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 article 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, obvs.

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.

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.

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".

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 pols¹, 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.

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.

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 justsify 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.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

I cannot resist a post on Trump and his foolish tariffs, mostly so I can look back in a few days or a year and think you fool, how could you possibly believe something so stupid⁵. But don't worry, I shall have words for other people too. First off, there are a lot of people explaining why tariffs will raise domestic prices, why the atavistic yearning for the manufacturing jobs of the goode olde dayes⁷ is doomed¹, why Trump's formula is broken in a host of different ways, and madness in general. For all of that analysis I direct you elsewhere; my own view is just the obvious: free trade is good, govenment restrictions on trade are bad, as experience proves. Secondly, I claim no prescience on this, otherwise I would have sold off last week instead of putting my sell order in this morning. There is of course a way out of the mess: Trump reverses, or puts on hold pending negotiations, or claims great success from others dropping their barriers, or shows even some signs that he means to ameliorate his tariffs. I personally think there is a moderate-to-good chance that happens, but don't take that as advice⁴. Oh, and there's another hope: that other countries don't follow the Chinese in raising barriers as retaliation³. Cutting off your nose to spite your face is not good policy.

Noah Smith has a nice post berating leftish people. My summary (which NS liked!) is "Trump's policy is mad but alas the Dems are completely clueless in opposing it". This is what I'd like to expound on.

As a touchstone of "are you capable of thinking about economics without your party blinders" I offer you What Does Public Schooling Teach Us About Predatory Pricing? which conveniently comes my way (or this).

Preliminary: the anger that MAGA feeds on - well, that populism feeds on, Bernie Saunders is much the same - is that you're being ripped off; that life today is worse than it was for your parents; that wages aren't rising; and so on. None of it is true, but people love nothing better than getting really angry about being taken advantage of. And yet, at the same time, I assert another aspect: people are so confident of the strength of the capitalist² system that they don't fear the risks that come from trying to make massive changes; they're confident that somehow it will all work out.

Secondary: on top of everything else, the tariffs are blatantly unconstitutional. But the constitution is not self-enforcing. Either Congress needs to explicitly take back its money-raising powers⁶, or someone needs to bring the case to court; there are moves afoot in both directions. As a good Popperanian, I point out once again how this points to the danger of giving government too much power; notice how none of the opposition are saying the government should not be able to do this they are only saying I don't like this thing the government is doing, my ideal government would wield just as much power, but for the good. A convenient example of this is the House Democrats, who say Trump's trade policy has been a chaotic mess, but that tariffs—if done right and paired with strong pro-worker and industrial policies—can help supercharge manufacturing. Not only is this a very bad idea, it is also desperately weak as a political strategy⁸.

At the moment, I think stock prices reflect what people expect of the future - i.e. the damage that will be done - and not too much of the actual damage done yet. By which I mean, they could still be reversed, if Trump just abandons all this nonsense. But fairly soon they will start to reflect real damaage - economic activity foregone, businesses closing, and so on. They have already done vast reputational damage that cannot be undone in the short term.

Every time I look at the situation something else appalling comes up, so I've probably forgotten some terrible aspect, but I think that will do for the moment.

Oh, but what does the world look like if the Dear Leader does not relent? People get poorer - and so angrier, and more prone to political extremism - and people at the margins, perhaps in distant countries, die. But - despite my headline - I think I expect my - and, dear readers, I hope your - comfortable middle class lifestyle to continue.

Update: I knew I'd forget something. One good thing the Trump admin did was starting the DEI rollback, though I'll be happy to admit that it was done crudely; but probably there was no other way. But if Trump gets completely discredited, that could stall or reverse; see this for a crude take.

Uupdate: and another: Your right to lorenorder refers. The USA is not El Salvador, but this points up the danger of a Strongman govt; or indeed of socialist / fascist govt in general.

Uuupdate: Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false - E. Musk. And I’d like to apologize to bricks for calling Peter Retarrdo dumber than a sack of bricks. That was so unfair to bricks.

Uuuupdate [2025/04/10] Well, yer Orange Man Blinked and the world breathes a sigh of relief, at least for now. Lawsuits continue, as they should. For those who want to know how I did (such as for example me): I put in my sell order (don't worry, not for my entire wealth) on Monday, it was executed on Tuesday, fortuitously more or less at the 5250 peak, and I am happy with that. Had I HODL'd I'd now be better off but still exposed. One obvious point is the potential for vast profits from insider trading (another reason for not giving one man all this power) but I'm not yet seeing much credible evidence for that.

Notes

1. America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back is a readable token in that direction. His solution won't work, though.

2. Is this the right characterisation? Perhaps just "system".

3. Just possibly this is a cunning ploy by the Chinese to raise tariffs merely as a bargaining chip that they want to throw away in return for the Mango Mussolini dropping his tariffs. If so, it doesn't look like it is going well so far. More likely China, as a Great Nation with a big dick cannot be seen to lose face.

4. As a token piece of good news, today's S+P is practically level on the day. I'm not cancelling my sell order though.

5. Ah, if only I know what exactly was the really stupid bit. But doubtless people will tell me that.

6. Some movement in this direction: Bacon, Hurd, Gottheimer, Meeks, Introduce Bill to Restore Congress’ Constitutional Role in Trade. Interesting comment: "In court, it's possibly even harder to defend a universal 10% tariff as an emergency measure".

7. Quite a bit of ye yearnninge for ye goode olde dayes is around housing affordability. This has indeed got worse but that's because idiot govts insist on restricting house building. See-also Even Acts of God Can't Fix Permitting Anymore.

8. NS: It is literally true that billionaires and CEOs, backed by neoliberal free traders, helped save the American economy from an even worse catastrophe while progressive Democrats and "anti-neoliberal" think tankers equivocated on the disaster.

Refs

* The Chinese Communist Party posting Reagan speeches about the importance of free trade…what a time to be alive.

* Rights and Wrongs of the Supreme Court's Ruling in the Alien Enemies Act Case (Scotus blog) / District Court and Fourth Circuit Order Trump Administration to Return Wrongfully Deported Immigrant (Scotus blog).

* More bad takes: Torygraph: The Bank of England must step in to stop market meltdown. But as the article says the markets are already pricing in rate cuts; and the problem here is not one bankers can fix.

* But astonishingly, a good take from the chancellor: In terms of buying British, I think everyone will make their own decisions. What we don’t want to see is a trade war, with Britain becoming inward-looking, because if every country in the world decided that they only wanted to buy things produced in their country, that is not a good way forward. In that she is batting back a foolish Lib Dem idea; it looks like the LDs are continuing the poor tradition of opposition-as-mischief-making.

* Peaks: Stanage.

* Tariff of Abominations.

* Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Claim That He Can Summarily Deport Anyone He Describes As an 'Alien Enemy'.

* Trivia by comparison, but Mackerel stocks near breaking point because of overfishing, say experts shows how the govt can't even do something trivial right; how can it be expected to get the exact value of tariffs "correct"?

* Bandwidth economics - this is similar to the Hayekian / Popperian "open society" stuff: you don't need to know about people in order to interact. Conversely, we suffer from the opposite, insisting on everyone caring about everyone else.

* Americans overwhelmingly agree that more Americans should work in manufacturing, but they definitely don’t want to work in manufacturing themselves.

* The Invisible Crash.

* Review: The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society by Joseph Stiglitz.

* A Psychological Theory of the Culture War.

* There must be an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect.

* Public Statement in Favor of Free Trade and Against Tariffs.

* The Road to Campus Serfdom.

* In defense of an online life.

* I owe the libertarians an apology says Noah Smith. It is a half-hearted apology and he has a way to go, but there is hope for him perhaps.

* The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs - ACX; better than the title suggests.

* Talking DEI with the Board of Visitors.

Pix

Lord Ribblesdale and friends

To the National Gallery for the Siena exhibition, but we were early so browsed around. And I was happy to find Lord R again; I think they move him around a bit. As wiki says the painting captures "the quintessence of understated aristocratic style … the portrait of an age as well as the man." Amusingly, wiki also says that Lord R ended up living up to the image presented in the painting.

If interested you can see all the pix I took here. And the full-length Lord R here. Sadly what I didn't do was take the ten or so other full-length portraits in the room. What was interesting was how much better this one is; the others were all oddly posed, or with strange backgrounds, or unnatural expressions, or other defects. Ah but happily the Nat Gall has a listing, you may judge for yourself.

The Siena stuff was interesting but desperately religious, of course. And crude. In the sense of their choice of subjects and their methods of painting and style.

I leave you with a quasi-typical example, only atypical in that it isn't the crucified Christ or the annunciated Virgin. Why did it never occur to them to paint stuff like this? Some kind of weird (or not weird, because everyone had it) mental block in painters and patrons.

Refs

* France 2024: Orsay, Chamonix, Argeles, Canal du Midi.

* [2024/03] London: Cloth Fair, Wigmore, Westminster, Courtauld, National Gallery, St Bartholomew the Great, RA.

* [2024/03] A visit to Magdalen and Elias.

* [2023/12] Ashmolean: Egypt.

* [2023/03] Cezanne: a trip to London.

Update: NPG

I visited the Natioanl Portrait Gallery for the first time, by chance. There's a JSS of Balfour; but to my eye it is much less successful. 

I haven't quite decided if Balfour is less interesting; or if the painting is just less good. The background - again a pillar, but wider, so B can rest his arm neglignetly on it, but the gesture is weak - is muddy; B blends into his own shadow, there is nothing of interest in the lower half; and don't get me started on the reflection I simply could not remove, they do a bad job of lighting these things.

Conjectures and Refutations, part two

Conjectures and Refutations refers, naturally. But what is so charming about Popper is the way that an idea, that in our debased times would amount to an entire book, is merely a single chapter. Although the material I'm discussing here, I am obliged to admit, is not quite up to the first two sections; ah well.

The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science (66-96)

Popper returns to the theme that philosophy is about solving problems not talking about philosophy; and points out that most problems in philosophy arise outside it. But that may not be obvious from the works themselves; they may have so sublimed the initial problem that is is not mentioned.

This is I think true and quite telling; it makes me pause and wonder about my reaction to certain works. Popper's examples here are Plato's theory of Forms, and Kant's Critique.

Before that, since Popper briefly discusses pseudo-problems, and since it fits my view of much of philosophy, I quote his My first thesis is that every philosophy... is liable to degenerate in such a way that its problems become practically indistinguishable from pseudo-problems, and its cant, accordingly, practically indistinguishable from meaningless babble. His second thesis is that what appears to be the prima facie method of teaching philosophy is liable to produce a philosophy which answers Wittgenstein's description [as babble]... that of giving the beginner... the works of the great philosophers to read... A new world of astonishingly subtle and vast abstractions opens itself before the reader; abstractions on an extremely high and difficult level. Thoughts and arguments are put before his mind which sometimes are not only hard to understand, but which seem to him irrelevant because he cannot find out what they may be relevant to; and so we return to the problems that provoked the philosophy.

Let's take his second example first, because I think it is simpler. Popper's contention is that Newtonian physics was so utterly successful and completely accepted by Kant's time that people had mistaken it for an absolute truth; and Kant therefore felt he needed to provide an explanation of how we could know such a thing a priori. I believe that (a) this is likely correct; (b) would not be universally accepted, because Kant is so obscure that people disagree over what he actually means, and are moreover desperate not to admit that he was wrong. My own reaction is yes: this is a nice explanation, it helps to understand Kant, but it also helps by pointing out that I really don't need to bother reading him: he is wrong.

The question of Plato's theory of forms is more complex, and also I think more speculative. Popper says that the discover of irrational numbers gets in the way of the atomisation and arithmetisation of nature, by which he means the programme - apparently that of those times - of associating numbers with things and deducing properties by counting; which assumes a smallest unit length scale, by which all other things in principle could be measured by counting (this programme is obscure and mystical, but that doesn't mean it wasn't their programme). Popper associates this with a switch to geometry; and then somehow connects this to the theory of forms. My own suspicion is that Popper is jumping backwards through hoops to rescue Plato's theory, probably from people like me who think it is silly, but I have to admit that it does perhaps help illuminate the writings.

Three Views of Human Knowledge (97-119)

This one isn't so good. It starts with a rather poor summary of "the Galileo affair" that totally misses the main point - that big G was trying to tell the Church how to interpret the Bible; and then tells us that the Gregorian calendrical reform made full use of big C, which I doubt. But leaving that aside, he is mostly discussing the status of scientific theory in the lights of what he calls Instrumentalism (theories are but tools, and don't describe an underlying reality, which most people using epicycles subscribed to) and Essentialism (theories describe "the realities behind appearances"). And his own preferred view: rejecting Instrumentalism, theories attempt to describe the real world, so not going all the way to Essentialism. All this seems to be not very interesting, and to come rather close to arguing over labels, a thing he usually disdains.

Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition (120-135)

Also not his finest; note that it was given to the Third Annual Conference of the Rationalist Press Association at Magdalen College; how delightful that such things once existed. But the ideas here are largely those of previous chapters.

Back to the Pre-Socratics (136-153)

A great deal of discussion of Pre-Socratic philosophy, doubtless very fine if you're interested in that history, but not of obvious modern relevance; he does though re-emphasise the importance of the emergence of a tradition of critical rational discussion. He does say two very strange things in the introduction to this section: (1) all science is cosmology; and (2) philosophy must return to cosmology. Admittedly he was talking in 1958 and wiki tells me that the CMB wasn't discovered until '64. Now, I would say, cosmology has almost entirely left the realm of philosophy and is part of science; that trend must have been obvious in '58. And (1) is only true if at all in the most general and useless sense.

Refs

* Tragedy in one shitty act.

Conjectures and Refutations

This is a great book by Karl Popper; you should read it. You can even do that online as rosenfels.org/Popper.pdf. The overall theme is the title; he explains it well in the preface:

... a theory of reason that assigns to rational arguments the... role of criticizing our often mistaken attempts to solve our problems. And it is a theory of experience that assigns to our observations the... role of tests which may help us in the discovery of our mistakes. Though it stresses our fallibility it does not resign itself to scepticism, for it also stresses the fact that knowledge can grow, and that science can progress - just because we can learn from our mistakes.

The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by... conjectures... controlled by... attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can neither be established as certainly true... Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it makes us understand the difficulties of the problem which we are trying to solve. This is how we become better acquainted with our problem, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory... is always a step forward that takes us nearer to the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes.

As we learn from our mistakes our knowledge grows, even though we may never know that is, know for certain. Since our knowledge can grow, there can be no reason here for despair of reason. And since we can never know for certain, there can be no authority here for any claim to authority...

Those among our theories which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism... may be described, together with the reports of their tests, as 'the science' of that time. Since none of them can be positively justified, it is essentially their critical and progressive character - the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our problems better than their competitors - which constitutes the rationality of science.

Popper's work is dense, which makes summarising it difficult; I contrast that with The Righteous Mind, or fluff like The Tyranny of Merit which is easy to review. I really do recommend that you read him yourself. I will content myself with pulling out some pieces. FWIW, I agree with essentially all that Popper says. Having sat on this post for a bit, I think I shall let it out into the world with only the first two sections covered; I may get round to the rest later.

Introduction: On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance 

Popper's main objectives in this tome are scientific but it turns out that politics gets mixed in: The belief of a liberal... in the possibility of a rule of law, of equal justice, of fundamental rights, and a free society - can easily survive the recognition that judges are not omniscient and may make mistakes about facts and that, in practice, absolute justice is hardly ever realized in any particular legal case. But this belief... can hardly survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective facts... and that the judge cannot have made a factual mistake because he can no more be wrong about the facts than he can be right. And we agree that there are objective facts (see-also my review of Why Materialism is Baloney).

There is a view - which Popper attributes to the the Renaissance, to Bacon and Descartes - that truth is manifest¹. Not that it is easy to see, but that once it is declared, it can be seen to be true. Thus there is no need for authority; although this isn't really true: Descartes has God as his authority, Bacon has Nature. This he regards as an optimistic doctrine; its opposite is a lack of belief in human reason, which demands an unliberal authority. But if you adopt the optimistic view, you need a theory of error or ignorance to explain why this manifest truth is not believed; and this is often a conspiracy view: priests² or capitalists or whatever conspire to confuse the good folk; or in a worse case, fanatics insist you must be evil if you cannot see their truth. But all this is not necessary, because the doctrine is false: truth is not manifest; it is hard to come by and easy to lose.

Another tempting source of authority is definitions. But considered carefully, we realise that definitions never provide factual knowledge of the world.

Popper again finding congruence between the political and the epistemic: The traditional systems of epistemology may be said to result from yes-answers or no-answers to questions about the sources of knowledge. They never challenge these questions [but] these questions are clearly authoritarian in spirit. They can be compared with that traditional question of political theory, 'Who should rule?', which begs for an authoritarian answer such as 'the best', or 'the wisest'... It should be replaced by a completely different question such as 'How can we organize our political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers... cannot do too much damage?'... The question about the sources of our knowledge can be replaced in a similar way... I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist... to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree... The proper answer to my question [is] 'By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and - if we can train ourselves to do so -by criticizing our own theories or guesses.'

Science: Conjectures and Refutations

Popper begins his considerations of what makes a theory scientific with his usual examples: relativity, psycho-analysis, and the Marxist theory of history. And finds the latter two lacking, in that they are able to accomodate anything: they cannot be falsified; there is nothing that they rule out³.

Popper solves the Humean problem of induction by discovering that scientific theories are not deduced by induction from observations; rather they are conjectures that are tested by attempted refutations. This is both charming and correct. A theory is any old wild-eyed idea⁵; a scientific theory is one open to refutation by some conceivable experiment. The antient Greek's "planetary orbits are perfect circles because circles are perfect and the heavens are perfect" was a theory; the simple version was gradually falsified by observations and grew epicycles; these too were eventually contradicted by observations. Along the dark centuries the theory lost most of its scientific character by fossilising into dogma and being resistant to criticism; eventually this crumbled. But Kepler's ellipses were not "deduced" from observations; instead, they were the last thing he tried after a long series of other guesses were falsified by observations⁴.

There may be - this is my thought, not Popper's - some relation here to Kuhn's ideas in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Wherein "normal" science does look rather like the process of finding lots of observations that concur with existing theories; only tiny amount of work is paradigm-shifting, the finding of new wild-eyed ideas.

Popper rather wistfully notes that the problem of induction is solved. But nothing seems less wanted than a simple solution to an age-old philosophical problem. And that rings true; philosophy has lost heart, and is more interested in endless talk around old problems, and commentary on what others wrote, and endlessly recursive commentary-on-commentary, than it is on solutions.

Update: notice that Popper's theory is of how intelligent beings (humans) in practice do science. It is not a deduction of some "intrinsic" or "ideal" immanent property; this is not the finally-discovered Platonic Ideal of what sceince is, because Platonic Ideals are silly. But it is what we do (in a vaguely similar way that Hazlitt's theory of morality is what morality actually is for us); and whilst the vast majority of scientists would not actually be able to explain the idea to you, because most scientists don't think about the philosophy of science, they would nonetheless recognise it, if you showed it to them.

Notes

1. I'm a touch dubious about this myself; in Descartes case, he needs the "anything clearly and distinctly perceived is true" to get him out of his pit of doubt; see-also my scathing review. And as for Bacon, where in Popper's view the "authority" guaranteeing correctness is Nature rather than God, see here.

2. See-also Hobbes: Of the Kingdom of Darkness.

3. Or, in the Marxist case, the original version had been falsified by experience but the theory proved sufficiiently flexible to evade this.

4. Incidentally... nowadays, we of course think of planetary positions in 3-D, and we have observations of wondrous accuracy. But in those days all they had were angular bearings from a moving platform, viz the Earth; even had you thought of it you couldn't just plot them out and go "oh yeah, that's an ellipse". And sweeping out equal areas in equal times is similar: this too was a conjecture, which wasn't falsified.

5. This I think leads to Popper being more generous that I would be to a number of the Antient Greek ideas. See-also Après ma mort, je ferai tomber une pluie de roses

Refs

* Science.

* Why do people believe true things?

Global cereal production has grown much faster than population in the last half-century

Every now and again one reads a paper saying something along the lines of "ZOMG we're all going to die of starvation". Perhaps not literally that, but it will say something like crop yields decline under global warming. And totally fail to mention that other factors - better farming, fertilisers, and so on - are increasing yields faster. So this is just a page for me to tag with the obvious rebuttals, and link to some of my old posts. My pic is from ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-production.

Searching, I find Crop yields have increased dramatically in recent decades, but crops like maize would have improved more without climate change, but that too is from Our World in Data, rather than the breathless academic press.

* How overfed are we? [2008]

* How overfed are we? (part 2) [2009]

* Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? [2009]

* Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death? [2017]

* Citing Climate Change, BlackRock Will Start Moving Away from Fossil Fuels [2020]

* How to assess the multiple interacting risks of climate change? [2021]

Refs

* Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture.

Red Team wins again

A follow up to Red team rows over, though I seem to have skipped 2024 (see here for the 2024 playlist). Not to spoil the suspense, but the Red Team rowed over head again; and on the women's side the arguably-red Jesus also rowed over unchallenged. But don't fear, behind those there was plenty of action (Caius bumping the hapless-this-year Madgalene to go second despite a fine charge from Downing, who got their revenge on Friday but still couldn't touch LMBC); see here for the playlist. This year's best chaos was Friday M2 when Caius II and Girton failed to take Grassy, and then Corpus ploughed into them; but no-one was injured.

If you've got no idea what I'm talking about, see cucbc.org/lents.

I took no photos this year, being busy with the drone; so here's an image from 120m up of M1 on Saturday; the closest two sticks-in-a-distance are Christ's not quite catching King's despite being agonisingly close all the way from Ditton.

Addendum

From Rowbridge:

BOATS BEHAVING BADLY: THE DEFINITIVE FINE ANALYSIS (LENTS 2K25)

It’s Boat Race weekend and OUBC are feeling smug. Their “alumni” have successfully banned every single CUBC athlete from competing. Sitting on the start line, though, the OUBC crews’ eyes widen in shock, quickly turning to fear, as they spot the replacement Cambridge crew spannering their way towards the start. Surely not… it can’t be? Murmurs of disbelief now amongst the hapless OUBC athletes as their worst fears are realised: it’s Corpus M1.

Ignoring the rules entirely, the Corpus cox calls for a big 10 straight through the line without bothering to wait for the flag. A nervy Oxford set off in hot pursuit, and overtake Corpus quickly. Jitters beginning to subside, Oxford’s rhythm returns as they approach the bend under Hammersmith Bridge. But panic soon returns as behind them, Corpus make zero effort to make the bend and instead bore a hole straight through the abutments, immediately destroying the whole bridge.

Dread sets in as Oxford’s stroke yells: “WE’RE DONE FOR! THEY’VE NOT GOT A RUDDER! THEY’RE COMING STRAIGHT FOR US!” In desperation, stroke tries to bail out of the boat but Jesus have bike-locked their leg to the footplate with some passive-aggressive note about it being “their” footplate actually. The OUBC cox, true terror in their eyes, swivels around in their seat just in time to hear the Corpus cox shout “yeah, nice corner there boys, bump in 20” before Corpus’s Jannie’s indestructible bow ploughs straight through Oxford’s stern, vaporising the entire boat’s superstructure instantly.

Corpus go on to win the race by 300 lengths. They are fined £50 by CUCBC for boating without a lifejacket.

~ TOTALS ~

Tues: 495

Weds: 510

Thurs: 540

Fri: 555

Sat: 690

TOTAL: £2790

~ MOST DASTARDLY COLLEGES ~

Sidney: £275 (Moneyball. Rocky. Shrek. Time to write another chapter in the book of all-time great underdog stories as one of the Cam’s pretty chill guys rockets into Boats Behaving Badly stardom. The first Lent Bumps since 2020 where Emma haven’t reigned supreme as the most-fined college. Take. A. Bow.)

Jesus: £190 (The Cam’s princes and princesses of darkness relish playing their panto villain role and this week was no exception with particularly noteworthy performances from their lower boats. Late to marshalling? Check. Extremely late to marshalling? Check (again). Blissfully ignorantly rowing on through a checkmate? Check(mate).)

Clare: £180 (the yellow submarine sends a torpedo into Emma’s hopes of a top three finish this bumps. It’s colder than a polar bear’s toenails stuff from their men’s side on the final day, with ruthless examples of how not to clear helping them secure bronze over ducks and laundry college.)

Emma: £165 (heads must surely be rolling in Emma’s Fine Department after this. Most colleges would pop the champagne after a sparkling fourth-place finish like this, but the bubbles will have been decidedly flat for Emma at this week’s BCD. It’s just not the standards they hold themselves to at that college and they’ll be gutted to lose out on an event they’ve had a stranglehold on for so many years now. If you know anyone at Emma, check in with them. Make sure they’re ok.)

Downing: £155 (a big hand for Downing this week, who rarely crack the big leagues at the top of the fine game. A cultured performance, with expert deployment of classic fines like “pointlessly handheld filming a rowover” really showing Downing’s class this weeks. Big foundations laid for Mays.)

~ GOOD AS GOLD ~

Stop press, stop press… yeah yeah the usual nerds and grandparents are in the “lame as hell” list here (Clare Hall, St Edmunds), but so are… Pembroke? And King’s? Are you guys ok? This is the first time in our data that either of these colleges have failed to donate to Umpires’ Dinner, and must be a really concerning place to find yourself so close to Mays. You have to ask: did Pembroke focus too hard on producing ruthless blade-train after ruthless blade-train, and not hard enough on the actual aim of bumps (being choppers)?

~ DISOBEDIENT RASCALS: THIS YEAR’S NAUGHTIEST BOATS ~

Sidney W1: £140 (it’s the Sidney show this week. Absolute smash and grab stuff from these ladies. Go in for a korma, end up with a vindaloo type job. Every day just saw brutal performance after brutal performance from this crew, as they duked it out bumping back and forth with Catz. Sure, Catz may have ended the week +2 to Sidney’s -2, but I don’t see them on this list and that’s what matters.)

Sidney M2: £135 (just pipped by their women to the top spot, this crew has the unusual honour of being fined for delightfully dreadful clearing twice on a single day. But they took their W1 right to the line, stretching them like spandex on the beaches of Benidorm. That kind of close competition can only be good for the sport.)

Darwin M1: £105 (merciless bumping strategy this week from the boys, who continued drilling their bowball into bumped coxes’ backs long after they should’ve held it up on several occasions. The only crew this week to smilingly donate blankets to chilly umpires one minute, and then hurl foul abuse downrange the next. Confusing, but effective.)

~ GENDER FINE GAP ~

Fascinating one this week. We’re delighted to report that the fine gap has remained narrow since last Mays: men’s boats were responsible for 50.7% of fines by value vs. 47.5% for women’s boats (the remainder are generic college fines for marshals not turning up etc).

Fine analysts everywhere are rejoicing, but let’s not be too hasty to declare the fibreglass ceiling smashed: because men tend to get overexcited and pee themselves during the warm Mays week, they often rack up hefty public urination fines. On your toes for Mays then, please, ladies.

~ INSIGHTS & TRENDS ~

First off, big up ARU. Welcome back. Always grinning like Cheshire Cats when we see you lot enter bumps. Guaranteed mayhem. We know you’re too cool for bumps, but hope to see you back for Mays (bring more people next time. We reckon you can smash the “all-time largest illegal bank party” record).

It goes without saying we need to call out Corpus M1, who made that rare ascent of Bumps Fines Olympus this week. They attained the highest accolade in our sport (the cox ban) after making a stellar contribution to bankside erosion by repeatedly slamming themselves into Grassy. Remember: blades are temporary, but bans are (CUCBC have firmly informed us) forever.

Average fine value this week was low, at £28.76 (or just £23.25 per boat entered). Indeed, this is the second-lowest average fine value in our records (only surpassed by last Lents). Not that gassed about it which is why we’ve put this way down here in para 3 tbh. Concerning, but we’re confident that getting a few pints of fizzy pop down the beer/champers boat divs before this Mays will reverse this worrying trend towards safe, clean racing.

We were fascinated by Lucy W2 somehow getting a towpath ban for “abusive behaviour.” This is the first time we’ve seen this in our data, and a noble new slopping of sick into the vomit bucket that is “abusing volunteer umpires giving up their time to put races on for your benefit”. We can only speculate what they said. “OUBC did nothing wrong”?

Finally, it does feel like the vibe has been slightly off lately. Caius proving yet again that they take this too seriously by spending the GDP of a small nation on a new boathouse, which they’ll use almost exclusively to train for two sets of meme races per year; Jesus locking random people’s bikes up; and Oxford… well, ironically, they’re gonna get schooled in a few weeks. But bumps is always a wonderfully bizarre moment of total nonsense in amongst all of that, and thanks again to everyone at CUCBC for putting it on, despite everything. Oh, and shoutout to William “BNOC” Connolley for finally getting the recognition he deserves. BNOC today, Chancellor of the University tomorrow. He’s got our vote.

(Boats Behaving Badly Back Catalogue: #RowbridgeReborn10247, #RowbridgeReborn8304, #RowbridgeReborn5403, #RowbridgeReborn3010, #Rowbridge12496, #Rowbridge11158, #Rowbridge7498, #Rowbridge5474, #Rowbridge5151, #Rowbridge3325)