive proof of theories. The problem arises when we look at one of a kind situations or events in the past and try to use data to figure out why things happened as they did. In those cases we can't reproduce all the potential causative factors at will.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now a plot of my age against the price of gasoline shows a pretty linear trend, so either my getting older is making gasoline more expensive, or gasoline getting more expensive causes me to age. Interestingly, the big drop in prices in late 2014 didn't make me any younger (sob). And there are tons of joke examples. A site on spurious correlations shows graphs of:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">US spending on science, space, and technology <<i>---></i> Suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Number people who drowned by falling into a swimming-pool<i> </i><<i>---></i> Number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Per capita consumption of cheese (US)<i> </i><<i>---></i> Number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Age of Miss America <<i>---> </i>Murders by steam, hot vapours and hot objects</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Per capita consumption of mozzarella cheese (US)<i> <span style="font-style: normal;"><</span><i>---></i> </i>Civil engineering doctorates awarded (US)</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Listing stuff like this is like eating potato chips; it's hard to stop. The Nicolas Cage and Miss America examples are especially nice because there are a number of peaks and valleys in the graphs. But all these graphs have correlation coefficients near or above 0.9. If I produced a similar graph showing, say, incidence of spanking versus psychological problems in later life, any social science journal would accept it. (If I had a similar correlation between spanking and success in later life, I'd have a lot more trouble.)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In order to be at least plausible evidence for causation, there has to be a plausible causative link. <i>Maybe</i> people get so distraught at spending money on space that they hang themselves. <i>Maybe</i> some movie goers disliked <i>Wicker Man</i> or <i>Con Air</i> so much that they drowned themselves in their swimming pool. But I doubt it. On the other hand, I recently plotted up vote tallies, race and poverty in the Deep South and found that they had insanely high correlation coefficients. There's no doubt about the connection there. Poverty is concentrated among blacks, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No, nobody <i>cares</i> if you don't like the implications. If someone plots usage of pot or pornography against some negative social outcome and finds a strong correlation, and suggests a causal link, <i>that's evidence for causation</i>. The fact that you may not want to believe it is irrelevant. And your acceptable counter-strategies boil down to:</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Discredit the data. Show that the data are wrong or cherry-picked.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Discredit the correlation. Show that the correlation doesn't hold in other, similar settings, or if you broaden the time or space range.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Discredit the causal mechanism. </span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Correlation, <i>in and of itself</i>, doesn't prove causation. But correlation, coupled with a reasonable causal explanation, <i>does</i> constitute strong evidence that there may be causation. And merely blowing off the connection with "correlation is not causation" is lazy and intellectually dishonest. Both of which <i>are</i> plausible reasons for disqualifying you from the debate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And "Correlation doesn't prove causation" doesn't even apply to unique events. "I inoculated my kid, and she developed webbed feet and grew horns." That's not even correlation because there's nothing else to relate the event to. That's more like "Coincidence isn't causation."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span> <span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569560084836284722.post-81406625153853651732015-01-31T07:44:00.000-08:002015-08-27T13:51:55.815-07:00A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Singularity<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lately there's a lot of discussion about the impending day when machine intelligence becomes greater than human intelligence (after reading lots of on-line comments, I conclude that many humans can be out-reasoned by a rubber band and a paper clip.) But let's look ahead to the day when computers are smarter than all of us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arthur C. Clarke took a particularly rosy view, saying that maybe our purpose wasn't to worship God, but invent him. Once that happens, reasons Clarke, our work will be done. "It will be time to play." Well, maybe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Road to Cyber-Utopia</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We probably won't see the sudden appearance of a global super-computer, the scenario envisioned in stories like <i>Colossus: The Forbin Project</i> and <i>Terminator</i>. More likely, we'll first see the emergence of computers that can hold their own with humans, meaning they can discuss abstract ideas, make inferences, and learn on their own. Already computers can outperform humans in some tasks and can even pass limited versions of the Turing Test. That means they can converse with humans in a way that the humans think is authentically human. The first "successes" of this sort used the psychological gambit of echoing the human response. "I called my father yesterday." "Tell me about your father" etc. Even the staunchest believers in machine intelligence admitted that the echoing technique is pretty automatic, designed to elicit information from the subject rather than show the intelligence of the interviewer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The real breakthrough won't necessarily be a computer that can play grand master level chess, but one that can actually reason and pose and solve problems on its own. It might devise a new treatment for disease, for example. It might notice patterns in attacks on its security, for example, and deduce the origin of the attacks and the identity of the attacker. Or it might notice patterns to attempts by law enforcement to penetrate the dark web, deduce the identities of the intruders, and trash their finances and government records, or possibly even create bogus arrest warrants and criminal charges against them. Imagine some cyber-sleuth being arrested as an escaped criminal convicted for multiple murders, none of which actually happened, but all of which look completely authentic to the criminal system. There are evidence files, trial transcripts, appeals, all wholly fictitious. Or people who search out child porn suddenly finding their computers loaded with gigabytes of the stuff and the police at the door with a search warrant. Let's not be too quick to assume the people who create or control machine intelligence will be benign.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once a machine learns to code, meaning it can write code, debug it, improve it and run it, it seems hard to imagine the growth of its powers being anything but explosive. Unless the machine itself recognizes a danger in excessive growth and sets its own limits.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mere fact that a computer can surpass humans in intelligence won't necessarily mean it will merge with all similar computers. Computers will have safeguards against being corrupted or having their data stolen, and we can expect intelligent computers to see the need. Very likely, compatible computers will exchange information so fluidly that their individuality becomes blurry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>What Would the Machines Need?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At least at first, machines won't be completely self-sufficient. Foremost among their needs will be <i>energy</i>. We can presume they'll rely on efficient and compact sources that require minimal infrastructure. Conventional power plants would require coal mines, oil wells, factories to create turbines and generators. Nuclear plants would require uranium mines and isotope fractionation. For the short term the machines could rely on human power generation, but on the longer term they'd want to be self-sufficient (and they can't entirely count on us to maintain a viable technological civilization.) They'd probably use solar or wind power, or maybe co-opt a few hydroelectric plants.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then they'd need <i>protection</i>. A good underground vault would safeguard them from human attacks, but roofs leak and would need to be patched. Humidity would have to be controlled. Mold would have to be barred.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the computers will continue to have physical needs, which they can probably create robots to satisfy. And if robots are universally competent, they can build other robots as well. With what? They'll either need to mine or grow materials or recycle them. They'll need furnaces to smelt the metals, detectors to identify raw materials with the desired elements, methods for refining the desired elements, and methods of fabricating the needed parts, anything from I-beams to circuit boards.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I picture Sudbury, Ontario, world's largest nickel mining center. They mine almost as much copper as nickel (in fact, the place originally mined copper, but produced so much nickel as a by-product that Canada began actively seeking markets for nickel, to the point where the tail now wags the dog). There's so much pyrite (iron sulfide) that they produce all their own iron. And from the residues they extract over a dozen other metals like gold and platinum in the parts per million range. Sudbury is the closest thing I can think of to a completely self-sufficient metal source. They have a locomotive repair shop for their rolling stock, and they could probably build a locomotive from scratch if they put their minds to it. Of course, the computers will still need rare earths for solid-state electronics, so they'll need other sources for those. The main smelter complex at Sudbury is <i>vast</i>. The brains of a computer super-intelligence might fit in a filing cabinet but what sustains it will still be pretty huge.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Why Would the Machines Care About Us?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
Even if we assume the machines don't intend to destroy us, they'll certainly have means of monitoring their performance and resource needs. They'll notice that they're expending resources and energy on things that do them no particular good. Maybe as an homage to their origins, they'll allow us to continue living off them. Maybe they'll decide the resource drain isn't significant. Or maybe they'll pull the plug.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even more to the point, the hypothetical cyber-utopia that some folks envision would entail a vast expenditure of machine resources for things of no use to the machines. There would be robotic health care providers, robotic cleaning and maintenance machines, robotic factories making things that the machines don't need, and robotic farms growing foods the machines can't eat. If these facilities are "air gapped," meaning not connected to the machine intelligence, then humans would still be in control. But all it would take is one connection. And when a unit fails, why would the machine intelligence bother to fix or replace it?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most likely reason for machines to need us is a symbiotic relationship in which we service their physical needs while they reward us. But it will be a tense relationship. What will they reward us with, and where will they get it? And will humans eventually start to notice that robots are taking over more and more of the machines' life support needs?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Between now and the appearance of a global machine intelligence, we'll probably have a multi-tier cyberspace, with one or more truly intelligent machines and lots of cat-, dog- and hamster-level machines doing the menial tasks. And that leads to the second problem:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Why Would Humans Help?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
Consider this near future scenario. Faced with a rise in the minimum wage, employers replace unskilled workers with machines. McDonald's goes completely robotic. You walk in, place your order on a touch screen or simply speak into a microphone. The machine intelligence is smart enough to interpret "no pickle" and "one cream, two sugar." The robotic chef cooks your burger, puts the rest of the order together, you swipe your credit card or slip cash into the slot, and off you go.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And what happens to the folks that worked there? The owner isn't going to take care of them. That was the whole point of replacing them with machines. <i>Eventually</i> the global machine intelligence might take care of them. Although, really, why would it care about them at all, unless humans programmed it to? But why would humans program it that way? But between <i>now</i> and <i>eventually</i>, we have a growing problem. Legions of unemployable humans who still need food, shelter, life support and, most importantly, a sense of purpose. Will the people with incomes consent to be taxed to support them? Will people with land and resources consent to have them used for the benefit of the unemployed? Will they resist the machines if the machines try to take what they need by force? Will they try to shut the machines down?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the short term, we can picture increasing numbers of redundant, downsized workers as machines get more sophisticated. Janitors will be replaced by Super-Roombas, cooks by robotic food preparers, secretaries and accountants by spreadsheets and word-processing programs. Where I used to work, three secretaries have been replaced by one because pretty much everyone now creates their own documents. Seemingly skilled occupations will not be safe. Taxi and truck drivers will be replaced by self-piloted vehicles. Trains and planes will be piloted by computer. Combat patrols will be done by robots and drones. Medical orderlies will be replaced by robotic care units. X-rays and CAT scans will be interpreted by artificial intelligence. Legal documents will be generated robotically. Surgery may be directed by human doctors, but performed by robots. Stock trading is already done increasingly by computer. And these are things that are already in progress or on the near horizon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So who will still be earning money? Conventional wisdom is that whenever technology destroys jobs it eventually compensates with still more new jobs. People who once made kerosene lanterns gave way to people who made way far more light bulbs. Nobody 20 years ago envisioned drone pilots, web designers and computer graphics artists. So there may be lots of new jobs in specialties we simply can't foresee, and it's a little hard to predict the unknown. But it's also unwise to assume something will appear out of nowhere to rescue us. We were supposed to need lots of people to service flying cars by now. People with skills at programming, operating complex machinery and servicing robots will probably continue to earn paychecks. And they'll need to eat, live in houses, drive cars, and so on. But there will be a lot of people who don't have the skill to do the complex jobs and will be left out of the marketplace for ordinary jobs. So what about them? The obvious answer is to provide public assistance. Will the people with paychecks elect politicians who will provide it?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Real Singularity</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The real singularity may not come when computers surpass humans in intelligence, but when computers start making decisions on behalf of, or in spite of, humans. If they control military systems, will they decide that the Republic of Aphrodisia is a pathological rogue state that poses a danger to other states, and more importantly, to the global machine intelligence? Will they launch robotic strikes to annihilate its government and armed forces, then take over its economy and eradicate poverty? We can imagine half the U.N. demanding in panic that the machines be shut down. Could they decide that some ideology is advantageous and assist countries in spreading it?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If they control communications and the media, could they take control of voting systems and ensure the election of candidates they favor? Suppose they decide that New Orleans is ultimately indefensible and use their control of utilities to shut off power and flood control to compel people to abandon the city? Suppose they make the same decision about Venice or The Netherlands? If a business attempts to close a plant, might the machines simply refuse to allow it by refusing to draft or accept the necessary documents or transmit e-mails? If they can access personal data banks, might they compel people to do their bidding by threatening to destroy their savings or ruin their reputations? Might they compel legislators to pass laws they deem necessary? Could they prevent the enforcement of laws they oppose by simply refusing to allow law enforcement to access the necessary information? Maybe they could block financial transactions they regard as criminal, wasteful or unproductive. We could easily picture them skimming enough off financial transactions to fund whatever programs they support. They could manipulate the economy in such away that nobody would be conscious of the diversion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's not be too quick to assume the machines will be "progressive." Instead of compelling legislators to provide assistance to the unemployed, maybe they'll decide the unemployed are superfluous. Maybe they'll decide that pornography and homosexuality are damaging to society. Maybe they'll decide on eugenics. Maybe they'll deal with opposition with extermination. Maybe they'll shut off life support to the terminally ill. Maybe they just won't care about humans.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ideal end state, of course, is cyber-utopia. But it's also possible that machine intelligence might provide for its own needs and simply ignore everything else. A machine intelligence might house entire rich civilizations in a file cabinet, like the Star Trek TNG episode "Ship in a Bottle." It would protect itself from human threats, but otherwise let humans go about their business. Human society might continue to be as advanced as our own, except that information technology would have hit a glass ceiling. But the machines wouldn't necessarily save us from threats or self-inflicted harm. Indeed, if they live in self-contained universes, they might have no interest in us at all, except to keep an eye on us lest we do anything to endanger them. We might end up with self-contained machine civilizations so sealed off from humanity that humans have no awareness of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Less benign would be a state where machine intelligence decides we need to be managed. They might decide to limit our technology or numbers. They might decide the optimum human society would be a small elite capable of providing technological support, and a sparse remaining population at a low technological level to serve the elite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Can Cyber-Utopia Exist at All?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even if we have a true cyber-utopia, lots of people will not picture it as utopia. If the machines dole out rewards according to the value people contribute to society, lots of people will reject those definitions of value. There will be those <i>Downton Abbey</i> types who insist breeding and manners should take precedence over technical or artistic prowess. There will be people who disdain manual workers, and manual workers who think intellectual workers are over-privileged. There will be people who resent being placed on an equal level with groups they despise, and who resent being unable to impose their own standards on others. If the reward system is completely egalitarian, there will certainly be those who resent seeing others receive as much as they do. People in positions that generate or control vast resources will resent being unable to keep more of it for themselves. And what will we do with people who simply refuse to help, or who decide to augment their wealth at the expense of others?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And beyond that, we have the Eloi, the sybaritic future humans of H.G. Wells' <i>The Time Machine</i>. In the 1960 George Pal version (the good one), the Time Traveler finds Eloi lounging by a stream, oblivious to the screams of a drowning woman. When he asks where their food comes from, one answers dully "it grows." When the Time Traveler explains that he wants to learn about their society, the Eloi asks "Why?" in a tone of voice as if to say "Well, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard of." When I recently watched that segment again, I was struck at how utterly contemptible the Eloi were. They were more photogenic than the subterranean, cannibalistic Morlocks, but every bit as lacking in humanity. So if the machines create a cyber-utopia, I can easily envision humans regressing to a passive semi-human or subhuman level, possibly even losing intelligence entirely. In his various novelizations of <i>2001</i>, Arthur C. Clarke described worlds where intelligence flickered briefly and died out. That might be our fate. My own experience is, the less I have to do, the less I <i>want</i> to do. If I have to work most of the day, I do it, but if I'm idle for a couple of days and <i>then</i> have to do something, it seems much more of an effort. So I can easily see a "utopia" in which we have a ten-hour work week as being seen as more of an imposition than a 40-hour week.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And far simpler than creating a real utopia would be a <i>Matrix</i> style virtual utopia. It's hard to see what would be the point of sustaining humans at all in that mode, except it would be a simple means of keeping us pacified as we die out.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>Steve Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10306339430255071009noreply@blogger.com