Book review: The Case Against Education

The Case Against Education is a book written by libertarian economist Bryan Caplan and published in 2018 by Princeton University Press. Drawing on the economic concept of job market signaling and research in educational psychology, the book argues that much of higher education is very inefficient and has only a small effect in improving human capital, contrary to the conventional consensus in labor economics. Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to certify their intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity—attributes that are valued by employers. He ultimately estimates that approximately 80% of individuals' return to education is the result of signaling, with the remainder due to human capital accumulation, as wiki says. Or you can try Goodreads. As BC himself notes, almost no-one changes their mind as a result of reading the book, so entrenched are everyone's opinions; so I'm not going to make any attempt to convince you he is correct: read the book if you want the details.

His data is almost all from the USA, but that hardly matters, because the same is true world over. Every government happily burbles that nothing is more important than education, and no-one amongst the elite - or indeed, anyone else - will listen to arguments to the contrary. Which is itself a meta-argument: how can so many fools all be right?

Another meta-argument: why is it that education is the only "good" that its recipients try so hard to avoid?

Anecdote: one of the gains to education is a strong societal, and indeed personal, gain at the lower end of male ability, because staying in education, and the minor gains to employability, tend to reduce criminality amongst young men. But there's no similar gain for young women, because so few commit any crime.

There are two sorts of gains: personal, and societal. The personal is improvements in your employability, future earnings, and the care and comfort of your soul. The societal is how much extra you'll produce as a result of what you learn, together with harder to measure stuff like the good of your soul and reduction in crime. If the bulk of the personal gain came from what you actually learnt, then the two types of good would be close to indistinguishable; BC's main argument is that they aren't, because the bulk - his estimate is 80% - of the personal good comes from signalling: completing your education signals to employers that you are intelligent, industrious, and conformist. But signalling has no societal benefit: it merely alters the relative ordering of people, it doesn't make people any more useful.

He produces exhaustive evidence for the effect of signalling, but I suspect this is much like evolution: you don't really need evidence, once the concept has been explained, unless your religion prevents you from believing. An example is that the rewards for education - as measured by earnings, in this case - are not linear with years of schooling; instead, there is a marked jump around graduation, from either high school or college. This would make no sense if the gains came from what you learnt; but makes perfect sense if what matters is the piece of paper saying you hae passed the course.

For what it is worth, BC happily accepts that reading, writing and arithmetic are valuable skills that we all need, and so doesn't trouble himself with junior school. Probably if you pushed him he would quibble that too, but never mind we need not go there. He also accepts that some of what is learnt in some courses - for example, engineering - is useful.

His remedy is austerity: the government should stop, or at least begin to reduce, subsidising useless signalling. He is perfectly well aware that this isn't going to happen.

I think that his arguments-from-future-earnings are unassailable, which means the easiest way round them is to argue for nurture-of-the-soul. This has the great advantage of being very hard to measure, so it is easy to apply wishful thinking, and people promptly do so. I - and I assume you, dear reader - are amongst the cognitive elite; and so our experience of education is rather different to that of the masses, at least I should jolly well hope so. I enjoyed school, and I enjoyed university. And I rather suspect that applies to quite a lot of elite policy and opinion formers out there; this may account for some of the bias. But nurturing the soul, and instilling a love of education, knowledge, and culture for its own sake, is not something that the bulk factory education system is going to do, except by happy chance.

If we were to accept his case, how much does it matter? The waste is then lots of money, but that translates into lots of time: all those people teaching stuff pointlessly, and all the students who could be doing something more productive. So, yes, it matters: the facile govt idea that at least it keeps people off the unemployment rolls for three years is silly.

Another advancement of science

The classic Science advances one funeral at a time refers; and I swear I have at least one other riffing on the theme. And today brings us Population Doomster and False Prophet of Ecological Apocalypse Paul Ehrlich Has Died. Wiki tells me that "statistician Paul A. Murtaugh says that Ehrlich was largely correct" but that is drivel. Michael Mann says he "was a friend and a hero. He will be greatly missed" and whinges that Julian Simon said Ehrlich was an alarmist purveyor of doom and gloom. Sadly, shortage of electrons - could it be anything else - prevents Mann from noting that Simon won the bet.

I recall in the dim and distant past discussing Ehrlich on sci.env; and, miraculously, Google Groups turns up this thread, started by Baby Timmy. And I find:

David Friedman wrote:

>In article <3cc1...@news.nwl.ac.uk>, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:

>> >...I get

>> >an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency

>> >during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.

>> Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.

>> I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up. 

>But those aren't famine deaths. That's coming from an estimate of "deaths

>world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies." Poor nutrition results

>in an increase in death rates long before anyone is starving to death.

So what. Its an upper bound. If correct, famine deaths were less than 5M,

and Erlich was wildly wrong (on this point).

Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.

I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up.

Which I think suffices for the distant past. My recollection of myself, at that time, was of being sympathetic to the kind of stuff the Ehrlich was saying - notice my parenthetical "on this point" -, but perhaps fortunately I was able to read what other people wrote; so many people can't.

I don't think I ever read Ehrlich. I did read the in-the-same-camp Club of Rome, and realised it was all wrong: they simply assume bad things increase exponentially but good things increase polynomially, and so even before the complicated modelling, those assumptions tell you that the bad will eventually overwhelm the good. Inevitably they plot bad-things-happening on a graph with time as the X axis; inevitably people read that time axis as meaningful; their defence is oh-dearie-me-no, the time is just expressive and so of-course-our-predictions-were-not-for-that-actual-time; but that just makes all the modelling even more pointless, because as I've said, the result is baked in from the start¹. David Henderson, in his My 1983 Memo on Population Growth, tells us that "This paper is premised on the idea that reducing population growth hastens economic progress. However, the author simply asserts the premise rather than documenting it" and I have a feeling that's true of Ehrlich's work. Malthus makes a similar mistake: to first order, more people will produce more stuff, so food production, as a first guess, should be assumed to increase in line with population.

2026/3/19: Ehrlich dishonestly claimed that all his work was peer reviewed. He was lying: popular books - indeed, books in general - aren't peer reviewed the way academic papers are.

Refs

* Why did Malthus assume linear increase in food?

* Craig Loehle stops speaking.

* Sherwood B. Idso suffers hard delete.

* Mistah Morner – he dead.

* Another one bites the dust.

* Me from 2023 reffing ACX on Ehrlich.

* The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Karl Polanyi).

* Limited Government as Insurance.

* Fewer Rules, Better People: What Lam Gets Right.

* Why Economic Freedom Matters.

* Adam Smith on the Labor Theory of Value.

* Capital maintenance requires real sacrifice. Under capitalism, private owners do it because they capture the gains. Under democracy? Public infrastructure tends to be neglected in pursuit of votes.

* Freedom of Speech and AI Output.

* Book review: Blitzkrieg.

Notes

1. Somewhere I believe I have a post saying this, but I cannot now find it.

Blue team goes up

We interrupt your war coverage for a struggle of a different kind, the Red team - (minty) Blue team wars. Last year the Reds were untouchable - I'm talking Men here, or rather Open in these Woke days; but one could call Jesus Red I think and they were certainly untouchable - but this year they were definitely Touched. Wednesday the minty Blues knocked the Yellows aside fairly trivially on First Post; Thursday saw the Maroons fly - what else could they do? -, and get within a length before dying on Ditton. So Friday was the day we were all waiting for, but didn't quite pan out as expected; suddenly, before First Post, a bump; close analysis of another video shows six crabbing. This wasn't quite how we wanted it to end; but it was surely no coincidence that this happened on the day the Reds were under most pressure. And Saturday brought no surprises.

This was my first year retired, so that I could watch it all. I found that rather pleasant, and didn't get the effect, as I sometimes have before, of getting a little bored with too much of it.

The full playlist is here.

Yanquis and Kikes twat the Mad Mullahs

So it finally happened: the MM ran out of patience and decided to twat the MMs, though this was perhaps a little late for the tens of thousands already killed by the regime. There is of course a vast backstory on all this, see for example Reflections on recent events in the Middle East, but perhaps recent events in South America are also relevant.

Ilya Somin thinks Donald Trump's Iran War is Unconstitutional and he is likely to be correct, in principle. However both House and Senate have rejected stop-the-war resolutions, and the armed forces are obeying their commander, so there is no practical constraint¹. And as long as nothing terrible happens - a large number of USAnians killed, or the price of petrol staying high for too long, the horror - I doubt the public cares enough to matter.

I'm in favour of this war, at least, when compared to all other practical courses of action or inaction. Diplomacy was obviously a waste of time, no matter how many highly paid high status elites it kept in lucrative employment. I opposed the Iraq war at the time, by actually bothering to go and protest, but I think far too many commentators are too ready to relearn the lessons of the last war: blah blah quagmire blah vague objectives blah and so on. Richard Hanania suggests that Killing bad people is an achievable goal that the US is good at and probably has positive effects on the world. We should do it more often, and do much less of many other aspects of foreign policy, and that seems reasonable. The most likely outcome is a weakened Iran, left with essentially no missile stockpiles or production facilities for same, and less capacity to export terrorism. The good outcome is the MMs get overthrown. The bad outcome is... I dunno: we take out some more schools, a pile of Iranian drones get through and destroy major infractructure and kill piles of Yanquis, and we retreat in confusion? Perhaps you, dear reader, can think of a plausible bad outcome; da meeja certainly hasn't presented any. Note how convenient it is that the Ivans are stuck in the quagmire of their own creation and are far too weak to cause any mischief.

Doing all this in violation of international law is something I covered in Reflections². But I'd add that coming from the lawyer-heavy UK, where nothing can be done, I feel that the time has come, if not to kill all the lawyers, at least not to leave them in charge.

It becomes ever more obvious to me - as I think I said in Poling Pales - how central the Iranian poison is to the problems of the Middle East and how much better off the region - and of course even more so the people of Iran - would be, if they just settled down to tend their own garden.

Updates

I expect things to continue to evolve...

2026/3/10: The Economist tells us that "Donald Trump must stop soon" and this is the kind of armchair-warrior stuff that is in a way amusing, in its combination of taking-itself-oh-so-seriously and total irrelevance. But it is a good source for the common complaint that Trump needs to "define what you want to achieve". I don't think that's true: the general direction is of course clear, and Trump has said that he'd like to end up with regime change, but I see no reason why that should be a firmly-fixed objective. If it turns out to be really hard, why should he really be obliged to keep pounding away? Continuing, "War aims direct the campaign" and this is true but pointless: the initial aim was to take out the top MM; then destroy Iranian military infrastructure, and so on and so forth; and these aims dictate the current actions, regardless of the final aims. "Strategically, his failure to say what Epic Fury is for is its biggest vulnerability" is bullshit.

2026/3/13: The Iranian regime has been the number one threat to peace and stability in the Middle East for years. U.S. forces continue to try to fix that, by pushing them into the number two spot. Well, that's how I read it on a first pass. Meanwhile, Brent crude is hovering around $100 per barrel, which is regrettable. I think the Yanquis should, and likely will, do something about that. Mostly, twatting the bits of Iran likely to attack shipping.

2026/3/16: The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why (by Al-Jazmagi).

2026/3/18: It’s getting to the point where if you’re an Iranian official and Israel hasn’t killed you yet it’s a bit insulting.

2026/3/23: the YK's are still bombing stuff, but the MMs or their agents are still flinging stuff back, though at a reduced rate. Most importantly, the Straits of Hormuz are not seeing a lot of traffic, leading to... volatility in the price of oil; cue panic from the meeja³. Personally, I go for the MMs running out of ammo before much longer, but perhaps that's an ill-defined time period. Let's say within a week.

2026/3/25: the Economist is sad that markets aren't melting down in the way el Econo thinks they should.

Refs

* The Scientists Who Declared War on Half of America.

* Labor Freedom Is the Best Explanation for the US-Europe Income Gap.

* Cruising to Dubai.

* Liberty Justice Center Files Lawsuit Challenging Trump's Section 122 Tariffs.

* Wealth of Nations: This masterwork is turning 250. It’s needed now more than ever; 250 Years Later, The Wealth of Nations Still Has Lessons To Offer the Political Class; Smith and Jefferson at 250.

* Media Can’t Hide the Truth About Gracie Mansion Bomb Attempt.

* The Anti-War Argument Is Actually a Pro-War Argument: One does not wait to attack an irrational actor while it gets more powerful.

* War and Oil. With nice futures charts.

* Judge Concludes Grand Jury Subpoena to Fed Had Improper Purpose.

* Gulf states press US to neutralise Iran for good as Hormuz crisis deepens.

* Praise is due to all who respect justice more than their position compels them to do.

* How to turn a price shock into inflation.

* The Ugly Path to Peace.

* Miscellanea: The War in Iran - I include this as an unwise overly pessimistic take that I might analyse sometime.

Notes

1. See-also "Law Is Irrelevant to the U.S. Attack on Iran," by Prof. Jack Goldsmith (Harvard).

2. Another attempt to "defend" int'l law comes from Alex Tabarrok: but notice his confused defence: Per the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the United States. International law is not liberal wishful thinking it’s US law.

3. E.g. "Oil back above $100 a barrel..." from Auntie; note that was "Updated 35 minutes ago" and yet they hadn't updated the (false at that point) headline.

The Foundations of Modern Political Thought

Wiki tells me¹ that The Foundations of Modern Political Thought is a two-volume work of intellectual history by Quentin Skinner, published in 1978. The work traces the conceptual origins of modern politics by investigating the history of political thought in the West at the turn of the medieval and early modern periods, from the 13th to the 16th centuries. It represents the contextualist approach to the history of ideas which Skinner and his colleagues in the Cambridge School had pioneered in the 1960s. The Times Literary Supplement named the Foundations one of the 100 most influential books since World War II. And all that seems fair enough, even if I'm not really sure quite what the "contextualist" stuff is about.

This review is going to be a bit crap, because I finished volume one before the start of last summer, and volume two before winter, but them wimped out of reviewing it, and now of course my goldfish brain has largely forgotten about it. But perhaps the things that survive this late will be the valuable bits.

So, in no particular order:

In volume one, in particular, we get a lot of political commentators, book writers, whatever, commentating on politics and the form of their writing is advice to Princes on their governance, in the manner perhaps of Machiavilli - I'll come back to him in a moment - but from different perspectives. What the book never ever discusses is whether the Princes were listening. It is perhaps possible to argue that, at least in the long term, reverse causation is just as valuable: we know what Princes were thinking about, because it is the kind of thing that commentators were writing about, and they wrote about it because they knew the Princes were interested. But nonetheless it seems a lacuna to me.

There's a lot of useful context here that I'm glad I now know or rather, given my appalling memory, glad that I'm vaguely aware of. Hobbes for example does not come out of nowhere as I'd previously assumed by default; he is part of, perhaps really the culmination of, a tradition of attempts to axiomatise human relations. This paragraph would have been much better written closer to my reading.

It is amazing - to me, an atheist in good standing - how badly these clowns allowed religion to cloud their approach to politics for so long. So many people just couldn't help giving advice along the lines of "oh course you must first be godly: tell the truth, rule justly in all things" and so on. Telling the truth - in important matters - is undoubtedly a part of any moral code (even an atheist one, so in a sense my complaint about religions isn't quite on the ball), but that doesn't make it always a good idea in politics. What these people utterly lack is the concept of iterated prisonners dilemmas, strangely enough, or game theory in general. And indeed I think QS somewhat lacks it too, or perhaps he is just describing what was there rather than judging it. Anyway, a few commentators - like Machiavelli, but he was merely one of a type, we just happened to have picked him as the one to remember because we all have memories like goldfish and cannot cope with complexity and need personalities - did have the intelligence and independence to suggest that actual effective governance, perhaps even for the good of the people², might require being sneaky sometimes.

Part of the religious problem was a quite explicit passage in Paul, Romans 13: Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. I'm sure I could dance this around if I needed to: Paul was writing for the times when Christianity was weak, and he was advising his people to lay low, obey, while they were powerless. It didn't occur to him to worry about being in power. But, by the time we're talking about, nominally Christian rulers were in power, and naturally the church had taken the obvious tradeoff: prop up the civil authorities, in exchange for privileges. So this passage was very well known, unlike the minor parts of Leviticus that tell you not to eat weasels. This then gets you into vast trouble when you have a Holy Roman Emperor - or whatever - nominally ruling over a pile of kingdoms, and your local authorities are obviously despots. Are you allowed to revolt? People then wander around making up "lesser magistrate" rules, and trying to argue that if a local worthy³ offers you a chance to revolt, you can take it. By the time we get to the reformation, the kind of tyranny people are revolting against is more the "I don't like your religion" type than the "please stop torturing me" type, which is unfortunate as it shows you how people will twist words.

Back to volume one, mostly about the Northern Italian city-states, who realised they had problems similar to those of much earlier Greek city-states, and so were interested in the newly-emergent works of Aristotle and so on. They worried about using mercenaries - very convenient, but who might well not bother fight and die when it came down to it - versus arming their own peasantry, but who knows what peasants might do once they had arms and the thought of using them. Volume two shifts North to France and the Reformation, where the issue becomes convincing enough people that your religion is popular enough that suppressing it would be difficult. And so we return to the political pamphlets desperately searching for some way around Romans 13; eventually, if I recall correctly, they start groping towards what Hobbes states explicitly: there can be only one authority; and religious power must be subsiduary to civil. I don't think toleration becomes widely popular though; in all of this, these people remain foreigners⁴, their religion desperately important to them, and so insecure that they cannot help trying to impose it on others. But now I'm imposing my ideas on top of them, so I'll stop.

Notes

1. And you. But I don't care about you :-)

2. To be fair the perspective is always the good of the rulers, or of governance in general. But perhaps those converge, in that even simply stable governance without warfare, sieges and rapine would be an improvement.

3. Obviously, only a worthy; the common folk are not allowed to decide that kind of thing for themselves under any circumstances, just think where that might lead to.

4. See The Go-Between.

Refs

* The Climate Science reference they don’t want Judges to read.

* UK and Renewables - SoD

* Lessons of the End of Trump's ICE "Surge" in Minnesota.

* "The Fallacy Fallacy".

* NYU Democracy Project Article on How to "Strengthen Democracy by Empowering People to Vote with their Feet".

Art for art's sake / money for God's sake

Art for Art's Sake is a song by 10cc, but I prefer the He's Dead Jim version; the original is thin. Although the song is really only one phrase, it's a good phrase.

My excuse for using this is a thought to go with my "William does art" series: The Hunt in the Forest and friends or Lord Ribblesdale and friends: which is that perhaps the old stuff is better because it isn't just done for art's sake. I'm not sure whether that really holds up though.

And to spin out this thin post, I offer you Eliot's Portrait of a Lady. Wiki will tell you what it is about, but perhaps doesn't quite catch it. You know you're in class poetry when it uses words like "velleities" which I had to look up; beautiful; and so fitting to the spirit of the work.

I

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon

You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do—

With 'I have saved this afternoon for you';

And four wax candles in the darkened room,

Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,

An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb

Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.

We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole

Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.

'So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul

Should be resurrected only among friends

Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom

That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.'

—And so the conversation slips

Among velleities and carefully caught regrets

Through attenuated tones of violins

Mingled with remote cornets

And begins.

'You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,

And how, how rare and strange it is, to find

In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,

(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!

How keen you are!)

To find a friend who has these qualities,

Who has, and gives

Those qualities upon which friendship lives.

How much it means that I say this to you —

Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar!'

Among the winding of the violins

And the ariettes

Of cracked cornets

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins

Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,

Capricious monotone

That is at least one definite 'false note.'

— Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,

Admire the monuments,

Discuss the late events,

Correct our watches by the public clocks.

Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II

Now that lilacs are in bloom

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

And twists one in her fingers while she talks.

'Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know

What life is, you who hold it in your hands';

(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)

'You let it flow from you, you let it flow,

And youth is cruel, and has no remorse

And smiles at situations which it cannot see.'

I smile, of course,

And go on drinking tea.

'Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall

My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,

I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world

To be wonderful and youthful, after all.'

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune

Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:

'I am always sure that you understand

My feelings, always sure that you feel,

Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.

You will go on, and when you have prevailed

You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,

To give you, what can you receive from me?

Only the friendship and the sympathy

Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ....'

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends

For what she has said to me?

You will see me any morning in the park

Reading the comics and the sporting page.

Particularly I remark.

An English countess goes upon the stage.

A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,

Another bank defaulter has confessed.

I keep my countenance,

I remain self-possessed

Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired

Reiterates some worn-out common song

With the smell of hyacinths across the garden

Recalling things that other people have desired.

Are these ideas right or wrong?

III

The October night comes down; returning as before

Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease

I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door

And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.

'And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?

But that's a useless question.

You hardly know when you are coming back,

You will find so much to learn.'

My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

'Perhaps you can write to me.'

My self-possession flares up for a second;

This is as I had reckoned.

'I have been wondering frequently of late

(But our beginnings never know our ends!)

Why we have not developed into friends.'

I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark

Suddenly, his expression in a glass.

My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

'For everybody said so, all our friends,

They all were sure our feelings would relate

So closely! I myself can hardly understand.

We must leave it now to fate.

You will write, at any rate.

Perhaps it is not too late.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.'

And I must borrow every changing shape

To find expression ... dance, dance

Like a dancing bear,

Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance —

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,

Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;

Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand

With the smoke coming down above the housetops;

Doubtful, for a while

Not knowing what to feel or if I understand

Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ...

Would she not have the advantage, after all?

This music is successful with a 'dying fall'

Now that we talk of dying —

And should I have the right to smile?

Yes I know I missed out the epigraph.

An Irish airman foresees his death

A rare post about climate; I do apologise. But first:

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

Not, you'll be unsurprised to learn, what I actually wanted to talk about. But there is some vague relation. Full version here, if you need a reminder.

What I actually wanted to comment on was "A climate scientist reflects on 30 years fighting the ‘forces of unreason’" by Benjamin Santer. As far as I know Santer is one of the good guys, so I'm only going to quibble.

Quibble one is Participating in an IPCC assessment is an unpaid, multi-year commitment by individuals with precious and finite stores of time and energy. This isn't really true, in my admittedly limited and out of date experience. Participation is, formally, unpaid, at least by the IPCC: but actually you get to do it on your employer's time, so it isn't really pro bono. I guess he is trying to push back against the idea that he's getting consultancy rates for it, but I think claiming pro bono is iffy. It's also close to trivia, so I think he should just not have mentioned it.

Continuing, we have In 1990, we concluded that “The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.” Put differently, the jury was out on human culpability for climate change. In 1990, it was still too early to tell whether burning fossil fuels had significantly altered Earth’s climate. And this is correct - so much for the fuckwits who claim we knew it all in the 70s, or 80s, or whatever.

Quibble two is But a mere five years later, in the IPCC’s 1995 Second Assessment Report, the scientific jury reached a very different verdict... “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”... A human-caused climate change signal had been identified. We could see the signal. It was there in data. Humans were no longer innocent bystanders in Earth’s climate system. As I pointed out convincingly in Who Knew What When, "balance of evidence" is weak, as is "suggests" and "discernable influence". Notice how '90 talked about not-unequivocal, and '95 has definitely not got to unequivocal. Per WKWW, the actual shift - in terms of what was written down - was more gradual.

Santer then continues talking about "forces of unreason". He restricts his discussion to physical climatology, so he can find himself on the side of reason without any difficulty. Had he attempted to discuss economics, he would find his allies guilty of unreason; he knows that, so carefully avoids any such discussion.

Reflections on recent events in South America

We start with a nice little cartoon. Perhaps a good reminder that the left can poke fun at itself, or can't resist doing so.

Anyway: da MM has captured Evil Dictator Maduro, an action generally considered illegal "under international law". This Volokh article by Ilya Somin is a good expostion of the finer points (see also On the Legality of the Venezuela Invasion). However international law is but a weak reed; see this article for that attitude forcefully pursued. Technically, it is probably illegal under US law too, since the US has ratified the UN charter; but unless Congress becomes less supine that is unlikely to matter¹.

Hobbes taught us long ago that Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength; and although many people don't like listening to Hobbes, US foreign policy hasZZZ.

An argument, much repeated, is that upholding international law is a good thing in itself, because upholding civilised norms is good. There is much to this argument, but what it put into my mind was the thought that a thing that one upholds, voluntarily, for the greater good is more like morality than law. So international law has the forms of law - lots of bits of paper studiously written by serious folk - but not the reality: enforcement. Like Rawl's Justice as Fairness it attempts to mislead you with words; it should drop the word "law".

I think that all sound-thinking folk would agree that within a civilised society, we want Rule of Law and not Rule of Individuals governing relations. Both for theoretical reasons, and for reasons of experience: we see from examples that individuals cannot be trusted with so much power. But the slipperly slope is to extend that to international relations between states, analogising people and countries. There are only, what, 200 countries in the world? Many of which are tiny or of no importance in international relations. So perhaps there are 50 that matter. It isn't quite so clear that in a community of 50 people, we would want exclusive rule of law; we would probably have rule-of-norms, with only informal enforcement. And if some nerd started torturing his cat, he'd get slapped around by the Big Guy.

Having considered this in the abstract, what about this concrete example. Is it good or bad? Trump Finds the Golden Mean in Venezuela finds RH thinking it good. I kinda agree². Removing an Evil Dictator gives the Venezuelans a chance to do better. Promoting the vice-prez, rather than pushing for the winner of the elections, was a bit of a surprise, but might actually make sense in the long term, in minimising disruption. You may also like Regime Change in Venezuela Is a Good Calculated Risk. Doubtless you can find for yourself any number of people saying it is terrible. Time will tell. Arguing that breaking international law is a really bad idea because then the Ivans might invade Ukraine is fuckwitted, obvs; ditto the Chinks and Taiwan. Arguing that removing Maduro is a good idea because it might scare others into behaving better is not implausible.

As an example of performative nonsense that isn't even self-aware I find stoptrump.org.uk/sign-venezuela-letter, which offers the delightful "The UK must support international law, in actions not just words, and vote to condemn Trump’s US". However votes are but words, not actions. The chance of the UK taking actual meaningful action is fortunately negligible.

While I'm on this stuff, I found US seizes Russian-flagged tanker in Atlantic instructive. In that it appears to display near-incompetence on the part of the USAnians. How can the most powerful navy in the world manage to lose a slow unarmed tanker and let it get across the Atlantic before finally seizing it?

And on a slight tangent, consider The Crime Victim's Right to Justice. The UK has some similar stuff about "victims rights". But notice that it is very much a recent add-on; it is in no way fundamental to the justice system. This is because (as I've said elsewhere but sadly cannot now find³; though I dislike rights-based language is close) you don't actually have a "right" to not-be-beaten-up; it is the other way around: the govt promises to punish anyone who might beat you up.

Another: this X post is an interesting example of how just going tut-tut isn't going to preserve your norms.

Notes

1. The Graun and others are excited that Senate advances war powers resolution to stop Trump from taking further military action in Venezuela. But it would need to get through the House, and then not get vetoed by - arf, arf - da MM; so that doesn't look promising.

2. What pathetic weaselly words. I mean I agree with all or most of the individual sentences. I'm still reluctant to agree with the overall conclusion.

3. Found it: Might is Right.

4. As I noted some time ago.

Refs

* The Unbearable Stupidity of Nick Shirley (RH on Somali / Minnesota, not what you might guess)

* Does the Supreme Court Favor the Rich?

* Reflections on recent events in the Middle East.

* Microloans Became Microdeposits.

* Against Recent Events.

* What Kind of Immunity for ICE Agents?

* Venezuelans believe Donald Trump has offered them a better future - the Economist (source for my image above).

* Buckley v. Valeo is Not What Ails American Democracy; see-also this from EV.

* 2026/02: Venezuela frees high-profile opposition figure Juan Pablo Guanipa.

The Book of the Old Year

Or, the Year in Stoats, 2025. Having at last driven away almost all my commentators - sorry about that, and thanks for all that did comment interestingly, but so it goes - I can once again choose a post per month by whatever means I see fit. Happy New Year to all.

* Dec: The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen.

* Nov: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.

* Oct: Prospects for Peace.

* Sept: The Hunt in the Forest and friends.

* Aug: A meta review of the no-longer-new DOE report.

* July: Book review: An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy.

* June: Might is Right.

* May: How do we solve moral problems?

* April: Lord Ribblesdale and friends.

* March: Conjectures and Refutations.

* Feb: Return to Sneachda.

* Jan: In a democracy, when and where should majorities rule?

Refs

* 2024, 2023; 2022; 2021; 2020.

* Also available on Substack.

We must not stop research on solar geoengineering

Astonishing sanity from the Graun. What has happened? A week ago they published a dumb editorial saying wanky stuff about Africa not wanting SRM; I briefly considered blogging it but realised that wanky Graun editorials are not news. But sanity on SRM, even just as a letter or sequence of letters, is, so hurrah. "We should not stop" is of course a bit underwhelming; we haven't really started, so a better headline would be "We should start". Reflecting Sunlight from 2021 refers; have I really said nothing since then?

That alone would make a thin post; fortunately Auntie steps up with the admirably stupid UK launches taskforce to 'break down barriers' for women in technology for me to take the piss out of. It offers the deliciously stupid idea that women need to "have a seat at the table" which tells you the sort of utterly-pointless-meeting focussed mentality that idiots that write this stuff have, and why the current govt has no idea at all how to garner the growth it so ardently pretends to desire; failing to realise that it itself is the major problem.

Refs

* Book review: Climate Shlock.

* Is it pointless now to fight climate change?

* Happy Saturnalia.

* The Pledge.

The Idea of Justice, concluded, by Amartya Sen

The Introduction refers. Part one, as I suspected, doesn't improve on it. Indeed part one has very little to add, but attempts to disguise this with repeated repetitious repetition. Nonetheless it is not without virtue; whether that is inborn or only that it sparked thoughts in my mind I suppose I don't mind; the point is to think. I continued on, briefly, into parts two, three and four. I don't recommend you read this book; read The Open Society and Its Enemies instead.

Wiki claims that "The book is principally a critique and revision of John Rawls's basic ideas in A Theory of Justice"; this is kinda true, although I don't see Sen admitting that anywhere since it would be humiliating; but he is deeply in thrall to Rawls³.

Nonetheless Sen's main point remains his desire for a comparative theory of justice⁹, as opposed to one that would allow the construction of institutions¹, so he spends lots of time pointing out that Rawls' theory isn't useful from his point of view. He is though rather shy of talking this through with examples. At one point (p 104 in my edition) he calls out famine, or exclusion from medical access, as things calling urgently for remedy, which said remedy would advance Justice². But he does this without any form of comparison, so it isn't really clear that he even needs his comparative theory. Indeed, it isn't really clear that he needs any theory of Justice, since he is able to identify Injustice without it, and to know that removing this Injustice would "advance Justice".

Implicitly, though, he has in mind a comparison of "the existing world" with one pet Injustice - say, Famine - with another (imaginary) case - the same world, but without the malign situation⁸. Since the two differ (in his imagination) in no way other than one lacks <bad thing>, it is easy for him to say that the second is better. But of course, the second world doesn't actually exist, and nowhere does he knuckle down to the hard work of thinking how to compare the real world, with a better one where <bad thing> has been alleviated, but the various trade-offs necessary for that have taken place.

Notice that what he is calling for can also be interpreted as a call for piecemeal changes, rather than revolution. If we followed the imaginary Rawls program and devised new ideally just institutions, putting them in place would be a revolution. Sen is implicitly calling for fixing one thing at a time. This is exactly the idea of "piecemeal social engineering" that Popper puts forward in TOSAIE; can Sen really be that badly read that he doesn't know this?

It is easy to nod along at his idea that all we need to do is compare something unjust to something better and prefer the better; but I don't think it works. Imagine: you have wrangled control, or influence, somewhere, and get to promote Justice within some limited area. You perhaps look around, and identify <bad things>, and you think what might be done to make a <better world>. But you can't do any of this without a theory of what is Just, or where you want to get to. It is like Popper's point that to do Science, you cannot simply <make observations and deduce theories>. Without a theory, and idea, you have no wlay to decide what to observe. And a theory of (In)Justice that amounts to no more than "I know it when I see it" isn't transferrable from one mind to another. And when the goons from Sen's govt come to take away your flute¹⁰, you can have no answer to "but we say it is Just".

He is keen on Adam Smith's "impartial spectator" as an arbiter of morals, and this is nice, because Smith's humane discussion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is worth reading⁵. But his problem is that he leans too hard on the Spectator, to be kind to him; or being less kind, he hasn't really understood that the Spectator is a purely imaginary being. Yet Sen repeatedly speaks as though the Spectator can bring us information, in the way that a perspective from a real person outside us could. On a similar vein, he is keen to discuss what groups-of-people might form Rawls' Under-the-Veil groups⁶. Unfortunately, there is no answer to this; it is (yet another) weakness in Rawls, which he sweeps under the carpet because there is no answer. Sen is worried that Rawls' (effectively national) groups might lack external perspective from - ker-ching! - perhaps people in poorer nations⁷. But this is unthinking of him: people can still read under the Veil. Do we owe "concern" to people in other nations (p 129)? Sen would like to think so, but doesn't address the overwhelming additional complexity that forcing this "concern" would entail. Page 140 worries about exclusionary neglect and global justice, without ever noticing that most of the "excluded" folk's main problem is their own government, not anyone else's.

On page 61 there is a discussion of whether people can be expected to act in compliance with the agreement made Under-the-Veil. Rawls, who expects unanimity, thinks there would be (yay, and even unto the seventh generation, but what then?); Sen, who thinks there wouldn't be, regards this as a flaw; but the point is that we have the criminal law to deal with those who break the law (see also point 6 on page 90). On page 63 we find that Liberty, seen in the Introduction as a mere nice-to-have, has now become a central concern. This is an improvement. On page 75 we have a discussion of Goodness and Smartness which would benefit from reading Hazlitt. On page 82 he asserts that we have to seek institutions that promote justice rather than simply are just. But whether or not the state should force, nudge, or push folk to be moral is a subject of intense debate, not something to be simply asserted.

But really, there isn't much else there; if you've read this far and want more, get the book for yourself. He is fond of bringing in Akbar and other Indian worthies, perhaps to remind us that India exists. He has a couple of pages of "critique of the enlightenment" which says that their over-reliance on reason has lead to atrocities like Stalin and Pol Pot. This is stupid, obviously, so he then walks it back again, leaving us with a net wasted two pages and a small portion of our lives wasted that we shall never get back⁴.

Part two

There is, predictably, little in it. I find a brief discussion of whether we owe duties, due to our power, to the less powerful. Sen clearly thinks we do, but is unable or unwilling to advance any clear arguments in favour of the idea (around p 206). There's also a discussion of "consequential-ism" vs "duty-ism", conducted bizarrely within an Arjuna-Vishna framework, p 210. At no point does Sen realise that one good reason for following rules-aka-duty is that the consequences of some actions cannot reasonably be forseen (if you decline to fight a battle for fear of killing people, will that save the people, or - perhaps by making the battle less decisive - kill even more people? Sen just doesn't think things through).

Part three

Part three flows by without any great evidence of thought; I have to admit I'm skipping, though. He is keen on capabilities; cripples are poorer than they look. This is something you need to worry about, if you insist on mixting justice and economics.

Part four

By p 374 we're on human rights, which is my excuse to trot out I dislike rights-based language. He has no such qualms, to him rights are just good things; and I can't tell from his careless text whether he thinks he is writing Truth or Opinion. There's a right not to be assaulted, there's a right not to be tortured, and you definitely don-'t want to stop and think: hold on... Isn't not being tortured already covered in not being assaulted? Why do we need a seperate, much more limited right? The answer of course is that, oh dear, "not being assaulted" turns out to be too broad; under certain circumstances The State is going to assault you (police controlling a riot, perhaps); and so we need a seperate right for oh no The State really really won't violate this one, except very rarely and in the darkness. But subtleties of that order are beyond Sen, vitiating his discussion.

He doesn't seem very good at economics: if someone wants to do something, in ordinary economic terms that is what they want, it is in their interest to do it, it represents utility to them; doing it is good to them and being prevented is bad. But Sen insists we must carefully examine whether it is really in their "interest" to do the thing (p 378) - which is, in reality, impossible to do. This all seems a part of his paternalism.

Notes

1. This despite the fact that Rawl's theory, whilst nominally constructive, doesn't actually manage to construct any institutions, even if you neglect his many fatal errors. Oh, I said that last time. Never mind.

2. Still without clarifying quite what Justice is; I think we have to take from his examples of non-Just situations what Justice might be; or perhaps he is implicitly using Hobbes' "all that is not unjust is just" idea.

3. Wiki also points me to a gushing Economist review.

4. Or at least, I have. You dear reader can avoid that fate by not reading it. Aside: you will perhaps find this hard to believe but in pre-composing this review in my head I formulated much well-deserved invective, but decided to omit it.

5. Although (cough) I admit to only having read about the first third. To be vaguely fair to me I dropped it in the bath, so it puffed out and became harder to read, but I really ought to pick it up again.

6. See this link to my earlier review of Rawls if you've forgotten what the Veil is. For my use, see the footnote on page 57 which makes it clear, if you're in doubt, that (a) Rawls really does expect unanimity; and (b) he was aware of objections to this idea even pre-publication.

7. And yet he offers very weak examples of what might benefit from such an analysis; see p 71 where women's rights, and the death penalty, are suggested.

8. Which means that all the pseudo-mathematical wankery about partial orderings is pointless. It also means that really, he isn't even doing a simple comparison; he just says that <bad things> are <bad>.

9. I am - characteristically - being overly generous to my subject. As other comments show, Sen really isn't interested in a "theory" of Justice at all; and perhaps to be fair the title is "idea", not "theory". It would be more accurate to say that he argues against the utility of a theory, and instead relentlessly pushed the idea of comparatives, without ever doing the hard work required to make his idea coherent.

10. If that doesn't mean anything to you, see the Introduction.

The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen: Introduction

Just the introduction (but now the rest is also available), but there's enough wrong in it that it is worth writing up, or so I fool myself. I picked this book up knowing I was going to disagree with it, but interested to discover exactly where. So don't accuse me of being unbiased.

Hobbes, as we all know, taught us the meaning of Justice quite some time ago. And yet it is an unpopular definition, since it lacks wiggle room; there is nothing there for smooth-tongued lawyers or slippery politicians or unscrupulous economists.

Sen, to be fair, lays his approval of theft out for all to see early on with a parable: consider three children disputing the ownership of a wooden flute. Child A asserts that she is the only one who can play it, and thus should have it. Child B says that he is much poorer than the other two, and has no other toys, and thus should have it. Child C says that she has spent the past few months making the flute by herself. Hobbes, and I, and any other sane person, immeadiately sees the correct answer; but that is far too simple for the oh-so-sophisticated Sen, who wraps a cloud of squid-ink around a desire to steal the flute and gain the power and prestige that go with allocating it. And all without noting that in the real world, there is a further problem: only C has an unique claim; both A and B would in practice be but examplars of a class of meritless claimants. Back in the real world, he is keen on "patent reform" to make drugs more available to the third world, which is apparently "clearly" part of "global justice", also an undefined term. But if you wish to improve the lives of the poor, and are granting yourself in imagination god-like powers to change the world, why not imagine giving these poor folk western-style govt instead of the hideously corrupt pols currently keeping them poor?

 

Sen would like to contrast what-he-calls a "transcendental" approach (he has been reading too much Kant) with a "comparative" approach. The T-folk seek ultimately just institutions by construction¹; the C-folk are more interested in comparing outcomes under actual institutions. He claims Hobbes for the T-folk but this is an error on his part (I don't think he has actually read much Hobbes); Hobbes doesn't really design institutions; his work is at a deeper level than that, on the definition of the word. Sen wants his ideas of Justice to guide his social arrangements, in some way; again, he doesn't justify this he rather takes it as given; but I say that on a sub-stratum of Justice you can build many different social arrangements and it isn't at all clear why your Justice should guide these at all.

Sen does not trouble himself with the meaning of the word Justice, treating it I can only assume as well known, since he doesn't even trouble to note that he isn't going to define it. Instead he saying that a starting point will be something like "how can justice be advanced?".

Sen has a lot of time for Rawls, who he regards as the leading political philosopher of our time, which is toss. But he does at least manage to notice what so many others fail to see, that there will not be agreement under the Veil of Ignorance.

He is weakly in favour of freedom: freedom to choose our lives can improve our well-being, and beyond that it may be valuable in itself (my bold).

Anyway, that concludes the introduction.

Refs

* The Climate-Risk Industrial Complex and the Manufactured Insurance Crisis.

* A serious problem in the developing world is that the moment anyone makes anything, their family and relations show up demanding a claim. Or, Bryan Caplan's version.

* District Court Judge Patti Saris vacated a Trump executive order that brought a halt to all offshore wind power development, as well as some projects on land.

* Public Choice: The Normative Core.

Notes

1. Or so Sen repeatedly claims, and I think it is fair to say this is where Rawls would like to go. But whilst this may be in principle their desire, in practice they get nowhere near deriving institutions; indeed, Rawls gets nowhere near even deriving, say, the Constitution.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is a book by Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume. I'll stop quoting from Wiki there because the rest of the article isn't so great, in my humble opinion. Be warned that whilst I of course regard my own views as the finest available, I am to some extent riding my hobby horse in this review, and indeed in bothering to read the thing at all. Follow along with the text from Gutenberg.

Context: as we all know, The Foundations of Morality were ably described by Hazlitt in 1964 and less ably paraphrased by me as a system of general rules that ensure social cooperation in the long-term for everyone's benefit. Hume doesn't know that, since he died in 1776 and wrote his book in 1751. But it is interesting to see how far he got.

The answer is that he did well, and indeed reading him I find more sense than elsewhere, but he still only gets a partial credit.

Wiki is keen to tell me that he thinks the foundations of morals lie with sentiment, not reason; that might arguably be true, but isn't really interesting, and rather misses the point⁶. I wonder if I might make some attempt to improve the article but I doubt I have the strength of will; instead I contented myself with some cosmetic enhancement.

Instead, Hume's principle contention is that morality is grounded on usefulness; specifically, usefullness to society as a whole. This, you will immeadiately notice, bears a strong resemblance to Hazlitt's theory, in that the kind of usefullness Hume is thinking of is fostering the bonds of society.

Some quotes for Utility: We may observe that, in displaying the praises of any humane, beneficent man, there is one circumstance which never fails to be amply insisted on, namely, the happiness and satisfaction, derived to society from his intercourse and good offices... As these topics of praise never fail to be employed, and with success, where we would inspire esteem for any one; may it not thence be concluded, that the utility, resulting from the social virtues, forms, at least, a PART of their merit, and is one source of that approbation and regard so universally paid to them? and In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil. He does notice, though, that there are sometimes difficulties in deciding what is useful: Giving alms to common beggars is naturally praised; because it seems to carry relief to the distressed and indigent: but when we observe the encouragement thence arising to idleness and debauchery, we regard that species of charity rather as a weakness than a virtue.

Section 3 discusses Justice. This is odd, to me, because Justice is not part of Morality. Morality is sort-of short-range Justice, and Justice long-range Morality². My book's annotations offer me Hume is not thinking of justice in terms of criminal justice. He is discussing political rights and rules of property. But that doesn't really help; Justice, in these texts, is usually such rather than criminal justice. So I hold this to be a flaw in Hume. He offers the interesting: Were there a species of creatures intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment and concludes that the necessary consequence, I think, is that we should be bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. He offers animals as an example; but that fails, because they are not rational. He offers women, under some circumstances, as another; that too fails, as he himself admits. I think that such creatures, were they to exist, would be disadvantaged; but I see no reason why they would not be part of Justice. I also, on reflection, can't see why he brought the idea up.

Section 4, Of Political Society, contains Why abridge our native freedom, when, in every instance, the utmost exertion of it is found innocent and beneficial? It is evident, that, if government were totally useless, it never could have place, and that the sole foundation of the duty of allegiance is the ADVANTAGE, which it procures to society, by preserving peace and order among mankind which I find dubious. He fails to consider what we see in some places today, effectively govt-by-brigands⁷. But his general point, that we tolerate the restrictions that govt puts on our liberty because of their overall usefulness, remains. He also correctly notes what I think I've said elsewhere: that the laws of good manners [are] a kind of lesser morality.

Section 5, Why Utility Pleases, starts by observing that It seems so natural a thought to ascribe to their utility the praise, which we bestow on the social virtues, that one would expect to meet with this principle everywhere in moral writers, as the chief foundation of their reasoning and enquiry. This echoes Popper's plaintive wondering. I don't think he quite ever says that this utility would seem far too plebian for the elevated minds of the antients and the prissy moderns; morality is "meant" to be finer than that⁵. And there's the quite Hazlittian And as the public utility of these virtues is the chief circumstance, whence they derive their merit, it follows, that the end, which they have a tendency to promote, must be some way agreeable to us, and take hold of some natural affection. It must please, either from considerations of self-interest, or from more generous motives and regards.

Part 2 of that section begins Self-love is a principle in human nature of such extensive energy, and the interest of each individual is, in general, so closely connected with that of the community, that those philosophers were excusable, who fancied that all our concern for the public might be resolved into a concern for our own happiness and preservation... we must renounce the theory, which accounts for every moral sentiment by the principle of self-love. We must adopt a more public affection, and allow, that the interests of society are not, even on their own account, entirely indifferent to us. This I think is where he falls behind Hazlitt. He sees quite clearly that on occasion our own selfish desires will push us to behave immorally or unjustly. Unlike Hazlitt, he doesn't emphasise that in general, self and societies interests are strongly aligned (and we could not survive in society otherwise). Unlike Hazlitt, he doesn't quite realise that morality forces us to act against our own best - or at least immeadiate - interests at times. He is forced to take refuge in It is needless to push our researches so far as to ask, why we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with others. It is sufficient, that this is experienced to be a principle in human nature. But Hazlitt doesn't need this principle; because he has an economic multiple-timescale view.

This theory of utility explains why Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues [are] everywhere rejected by men of sense; they are not true virtues for society. And so A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar⁸; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society.

I'll stop at a part of the conclusion: But what philosophical truths can be more advantageous to society, than those here delivered, which represent virtue in all her genuine and most engaging charms, and makes us approach her with ease, familiarity, and affection? The dismal dress falls off, with which many divines, and some philosophers, have covered her; and nothing appears but gentleness, humanity, beneficence, affability; nay, even at proper intervals, play, frolic, and gaiety. She talks not of useless austerities and rigours, suffering and self-denial. She declares that her sole purpose is to make her votaries and all mankind, during every instant of their existence, if possible, cheerful and happy; nor does she ever willingly part with any pleasure but in hopes of ample compensation in some other period of their lives. The sole trouble which she demands, is that of just calculation, and a steady preference of the greater happiness. Notice that the self and society are deemed to be aligned, as long as we are capable of "just calculation" and "steady preference of the greater happiness". But for some, that is too much to ask.

Right, that's about yer lot; I've written enough on this. But before I go, some trivia. Hume was apparently disappointed by the reception of his A Treatise of Human Nature and attempted to improve his prose style in this tome⁴. Alas, while his writing is all very gentlemanly and good-natured, he constantly falls into over-flowery prose with convoluted reversed syntax and mostly refuses to write plain simple sentences; he learnt the wrong lessons. Trivia two is that he believes that we can only expect success, by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances; this is very Baconian of him, and all too apt for the man who first formulated the Problem of Induction; we naturally forgive him for failing to forsee Popper's solution of the problem, by denying his method of producing science¹. T3 is that Morality is fundamentally relational; it is our acts and effects that are moral, or otherwise. Hume however is inclined to think in terms of a more unipolar "moral character", perhaps a-la Aristotle.

Does reading moral philosophy make me any more moral? No. Per Kant, everyone has a good idea of what ordinary everyday morality is³. Similarly, no-one needs a background in number theory in order to do addition. But it does help make sense of edge cases, like international relations; or woke and our ever-shifting moral system.

Notes

1. I don't want to push this too hard here, but I think you can see this even in the text of his work. He does consider examples; but from them he pulls a theory - utility - and proceeds to "test" that, and discover that he cannot refute it. As yet another trivia point, I found this for myself recently: looking at - solving - one of those IQ test puzzles I found on the wub, where there is, effectively, a sequence and you have to find the next term, I realised that what I was doing was guessing patterns, and then testing them.

2. There's another aspect between them that I don't think Hume mentions, that Justice (in the sense I am thinking of; of obedience to the Law) is a negative virtue whereas Morality has both positive and negative. The Law will punish the unjust (ideally) but it will not reward the just. Whereas society punishes the immoral and rewards the moral. I almost think there ought to be a physical analogue for this, related to the long / short distinction.

3. Or from the present work, Such frequent occasion, indeed, have we, in common life, to pronounce all kinds of moral determinations, that no object of this kind can be new or unusual to us; nor could any FALSE views or prepossessions maintain their ground against an experience, so common and familiar.

4. There are some nice little bon-mots, of the kind I think a cultivated man is expected to include; for example: A man's time, when well husbanded, is like a cultivated field, of which a few acres produce more of what is useful to life, than extensive provinces, even of the richest soil, when over-run with weeds and brambles.

5. But there's another bon-mot to analogise this: If the ground, on which the shadow is cast, be not broken and uneven; nor the surface from which the image is reflected, disturbed and confused; a just figure is immediately presented, without any art or attention. And it seems a reasonable presumption, that systems and hypotheses have perverted our natural understanding, when a theory, so simple and obvious, could so long have escaped the most elaborate examination.

6. I feel obliged to write something, if incomplete, here. Already the book is slipping from my memory. Hume's point is that ultimately our desire rests on what-we-desire, which is sentiment, or feeling. Our ends cannot be rationally justified (sez 'e). But he is quite clear that rationality is needed to chose amongst our various possible actions.

7. To be fair to Hume, he may be talking about - errm, what he actually says - duty-of-allegiance, in which case the kind of forced-obedience I'm carping about isn't a fair complaint.

8. I.e., become a saint.

Refs

* Eleventh Circuit Rejects Trump's Defamation Lawsuit Over CNN 2022 "Big Lie" Statement.

* The Banished Bottom of the Housing Market.

* RETRACTED: Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases by Jan Kubicki, Krzysztof Kopczyński, Jarosław Młyńczak.

* Trump's Shameful Attempt to Reprise the Munich Agreement With Ukraine - and What to do About it.

* Britain’s left-wing government is left-wing. An obvious fact. But still an overlooked one.

* Gypsies and Jews.

* The Battle for Climate Science and Policy Past—And Why It Matters.

* This is a special time to be alive says Sabine Hossenfelder. I offer this as a counter to my usual gloom.

Is it pointless now to fight climate change?

It am dat Sabine again. Worth listening to I think, though you're not obliged to accept every word. Mostly interesting because she segues into SRM (see reflecting sunlight). Presumably triggered by the Nude Scientist article, but sadly it is paywalled.

Lest one should get too carried away, I notice that Shaun Thingy, when actually quoted on his own webpage, is a good deal less forward. For myself, I think what I thought before: that we should be researching it, and not put of by the harpy like shrieking of the "environmentalists" who are opposed; they are no more really friends of the Earth any more than the pro-Hamxs types actually have the best interests of the Pales at heart.

Somewhat relatedly, my evolving views on global warming by John M. Wallace is worth reading  (std note: the only ref to him on my blog I can find is this comment by crandles).

And while I'm here I should note Bill Gate's Three tough truths about climate. RP is, naturally enough, happy to hear it. And the usual nutters call it "soft denial". Mann doesn't quite use the D-word himself, but he does have stupid things to say on the subject. And we wonder why it is so hard to have an intelligent conversation on the subject.

Refs

* And right on cue, some self-righteousness from some climbers. I too regret melting glaciers, but we're all burning fossil fuels to get to the mounains, and no that is not the fault of the Evil Fossil Fuel companies, it is the fault of the people burning the fuels.

* The Competitive Chaos Behind Moore’s Law by Brian Albrecht.

* FTC vs Meta: court tells FTC to fuck off.