500 economists and inequality experts from seventy countries support call for new ‘IPCC for inequality’?

Oh dear; it am dat Pilketty again, pushing his politics whilst masquerading as a scientist. See their letter, if you really want to see a denialist-style list of "experts"¹. It seems that "inequality expert" is now a thing, like "genocide expert" was briefly a thing before they were exposed as frauds. As for their "Inequality is not inevitable" - it is bullshit. Or in somewhat more elegant language: Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community. The most rigorous inquisition too is requisite to watch every inequality on its first appearance; and the most severe jurisdiction, to punish and redress it. But besides, that so much authority must soon degenerate into tyranny, and be exerted with great partialities; who can possibly be possessed of it, in such a situation as is here supposed.

An "IPCC" for inequality is a terrible idea. The IPCC worked because there was broad substantial agreement on the physical basis of GW. There is no such basis in economics for TP's opinions on inequality; or rather, I suspect that there is broad consensus amongst economists that his views are wrong.

We should inquire into the origins of this nonsense. The letter is based on a report which styles itself "the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts’ Report on Global Inequality". But is somewhat shy on telling us who actually commissioned the thing. Was it indeed the G20, as you might expect from the title? That would be disappointing if so, but it isn't so: instead we read that The Extraordinary Committee expresses its gratitude to the President of South Africa, His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa, for constituting the G20 Extraordinary Committee for the South African G20 Presidency in 2025, and for commissioning it to publish this report. Unlike the G20, the South African govt cannot disappoint me - my opinion of it is too low. These experts have all the independence of those who wrote A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, but happily we can all see that for what it is (or so I assume - I still haven't read it).

I could go on I suppose but I'm sure you've got the point by now.

Oh, but I should add: I think - and I certainly hope - that this isn't a serious proposal and won't succeed. It's just an attempt to garner a bit of press coverage and some clicks.

Notes

1. The usual collection of emeriti and the thinly credentialled, with a few real names.

Refs

* Illegal Immigrants Didn’t Break the Housing Market; Bad Policy Did.

* Javier Milei Ended Rent Control. Now the Argentine Real Estate Market Is Coming Back to Life.

Grokipedia

Musk's mildly-heralded Grokipedia is out as Beta 0.1; we should take a look. As I recall the last Wiki-clone was Justapedia, and that hasn't fared well. Gpedia is a better effort, though.

What is it? Of course, we turn to Wiki to find that it is AI - i.e. Grok - generated, but very clearly based on Wiki. Amusingly, turning to Grokipedia itself produces no results (it also plays badly with archive.is), which throws up the first obvious issue: it is significantly smaller than Wiki, at about 900,000 articles. Wiki still has the article about me (I've just updated it to say I'm retired); Gpedia doesn't, arguably a better choice but this is minor.

Searching for something neutral, I looked at Autun Cathedral (because I'd just come across this) and it seemed achingly familiar... this turned out to be because I'd been through in the summer. Comparing Gpedia with Wiki, Wiki is obviously superiour because it has images; I can't quite imagine how Gpedia has managed to fail in this aspect. The text is a virtual copy of Wiki, down to the error in reference 15 ("Capital: Virtues and Vices. Jean and Alexander Heard Library. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)"). But that's not a problem; Wiki is freely copiable, that's part of the point (though is Gpedia we wonders?). Problem two is the lack of internal links in Gpedia; again, I struggle to understand how they've screwed that one up.

Let's try something more controversial. Was George Floyd "an African American man who was murdered by a white police officer" or was he "an American man with a lengthy criminal record including convictions for armed robbery, drug possession, and theft in Texas from 1997 to 2007". Answer: he was both. You get no prizes for guessing which quote comes from which 'pedia; and note that for purposes of exposition I have only taken a short leading quote from both.

Tip-toeing up to GW, let's look at Global Cooling: G, W. Here the Gpedia text isn't from Wiki; it reads like someone has pushed Grok to do an analysis; it has done passably but the Gpedia text is worse than Wiki's.

Now to look at GW directly. A year or so back Wiki renamed its GW article to Climate Change, because <fashion>, so Gpedia wins by having the content at GW, although bizarrely at an article called Global warming (disambiguation) which can only be because it has picked up on Wiki's Global warming (disambiguation) page for some odd reason. But Gpedia loses by absurdly including minor nonsense about some rap album in the lede. It also loses by lacking detail, and above all by not having easy links to subsidiary articles, which makes following up on ideas much harder. And it lacks images, a major blunder. But as to slant, it is all fine; I had to go down quite a long way to "Surveys of climate scientists indicate that while over 99% of recent peer-reviewed studies endorse human causation as primary, approximately 14% attribute warming roughly equally to human and natural factors, highlighting persistent debate on precise partitioning" to find something objectionable. That statement is supported by two refs; the first is news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change and is sane, but doesn't support the statement; the second is by Scafetta. I also notice that I don't get a "see edits" button for that page.

Looking at The Theory of the Leisure Class, I recall not liking the Wiki articles I used for convenience; but Gpedia is if anything worse. It sez "Veblen examines the origins and behaviors of the leisure class, a non-productive upper stratum that sustains social dominance through displays of wealth rather than contributions to societal utility" but that's wrong; as I noted, the title is a lie and Grok has been misled. I suspect it is reporting what TV himself thought, but errs by stating it as a fact; he makes the mistake that nowadays would be analoguous to the "progressive" idea that bankers or venture capitalists are parasites and contribute nothing.

But this is all v0.1. I look forward to something out of beta being rather better. Oh, before I'm off: what does yer meeja say? The answer is... meh, nothing interesting.

Refs

* Populism fast and slow.

* Bill Gates Shakes Up the Climate Discussion.

* Believe in Markets, Not Men (or Women).

* On Solving Social Dilemmas.

* William Barr Discovers the Economics of Tort Law (and Misrepresents the Law Governing Interstate Pollution) - some climate suing stuff at Volokh.

* Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes.

* We Already Have a Social Contract for Universities.

* Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Case Seeking to Overturn Obergefell.

* Ted Nordhaus: Environmental Law After Environmentalism.

* Should Republicans Be More Explicitly Racist?

My tribe

Doesn't quite make its own post.

From yourpoliticaltribe.com. Not all questions quite made sense, I did my best to answer sensibly. I think I'm "happy" with the result: economically right, obvs; and socially central. Your ideology is determined by three key dimensions:

* Economic Score (98.4): Measures your views on economic policy, from liberal (0) to conservative (100)

* Social Score (60.1): Measures your views on social issues, from liberal (0) to conservative (100)

* Establishment Score (30.0): Measures your trust in institutions, from pro-establishment (0) to anti-establishment (100)

The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class is a book by Thorstein "Bunde" Veblen. It isn't very good. It has one good idea - conspicuous consumption¹ - but spins that out into page after page of turgid Marxist-tinged prose⁶. Read it for yourself, here, if you dare. I started off reading carefully; about a third of the way through I became bored by the repetition; by two thirds I was skipping.

One of the many things wrong with it is the title, which is a lie. "Leisure class" in the context of the Gilded Age brings to mind the idle rich but these, ostensibly at least, are not his subject; instead "The leisure class as a whole comprises the noble and the priestly classes², together with much of their retinue. The occupations of the class are correspondingly diversified; but they have the common economic characteristic of being non-industrial. These non-industrial upper-class occupations may be roughly comprised under government, warfare, religious observances, and sports". So the leisure class actually has occupation, generally full-time. I think what he is doing here is using "Leisure class"" as a technical term quite different from its commonplace meaning, but relying on us to elide the two uses; but this is dishonest³; and he should just have written "non-industrial", or invented a term such as "class X".

The other thing wrong with the title - and much of the text - is the "class" element. I think it fits happily into his Marxist-type outlook, but really there's no need to bring class into this at all; his observation is simply that people like to signal status, and one way of doing that is to demonstrate their wealth, and one way to demonstrate wealth is conspicuous consumption: to consume pointlessly and visibly. I can't see any reason why this would be restricted to any particular class, even if there were any real class boundaries; although obvs it will be more obvious amongst those with money above the survival level. Fans of feminism won't be happy with his observation (recall we're back in 1899) that women, as the chattels of their husbands, are particularly suitable to consume conspicuously - by doing nothing useful - thereby vicariously consuming for their husbands; but this seems fair enough for the times. Fans of religion won't be happy with the idea that ministers of religion consume vicariously for their absent masters.

TV presents his work as a theory, or perhaps as a discussion, or an inquiry; but with my Popper hat on I wonder if it should be considered in any way a scientific theory? Is it testable; could it be falsified? I suspect not; I think it could perhaps join Freudian analysis or Marxism on Popper's list of anti-examples. Wiki quotes Mencken saying Do I enjoy a decent bath because I know that John Smith cannot afford one—or because I delight in being clean? Do I admire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists—or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver, because plowhands must put up with the liver—or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose? And this seems to be a problem for TV which I don't think he addresses: in many instances he has no particular criterion for distinguishing when a consumption is merely conspicuous, and it is hard to see how he could have⁹. This seems related to the Puritan type idea that some things are necessary, and others not. Nonetheless I'm quite happy with his overall idea.

In the preface, he talks about the data employed in his argument, which makes me snort because there is no data. Indeed most of the text, page after page, remains resolutely abstract without even examples; but as to any actual data, it is entirely absent.

There are some minor oddities. For example: The duel is in substance a more or less deliberate resort to a fight as a final settlement of a difference of opinion. This is wrong: a duel is to settle points of honour. At one point he tries to explain women's fashion - he is fascinated by corsets - and correctly I think identifies it as signalling an inability to do any physical labour. He also tries to explain why each season sets new trends but his explanation does not convince. There is one, within his theory: that demonstrating you have the spare to allow devoting time to following the latest fashions demonstrates wealth; as does having the ability to acquire said fashion earlier than others.

I could do without the dodgy race-science elements; this doesn't seem to be necessary (his theory after all is quite generic⁸) and I didn't find the dolicho-blond stuff enlightening.

His schema⁷ has women-as-chattels as natural; towards the end he notices movements for female emancipation but does not seem sympathetic⁴: In a sense, then, the new-woman movement marks a reversion to a more generic type of human character, or to a less differentiated expression of human nature. It is a type of human nature which is to be characterized as proto-anthropoid, and, as regards the substance if not the form of its dominant traits, it belongs to a cultural stage that may be classed as possibly sub-human. This isn't a problem of his theory, obvs.

How much does all this apply today? CC amongst certain groups still exists, but I think in modified form. I don't think it applies much to me⁵ or those I know. Dressing well - dress is one of TV's few examples - is now available so readily that it doesn't form much of a signifier; I like the idea that luxury belief is now one of the marks. And he will certainly have to find himself some other class demarcation, now that "industrial" employment is so reduced.

Trivia: the idea of a Veblen Good, which is named for him, is nowhere mentioned.

Update: 2025/10/25: I discussed this with infants and wife. They were less inclined to believe the underlying theory than I was; and more inclined to say that it is impossible to separate CC from things-you-like.

Notes

1. I'm being somewhat lazy in giving wiki refs for all that; in these aspects I do not particularly recommend the wiki articles; I'm just using them to identify the concepts.

2. The book is full of language like that.

3. An idea taken up later by John "Justice as Fairness" Rawls.

4. To be fair, he has rather more to say than just this. To quote somewhat more sympathetically: But... futility of life or of expenditure is obnoxious... The impulse is perhaps stronger upon the woman than upon the man to live her own life in her own way and to enter the industrial process of the community at something nearer than the second remove.

5. But I would say that, wouldn't I? Perhaps blogging counts as a conspicuous display of spare time. We're back to the problem of how to you tell if an activity is CC or not.

6. See my witty para 3 on "Meritocratic" Sandel.

7. Not the CC idea; that is, in principle, entirely sex-agnostic. By "schema" I'm referring to his cod history of social development; characteristically this not only has no examples or data, it also employs his own terms to describe things, so you can't even tell what periods he is referring to.

8. Belatedly I recall to mention: at some point, that I cannot now be bothered to find, TV is critical of capitalism, because of the CC it encourages. But this is silly. CC is a generic feature of human nature driven by status seeking; the concept works in any system.

9. Another of his examples is studying classics and dead / useless languages being respectable, because useless. This sort-of feels plausible-ish, but doesn't fit quite properly.

Refs

* An alarming compendium of DOJ misrepresentations and falsehoods.

* In Search of a "New Environmentalism".

* On the Success of Neoliberalism.

* Film review: A Real Pain.

* Book review: Man's Search for Meaning.

* A visit to the Imperial War Museum.

* Liberalism, ISIS, and Toaster Nationalism / On the Success of Neoliberalism.

* Elite misinformation is an underrated problem.

* Highbrow climate misinformation.

It’s not the End of the World as We Know It

Back in April I presciently predicted, or perhaps just noted, The End of the World as We Know It, due to the Mango Mussolini's idiot tariff policy. But the sad story turns out to have a happy "ending": things have largely recovered. I put ending into quotes because, obvs, there's plenty of time for things to go wrong.

You may, like me, be tempted to suggest that all of that recovery and surge is AI hype, but you're probably wrong: el Econo reckons One concern is that artificial-intelligence investment spending, especially on data centres, is the only thing keeping the party going, spelling disaster if investors cool on the technology. This argument is strongest in America, where investment in information-processing equipment and software (IPES) accounted for about 40% of growth in real GDP over the past year. Yet, at an absolute minimum, two-thirds of IPES has nothing to do with AI. The data include, for instance, a business buying a computer. In addition, outside America there is no evidence whatsoever that IT is driving growth. Instead, the story is the resilience of the real economy even when the pols fuck it up, as long as they don't do so too badly.

The tariff case comes to the Supremes on Nov 5th.

Refs

* Prisons aren't filled with harmless pot smokers.

* Age and Cognitive Ability.

* Abundance 2025 - Review by RP Jr.

* MAGA Has a Point About Science. It's Time to Listen.

* Gaza Fatality Analysis: Latest Findings from Hamas & IDF Data.

Prospects for Peace

In the Middle East that is; the Russian invasion of Ukraine is doomed to grind on for longer I fear; more on that anon. Trump has a cunning plan, and Netenyahu has accepted it¹; Hamxs's rather delayed response is "yes, but"², as expected; Trump the eternal optimist³ thinks that things are going well.

Talks, as ever, continue. But while they do I have a chance to predict the future and get it wrong⁶, so everyone can tell me how wrong I was. Do you have a better prediction? Leave it in the comments⁵.

Hamxs is soaked in blood and has no function beyond terrorism, or resistance as they would put it; agreeing to disarm would be organisational suicide, so I don't see that happening. Looking at the plan, the actionable timeline appears to be:

* If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.

* Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

* Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after 7 October 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.

So nominally (a) both agree; (b) fighting stops, some kind of withdrawl; (c) within 72 hours all hostages released; (d) Israel releases some terrorists. I find myself doubtful that Hamxs will go for (c). The hostages are useless to them, indeed a millstone round their neck, but they have been too stupid to see that in the past and I don't see them getting any clearer in their thinking.

What of other instances where long-term terrorists have given up? The obvious analogue is Ireland, where the IRA eventually gave up. There were key differences though: mostly, the conflict was embedded in civil society on both sides; and the world was obviously just passing it by; the public and the world was not egging them on⁴. This was organisational suicide for the IRA but not for the individual members, a possible model for Hamxs, but the situations are not really analogous.

Speaking of the public egging them on, and referencing Polling Pales, there's an updated poll from May. Whether it can be trusted I leave you to decide for yourself; I'll discuss it as though it can be. I'll start with killed-and-injured, because it is good news: the proportion of families with killed-or-injured has gone down; only slightly, but definitely. This is remarkable. [2025/10/28: more good news: the proportion of families with dead-or-injured continues to decline, down to 72% on October].

The report doesn't think it is remarkable, because it doesn't remark on it (update: and in Oct, does its best to draw your eyes away from the decline). It is not impossible of course: if you manage to wipe out enough entire families, it could happen. But more likely it is either inaccuracies, or sampling errors, or people lying, or whatever⁷. 

A solid majority remain delusional: A majority of 56% (65% in the West Bank 42% in the Gaza Strip) expect Hamas and Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement in a few days while 41% do not expect that. That's essentially the same as a year previous. On the plus side, 48% of Gazans... say they support the demonstrations that took place over the past two months in the Gaza Strip demanding that Hamas abandon control over that Strip so there may be some hope. About 50% would be willing to emigrate; I would say that's a good solution if it were possible to find somewhere to take them. And (fig 17) armed struggle is now less popular than negotiations, at least in Gaza; the West Bank, which sees rather less armed struggle, prefers to fight.

Overall I think that agreement leading to release of the hostages is unlikely for now, whilst hoping that I am wrong.

Returning to reporting of yer conflict, Aunty says Hamxs wants to keep enough firepower to defend itself against Palestinians who want to take their revenge for nearly two decades of brutal rule and the catastrophe the Hamas attacks brought down on them.

Not really fitting into my flow of text, but I feel I ought to say the obvious: the claims of Israeli genocide are bollox and mostly malicious.

Notes

1. As far as I can tell, unconditionally. He has subsequently said things that make this somewhat hard to square, but nonetheless the words "I support your plan to end the war in Gaza which achieves our war aims" (or their Hebrew equivalent? The meeja is really appalling at providing full information) have been uttered.

2. Actually it is far more complicated than that with various factions disagreeing, and Hamxs's actual words being so ambiguous as to be close to meaningless, as expected. The fat corrupt political types living in luxury in Qatar are naturally keen to continue their fat lives, though the recent bombing may have reminded them that they don't get a free pass; the menwithgunz in Gaza have no lives other than terrorism, so are unlikely to want to turn into unemployable ex-terrorists at peace.

3. You will correctly object that Trump is also an eternal liar and uninterested in distinguishing true from false, but I think that he is also genuinely optimistic, like many such.

4. Indeed, I imagine most of the IRA's wives and mothers were urging them to give up. Shamefully, now, useless deluded folks in the West are still egging the Pales on. These people need to find meaning in their own lives, rather than other people's conflicts.

5. Speaking of comments, do try to avoid getting yourself spammed. Repeat offenders will just be suppressed.

6. 2025/10/09: Initial reports are promising and (10/10) a ceasefire appears to be in effect. 10/11: ceasefire still seems to be in place, but "Hamas hasn’t changed. It still believes that weapons and violence are the only means to keep its movement alive". Joy in Israel and Gaza but not amongst the "progressive" in the West. 10/14: Pales behaving badly: part 1, part 2, part 3. Hamxs have now released the hostages they haven't killed, but not the ones they have killed; this bad-faith slow-walking isn't promising. 10/28: Hamxs still slow-walking the hostages (and other dodgy stuff), and the prospects for phase two don't look good; and just as I say that, more fighting (more).

7. Another interesting discrepancy: see this X post and the corresponding Graun article: the male / female death rate inferred from orphancy is 6, not the 3 reported by Hamxs.

Refs

* A Muslim faith leader calls for stronger moral leadership in the Middle East?

* Care less / The Struggle / History is Bunk.

* Country capture.

* In Defence of War.

* Reflections on recent events in the Middle East.

* By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die.

* The Syrian Experiments.

* Might is Right.

* Bioethics: Tuskegee vs. COVID.

* Blackout: A Look into the Iberian Blackout.

* Disagreeing with not discussing race and IQ.

* Bring Back the Internet Gatekeepers says RH. I remain doubtful (in general; I will of course moderate here as the spirit moves me).

* "A whole lot of BS political views basically amount to assuming that life in our hard won civilisations is just the way things are, and that you can simply remove the foundations".

* Will the absence of robotaxis in Europe mark the moment its citizens notice how far their continent has fallen behind?

* ACX Grants Results 2025.

* A Surprisingly Good Nobel Prize in Economics.

* "Gaza is awash with guns and desperate people, and Hamas has no interest in relinquishing its weapons. More repression and chaos may await the devastated strip": El Econo.

* Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip.

* PA condemns Hamas executions as ‘heinous crimes’.

* Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025. Danny Orbach, Jonathan Boxman, Yagil Henkin, Jonathan Braverman.

* Free Trade and Dynamic Efficiency.

* Understanding Decarbonization by RP Jr.

* Hamas terrorists were filmed removing body remains from a prepared structure and re-burying them nearby, before summoning Red Cross representatives to stage a false “discovery” for photographers.

The Hunt in the Forest and friends

Following my previous brilliantly successful venture into art criticism, I feel emboldened to comment on The Hunt in the Forest, and friends. Wiki tells me The Hunt in the Forest (also known as The Hunt by Night or simply The Hunt) is a painting by the Italian artist Paolo Uccello, made around 1470. It is perhaps the best-known painting in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England. The painting is an early example of the effective use of perspective in Renaissance art, with the hunt participants, including people, horses, dogs and deer, disappearing into the dark forest in the distance. It was Uccello's last known painting before his death in 1475. And all that is fair enough.

But I find "an early example of the effective use of perspective" a bit weaselly; it is more like "my first attempt at perspective" and is quite crude (although the Ashmolean tells us that "Paolo di Dono was celebrated in his lifetime as a master of perspective"). The device of having regularly spaced trees is crude; the trees themselves don't look real, more like a child's idea of a tree (they are also far too regular to be a forest, and have been pruned, so this is a plantation); and having all the interest as a band of colour at the bottom leaves the top three fifths of the painting rather dull. I'm also inclined to find him uncomfortable drawing 3d figures; most of the men and horses and dogs are distinctly 2d (the "stopping horse" is particularly obvious), the few that aren't (e.g. the white horse on the right; note also the perspective goes squiffy there; the horses feet are level with the tree but its head is on our side) rather stand out.

More generally, and I say this because I was reading Aunt Agatha's "Five Little Pigs" which features a passionate modern artist, I find so much of the early stuff distinctly lacking in passion, or life.

Here you can have the wallpaper too, since it was lovely. The attention is all on the skin and muscle tone of Christ (days dead, but weirdly still bleeding). The single tear carefully placed on the cheek of the woman in blue doesn't make for emotion; nor the elf in red.

Refs

* Abolish the FCC.

* Courts are Checking Trump More Effectively than Many Think.

* Starmer is a twat.

* Book review: the Decipherment of Linear B.

* Book review: Herr Doktor Thorne.

* Me vs the world on Spinoza.

* Two Prominent Left-Liberal Thinkers Reconsider Libertarianism.

* What Ended the Great Depression?

A meta review of the no-longer-new DOE report

I still haven't read the bloody thing, and at this rate I never will, but happily CarbonBrief have read it for me. I'm going to assume that they've put their two best criticisms up front - you'd be mad to do anything else - and those are:

The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.

It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.

Sadly, Stefan Rahmstorf was foolish enough to believe that CarbonBrief make sense. 

But "CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed" is true; and "excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial" is also true. I mean FFS, "excessively aggressive" is almost by definition detrimental. These people are clowns. Of course, that doesn't actually make the report itself good; it just shows you how uselessly debased the "discussion" is.

Update

DOE Climate Working Group RIP says RP Jr and this appears to be true. With just a little luck, I may never have to read the thing; the virtues of prevarication. RP says "Based on my connecting the dots, the disbanding is the direct result of a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists arguing that the empanelment of the CWG violated the bureaucracy in triplicate act" which might be true; though if it is, it displays a considerably greater respect for the niceties of the law than the Trump administration has shown elsewhere. Perhaps, having got their headlines, and the text of the report, they just don't really care that much? Andy Revkin also comments. And Gavin says DOE CWG Report “Moot”? Perhaps interestingly, there's nothing on Curry's ClimateEtc. Tamino suggests they pulled the rug so as to avoid having to revise the report in light of the numerous substantive comments; it is a nice idea but not fully convincing. Ars says Feds try to dodge lawsuit against their bogus climate report but I'm not sure that adds much.

Refs

* If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?

A week in the lakes

Once again I'm briefly back. This time my excuse was a week - or thereabouts - canoeing around Stora La, a large lake in Sweden; bookended by stays in Oslo, Goteborg and Stockholm. All very pleasant and civilised, there were even composting toilets. 428 photos are available.

Refs

* Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane.

* Retail goods prices were on a stable trend until Liberation Day. Tariffs upended that.

* Contra the UK government, please don't delete your old photos and emails to save water (see-also Study shows shocking impact of 'photo-hoarding' on carbon footprint?).

* A rare eruption of  scientific commonsense in the  WSJ's news pages has interrupted the Ed Board's long campaign to obscure the ongoing climatic consequences of the Industrial Revolution (RS).

* Terence Tao, signing an open letter in 2020: "We are enraged at the everyday operations of a white supremacist society... apparently The “Mozart of Math” tried to stay out of politics.

* A disappointing article from Veronique de Rugy in Reason on the new DOE report. The comments ref my old If it isn’t catastrophic we’ve got nothing to worry about, have we? as did ATTP recently.

* The Ideology Is Not The Movement (SSC).

* Convenience vs. Social Desirability Bias.

* The decarbonization of the U.S. economy from 1992 to 2025 (RP Jr).

* Tropical Cyclones - "Doing the Lord's Work" v Reality (SoD).

Briefly...

In the ever-decreasing intervals between me having to be elsewhere, I find time to write a few words.

First, if you've wondered where I've been, the answer has been France, and to a lesser extent Italy; see pix here if you really want to. Here's the summary page I wrote, though you may fail to read it.  Would suit fans of cathedrals or mountains mostly. My featured image is in the cloisters of St Jean Baptiste, in St Jean de Maurienne¹. Belatedly written up here.

Available Strava traces include the Col du Galibier from the north, very slowly; and the Gran Paradisio from the Emma Vittorio II hut, a lovely climb.

But what of the new DOE Climate report, I hear you cry? Well, ATTP has written a more sensible and well considered version of what I might have written, had I had time to read the thing. I did write The East is Red in 2017; do I need to change anything? I guess the question is what will come of it; I'd be more immeadiately worried about various other Trumpian madnesses, like cancelling a pile of mRNA research.

I leave you with me sleeping by the Loire by moonlight.

Refs

* Phil was kind enough to link to the DOE report.

* Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection.

* Rethinking Economics Is Really Economics Denial.

* Why are UK electricity prices so high?

* The only thing worse than sweatshops is no sweatshops.

* Capitalism Isn't Why You're Unhappy.

Notes

1. And not in Chalon-sur-Saone.

Book review: An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy

Having dissed the Greeks, it's time for the Chinese. I assure you that this is a coincidence. But what isn't a matter of chance is the illustrations used on the covers of the books: here, the Chinese one is a restful well-ordered garden such as a Zen Buddhist might contemplate within. Whereas the Greek one is of a science-y, analytic nature. That's kinda the overall distinction I had coming into this book, and I didn't lose it in the course of my reading.

Of itself it says: This second edition of An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy presents a comprehensive introduction to key ideas and arguments in early Chinese philosophy. Written in clear, accessible language, it explores philosophical traditions including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism and Chinese Buddhism, and how they have shaped Chinese thought. Drawing on the key classical texts as well as up-to-date scholarship, the discussions range across ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, while also bringing out distinctive elements in Chinese philosophy that fall between the gaps in these disciplinary divisions, hence challenging some prevailing assumptions of Western philosophy. Topics include human nature, selfhood and agency; emotions and behaviour; the place of language in the world; knowledge and action; and social and political responsibility. This second edition incorporates new ideas and approaches from some recently excavated texts that change the landscape of Chinese intellectual history.

I don't think the book managed to impart to my somewhat careless reading much of value of their philosophy, so consider this a rather shallow review, of the book and of the ideas it covers, but that very shallowness is also a judgement. There's a lot of "correlative" stuff: "as above, so below" which is of course drivel, at least if the "above" is the heavens; though the book is far too polite to say so. Perhaps "above" could be interpreted as the character of the rulers, and so we learn by analogy the idea of having virtuous rule? It is a bit like that all the way through: you can make your own interpretations.

Similarly, towards the end and so fresh in my mind, there's the Book of Changes. Literally, this is divination and therefore drivel, but the book is far too polite to say so. Metaphorically, it is a set of ideas and images that can be applied to various situations, an idea which the book likes. But sometimes those images don't chime with modern life: the proper place for the woman is inside the family, the proper place for the man is outside. How should we interpret this? Perhaps those were just ideas for their times, and we treat it as illustrating historical sociology but of no great philosophical import. Or perhaps it was timeless wisdom, and we're wrong (naturally I take for granted the classical-liberal "treat people as individuals, not members of tribes or sex"). Or perhaps it is telling us that a "family unit" is better if nurtured from within by one, who we can label for these purposes "woman", and represented to the outside by someone labelled "man". That's not an interpretation the antients would have liked; the book has no discussion of this, effectively it just says "oh dear".

Most of it seems to be "how to rule", but in a way distinctly different to the approach the Greeks would use. No-one attempts to collate different constitutions and study them; no-one tries to start from first principles and design a constitution however ineptly; instead, if there is a theme, it is to have virtuous rulers.

The last chapter is on Chinese Buddhism, of interest to me because my wife is Buddhist. And it helpfully describes the waves of ideas coming over from India, and then fermenting in place. For my lack of sympathy with Buddhism, see-also This Being That Becomes and Living With Awareness.

Book review: Greek Science

I happened to pick up a copy of Greek Science by Benjamin Farrington - well, time hangs heavy on retired hands, as Kipling warned us. The book is not new - part one was published in 1944, part two in 1949 - so is missing any more modern scholarship; perhaps also importantly BF was a professor of classics and in some respects seems uncomfortable with the actual science. Time and again he veers off into philosophy. Perhaps this is unavoidable; so much of the antient Greek stuff is actually that, and it is what they are really famous for, but nonetheless he lets himself get distracted at the expense of actually talking about science.

To get my headline thought out of the way early: it becomes ever clearer to me that, using the - correct - paradigm that science is characterised by conjectures and refutations, the antient Greeks were fertile in their conjectures but never really knuckled down to the hard work of refutations. And I can't resist adding that any old fool can come up with fairy stories. I'll also stick to my previous idea that none of this actually mattered to them, and it is unlikely that you will knuckle down to hard work about things that don't really matter.

BF himself evolves the idea that their problem was their slave society: since no self-respecting freeman ever did any manual work, they were a bit stuck for observing the processing of metal in forges, or even tinkering around. BF is a Marxist, though, so I'm suspicious of his sociology.

They had also fairly early on realised that, in a philosophical sense, it was difficult to see how you can acquire certain true knowledge as opposed to mere informed opinion about the world, from observation; and took the fork of retreating into the world of Ideals and Forms in search of Truth, which of course failed; but again, left them disinclined to spend much effort looking at the world.

But what, I hear you ask, of the actual science? This was most of my reason for picking up the book and I was disappointed by the thinness. We get, of course, Euclid; but that is maths, not science; BF gives no hint that he understands the difference. At one point he tells me that Archimedes invented the Archimedian screw, which does not fill me with confidence; and that no-one knows how it works; ditto. There is some geography, and some medicine, but of the latter very little of what they could actually do, and rather more of opinions.

BF wonders how it was that they achieved so much, and yet failed to step over into Modern Science - well, modern meaning the slow gradual rise that started ~1500 years after them. My answer would be that their apparent "so much" is largely illusion and exaggerated crippling respect; they were missing so much basic tech.

Overall BF is too deeply in thrall towards the antients-called-greats to be useful as anything other than a superficial introduction.

Oops: bits I forgot: BF think that experimentation, and the experimental method, are the hallmarks of Science, and so is ecstatic at the few occasions he finds the Greeks doing it. We cannot expect our professor of classics to have read the 1934 Logik der Forschung. Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft and I doubt he read the 1959 English version either; but nonetheless he is subtly wrong; science is grounded in experience or experiment; but the hallmark is testing theories. He's also rather keen on Bacone, which is also an error.

Refs

* Randomized Controlled Trials of Medicare and Medicaid, Please.

* Attitude networks as intergroup realities: Using network-modelling to research attitude-identity relationships in polarized political contexts.

* Why I Distrust Social Trust Rationales for Immigration Restrictions.

Reflections on recent events in the Middle East

My last post started off as this post, so to speak, but mutated. Happily, the situation hasn't changed much in the last few days. Before we proceed to any substance, pause to admire the graphic, which admirably demonstrates how useless CND, and by extension the "progressive" left, is¹.

Anyway, to set the scene: for years, the Mad Mullahs have been enriching uranium and pissing about on the margin of have-we-enriched-it-enough-to-make-a-bomb-soon. Various meeja have produced articles along the lines of "were they actually about to do it now" and all of that is wank; it would be impossible to know; it would be reasonable to not be prepared to leave it as a risk.

So, having conveniently smoothed their local environment, the Front Wheels decided to twat the MMs; naturally, the MMs fired back. As far as I can see, the FWs are using precise targetting, the MMs are using scattershot volleys of imprecise missiles most of which get shot down or tracked into the wilderness. The MMs haven't hit anything significant; the FWs by contrast have taken out a lot of the MMs military infrastructure³, and if nothing unexpected intervenes, will go on to win. Quite what "winning" will look like is unclear. Ideally, a revolution. Failing that, just destruction of all their significant military and nuclear stuff.

Should the USAnians join the fun? They are moving piles of air tankers regionwards which would be expensive if it was but a whim; I wouldn't be astonished if the Mango Mussolini decides that the Kikes are winning, so he should join in late² and claim all the credit. And I bet the US military would love to know whether their bigger bunker-busters actually work for real. Notice how helpful it is that Russia has exhausted itself in Ukraine and has no strength left to meddle elsewhere; relatedly, Syria is being sensible.

A brief note on negotiations: the MMs were never serious about this, presumably because they would have lost face. Even now they are pissing around insisting on a ceasefire-before-talks, which is stupid. I'm not even sure why they are bothering; the Ks are ignoring them, obvs; the EU are paying attention because they love talking, but the Ks are ignoring the EU too, obvs⁴.

This post notes that Israel is winning with fighters against a country noted for its drones; whereas the twitterati consensus was that fighters are obsolete in an era of drone warfare. That's not quite fair, because the MM's drones are slow-moving bombs; but it does illustrate the point that drones aren't any use against invisible fighters at altitude and speed and range.

What could go wrong? The MMs could actually scrape enough Pu together to make a bomb; but then they'd have to deliver it, which would be tricky given the ~5% suvival rate of their missiles so that seems quite unlikely. They could amuse themselves targetting ships in the gulf, but that's a quick way to bring the USAnians down on their heads, so probably not a good idea; and anyway in a couple of days they won't even be able to do that.

Competition's eatin' the mice

2025/06/22: As the seminal LL Cool J put it in the eerily prescient Mama said knock you out:

Explosions, overpowerin'

Over the competition, I'm towerin'

Wrecking shop, when I drop

These lyrics that'll make you call the cops

Don't you dare stare

You better move, don't ever compare

Me to the rest that'll all get sliced and diced

Competition's payin' the price

Or to put it another way, the USAnians have indeed dropped the bomb. Not The Big One, just a few big ones. Death Star memes are available. I'm charmed by the way the MM ends his twit "Thank you for your attention to this matter"; it is as though he is still remembering his complimentary close from business school. The results of the twatting aren't obviously impressive; doubtless you've seen people trying to interpret the images (or here). The usual useless talking heads have volumes on what-might-Iran-do-now; for example Aunty; all of it worth every penny you paid for it. The Dems are predictably useless. Reportedly, The Iranian Parliament has approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, and doubtless the popcorn vendors are desperately hoping the MMs do try to do this. 2025/06/23: "sadly" it looks like they've wimped out.

2025/07/17: Why did Israel strike Damascus? witter a variety of people, including the Economist. They also report "the attack killed at least one person and wounded several others" and fail to think about that at all; for some very big bangs, that is a remarkably low death count. More informatively, vidz appear to show them deliberately missing. So the obvious: it is a display of force by the Kikes, but deliberately trying to avoid casualties.

Notes

1. I was going to belabour exactly why, but realised it woud be pointless.

2. Like wot they always do.

3. This will become fairly obvious as the MMs run out of missiles and launchers over the next few days.

4. 2025/06/21: for sheer po-faced taking ourselves too seriously, you can't beat Aunty's Huge dilemmas lie ahead for UK over Iran. No-one gives a toss but the political class can wank themselves blind over it. But even there they can't help getting it hopelessly wrong: Other sources describe diplomacy as a "sticking plaster", questioning how effective it can be when Israel...; no, you clowns, the problem is that the MMs, who are losing, refuse to talk about the one important thing, their bomb plans.

Refs

* A "Sympathetic Critique" of Law-Skepticism on the New Right.

* "The Nationalist Threat to Liberty" - My Final Contribution to the Liberty Fund Symposium on "The Legacy of David Boaz".

* Basic Economics Is Intuitive.

* Why Piketty's Full Of It.

* Adam Smith, George Orwell, and Rules for Writing.

* The Resilient American Dream.

* Political Violence Surges Because Politics Matter Too Much.

* Prof. Jack Goldsmith (Harvard) on "Was the Iran Strike Constitutional?".

* What Britain looks like after Brexit.

* Law and Policy.

* Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are Mostly Fiction, But the Real Energy Subsidies Should Go.

* "The Clear Winner in Trump v. CASA: The Supreme Court" / Bray and Bagley on Trump v. CASA / A Bad Decision on Nationwide Injunctions.

* Country capture.

* Hot Heat in the USA and beyond.

* Europe's heat-related death vs American gun violence.

* What Do Progressives Want for the Courts?

* Free-market economics is working surprisingly well - even Noah Smith is starting to see the light, but he has a way to go yet.

* Singer vs. Horatio Alger.

* Judging People by their Unpopular Views / Life as an Academic Defender of the Intuitively Obvious.

* Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights: The Low Threshold Hatred Paradigm—When "Offence" Is Enough to Restrict Speech.

* Hard to Sue: A Feature Not a Bug; Good systems tune out crazy complainers.

* The Sputnik vs. Deep Seek Moment: The Answers (zero-sum thinking)

Might is Right

You'll likely be pleased to know that I'm not going to defend my headline too hard. But let's see how far I can get.

Attempts to understand "right" or "justice" - see how whiffly I am being about exactly what I'm talking about - go waay back. In The Republic we find that old fascist Plato pretending to search for a theory of Justice; he is of course not searching, he is just presenting a preamble to lead us to his pet theory; to do that he has to eliminate likely contenders¹. He puts the idea that "might is right" into Thrasymachus's mouth; because he has no meaningful arguments aginst the idea, he just makes T an unpleasant angry character and really, that's the level of intellectual argument you'll find there.

As we all know, I dislike rights-based language. In moving from a "state of nature" where you have the right of private justice - i.e., you can hit people if you think they have wronged you - you abandon this right, in exchange for the state promising public justice; you do not really have a "right to life"; instead, the state promises to hit people who try to kill you. Which is to say, the state promises to use the overwhelming - in comparison to any private citizen - might available to it in order to ensure your "rights".

But international relations are not far from the state of nature, perhaps more so now that the USAnians are going a bit mad. So if two countries - for example Iran and Israel - decide to have a fight, the true arbiter is might. Naturally enough useless pols², whose only currency is useless words, disagree; we have for example our own Dear Leader saying The reports of these strikes are concerning and we urge all parties to step back and reduce tensions urgently. Escalation serves no one in the region. Stability in the Middle East must be the priority and we are engaging partners to de-escalate. Now is the time for restraint. But there's no information content there; this is just what they say, reflexively, unthinkingly, every time. They are word-people; they would like the world to be one that privileges the talents of word-people. That their advice is harmful is of no concern to them.

In the private sphere, we have surrendered our right to private justice to the state and should not use violence. But this should not confuse us into assuming this is true everywhere. And if there is to be war, it is better that it be short.

Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons

A lovely article at SSC; and see-also Asymmetric Weapons Gone Bad. Which might be paraphrased as "being right leads to might"; though only over the long term.

Notes

1. In fact he doesn't even manage this. As Popper points out, Plato doesn't include "equality before the law", not because he hasn't thought of it, but because he has no good arguments against.

2. Would you like proof that KS is a twat? How about Hydrogen investment means homegrown British energy powering our homes, and thousands of new jobs in Britain's industrial heartlands. We will secure Britain's future as a clean energy superpower?

Refs

* How Trump's Imposition of Massive Tariffs is Repeating the "Ship Money" Abuses of King Charles I.

* Power is Power: Thoughts on the new right-wing cancel culture.

Bring On The Night

As the Police put it, respectfully touched up:

The afternoon has gently passed me by

Evening spreads itself against the sky

Waiting for tomorrow

Just another day

God bid yesterday goodbye

The future is but a question mark

Hangs above my head there in the dark

Can't see for the brightness

Staring me blind

God bid yesterday goodbye

Bring on the night

I couldn't stand another hour of daylight

Fine White Reggae. And the relevance? You may congratulate me: I am now a retired gentleman of leisure.

Perhaps contrary to the words, I don't expect it to make any great difference to my sporadic blogging.

Refs

* Society Is Fixed, Biology Is Mutable.

* Predicted Arctic sea ice trends over time.

Pols vs Meninwigs, again

At Volokh, but it is Josh Blackman, who I think one of the weaker and distinctly more Trump-friendly, reporting Vance saying:

You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they're not allowed to have what they voted for.

This is wrong - at least in theory. The USA has a constitution, and people can vote for who they like, that doesn't change it. Of course if a sufficient supermajority wants a thing, then the constitution can be changed; but that isn't so in this case. "Does the majority get what it wants" is a recurring theme in political philosophy of course; see for example In a democracy, when and where should majorities rule? or Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson.

Of course, how it plays out politcially is a different matter. Vance is trying to push for what he wants, disguised as some kind of principle. JB, ditto.

Refs

* Court Grants WilmerHale Law Firm Injunction Against President Trump's Executive Order Targeting Firm.

* Justices Alito and Thomas Dissent from Court's Declining to Hear "There Are Only Two Genders" School T-Shirt Case.

* How Fast is the World Warming?

* The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.

* Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID - ACX.

* We Won Our Tariff Case! - EV. Timmy is weaselly, but apparently rejects the constitution, insofar as I can parse him.

Locke: Two Treatises of Government

I've owned, and been meaning to read, this for years. Indeed my copy is marked up at the start of Vol II; but I get ahead of myself. First, an intro. Quotes are mostly taken from this online copy or SEP.

Vol I is dull, and is a sarcastic refutation of the patriarchal theory of Sir Robert Filmer, who tries to justify the divine right of kings from the authority that God gave Adam. Locke tediously refutes this, but really you're best off reading the summary at the start of Vol II, viz: Firstly. That Adam had not... any such authority over his children, nor dominion over the world, as is pretended. Secondly. That if he had, his heirs yet had no right to it. Thirdly. That if his heirs had, there being no law of Nature nor positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined. Fourthly. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is the eldest line of Adam’s posterity being so long since utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there remains not to one above another the least pretence to be the eldest house, and to have the right of inheritance. Indeed, point four pretty well suffices on its own. It is perhaps worth noting that Vol I begins Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man...

No more of Vol I, we move on to Vol II.

We begin with The State of Nature. Locke is whifflier than Hobbes; his SoN is a State of Liberty not of Licence; we may for example not kill ourselves, because we are the Property of God¹. Similarly, we are enjoined not to take away the life limbs or goods of others. And anyone may punish transgression of this Law of Nature. Hobbes, and I, say this is piffle: with no-one to judge, there is no law; and no-one can be judge in his own cause², as Hobbes says and common sense dictates. Moreover the founding of all this on God is regrettable; if Locke's work is only for the God-fearing I will put it down with a yawn. Para 11 - still in the SoN chapter - starts talking about the powers of the Magistrate; this is very confusing. L seems very hung up on rights of punishment; Hobbes has no such burden.

Para 14 asks if we were ever in a SoN, and answers Yes, since currently different countries effectively are. This is an error, a confusion, between people and countries. Hobbes, correctly, says that countries are indeed in a SoN; at least they were then and to some extent still are now; the international Civil Sword is weak.

Chapter 3 moves on to War, and discovers that the LoN also says when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred. L is not parsimonious of his LoN; essentially, it says anything he wants it to. He notes that where an appeal to the Law … lies open, but the remedy is deny’d by a manifest perverting of Justice, … there it is hard to imagine any thing but a State of War. For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour’d with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law…” This is a rather more pragmatic approach that Hobbes, who would point out that L here is assuming that everyone can recognise injustice when they see it. And, to avoid the SoN turning everywhere into the SoW, men naturally turn to setting up Authority on earth.

2025/05: that was written around 2024/07; and this having sat around in this state for a while, I now throw it into the world unfinished.

Notes

1. This would appear to make us the slaves of God; and being the slave, even of a good master, is surely vile; this is a conclusion that you may be sure Locke does not draw.

2. L's answer is para 13, which is basically WP:OTHER: if people shouldn't be their own judges, what about kings, eh? Eh? And then digs another hole for himself with at least in the SoN, people are not "bound to submit to the unjust will of another" - taking it for granted that there is a good defn of unjust, that everyone recognises and agrees on it. This is more piffle. Later (para 19, SoW) puts further obstacles in the way of private justice.

3. Fans of Hamas-vs-Israel will like one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion, because they are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

How do we solve moral problems?

I'm not sure that the "midwit" text here is quite right; it is supposed, I think, to be something like "we derive our morals from first principles" or somesuch. And the idea is that while dimwits just use common sense, the cognoscenti recognise that there is nothing better than just using common sense. The picture was posted, we must presume favourably, by Bryan Caplan; and criticised by Scott Alexander.

For most common everyday issues we do of course use "common sense" for our moral judgements. It could hardly be otherwise; we don't have time to think everything through from first principles. Nor is there any reason to: most ordinary everyday problems are commonplace with well-known solutions; this is after all what we call everyday morality. And even when we do immoral things, no great depths of analysis is required. As good ol' Kant put it:

There is no one, not even the most hardened scoundrel - provided only he is accustomed to use reason in other ways - who, when presented with examples of honesty in purpose, of faithfulness to good maxims, of sympathy, and of kindness towards all (even when these are bound up with great sacrifices of advantage and comfort), does not wish that he too might be a man of like spirit. He is unable to realise such an aim in his own person - though only on account of his desires and impulses; but yet at the same time he wishes to be free from these inclinations, which are a burden to himself.

But the more interesting question is how morality is to be applied to less common situations where we do not have a wealth of examples to guide us. Here it helps to know what morality is, for which you should read Hazlitt, not Kant or his ilk.

From this we learn that, since morality is to promote social cooperation for the long-term good, we should expect us not to have good answers to artificial issues, like the Trolley Problem¹. And since morality is under-determined by any irreducible basis, we should expect people to disagree over edge issues, like the social acceptability of abortion. But I think the most common confusion is to believe that morality covers all issues, up to and including international relations, wars and related matters. You know where I'm going with this, so I can almost stop here. But I'll add: if there's a war, it is best² that it should end quickly. Thus if one side is clearly losing, it should surrender.

Refs

* The parable of the Antheap and the Anteater / Reporting of yer conflict / By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die / Polling Pales.

* Book Review: The Righteous Mind.

* The Prevalence of Marxism in Academia.

Notes

1. If we encountered this in the real world, our likely response would be to jump onto the trolley and try to stop it; or throw a rock onto the tracks or cut the power; or to try to untie the people; or attack the maniac who has set up the problem.

2. "Best in what sense?" you might well ask. Being a comfortable Western atheist, I would answer "best for life, health, prosperity and opportunities for human flourishing". But if those aren't your top priorities - if your top priority is <something else> you might well consider an unwinnable war "worth" continuing. But if you do, you shouldn't then go around wailing that you lack LHPaOfHF.

Moah Techno-optimism

I seem not to have been optimistic since 2017; but really, life is better than that. The world is beautiful; I've made it out onto the rocks; and tech advances, when the idiot govt stands aside.

And the immeadiate cause for this enthusiasm is Accelerating astrophysics with the SpaceX Starship. People are always being whingey about Starlink (see ATTP and note my comment; or here; or Sabine) but I've thought for a while that dumping telescopes into space, and having to pay rather less attention to their mass or size could make them a lot cheaper, which is what that discussion paper says.

Speaking of idiot govt, Auntie offers Inside the desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion but I am doutful the headline is accurate. It would be very strange if the data was actually deleted; I think it is just being removed from the wub, if that; though I could be wrong. The first easily-verifiable link is "On 16 April, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) announced that a list of datasets regarding ocean monitoring were now scheduled to be removed in early May". From that, there's ADT-HURSAT, which is just not being updated; Cloud Properties - ISCCP H-Series CDR, ditto; Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (RP's bete noire²), ditto; nClimGrid-Daily: mostly-ditto; at that point I got bored. If anyone knows of anything actually being deleted¹, I'd be interested.

Notes

1. If that even means anything in today's world of multiply redundant backups and copies.

2. "Because the methodologies used by NOAA to generate loss estimates are neither public nor (to my knowledge) written down, it may be that with Smith’s departure the agency may have lost capacity to carry on..."

Refs

* The Pope Who Helped Bring Down Communism.

* Pharmaceutical Price Controls and the Marshmallow Test.

* "Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech," by Prof. Yascha Mounk by Eugene Volokh.

* Surprising, but not unexpected, multi-decadal pause in Arctic sea ice loss via RP.

* Dazal’d thus with hight of place - Upon Somerset's Fall.

* The Merciful Maximization of the Market.

* Europe’s free-speech problem.

* Supreme Court Issues Ruling Temporarily Blocking Alien Enemies Act Deportations.