Friday, July 15, 2022

Sapience, sentience and AI... and other hot science news!

Ah… sapience


In another posting here I re-issued my June op-ed in NEWSWEEK about human response to AI, especially ‘empathy bots” like the notorious LaMDA. This op-ed - and other interviews - referred to a prediction I made 5 years ago that "in five years or so, we'll be challenged by announcements of a fully sapient AI, demanding sympathy... and cash."  


Here's that talk on the A.I. future  at IBM's World of Watson event in 2017, that offered big perspectives on both artificial and human augmentation... and the text version. Few topics are more pressing for our future path... except saving civilization and the world and justice... and those will wind up enmeshed tightly with AI.


And so, in this more general science roundup, we'll start by diving into the topic of sapience (a much better word than the badly misused "sentience") yet again, as I expect we’ll do many times ahead.


== Sapience… sentience… pre vs. post ==


First, we know of only one sapient species, so far. This interesting paper appraises changes – across the last 6000 years or so - in prevalence of a number of genes that favor General Cognitive Ability (GCA). These observations are consistent with the expectation that GCA rose during the Holocene.  The result is very much in tune with what I posited in EXISTENCE. That there seem to have been rapid speedups in cognition and inventiveness, starting especially around 60,000 years ago.

What about our fellow Earthlings? It seems almost monthly that we see more stories about clever animals who use or even invent tools, who concoct clever escape plans, as in the case of a famous San Diego Zoo orangutan

...or who bear long memory grudges toward individual humans, as in swarms of vengeful crows or this Indian elephant, who showed up at the funeral of a woman he had trampled to death days earlier, to hurl the body and trample it, some more.

This topic, which I dived into 40 years ago with my Uplift Series, continues to fascinate, as in stories of wounded or entangled creatures deliberately seeking help from humans to patch harms or cut nets, etc., clearly making a distinction between good/helpful and bad/dangerous people.


Fascinating also is the way that – in many octopus species – the mother guards her eggs… only to later leave them and suicide in bizarre ways. While the main cause is unknown, some of the processes are being revealed. 


== And on to other science matters.... ==


Heads up. The search for room temperature superconductors is over! Though not yet useful, since the ‘higher order hydride’ structures that now superconduct at even 550K still require immense pressures. Still…


How are geographical discoveries still possible even now? “Cave explorers stumbled upon a prehistoric forest at the bottom of a giant sinkhole in South China earlier this month. Sinkholes such as these are also known in Chinese as Tiankeng, or "Heavenly pit. At 630 feet deep, the sinkhole would hide the Washington Monument and then some. The bottom of the pit holds an ancient forest spanning nearly three football fields in length, with trees towering over 100 feet. 

Even deeper, new techniques allow mapping of  the boundary between the Earth's iron-nickel core and surrounding mantle to better understand one of the major engines for plate tectonics, volcano formation, and other related processes like earthquakes. Other scientists also believe there is a link between ultra-low velocity zones and volcanic hotspots, such as those in Hawaii and Iceland.


Neanderthal Man’s Recreated Face Takes Internet By Storm.  And yes, it is a cool reconstruction! Though come on. These folks lived primarily in Europe to the Urals. And this particular fellow lived in Doggerland, between England and Denmark. He’d have white skin. Vitamin D, don’t cha know. Possibly even blond hair.


If the Amazon dies, beef will be the killer. And America will be an accomplice, Brazil is burning down the Amazon so you can eat steak. And I say this as a NON-vegetarian.... who has cut way back on air-breathing meat for numerous reasons like health, but also in order not be contributing one more economic driver to such devastation. I can sustain my carnivorality tastes treating red stuff as a condiment, like ketchup! And bring on the tissue culture!



Interesting medical news:


Further facial recreation: an article in the NYT about a patient who had a prosthetic ear 3D printed from her own cells. Beyond immediate beneficial medical use, it could/would eventually lead to people using this technology for "artistic" purposes - that is, in the same way that we customize bodies using tattoos and piercings, we could "add" additional fleshy lumps to various places. They can’t print nerve cells (for now, anyway) so the new additions would have the tactile sensation of a plastic brick.  So your stylish elf ears might have… Legoleprosy?


As blogmunity member “Talin” suggests: “A different extrapolation is one where the archetypal fantasy races - elves / dwarves / orcs and so on - are actually created from humans who want to live that lifestyle. I mean we sort of have the beginnings of this with gender-affirming surgery..."species affirming"?”

"Small cancer drug trial sees tumors disappear in 100 percent of patients". 


And also the diabetes drug that lost a lot of folks a lot of weight.



== Finally, all about science and…. magic!  ==


Caltech physicist Spiros Michalakis and Hollywood writer/producer Ed Solomon (co-creator of Bill & Ted) speak with Caltech science writer (and sci-fi fan) Whitney Clavin about how they collaborate to make science shine in film.  


First, there IS a form of magic that irrefutably works and it works via modalities of incantation. If you define that magic is about using word spells to create vivid subjective realities in other peoples’ heads, then I am among the top, industrial grade magicians. Ever.


Some assert that magic can also affect objective reality - e.g. making the rain fall or putting-on hexes or curing ailments, despite the fact that most such claims evaporate under scrutiny.  A few don't evaporate! In fact, any magic that does causally affect the physical world consistently eventually becomes... part of science.


But there is also some merit to studying magical claims, even knowing they are objectively bogus, because they were utterly persuasive for tens of thousands of years. 


And so, here at this posting I talk about some of the rule-based systems that have been used in magic systems by shamans and wizards and priests for millennia. And here, I discuss the differences between science fiction and fantasy.


In this audio talk, I dive into some of the fundamental differences and similarities between magic and science.


And we all have superstitious or romantic corners within us. The trick is to reserve them for certain realms that enrich our lives... our personal lives of evenings and weekends and art and fantasy... while being abolutely determined to exile romanticism and subjective roars and such twaddle from the daytime business of justice and negotiating pragmatic solutions anf - above all - policy.


153 comments:

Larry Hart said...

Iran selling armed drones to Russia is a game changer for me.

For years now, I've been on the "Why not make peace with Iran?" and "Saudi Arabia sucks" side, but if the Saudis are backing Ukraine and Iran is backing Russia, that all changes.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/11/iran-uav-drones-russia-00045195

The Iranian government is preparing to send “several hundred” drones, including some equipped with weapons, to Russia at some point in July, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday.

David Brin said...

The Suadi+Israel alliance is both disturbing and progress, if it gets the Wahabbi/Salafists to stop including 'death to all Jews!" in every textbook they give to childrenaround the globe. That and $100bn in aid to Palestinians could help make up for 75 years preventing Palestinian Arabs from leaving the camps for new lives across the Arab world. Now get your mitts off US politics.

Then, if Israelis get get a rational majpority behind the 2 state solution, Iran's whole pose as sacred defenders of Palestine might collapse.

Alas, so many obstacles.

----


“Horrifying images from Ukraine spark renewed calls for war crime investigations.” Our biggest problem here… and our greatest opportunity and Putin’s worst danger… that truth might penetrate the Russian propaganda curtain so that the people learn what atrocities have been done in their name. So far, it’s he-said, she-said and people (Russians especially) tend to close ranks, giving their leader benefit of the doubt. (Not Americans, though, criminy!) But here is a way past this! DAMAND A GRAND JURY of randomly chosen citizens (based on lists that were reliable before the war: e.g. from databases of water or utility companies. Use standard grandjury vetting to cull the fanatical, but get 100 citizen jurors from each of Russia, Ukraine, the US, China, Europe and the Developing world. Now pay what it takes to send those 500 world citizens on a fact-finding tour with live cameras. Let them see the bombarded areas, the refugee camps, interview soldiers on both sides, etc. See which side’s claims of blanket shelling of civilians is actually true.

Of course Putin will first ignore the demand… then reject it with a laugh. Then reject it angrily! But that very rejection will turn into his poison. Because it is so blatantly and blanketly the right thing to do and those demanding it are blatantly the ones unafraid of the truth.

The trick here is repetition. As with my other versions of this same notion of confrontational transparency/accountability. Liars flee when you demand WAGERS, for example! They wriggle and laugh then scream and point offstage and change the subject. So, instead of playing whack-a-mole with fact-haters, you repeat the demand, in clear terms, that specific things they are yammering be factually checked. And that YOU are the one with confidence and guts, willing to put up money stakes, while the macho twits are weenie cowards without the cojones to stand and back up their blowhard BS.

Let me repeat the core point. Zero in on their biggest lie and HAMMER it, then again and again refusing to be distracted. (Try the two words the terrify every right wing liar-pundit: ‘ocean acidification.’)

Re the Ukraine War and rousing the Russian citizenry, the citizen investigation commission demand - if repeated over and over - would corner Putin as word of the simple demand leaks in and average Russians wonder: “Well? Why not?”

Moreover, would set a fantastic precedent for the future of all conflicts!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/horrifying-images-ukraine-spark-renewed-calls-war-crime-investigations-rcna22808

Alfred Differ said...

Ukraine's traditional role through history is as the place others fight over using forces located there. Germany played a similar role in Europe for a LONG time.

Iran is weapon testing... as are others. It sucks for the people who live there, but the US is benefiting from knowing what Iran can and can't do with the tools of asymmetric warfare.

-----

I'd argue for a darker skinned Neanderthal, but only because cold, icy winds make leather of all nomads.

"White" among our type of hominid is a recent thing and they weren't so nomadic at that point.

scidata said...

Busy.
In ST-TOS, Dr. Daystrom's M-5 computer drew more and more power as its capabilities grew, and eventually seemed to drain & torment Daystrom himself. I have a similar experience with my SELDON-1 processor project. What hath my soldering iron wrought?

Also my Toronto Blue Jays require constant care & attention.

And my obligatory WJCC thought. While it's true that many here in CB may not care or even understand the reference, big tech does, state & federal gov'ts do, and many tens of millions of dollars are suddenly being invested. They still don't see the examples-in-textbooks trees for the Colossal Education Doctrine forest. IMHO, pervasive, 'sub-doctrinal', early computational thinking is the best hope for thwarting The Collapse. It's charming that Hadi Partovi is being lauded for his nine years in the wilderness. But WJCC was penned 16 years ago. I built my first digital computer 45 years ago only because I wanted, nay needed, to code. Like Asimov, I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-07-12/meta-microsoft-ceos-double-tap-on-computer-science-education


Calculemus!

Tony Fisk said...

Has anyone tried to gene sequence a neanderthal? That might answer the question (they were actually purple*)
As for blondes, well, there's a group of melanesians with that trait.

I honestly don't know what Papa Pooh tin is praying for at this stage. Raising volunteer(?) brigades from each district to be sent in after thirty days training. Oh, and this motley crew is expected to take the whole of Kharkiv oblast...

I only hope the (other) Russians love their children too.

*prove me wrong.

DP said...

Larry

We trump the Iranian drone ace with Israeli (Iron Beam) or American (THEL - developed with the Israelis) battlefield lasers.

Nobody siding with Putin has similar anti-drone technology.

DP said...

The Magas are just a front.

Here is the real Christo=fascist threat and real life republic of Gilead.

Watch and be terrified.

https://mobile.twitter.com/NickKnudsenUS/status/1547259907275075584?s=20&t=ta651bw_uk77pco0ad9-NA

DP said...

Update, Poland has an order in for 500 HIMARS.

We need to send 1,000 HIMARS to Ukraine to break the Russian army quickly.

Pound the shit out of their logistics infrastructure and command systems until we run out of targets to hit.

Why?

Because the war has now become a race to see which will collapse first: the Russian army or the German economy (and possibly the rest of Europe).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln2F0rublB4

Don't shed a tear for the Germans, their idiot Greens did that to themselves, getting rid of nuclear power and becoming hooked on Russian gas.

Meanwhile, thank God you live in North America because we won't be starving in the coming years, but our grocery bills will be higher.

Grocery prices are the result of global warming hurting crop yields and the Ukraine war removing Ukrainian and Russian wheat from world markets.

And the result of petroleum related price increases to fertilizer production.

Fertilizer costs tripled this year.

Again because of the Ukrainian war.

Meanwhile, nations deep in debt like Sri Lanka, Guatemala and Lebanon, are falling apart - with dozens more dominos waiting in line.

Again due to the Ukrainian war.

We have to end this war quickly with 1,000 HIMARS crushing the Russian army ASAP.

We can't let this war drag on, or everything starts to unravel and vast belts of Latin America, Africa, Middle East, and Asia become lawless failed states - a giant version of Somalia.

DP said...

Tony

A question on Neanderthal chins. Neanderthals have what we homo sapiens call a "weak chin", though their jawlines are massive.

Are humans today with weak chins evidence of Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal cross breeding?

DP said...

Dr. Brin

"Our biggest problem here… and our greatest opportunity and Putin’s worst danger… that truth might penetrate the Russian propaganda curtain so that the people learn what atrocities have been done in their name."

I think you will find that the Russian people already know and approve of these atrocities.

David Brin said...


DP we have small teams testing things like laser systems in Ukraine, with orders to not get captured, naturally. It’s another thing to deploy the laser systems in enough numbers to be tactical. You must prevent seizure at all costs.

DP we don’t have 1000 Himars to send. So far it seems (seem from unconfirmed reports) that the dozen or so HIMARS (US officials only admit to four) have been doing incredible damage to RF logistics and command/supply centers, forcing panicky dispersal. Alas, what they cannot do is take out the masses of RF artillery who are terrorizing Uk cities and civilians, or else powering the grinding pain of RF advances. HIMARS is too expensive to use vs merely a couple of howitzers per shot. For that, you need super fast-accurate counter-fire systems. Both sides have those in grinding attrition. In theory, ours should be better and theirs should be jammable… and no one has any pity for those RF artilleryman mo-fos.

79 years ago today the greatest tank battle in history reached its climax at Kursk, just a little north of where the future of Europe – and possibly the world – is again being decided right now.

“I think you will find that the Russian people already know and approve of these atrocities.” RF propaganda claims the Uke’s are doing the civilian bombarding and RF forces are being very kind.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

“I think you will find that the Russian people already know and approve of these atrocities.” RF propaganda claims the Uke’s are doing the civilian bombarding and RF forces are being very kind.


With the caveat that I am not any kind of expert on Russia, my sense is that the people know that the Russian government narrative makes no sense. They choose to accept (rather than believe) it for the same reason the MAGAts do--because what the hell else do they have?

Paradoctor said...

DP:

Anti-nuclear fear is a direct consequence of a four-decade campaign of global thermonuclear terrorism, called the Cold War. The Pentagon and the Kremlin are the two biggest de facto spreaders of anti-nuke propaganda. If the Bomb didn't scare everybody, especially the political and financial elites, then all of those terabux would have been spent for nothing. But lucky us, this time tax money was not wasted. Now it's common sense worldwide to regard those alchemic hell-toys with revulsion. Mission accomplished!

So why complain when a tax-paid global education campaign succeeds? And succeeds so well that the fear it taught persists for generations? Are we to suddenly reverse our conditioning, upon command? You wouldn't treat a dog like that.

But the power companies said that their atoms are for peace? SAC said "peace is our profession". Why trust either? Besides, those reactors generate the plutonium needed for SAC's bombs. And sure, nuclear power is clean and safe - until it isn't. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone will be an evolutionary hotspot for the next 10,000 years, partly due to radiation mutations, and partly because humans will stay away and not interfere.

You can do statistics proving that coal is worse, and I agree, but not even money-men are that rational. So face it: we as a species are ensorcelled. If you want nuclear power, then you must break a global psychological block. You need counter-spells.

One popular counter-spell is solar. It's thermonuclear power, yikes, but it's from a safe 8.5 light-minutes away. The trick is collecting and storing the power-too-cheap-to-meter.

My own favorite counter-spell is the LFTR; the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. This is partly for the inherent safety features of the design; partly for the greater abundance of thorium over uranium; partly for the shorter life of the waste (3 centuries instead of 200 centuries); partly because it can use that 200-century waste and turn it into 3-century waste; partly that you can collect valuable rhodium from its waste; but mostly because long ago the DoD evaluated the LFTR against the plutonium-cycle reactor, and rejected the thorium reactor precisely because it is useless at making bomb-grade plutonium. (The plutonium it makes is inevitably contaminated with a gamma emitting isotope; so it's hazardous to handle, it degrades any electronics or explosives near it, and its position is detectable from afar.)

For the MADmen themselves to reject LFTR, as being useless for killing a million in a minute; now there's an endorsement!

David Brin said...

paradoc yes re LFTR. But can you really argue that SAC wasn't effective? We... are... still... here.

DP said...

Paradoc - the biggest spreaders of anti-nuclear propaganda is the coal industry.

DP said...

"DP we don’t have 1000 Himars to send."

Bit of hyperbole on my part

CP said...

Regarding Neanderthal skin color: a couple briefe articles via google:

https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals/dna-genotypes-and-phenotypes

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22308-europeans-did-not-inherit-pale-skins-from-neanderthals/

So, perhaps variable but most commonly dark.

Der Oger said...

Don't shed a tear for the Germans, their idiot Greens did that to themselves, getting rid of nuclear power and becoming hooked on Russian gas.

Actually, it was the conservative-libertarian coalition under Merkel who pushed the nuclear exit forward, partly as a reaction to Fukushima-related polls, partly to demobilize green voters when they first became a threat to stable conservative-dominated coalitions. In the years up until last year, the conservatives fought regenerative energies and trashed the fledgling industry. During the last eight years, Merkel partnered with the SPD, who traditionally had friendly relationships with the Russian government and industry. They effectively killed 80.000 jobs in the renewable sector to save 20.000 in coal.

And also actually, it where the Greens who warned about the looming Ukraine war and positioned most decisively against Russia and China during the election campaign last summer. During the current crisis, they (and the libertarians) form the hawkish part of the government, while the social democrats form the dovish part with regards to Putin.

Also, they currently are considered to be the working part of the government. They explain their policies well and authentically, and have to address a situation they had - at least for the last sixteen years - no responsibility and possibility to act on. They are staunchly pro-Nato, pro-EU, anti-Putin*. They have gathered new sources of fossile energies, even partnering with states they don't want, speed-construct LNG terminals (even if that means endangering local maritime life further** and possibly alienating their political base), coal from Columbia, increasing the percentage of land that may be used for agriculture, and supported the 9€ ticket (use of public transportation excluding high speed trains for a month for said price).

Many people and most major parties are to blame for the current mess we're in; the Greens bear the least responsibility for it. More likely: It is the part of our country who was either ignorant or "morally neglected by wealth" who is to blame, falls for the conservative press and their dirty campaigning. Elections have consequences.

Oh, and as an afterthought: Who sold us our Uranium until now? You'll guess it, probably.

Der Oger said...

Something I forgot to mention:

Nuclear energy was a cultural wedge issue from the start on. Like, speed limits on the Autobahn or refugees/immigrants. Like, gun control and abortion rights in the US, but not to the extent it is today.

Tens of thousands of protesters and policemen clashing every other weekend or so from the early eighties to the start of the millenium. And corruption and shady domestic intelligence service work of which we will never see the bottom of. And the same politicians demanding nuclear energy refusing that a waste disposal site will be build in their state. And bought "science", too. Geological Experts who deemed locations safe that in the end, when waste was deposited there, weren't; and other experts who warned had their careers ended.

That is also part of that story.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

Anti-nuclear fear is a direct consequence of a four-decade campaign of global thermonuclear terrorism, called the Cold War. ...
If the Bomb didn't scare everybody, ...


The association with nuclear weapons is part of it, but that's not the whole story. There's also the fear of nuclear meltdown, as in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc.) The thought of a large swath of land being poisoned for generations.

And yes, I know that you're more likely to die in a car accident, but the fear of nuclear accidents isn't about how likely they are, but how devastating they are if one should occur.

Der Oger said...

DP, I watched the video you linked, and I must say, it is blatantly bad journalism.

1) There is no state-induced rationing of energy or gas as of right now. At the current level of the energy emergency plan (2 of 3),
- Monitoring of energy use is in play
- the Industry is actively asked to come forward with plans to address the problem.
At level three (which could come anywhere between July 21st and autumn), the Ministry of Economics could introduce mandatory rationing (starting with the Industry first, and private households and essential buildings like hospitals, nursing homes and schools last).
All rationing that is in play is voluntary and at the levels of the communities, such as not heating up public baths up to 28°. Rationing Lighting is also in the area of the communities, and was always a thing as long I can remember. For example, my own community switches of the light at midnight, and the neighbouring one two hours earlier.
2) Wind power legislation installed by the conservatives requires wind turbines at least 1km away from inhabited areas. Good look finding a space where that is the case in a country crowded as ours. Also, progress on a energy conduit from the north (where the wind is) to the south (where the energy is needed) is painfully slow, mostly because all major building projects in GER are (10-20 years). Just find a rare beetle or flower happen to live just there, and you can say goodbye to your project.
3) Comparing/likening it to Texas is an false equation. Unlike the US and that particular state, we actually care a bit on maintaining our net, connect it to other European states, and try to improve energy efficiency. Air conditioning is quite rare.
4) France is relying heavily on nuclear power plants. Problem is, most of them are quite old and risky; several of them had to be shutted down because the temperature of the cooling water was to high this year. Climate change affects them, too, and would affect our older reactors in the same way if they would still be running.
5) The remaining three power plants are already in a stage of retirement that it would require a full year to reactivate them. Even the heads of industry have declined to use them further.

Don Gisselbeck said...

Regarding nuclear power, we need to keep reminding people that the question of what bad happens to nuclear waste in porous rock has already been answered - pretty much nothing. Read up on the Oklo natural reactors.

David Brin said...

If there comes an urgent national emergency, Yucca Mountain should be opened for business by force majeur.

Tim H. said...

I just read that Eric Flint passed away today his "Ring of Fire" alternate history series was entertaining.

GMT -5 8032 said...

I deleted my earlier comment about nuclear waste and thorium (LFTR) reactors since I was lazy and did not read all of Paradoctor's post, and Dr. Brin's response, before writing my response. I am embarrassed...deservedly so.

Allow me to add some content. I find it interesting that George Monbiot wrote that the Fukashima disaster actually converted him into supporting nuclear power.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima

"You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation."

I checked Wikipedia (I know, shame on me) and it reports that one person died from radiation exposure and 2,202 died during the evacuation. I will admit my bias...I am a big supporter of nuclear power. I think that modern designs could be made much safer; we've learned from our mistakes.

Here is an excellent video on "Who destroyed Three Mile Island." I am a big fan of Nick Means. I love his message of, "assume positive intent." https://youtu.be/1xQeXOz0Ncs

duncan cairncross said...

Nuclear power is the safest greenest power we have
Even the worst cluster fuck ever (Chernobyl) released about 20 tons of material

Coal is at least one part per million uranium - the 7,000 million tons of coal burnt each year means that 7,000 tons of uranium goes up the smokestacks each year

99.9% of the Chernobyl exclusion zone has never been as radioactive as Aberdeen in Scotland

Unfortunately nuclear is also about 5 times as expensive as the unholy triumvirate of Wind, Solar and Storage
Which are nearly as safe and green

Nuclear is as expensive now as it was 50 years ago - even if we can drop the cost I think the unholy triumvirate has got too much of a lead

DP said...

duncan - we got very lucky at Chernobyl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjM_97uKedQ

Larry Hart said...

Serious question--what is the current right-wing/MAGAt position on nuclear power.

I mean, I'm sure they like its owning-the-libs policy, but they don't like its replacing-oil policy. So what do they actually root for?

Larry Hart said...

Heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show...

"Someone posted a picture of Donald and Ivana Trump and said, 'Don't you hope they got back together soon?'"

Larry Hart said...

What we already know...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jul18.html#item-7

The difference is striking and goes back to a fundamental difference between the parties. The Democrats think the most important thing is playing according to the rules and being fair. The Republicans think the most important thing is winning. It shows.

Larry Hart said...

Several people here have made this point about economic growth...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/18/magazine/herman-daly-interview.html

Growth is the be-all and end-all of mainstream economic and political thinking. Without a continually rising G.D.P., we’re told, we risk social instability, declining standards of living and pretty much any hope of progress. But what about the counterintuitive possibility that our current pursuit of growth, rabid as it is and causing such great ecological harm, might be incurring more costs than gains? That possibility — that prioritizing growth is ultimately a losing game — is one that the lauded economist Herman Daly has been exploring for more than 50 years. In so doing, he has developed arguments in favor of a steady-state economy, one that forgoes the insatiable and environmentally destructive hunger for growth, recognizes the physical limitations of our planet and instead seeks a sustainable economic and ecological equilibrium. “Growth is an idol of our present system,” says Daly, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, a former senior economist for the World Bank and, along with the likes of Greta Thunberg and Edward Snowden, a recipient of the prestigious Right Livelihood Award (often called the “alternative Nobel”). “Every politician is in favor of growth,” Daly, who is 84, continues, “and no one speaks against growth or in favor of steady state or leveling off. But I think it’s an elementary question to ask: Does growth ever become uneconomic?”
...

Paradoctor said...

LH:
Are Donald and Ivana going to the same place?

Yes: TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima did to the reputation of the light-water reactor what the Hindenburg did to the reputation of the hydrogen-lifted airship. I call them both 'refuted technologies'. The refutation is not entirely rational; it is in part dramatic. Coal kills more, but slowly and quietly. This matters, due to human psychology. You enter the future with the human race that you're in, rather than the human race that you'd like to be in.

As for the magat position on nukes; it's like in quantum mechanics. The particle's position doesn't exist until it is measured. Likewise, the magats don't _have_ a position on nukes, and won't until someone asks them; then they'll collapse to a random position, one that they'll insist they've always had.


DP:
Coal spread nuclear fear as their secondary mission, to protect their market share. The two military superpowers spread nuclear fear as their primary mission; it _was_ their market share. Coal spent megabux on half-true words, the superpowers spent gigabux on shiny death toys.


Brin:
Sure, SAC was effective. Terrorism works. But there's a psycho-political price, and let's say a "spiritual" price, to committing so great a crime against humanity.

If my theory is correct that virtual nuclear war prunes the multiverse tree, then we are _barely_ here. What's left of us is here.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

Likewise, the magats don't _have_ a position on nukes,...


I was just wondering what the current Republican position is supposed to be. I mean, in the 80s, it seemed that liberals were again' nuclear power and conservatives were fer it, probably in part because of the perceived potential for catastrophic environmental harm. But these days, Republicans are specifically all in on guns and fossil fuels--and I wonder if nuclear power is perceived as a threat to the latter.

Just as when a Muslim shoots up a gay bar, I'm always curious which side they come down on.

Paradoctor said...

Larry Hart:
The R's will tell us what they have always believed after they put their finger to the wind. Their collapse to a definite position will be non-local; suddenly every one of their media parrots will squawk the same thing.

Paradoctor said...

LH:
"... in the 80s, it seemed that liberals were again' nuclear power and conservatives were fer it, probably in part because of the perceived potential for catastrophic environmental harm".

Yes, it sounds about right for 'conservatives' to be for nukes, because of the perceived potential for catastrophic environmental harm. Take any political issue, and 'conservatives' will choose the option that harms the most people and does the most damage. That is what happens when a movement chooses destructive means to an end, and the means become ends in themselves.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

Take any political issue, and 'conservatives' will choose the option that harms the most people and does the most damage.


That may be why "the lesser of two evils" is a pejorative. The prefer the greater of two evils.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor again:

Yes, it sounds about right for 'conservatives' to be for nukes, because of the perceived potential for catastrophic environmental harm.


The thing is, back in the day, I would have said the conservatives were about the money. Cheap energy for consumers (voters) or subsidy money for power plants. And that the "potential for catastrophic environmental harm" was a risk they were willing to take, not an end in itself.

These days, the reverse is true. They'd be willing to cost money to their constituents in order to make liberals feel bad. And their voters are just fine with that.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

Are Donald and Ivana going to the same place?


Since I'm not a believer in the traditional heaven and hell, you're asking the wrong guy. Or the wrong question.

To misquote the line from the song "Closing Time", he don't have to go home, but he can't ...stay...here.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

The R's will tell us what they have always believed after they put their finger to the wind.


But which wind is the question? Because most voters aren't in favor of forcing a ten-year-old girl to bring her rapist's child to full term. So what sort of "wind" blows their politicians in that direction?

Likewise even moreso with eliminating Social Security and Medicare.

Unknown said...

Dr. Brin,

Re: body redesign

That's a trend that will only accelerate as medical tech advances. Mrs. Pappenheimer (Mammenheimer?) informs me it's called "modding" and is already a thing, though I'm not sure she's referring to building whole new organs (a prehensile tail might be cool, but that would take a whole lot more bioengineering than ears). Pretty sure that nekkomori mods will be more popular than Orcling mods, though.

Pappenheimer

P. S. I've assumed for a while that bioengineering an aquatic subspecies of human is only a matter of time.

Paradoctor said...

LH 10:17 AM:
Are you tired of the lesser of two evils? Then vote Cthulhu!

10:22 AM:
Means become ends in themselves. The point is not rational policy, but passionate loyalty. Vote against your own interests, and against common decency, to achieve inverse virtue signalling.

Self-hatred is fanaticism's secret power source. Read Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" for more details.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

The point is not rational policy, but passionate loyalty. Vote against your own interests, and against common decency, to achieve inverse virtue signalling.


Yes, when Republicans complain about liberals virtue signaling, they're doing their usual whining about their own reflection. Flag pins? The national anthem? Bumper stickers about Jesus? All they do is virtue signal.

Alfred Differ said...

There is no single solution to electricity generation that will suffice.

When you pay for electrons moving in your house, you are actually paying for electrons moving RELIABLY.

What coal generation provides the wholesale market is a stable generation base. The technology is ancient (meaning well known) and you get reliable current from them. Feed coal in, get power out. That means you can supply your base load RELIABLY.

What nuclear generation provides the wholesale market is damn near the same coal. You can't ramp up and down your supply quickly, but the coal stations can't either. Feed your fuel in one end, get reliable electrons moving out the other. The technology isn't as ancient, but it's getting there because we haven't let engineers improve on their designs much in the last few decades.

What solar generation provides the wholesale market is moderately predictable currents during certain times of the day. Some ramp up and down can be done in solar thermal stations by controlling the surface area reflected upon heated fluid driving turbines. For PV stations, just turn the panels… assuming you built them with that ability. Solar isn't reliable, though. Clouds move in that aren't inclined to respect futures contracts. If you want reliable current from one of these stations, supplement it with a rapid change tech like a nat gas turbine. Or… don't sell power from these stations except on the short-range spot market.

Wind generation provides the wholesale market with much the same as solar except it is less reliable. Solar illumination can be moderately well predicted. Wind speeds and eddies… less so. Still… supplement them and they perform.

No matter the tech involved, one must remember that these currents are sold in markets. Generators sell. Utilities buy and then resell. It's not as simple as buying and selling power, though. It's a futures market with options layered in. Generators sell future power they'll generate. They also sell reserve capacity (spinning) and reserve capacity (not spinning). They also sell black start power which is stuff that involves equipment that does NOT need to be on the grid to get going. Think diesel generators and such. [What got Fukushima in such a mess was their reliance on local black start power that got swamped by the tsunami.] *

No matter what people think of any single one of these technologies, they fit in a market ecosystem. Want to remove coal? Better have something else that delivers moving electrons about the same way or you'll get a nasty surprise some day when Mother Nature points out you were really buying reliability instead of currents.

I'm not super excited about nuclear power, but I think it foolish that we don't have engineers building them and learning what not to do on future ones. We learned quite a lot from TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.


* A less lethal example involves home hospital equipment. Got a loved one dependent on a CPAP to sleep at night without suffocating? What do you do when the power goes out? Do they depend on an O2 system to get by? What do you do when the power goes out? Short outages aren't deadly for most of us making do at home, so we don't buy high reliability. Long outages are much more of a hassle. [I have two spare batteries I have ready to use. One is a deep cycle monster that looks like a car battery but is really for boats. The other is a small Li-Poly thing no one could make back when I got my first CPAP. I don't need O2 supplementation anymore, but I did in 2013.]

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

Serious question--what is the current right-wing/MAGAt position on nuclear power.

Ugh.My serious answer is "I don't care."

Just pick a stance for yourself and they'll pick opposition. Maybe you can do reverse psychology, but I don't think they are that reliable.


Does growth ever become uneconomic?

No. The classic form of economic growth is population growth. Back in the feudal era, our population doubled about ever 1500 years. Thus… the economy doubled at about that rate. Everyone focuses upon the non-population growth numbers for the economy, but the base number should include what's happening to our body count.

I've got two HUGE issues with a steady-state approach.

1. We turn this all into a zero-sum game. Civilization ends shortly afterward.

2. Rule makers dominate is low-growth scenarios. Will your daughter be among the rule-makers? Will my son?



The best argument for a planned approach to lower non-population related economic growth is "limiting capacity" of the Earth. That's all utter bullshit, though, because we change how we do things in a way the other animals and plants on Earth can't do. I offer a simple example.

We all know what a spoon is. Imagine you have a small one useful for eating stew from a bowl. Now ponder how the spoon is made. The exact techniques will depend on the tech level you want to use. Is it 14K gold or something you carved from readily available bamboo? Whatever the techniques, the world can only have so many of those spoons before you'll run out of something you need to make them or clean up after you make them so the process doesn't kill you. Take all those factors involved and imagine industrial sources, pipelines, and sinks. By the time you've worked out the numbers, you'll have reconstructed the "Limits to Growth" argument from a very famous book.

So… how many spoons can you have in the world? That turns out to be a really useful example of a stupid question. The actual limit on spoon count involves our willingness to make them which depends on prices of all those factors AND demand. Approach a limit on one of those factors and prices adjust in our free markets. Do that and the tech used shifts to reduce expenses. You don't have 14K gold spoons I'd bet. Why not? I'll bet you have a mix of other tech types in your kitchen, though. Dig through your utensil drawer and count the tech process families used. I'd bet $100 it's more than one AND you adjust what you buy according to prices. (Plastic spoons for picnics… etc)

Ah… but the Earth is limited, right? No. We can recycle. Your neighborhood dump will become a mine some day. In a lot of places they already are in order to harvest the methane they produce for electricity production. Humans DO that if allowed to recognize prices as signals. We innovate and do it at such a clip right now that the population can't keep up… even if women wanted to keep up… they can't.

Ah… but recycling is just another of those industrial pipelines, right? There are limits! Sure. So what happens when my friends get out into space and start ripping into asteroids? Which industries will move out there following price signals? What "Earth" is will change… because that's what humans DO.

Limit growth and civilization collapses. Not because the golf buddy clade sees their wealth diminish. They won't because they'll be making the rules in a tight zero-sum game. It ends because we need innovation to work so we stop doing some of the stupid things we do right now… that are decent bootstrap techniques to get us to a brighter future.

scidata said...

What lies beneath. I had a high school geography teacher way out in the sticks who taught in stretches just to get money to explore Karst regions worldwide. A real seeker, and a strange twist on "Those who can do, those who can't teach." He was always in trouble for showing his classes slide shows of largely unknown wonders instead of following the assigned (and often wrong and outdated) geography curriculum.

Early intelligent life exists as a thin film on the surface of habitable planets. But when energy and technology are mastered, it's actually safer to live underground if a civilization is to spread into neighbouring worlds. Our SETI attempts have entirely focused on this thin film stage and associated behaviours of such 'flatworld' creatures. "Journey to the Center of the Earth", "First Men in the Moon", "Caves of Steel", and "Alien vs Predator" roughly develop a 'deeper' narrative.

BTW The sinkhole link in the topic post has some cruft prepended to it, but it's obvious so probably others worked around it.

Alan Brooks said...

“Just pick a stance for yourself and they’ll pick opposition.”

They’re nattering nabobs, and here’s a natter from the nabob of negativism:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/08/millennials-dumbest-generation/

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

Just pick a stance for yourself and they'll pick opposition. Maybe you can do reverse psychology, but I don't think they are that reliable.


Heh. Remember how all the Republicans complained that President Obama didn't send troops to Libya? Until he did, and then without batting an eye they complained about that?

I used to think that their inconsistencies would be politically embarrassing. Nowadays, I just point them out as an exercise in my own sanity, but I know there will be no real world effect. They believe everything Tucker Carlson says, even the parts that contradict the other parts.

Alan Brooks said...

Rightists often miss the 1950s; yet the ‘50s was the decade when students were herded into fallout shelters during civil defense drills.
During the ‘50s, many oldsters were nostalgic for the 1920s, but the ‘20s was the decade of flappers and bootleg alcohol. And in the ‘20s, old-timers were sentimental for the 1880s. And in the 1880s, there was nostalgia for the antebellum eras...

duncan cairncross said...

DP - re Chernobyl - I can't watch that video in the UK
But I suspect its bollocks
Chernobyl was about as worst case as you can get - the nuclear cockup ignited 2000+ tons of graphite and it was that chemical energy that spread the radioactive crap
People talk about steam explosions and they are talking out of their rears - a steam explosion is only bad if you have containment - resisting tens of Bars - there was nothing there

Almost all later reactors simply don't have thousands of tons of graphite to burn

Jon S. said...

Paradoc, I was *at* SAC in the '80s. I wrote software to deconflict weapons in the event of nuclear war.

I can assure you categorically that we did not spread fear of nuclear power - hell, we encouraged it, as a way of reducing dependence on foreign power sources like oil. (Also, incidentally, only a couple of nuke plants produced the enriched plutonium needed for fusion weapons. The waste materials coming out of the vast majority of plants are useless for anything except possibly fueling a new generation of reactors that hadn't been designed yet back then - if you could take the product of, say, San Onofre and repurpose it to make nuclear weapons, there never would have been an issue of waste disposal.)

Kind of interesting to know that I was a "terrorist", though. Are all military services comprised of terrorists, for their sin of preparing to inflict unacceptable casualties on any enemies who attack them?

Larry Hart said...

What we (sadly) already know...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/opinion/climate-politics-manchin.html

...
The theory, which I naïvely subscribed to, was that such a strategy, while it might be less efficient than one centered on carbon taxes, would be much easier to sell to the American people, and that there would be at least a few Republican politicians willing to sign on to policies that promised concrete rewards for workers, contractors and so on, without imposing new burdens on their constituents.

But Republicans — and, of course, Manchin — were unmoved. I don’t think they were solely motivated by the desire to see Biden fail. They’re just deeply hostile to clean energy.
...
The fact is that one of America’s two major political parties appears to be viscerally opposed to any policy that seems to serve the public good. Overwhelming scientific consensus in favor of such policies doesn’t help — if anything, it hurts, because the modern G.O.P. is hostile to science and scientists.

And that hostility, rather than the personal quirks of one small-state senator, is the fundamental reason we appear set to do nothing while the planet burns.

Paradoctor said...

Jon S:

You didn't intend to make billions terrified of nuclear electric power, but that was an inevitable, though unintended, consequence of the nuclear terror that you did intend. Yes, of course it was terrorism, as it was explicitly designed for the vaporization of entire cities full of civilians. I know of no non-hypocritical definition of terrorism that does not include the routine deeds of great powers.

Merely to possess thermonuclear explosives is an assault upon the entire human race. It is a crime against humanity, against the very idea of humanity, against the idea that any of us are worth more than small specks of dirt.

You plead extenuating circumstances, due to reasons of state. History will probably forgive your work as the lesser evil. "Deconflicting" nukes sounds good, though I don't know what that term means, and I suspect it was a euphemism. No doubt it all made sense at the time.

But you paid a price for serving MADness. If your work had ever been fully used, then it would have been better if you had never been born. But lucky you, and lucky us, your work was buried, and used only for posturing and threats, so it is only as if you had never been born. All your man-hours were for nothing. That is why, when I was offered work at the Livermore Labs, I turned it down, as I saw no possible profit in it.

I have no complaint against you personally. I don't even object to the natural cruelty and wickedness of great powers, who are as innocent as viruses and tigers. My only reservation is about intelligent life in the universe. Is there any? Particularly, on planet Earth? The existence of SAC and its Soviet counterpart is evidence for the negative.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

Merely to possess thermonuclear explosives is an assault upon the entire human race. It is a crime against humanity, against the very idea of humanity,


On the contrary, it is the only thing preventing Ukraine from being a pile of radioactive slag.

Don Gisselbeck said...

The human race has never before gone 77 years between the second and third wartime use of a new technology for killing people. That is slightly encouraging. Has anyone seriously considered what would have happened had we entered the cold war with only theoretical knowledge of what happens when you nuke a city? Could JFK have stood up to LeMay screaming about a "wasting asset"?

David Brin said...

Thanks Don G. Figuratively,, I drop to my knees to thank Saint Bomb. My generation was scheduled for annihilation in a thrid world war, in the 70s, had it not been for the nukes that deterred it, leading to the greatest per capita era of p[eace humans have ever seen, by orders of magnitude.

Can it last? Of course not! Putin may order a spasm tomorrow. Miscalculation could bring us The Postman aftermath or worse. We must take this gift and use it to make it obsolete.

But ingratitude toward absolutely undeniably favorable outcomes is just churlish.

Paradoctor said...

Larry Hart:
You forget that part of Ukraine is already a radioactive ruin, and due not to bombs, but to the peaceful atom; thus demonstrating that incompetence can be worse than malice. What's more, the logic of deterring the bomb with the bomb is loopy. Not having the accursed things around at all would work even better. Second best would be for nucleonics to be under the firm control of a global State; but founding such a State would be a problem, and living under a nuclear global State would be another problem.

Don Gisselbeck:
Speaking of wasting assets: the Hiroshima generation passeth away; we Cold War survivors will also pass away; what happens when only nuclear virgins exist? I have talked with Millennials about this, and they truly do not understand. Lucky them, unlucky them.

Paradoctor said...

Dr. Brin:

Your choice of what to sanctify is no worse than many of the other monsters that humans have called holy. But no better, either.

As for gratitude:

Right after Gorbachev returned from hiding, and the Cold War was definitely over, I walked a half-block uphill to a small park overlooking San Francisco. It was early evening; downtown shone with blue and orange lights like a dragon's hoard of citrons and sapphires. (I had a clear view of downtown because long before I had chosen a residence close enough to Ground Zero to keep me out of any Postman future. That was my way of going on strike. Take your post-apocalypse and shove it.) I gazed at the City. It was beautiful. I thought to myself, "Maybe we'll live after all."

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

You forget that part of Ukraine is already a radioactive ruin, and due not to bombs, but to the peaceful atom; thus demonstrating that incompetence can be worse than malice.


There are people on this list who will argue that Chernobyl hasn't killed anyone and has done less damage than coal. I'm not one of them, but they might speak up.

My response is, "So?" That's like saying car accidents are more likely to kill me than a terrorist or a foreign soldier. But car accidents are not trying to kill me. I'll take my chances with random hazards. With Vladimir Putin targeting my city to blackmail the world into letting him do whatever the f*** he wants? I'm glad there's something that deters him, even if I wouldn't like to have to use it.


What's more, the logic of deterring the bomb with the bomb is loopy. Not having the accursed things around at all would work even better.


Of course, but you can't turn back time, so that's not an option.


Second best would be for nucleonics to be under the firm control of a global State;


Which is essentially the same situation you're ranting against. A hopefully-never-used but ever-present threat by someone we must hope uses its power for good instead of evil. And in that scenario, suppose a rogue terrorist organization got ahold of a nuke and set it off in a major metropolis? What would the nuclear state do about it?


but founding such a State would be a problem, and living under a nuclear global State would be another problem.


Yeah, you're making my point, not yours. That MAD is the worst possible scenario except for all of the others. I mean, you haven't named an alternative yet which you yourself haven't immediately (and correctly) shot down.

David Brin said...

"What's more, the logic of deterring the bomb with the bomb is loopy."

Except... um... it worked? Better than all the preachings for peace across all the annals of time.

" Not having the accursed things around at all would work even better."

Absolute rubbish. Stalin absolutely intended to take all of Europe and nothing would have stopped him. And I and all the guys I know would have died in the subsequent global inferno.

Tara Maya said...

As more claims are made for AIs that pass the Turing Test, hadn't we ought to question the validity of the test itself? There are flowers which pass the "turing test" of the bee world, successfully fooling bees into thinking they are bees, but this doesn't make the flowers into insects. It seems likely that robots designed to fool humans into mistaking them for sentient could evolve (or be designed by other humans) far sooner than real AI sentience developes.

Alfred Differ said...

Tara Maya,

That just leaves us with the tricky issue of defining "Real AI sentience".

The point of the Turing test shouldn't be whether a single human being can be convinced. It should be more analog and involve several of us. Can MANY of us be convinced?

Isn't that what we do with children? When do we become convinced a child is really human? How?

Jon S. said...

"Deconfliction" means to make sure that in the event such a war plan were ever necessary, our weapons wouldn't blow each other up before reaching their targets. The point, after all, was to keep the USSR (and, to a lesser extent, China) aware that any launch on their part would lead to MAD (the most apppropriate acronym I've ever known).

And I am well aware of who was spreading fear of nuclear power plants - that would be the so-called "environmentalist" movement of the mid-'70s, that preached the necessity of man's extinction in order to save the Earth. They were the ones spreading propaganda about power plants blowing up like bombs, no matter how many times scientists (and SF writers) tried to tell everyone that was impossible. They wanted us to abandon all high technology, and "live in harmony with the Earth", a prospect which even at the time would have required the deaths of billions - by disease and starvation, our waste products then ruining the planet for longer than even nukes would. (The famous stat of "enough nuclear weapons to blow up the entire planet X times" is based on the rather fatuous idea that such destruction would be spread about evenly or randomly, rather than being specifically targeted. I wouldn't have wanted to be within 50 miles of my duty station at Offutt AFB after such an event, or within 200 miles or so downwind, but western Nebraska would have been relatively untouched, lacking as it does any significant targets.)

And as Dr. Brin points out, there is the inarguable fact that it worked. Soviet doctrine called for expansion whenever possible, to "liberate the Workers of the World", and had there been no significant consequence to their use of nuclear weapons, they would have felt compelled to by their own rules. The situation as it shook out could be compared to three men who hate and fear each other, in a locked room, each of them holding a loaded gun on the other two. Guess what happens if one person puts their weapons down at that point?

As for any fear of what we had planned, I think that can be allayed by looking at what happened when the Soviets' weapons were lowered - that is to say, nothing. We didn't take advantage, because our doctrine is no longer as expansionistic as it was during the age of sail.

And you can take your accusations of "terrorism" and place them firmly under your well-protected seat, thank you very much.

Robert said...

I drop to my knees to thank Saint Bomb.

Poul Anderson wrote a short story with that character…

Alfred Differ said...

Second best would be for nucleonics to be under the firm control of a global State; but founding such a State would be a problem, and living under a nuclear global State would be another problem.

Yikes. I have enough difficulty trusting a government I can influence (even if I have to resort to the 2nd Amendment), but a singular nuclear state pegs my suspicion meter and wraps the needle around the stop post.

Stalin would have happily eaten us alive. Patton was right about him and his kind. Personally... I think we would have beaten them, but the cost in human life would have made the earlier losses in WWII look like nothing. The US would have emerged as a VERY angry empire owning a VERY angry world. [Central Europe would've been a poisoned wasteland.]

Alfred Differ said...

Paradoctor,

I gazed at the City. It was beautiful. I thought to myself, "Maybe we'll live after all.

I watched my professor watch the news as the Berlin wall fell. He had tears in his eyes and muttered something about not believing it would happen let alone him ever seeing it. He as pretty sure at that point, though, that the rest of what happened was going to happen. The West had won and the Soviets just needed time to come to terms with that fact.

That doesn't mean history ended, though. We lived through that one. Our current task is to live through the next one.

Paradoctor said...

Hobbes pointed out that the whole point of the State is to have a monopoly of force. This is called 'legitimate' if it prevents chaos. Historically, a State is the only known way to reliably suppress endless tribal warfare. The endless standoff we have now is an experiment. So far it has worked, sort of, and it will continue to work, sort of, until one day it doesn't. It has not prevented territorial conquest, such as in Eastern Eyurope, nor proxy warfare, such as in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, and now in Ukraine.

There do exist alternatives, short of a global State, to the endless standoff. I recommend "The Abolition", by Jonathan Schell. He proposes 'nuclear latency', or what I call the 'virtual bomb'; namely, the ability to make a nuke, without having an active one yet. Under nuclear latency, nations keep the fissiles out of the bombs, which however can be put together quickly. It would be like an unloaded cannon in the village square. A loaded bomb is a threat of megacide; a virtual bomb is the threat of a threat. This relatively civilized alternative would have all the deterrent power of a built bomb, without the mass psychological damage of owning (and being owned by) those accursed hell-toys. Also, it deprives any foe a target. You can't first-strike a bomb that doesn't yet exist.

But I think that Schell's proposal, though humane and logical, lacks the hysterical theatrics needed to make Saint Bomb's holy terror work. Therefore I propose that nuclear latency be supplemented by periodic 'nuclear blatancy' days. Every Trinity day in a Presidential election year, heads of state convene at an underground testing range. The host nation's elite forces bring in the empty bombs, along with the fissiles and chemical triggers, separately. Then each nation's technicians put their bombs together, in glove-boxes provided by the host. The bombs are lowered down their mine-shafts, and set off. Various pre-signed treaties then take effect, depending on which bombs explode and how strongly. That gives the contest stakes; a virtual nuclear war. Thus the bomb would fulfill the traditional role of weapons: effectively deciding political issues.

May Blatancy Day be a time of smug celebration and harsh condemnation. May its messages be mixed. May there be pro-bomb marching bands and anti-bomb protesters, both civil, both loud. May politicians give self-congratulating speeches, and may grandmothers from Hiroshima give searing testimony. May the day be a hazing ordeal for the heads of state involved. (If you're going to play with the big toys, then you've got to play with the big boys, by their clubhouse rules.) And in the sumptuous feast after the bombs go off, may the celebrants be addressed by an officially-designated Holy Fool, dressed in motley, who gives them all a proper comic roasting for their wicked nuclear ambitions.

Nuclear latency plus periodic Nuclear Blatancy days; that is my modest proposal. I grant that it's wacky, but it's wacky enough to work, and it's relatively sane. It is traditional, in many tribal societies, to contain conflict by similar rituals.

And I insist that it's necessary to remind the sons-of-bitches in charge just what forces they are playing with. They ought to feel the ground shake, personally. Let them have nightmares.

I can dream, can't I?

Unknown said...

Alfred,

I've played that game (called the George Patton Fantasy Scenario) where the Western Allies attack the Red Army in Europe, or some deadender Nazis engineer an incident sparking a conflict*. It gets easier to win when you recruit SS veterans, pop them back in their Panzers, and send them Ost again. Just because something could have been done, doesn't mean it should have. The Nazi high command spent the last 3 years of WWII wondering why the alliance hadn't fallen apart already in mutual betrayal. I mean, it's what THEY would have done.

Yeah, the US would probably have won, but the alliances we would have needed to make...Churchill would have been all for it ideologically but at that point he was down to the last of British manpower and facing massive British war-weariness, and France was just starting to recover from years of occupation. US forces were expecting demobilization and if they hadn't gotten it, their congressmen would have screamed.

*There's an old novel entitled "Blood and Guts is Going Nuts" about Waffen SS in 1945 dressing up in captured Red Army uniforms and equipment and attacking forward elements of the 3rd Army, trying to spark this very scenario, and that nightmare is why Eisenhower ordered US troops to pull back from any advancement past the agreed line.

Stalin was not to be trusted, I agree. But that way lay the Empire of America, as you say.

Pappenheimer

Paradoctor said...

Tara Maya and Alfred Differ:

I expect that, in the matter of AI, science will follow its usual habit of both empowering and humbling humankind. It will solve the problem of cheaply simulating human intelligence, by proving that human intelligence itself is a cheap simulation. We call our children bright not because they're bright, but because they're ours.

My own opinion of humankind is both very high, and very low. That's the only way to respect both ourselves and the facts.

DP said...

Unknown -

Quote from "From the Rommel Papers", a chapter written by his son Manfred about the time Rommel spent at his home recuperating from his wounds in Normandy and before Hitler's goons forced him to commit suicide for his involvement in the July 20th bomb plot to kill Hitler, an interesting insight into who a German military professional thought would win:

At that time, my father was firmly convinced that war was bound to come within a few years between Russia and the Western Powers and, contrary to most officers of the same mind who came to see us, was equally convinced of a victory of the Western world, even in the more distant future. In this connection I remember with particular clarity a conversation which took place about a month after my father's return from France. It was about ten o'clock in the evening in his big study at Herrlingen. My father, wearing his brown, single-breasted civilian suit, sat opposite me in an armchair. He was at that time already very active
and impulsive again, although his left eye was still swollen as a result of his wound. The other eye had for many years been very long-sighted and I had therefore been, posted home temporarily to read documents to him. That evening it was a statistical book concerning the distribution of raw materials which was interesting him, but the book already lay closed on the table and we talked of the future, which at that time looked very dark. " Russia and the West are like fire and water," my father said. " There will be friction and probably war. Perhaps not immediately after our collapse, for the whole world is tired of war. The danger will come after a few years."

DP said...

(cont.)

" A poor prospect for the British and Americans, don't you think? " I asked. " Russia's land forces are on an altogether different scale from those of the West." " That isn't what will decide the issue," my father replied. " Have our better tanks and e1ite divisions in Normandy been of any avail? No, young man, the Americans have got command of the air and they'll keep it. That is a sentence of death for any land army, however large, that has to fight without adequate air cover."

" Perhaps the Russians will wait until after the war," my mother interrupted; " until the Americans have disarmed. The Western peoples want a high standard of living and their industries will be converted to civilian production." " Even then America and Britain will win," he replied; " even if Europe succumbs to the storm from the East. We mustn't forget that Britain and America have sea-power and can carry their war material to any point on the face of the globe which is accessible to the sea. Here is French North Africa," he said, pointing to the map which I had brought at his request, " with many large ports and first-class railway communications. But between the Caucasus and Egypt, there are only occasional stretches of railway and even those have a smaller gauge than the Russian system, so they wouldn't be much good to them. Between Libya and Tunisia, there is no railway at all for 2,000 miles or so, so the Russians would have to carry supplies for their mass army by lorry over several thousand miles, and that is a practical impossibility. A lorry of this kind requires a gallon of petrol for every seven miles, that is about 280 gallons for a 2,000-mile trip, plus another 280 for the journey back—about 120 cans in all. So the greater part of the load of each lorry would have to be its own petrol. Another thing is that the modern tank-motor won't stand up to such distances. So would the Russians be dangerous after two or three thousand miles? Of course not," He gave his own answer. " And in Africa a small, well-equipped force could maintain a delaying
resistance for months."

" Then again," he went on, " We've just heard that Britain and the United States are producing about four times as much as Russia. Now, there can be no doubt that in an emergency these two countries could assemble a force in French West Africa unmolested. From there they would slowly wrest command of the air and become stronger month by month. Then they would begin to move forward as they are now doing in the West. Their bomber fleets would cut off the Russian Army from its supply bases, pin it to the ground and destroy it. Then they would move on step by step, with their ships carrying their supplies without effort to any place on earth, to Tobruk, to Suez or to Basra, according to how the operation progressed. And once the oil areas on the Caspian Sea came in range of their bombers, Russia's Achilles' Heel would lie open."

Paradoctor said...

Jon S:

Thank you for defining deconfliction. I am relieved. I thought it was double-talk for first strike. Instead it was planning the suicide of civilization, so that the lethal violence would go smoothly. Of course that's insane. My condolences for all mental stress you suffered from exposure to such derangement. Thank you for your service.

As for anti-nuke: why sure, the environmentalists drove that car, but the Pentagon built it and fueled it. The entire point of the global death machine was to terrorize. For the sake of your own mental clarity, please own that self-evident fact! You can make a strong cynical case that nuclear terrorism is a lesser evil than nuclear use. But by the same cynicism, you must expect that terror to be attached, in the public mind, to peaceful uses of the atom. Would your local school board hire a serial killer to teach kindergarten?

Therefore, if any nuclear power system is to succeed, then the tech applied must be rigorously separated from military use, for solid technical reasons rather than a mere promise. Therefore LFTR, which the MIC explicitly rejected as useless for bomb-making. Likewise, we've pursued controlled fusion for decades because tokamaks don't explode.

I mean no disrespect by using the term 'terrorism'. My intention is accurate description, not accusation. Bin Laden used fear against defenseless people for political leverage and to enforce compliance. So do mob bosses, and so do heads of state. Bin Laden was too little to be a President, and too big to be a capo; so merely by existing, he demonstrated the continuity between government and organized crime. That was his biggest offense.

Paradoctor said...

By the way: fortunately the Constitution has a remedy for dealing with terror-users too big to be capos and too little to be heads of state: Article 1, Section 8, which gives Congress the power to "grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water." The police for capos, the armed forces for a foreign tyrant, and privateers for men in the middle.

David Brin said...

When our older son was still in single digits (low ones) I explained the concept of world government t6o him. His answer?

"But... where would you go?"

5 words.

Now mind you, it's inevitable and even necessary. The wold oligarchy is trying to set it up, in fact, with 'staning' before courts and world bureaucracies restricted to legacy nations, corporations and the rich, and with a minimum of democratic "mob" franchise. OTOH if it arises from a Hollywood zeritgeist, it will be loose but responsive with much devolution of power downwards.

Alfred Differ said...

Pappenheimer,

We still wound up with an American empire... just not that one.

We would have had to spend a lot of blood procuring that other one, making that a likely reason we wouldn't have tried. However, Stalin burned through 40 million people in recent years. He would not have come out of it alive.

Nah. It's not who we were. It's not how we thought of ourselves. Patton didn't get that. He was right about a number of things, but clueless on others.

I think the world is much better off with a Cold War than a hot one where the US demolished the Soviets in the 40's and early 50's. MUCH better off. So... I don't feel guilty about nuclear fears. People should be scared of some of what we can do to each other when our genocidal tendencies come unleashed.

Alfred Differ said...

Hobbes is a terrible source to quote for anyone trying to convince me to move toward their vision of the future. Hobbes was the guy who thought he could do to society and our rules what Euclid did to geometry. PROVE how things should be from a small number of axioms.*

Don't cherry pick Hobbes. Look at what he said in context to see why I throw it ALL out. No camel noses are getting into this tent!

*His so-called proof aimed at justifying arbitrary rule by kings and a rigid social order to support them. Hobbes is an exemplar for "treasonous boffin."

duncan cairncross said...

Larry Hart

Coal has killed millions of people for each one killed by nuclear power
The smogs in London alone killed thousands of people in a single day

I would argue that coal has killed thousands of people for each one killed by nuclear weapons

That was a price that we were willing to pay for the energy - but it is a much higher price than nuclear

Today we are lucky - wind solar have a much lower price tag than either

To Alfred's point about variability of supply we have a number of tools
Pumped Hydro
Batteries - including EV batteries
Long distance (HVDC) transmission
Overbuilding
Demand management
Enough tools that the actual record has grids becoming MORE reliable as the amount of wind/solar increases

Alfred Differ said...

I agree the grid is (on average) more reliable. We've been adapting as we learn.

My concern right now is some of the older stations were built where there was an assumption of long term availability of cheap water. That assumption is proving to be incorrect at many locations due to climate changes. Doesn't matter if the changes are human caused or not if you run low on water to keep your nuclear fuel cool or your steam turbine turning.

---

As for coal... I never met my father's mother. She didn't survive to see me born. I was his first, but he was her youngest. It happens. More importantly, his father worked the coal mines so his mother and the rest of the family obviously lived nearby. She died the suffocating death known as emphysema. I did meet his father who turned out to be a tough old bird who made it to his mid-70's, but no one was shocked by his cancer diagnosis. [My father got out and passed away for non-coal dust reasons.]

Coal has a LONG history of killing people. We put up with it because we had little choice. We do now. Let it die. Even if it takes nukes to fill some of their reliability niche.

reason said...

Duncan it occurs to me that another way of storing energy is as hot water in homes. Would require some tricky system management to only heat water when the sun shines or the wind blows.

reason said...

Duncan as an aside - just near me they are building a new home and they have a swimming pool in the cellar. If the house is well enough insulated that would be just about all you would need to maintain a stable temperature.

reason said...

Alfred, re a no-growth economy and zero-sum it is not necessarily true because there are valuable things (e.g. leisure time, home production) that are not counted in GDP (i.e. are not exchanged) and because the current world is zero-sum anyway when it comes to resources. If you actually read Hermann Daley he states that we should prioritise maintaining our capital while minimising the use of base resources. This is not necessarily zero sum. The world of privately owned physical resources is.

duncan cairncross said...

Hi Reason
My house uses the concrete floorslab as a thermal flywheel - underfloor heating

Works really quite well

No-Growth
I spent my career as an engineer "doing more with less"
We CAN "grow" a LOT - without increasing the resources that we use

IMHO that is the type of "growth" we should be aiming for
Capitalism is a great "engine" - but we need to direct it better

JR said...

Jon - re: western Nebraska as "safer than Offutt". You forget Warren AFB in WY, and the dozens of missile silos in eastern WY and western NE. That area would have been burnt and blasted. The southern edge of Bellevue would have been a large hole in the ground.

Retired Jeff

Paradoctor said...

duncan cairncross:
I distinguish between two models of growth, which I dub "Trantor" and "Rivendell". In the Trantor, or "Empire of Space" model, growth is defined by expanding resource consumption and maximizing reach. The idea is to live as big as possible. In the Rivendell, or "Republic of Time" model, growth is defined by minimizing resource consumption and expanding sustainability. The idea is to live as long as possible.

duncan cairncross said...

Hi Retired Jeff

Nebraska is 200,000 square km -
they would need ground strikes to eliminate silos - so each "hit" would destroy less than a quarter of a square km

400 hits would destroy less than 0.05% of Nebraska

Paradoctor said...

duncan cairncross:
You forget downwind contamination by fallout. Also irradiation of the ecology, so those canned goods had better last for years, and then what?

duncan cairncross said...

Hi Paradoctor

Both of those are massively over hyped - the dangerous isotopes are also the shortest lived
A bomb produces at most about 20 kg of radioactive material

If you are directly downwind then you may be in trouble - after a couple of days the really nasty stuff has gone

0.05% flattened
0.5% poisoned
99.5% - OK

Alfred Differ said...

Be careful making 'models' of growth. Map… terrain… there is danger here.

Whether it is Trantor or Rivendell, what that kind of model portrays is a 'preferred' growth path. That may seem obvious, but humanity has often run into conflict between what it prefers and what is possible. For example, no one likes it when people are stuck living on the streets, but rent control doesn't work the way naive economics thinkers think.

Trantor was a good example of what we'd prefer to avoid. Personally, I think Rivendell is an equally good example of that. The elves were essentially immortals and not inclined to alter their home world much beyond basic living arrangements. They could afford to be patient. Doesn't work that way for humans. We aren't immortal. When someone says 'be patient' they are heard as saying 'I have mine and I want to keep it this way.' We aren't Tolkien elves living in a world beautifully created for us. Mother Earth is rather indifferent about our survival both short and long term.

Lots of us don't prefer Rivendell OR Trantor and this leads to the most important fact one can know about economics. When human preferences are scaled up, coherency is utterly lost. Small family units can agree on what is to be done with resources. They can optimize. They can economize. Several family units can mostly agree, but once the number of people involved grows much beyond 100-250, that agreement fractures into shards about the size of our old nomadic HG bands. Tribes can agree on some things, but have to leave smaller units to decide the other stuff themselves or fracture into sub-tribes. How these fragments coordinate action IS what humans do when making markets. How this works IS the only sensible way to imagine economic models involving humans. All the rest is fantasy. Tolkien's elves didn't need all that. We do because we can't agree.


I'm all for minimizing use of base resources in favor of recycling, but I don't expect everyone to agree on that preference. They are human and naturally suspicious of my motives. That's not a problem, though, because prices will drive their choices. If natural resources are expensive relative to recycled ones, they'll make a personal choice that aligns moderately well with my personal preference. That's good enough.

I'm not for minimizing use of base resources in an absolute sense, though. I WANT the solar system exploited on behalf of life on Earth. That's my preference. That's my growth preference. Mother Earth should grow.

Larry Hart said...

I just now realized something that should have been duh-obvious long ago.

God created cats to make us understand what we sound like to Him.

Alfred Differ said...

reason,

Leaving things out of the GDP calculation makes it a fake metric. I get that they do that. It's hard to put a price on certain things when they aren't exchanged. It's not impossible, though, because we can game the numbers a bit and discover prices from choices.

If you could have X hours of leisure time or make Y dollars performing a task in that same time, what would you choose? Adjust X and Y a bit until people split evenly in the choice and one has useful information about the price of something not traded relative to something that is.

That method isn't perfect. Far from it. The average price discovered says little about the bid/ask spread or the fact that the trade is closer to being a futures option contract than a spot market exchange. It's a start, though.

Neglecting difficult to measure values is what Piketty did when he left out the value of human capital acquired through education in his growth statements. He skewed the entire conclusion by leaving out the ONE thing in which every poor person can and does invest.

There is good reason to minimize growth of base resources, but this doesn't require much ethics. Price the difficult to price things and our choices will move. Externalities must be priced in somehow. We can't just dictate those prices, though. Humans don't work that way. Discover them.

———

None of this is zero sum. Not even a world of privately owned physical resources. The value of those resources depends on the values of known sources and sinks. They also depend on the value of known industrial pipelines (processes) and our reasonable expectations for innovation in them.

No. None of this is zero sum unless we believe it to be so, thus limit ourselves.
That belief will screw us, so I reject it.

———

Swimming pools in cellars is a nice example. I've seen eco-homes that simply dig a deep hole and push air through it. The ground is pretty cool below our feet, so a bit of insulation up top and a good fan can go a long way… in places where the water table won't collapse the hole.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

Oh dear.
That makes too much sense.

matthew said...

I see that Alfred has adopted the ahistorical reading of the 2nd Amendment as "guns should not be banned because we might need them to overthrow the government." Dude, you need to stop hanging out with crazy libertarians and GOP-types.

The 2nd was about governmental militias, not the right to personally own a gun. Scalia invented *that* legal reasoning to get the outcome he, as a politian-judge, personally wanted to get. Read the Federalist Papers and contemporaneous writing on the subject. Read 150 years of jurisprudence. Do not be suckered into believing a modern interpretation of the 2nd is the basis for the Right existing.

The 2nd was about putting down slave rebellions and committing genocide on the original inhabitants of the continent. It was about GOVERNMENTAL use of force, not a personal one.

Just because modern extremists redefined the Right, does not make it historically correct. As our current activist SCOTUS points out, Rights can be redefined by a simple majority of the Court.

Robert said...

The ground is pretty cool below our feet, so a bit of insulation up top and a good fan can go a long way

Depends on where you are. The London Underground relied on cool ground for cooling tunnels and stations. Over a century of doing this (plus running trains) means that subsurface London is now quite warm, and cooling the Underground is a serious problem.

Even cool ground is a limited resource, depending on the timescale you are building for.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

If you could have X hours of leisure time or make Y dollars performing a task in that same time, what would you choose? Adjust X and Y a bit until people split evenly in the choice and one has useful information about the price of something not traded relative to something that is.

That method isn't perfect. Far from it. The average price discovered says little about the bid/ask spread or the fact that the trade is closer to being a futures option contract than a spot market exchange. It's a start, though.


I don't think I'm arguing against you. My take on such intangibles as leisure time is that it is difficult--perhaps impossible--to reconcile the personal value one places on such things with the dollar value you would be able to trade it for on the open market. I've heard libertarians (ok, I mean the Ayn Rand variety) argue this way in favor of the institution of slavery--that by forbidding anyone else from paying me money in exchange for my life or liberty, I am being deprived of the value of those things. Same with the notion that the value of your own house is the dollar value that you could rent it out for if not for the inconvenient fact that you already occupy the domicile.

I've also heard of the exorbitant salary that a housewife and mother would be owed for all the myriad tasks that would otherwise need to be performed by a cleaning service and child care. Fair enough, but that money is owed by whom exactly? Her family are the only people deriving the benefit, and presumably they don't have the available case to pay impersonal domestic professionals. Furthermore, unless the family finances are quite different from my own, she would in effect have to pay herself.

Larry Hart said...

Interesting take on the gender gap between the major American parties.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/20/opinion/gender-gap-partisanship-politics.html

It almost goes without saying, but men and women who support traditional gender roles for men and women lean strongly toward the Republican Party; men and women who question traditional gender roles and who are sympathetic to women’s rights lean strongly toward the Democratic Party.


The article posits that it is not so much biological gender that signals party affiliation. Rather, both men and women who value enforcement of traditional gender roles tend to vote Republican while both men and women who value equality of the genders under the law tend to vote Democratic. The same could be said about those who value enforcement of traditional racial or religious hierarchies vs (again) those who value equality in those arenas.

That does help explain why Republican voters can support politicians who treat women as service animals and ambulatory incubators rather than as human beings--doing so is a core Republican value. It also explains that while Republicans claim a "color-blind" society, they don't mean one where all races are treated equally. They mean one in which whites are privileged and others are polite enough not to mention that fact.

Jon S. said...

"The southern edge of Bellevue would have been a large hole in the ground."

Our emergency plan, had the War happened, was to go immediately to the top of the Mole Hole, put on sunscreen, and get the best tan of our lives for about a thousandth of a second, because the Air Room (our planning space at the bottom of the Hole), proof against WW2 "blockbuster" bombs, would have been somewhere above the floor of the crater. We survived working there with graveyard humor.

Alfred Differ said...

matthew,

You are reading too much into my words.

I actually agree with your interpretation of the 2nd amendment. If my State wants to regulate guns, that amendment wasn't supposed to get in the way. Amendment #14 complicates things a bit, but not enough (I think) for a State to be barred much from doing what it wants.

Amendment #2 does, however, block the feds from doing as much. As long as #2 is sitting there, a State can argue the feds are intruding. Yes… that makes for a mess between states with very different gun control attitudes. Too bad. That's what #2 is about… States doing what they feel they must.

I don't own a gun and I think the libertarians who are single minded about #2 are being (1) stupid and (2) serving the interests of those who would master them. I'm not particularly concerned about them owning guns, though. I'm concerned when they use them. I'm concerned when they're packing in public. People get really f@#$ing stupid when they have a gun on their hip. The fear they cause in the crowd around them is NOT unfounded.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

Heh. Been awhile since I've parsed Rand's arguments and tried to distinguish them from those who followed her. I do it about as often as I enjoy a warm poo pie.

If that is indeed their position (we should be able to sell our liberty) then they are missing two vital points.

1) We don't block selling ourselves into slavery out of altruism. Many think we do, but if that were the case, slavery would have fallen long ago. It's still with us today (even in the US), but on the 'black' market. We block it from white markets because there is a broad consensus it is unethical to buy a person. That's not the same. Altruism protects the slave. The consensus judges the buyer.

2) Slavery is an ancient institution. It is fundamentally about coercion in the service of preventing another person from acting on what they think they should do next. Successful coercion ensures the slave does what the owner wants them doing next. We've forced people to do things since before humans were human, but there is nothing about that behavior that is even slightly allowed by people who love liberty. The whole f#$%ing point about liberty is absence of coercion. BY definition.

What we CAN point out (fairly) is that we should look upon ourselves as property in the sense that we own ourselves… and no one else does. That doesn't mean we have to treat this type of property as we do other types. Jefferson wrote 'life, liberty, and property' before being convinced to change that last term to 'pursuit of happiness' and most of us know why. Slavers want this kind of property to be tradable. We don't have to tolerate market activity for this property type by throwing out all recognition of it AS property. All we have to do is recognize that trading such property is unethical… and most of us do now.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry (cont'd)

As for the housewife salary argument, it is usually stated out of context. A better way to look at these non-monetized trades within families is to notice that everyone in the family is doing something for which they are not getting paid. This is really easy to spot. Humans have highly tuned awareness detecting "that is not fair" in these settings. I'm sure you saw your daughter learning these lessons and occasionally having to be corrected.

Sure. The typical housewife does a lot without getting paid, but we can work backwards to what a lot of that would cost if the family had to purchase those services. In many cases, we can see the coins flowing because some families hire domestic servants to do the work. In families with less wealth, we can still see this by summing the costs for the household and subtracting the expected costs for the individuals if they lived alone. We CAN make decent estimates on prices for non-monetized trades, but they won't be as exact as the monetized ones.

I argue that MOST trades made are non-monetized because most of what we do occurs in what Hayek referred to as 'economies' instead of 'catallaxies.' Smaller groups of us can 'economize' because we can agree on a figure of merit in the optimization problem. No doubt your family did this without thinking much about it. Resources were optimized in some way and invested (especially in your daughter) in other ways. MOST trades are non-monetized, but most importantly, they don't have to be monetized… within 'economies'. We monetize trades in catallaxies composed of larger groups who cannot agree on a single figure of merit.

I throw out the "unpaid housewife" argument not because we have a hard time measuring such things or shouldn't be monetizing such things. I toss it because it's silly. Most of what we trade is non-monetized because we want it that way. Try paying your wife for all that she does and see how long it takes her to worry you might see her as a domestic servant. No doubt she does a lot, though. You'd all know if she wasn't being fair like she'd know if you weren't.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be calculating these things and including them in our estimates of the size of "the economy". Them not being in GDP (if that's the case) means we aren't counting most of what's happening. We will make distorted conclusions when we do that.


The ancient belief in 'animal spirits' in all the objects around us fell under the onslaught of Science and Humanity became better off. Rocks don't fall to the ground because they want to be closer to the center of the universe. The next ancient belief that must be slaughtered is the one leading us to see processes around as as zero-sum games. None of this is zero sum… until we behave like it is.

We've believed this longer than we've been human I suspect, so it won't die easily. Much like animism, we think in the language of zero-sums. Your gain is my loss. Musk can't be where he is without having screwed someone. Humans can't have luxury lifestyles without costing the ecosystem in like measure.

Much like animism, though, it's seductive falsehood and you have proof in your pocket. Fish out any spare change you have and ponder 'money' for a while. 'Money' doesn't exist except by trust arrangements between traders in a catallaxy. That trust can't be zero sum. It simply wouldn't work. Now look within your family at non-monetized trades and you'll find that same trust.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

We block [slavery] it from white markets because there is a broad consensus it is unethical to buy a person. That's not the same. Altruism protects the slave. The consensus judges the buyer.


I'd say we no longer recognize slavery because we don't accept that "inalienable rights" can be traded away for a mess of pottage.


What we CAN point out (fairly) is that we should look upon ourselves as property in the sense that we own ourselves… and no one else does. That doesn't mean we have to treat this type of property as we do other types


More or less what I was getting at. Randroids aside, there is a big difference between the personal value I place on my property and the monetary value someone else would give me for it. My seven-year-old-but-reliable car is valuable to me for transportation much more than I would receive as a trade-in. If that car is totaled in an accident, my insurance company will only pay me the latter, leaving me much worse off when trying to replace the functionality. My house is valuable to me and my family for shelter and comfort, having nothing at all to do with the monetary value I could rent the place out for if I wanted to live in my car or on the street.

I don't know how economists ever got started on the idea that the value of property is only what it can be traded for. Seems awfully circular to me.


The ancient belief in 'animal spirits' in all the objects around us fell under the onslaught of Science and Humanity became better off. Rocks don't fall to the ground because they want to be closer to the center of the universe.


Heh. That was exactly Dave Sim's unified theory which he claims to have figured out though Einstein couldn't. Ok, he didn't say so in words, but the gist of the story he wrote about it implies that particles in the universe merge and bind together essentially because they are sexually attracted to each other.

(Stars are huge conglomerations of such particles which have trapped themselves in gravity wells after realizing too late that merging and binding is a really bad idea. So they keep trying to escape and keep being drawn back in.)

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

I actually agree with your interpretation of the 2nd amendment. If my State wants to regulate guns, that amendment wasn't supposed to get in the way. Amendment #14 complicates things a bit, but not enough (I think) for a State to be barred much from doing what it wants.

Amendment #2 does, however, block the feds from doing as much. As long as #2 is sitting there, a State can argue the feds are intruding. Yes… that makes for a mess between states with very different gun control attitudes. Too bad. That's what #2 is about… States doing what they feel they must.


Except--apparently--when it comes to abortion. I mean, right now, the issue has been thrown back to the states, but the so-called-states-rights Republicans have made no secret of the fact that they're itching to pass a nationwide ban on abortions, no matter what your state or mine "feel they must".

Robert said...

If I remember right, the whole 'housewife salary' thing originated as an argument by feminists that women's work was not valued as contributing anything to a marriage during a divorce.

Caring work still falls disproportionately on women, and is still under-represented in economic models and planning.

Larry Hart said...

@Robert,

My point was not to devalue the work done by women within a marriage/family. Just to point out that (in most cases) the money to remunerate her for that work does not exist. She is literally creating wealth within the family which only exists as long as she cares to do so.

When my daughter was between one and two years old, my wife had a serious gall bladder issue which might have killed her. Thank goodness it didn't, but at the time, I was well aware that her motivation to care for the baby was irreplaceable.

Robert said...

Larry, if you think of the Republican position as being "Red-States Rights" it all makes much more sense.

Robert said...

My point was not to devalue the work done by women within a marriage/family.

My point is that economists and planners still do that (devalue women's work).

Alan Brooks said...

Family also means extended family. As when some Grannies and Gramps live with kin, and not in nursing homes. Etc.

David Brin said...

Matthew as usual rushes to the extremum: “I see that Alfred has adopted the ahistorical reading of the 2nd Amendment as "guns should not be banned because we might need them to overthrow the government." Dude, you need to stop hanging out with crazy libertarians and GOP-types. The 2nd was about governmental militias, not the right to personally own a gun.”

As gun nuts ignore the 1st half of the 2nd Amendment, you ignore the 2nd half.
Instead, you IMPUTE stuff that’s not in the 2nd at all and has nothing to do with why NORTHERN states started reviving their militias starting in 1852

While the “insurrectionary recourse” to topple a modern government with a basement fulla guns is insane, it is not untrue that an armed populace could give a truly oppressive regime second thoughts and make a general, looking at a fuming ghetto, say “I am NOT sending my men in there while negotiation is still possible.”

See The Jefferson Rifle: hidden essence of the gun debate - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html

David Brin said...


Paradoc no question Tolkien preferred Rivendell+Shire over clanking, hissing modernist Mordor.

Squint past the Elfish propaganda, though. Their world (Tolkien admitted!) is static, uninventive, incurious and utterly unforgiving of anyone who doesn’t keep in his assigned place, with a vast majority suffering horrible lives for the Efl/Dunedain plaisaunce.

On Trantor you might see a youthful environmental movement rise up.

Alan Brooks said...

Besides, guns wouldn’t succeed against the most powerful Air Force in existence.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

an armed populace could give a truly oppressive regime second thoughts and make a general, looking at a fuming ghetto, say “I am NOT sending my men in there while negotiation is still possible.”


"There are parts of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

duncan cairncross said...

an armed populace could give a truly oppressive regime second thoughts

Historically 99.9% of the time the "Armed Citizens" have been on the side of the oppressors

David Brin said...

LH I was thinking of that line, too!

Alan B... I make that point in my Jefferson Rifle essay. Bosnia showed that 5000 dads with bolt action rifles can either

(1) make a still somewhat responsive govt negotiate (esp if many troops are sympathetic with the dads)... or else


(2) Make things very hard on oppressors trying to storm the rubble.

The combination of those two means that the insurrectionary recourse argument is NOT totally dismissable.

Moreover if we admit that, we are in a better position to find ground where we can wean away 25% of the gun folks and shatter their political power.

As in The Jefferson Rifle: hidden essence of the gun debate - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html

Alas, our own sanctimony junkies are unable to even consider adaptive tactics.

Alan Brooks said...

If Trump is elected president in ‘24, a general strike might be in order. Shut everything down until he boards a plane back to Dixie.

reason said...

Alfred - I am totally unconvinced by your argument because prices are skewed because of who doesn't get to bid and because the bids are weighted by historical wealth accumulation. People want wealth and power for it's own sake not just just for the income it might generate.

matthew said...


A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This refers to Militias empowered by a state government. Not individuals. Here's Federalist Papers 29, by Hamilton.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed29.asp

"THE power of regulating the militia, and of commanding its services in times of insurrection and invasion are natural incidents to the duties of superintending the common defense, and of watching over the internal peace of the Confederacy.

It requires no skill in the science of war to discern that uniformity in the organization and discipline of the militia would be attended with the most beneficial effects, whenever they were called into service for the public defense. It would enable them to discharge the duties of the camp and of the field with mutual intelligence and concert an advantage of peculiar moment in the operations of an army; and it would fit them much sooner to acquire the degree of proficiency in military functions which would be essential to their usefulness. This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, RESERVING TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY THE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS, AND THE AUTHORITY OF TRAINING THE MILITIA ACCORDING TO THE DISCIPLINE PRESCRIBED BY CONGRESS.''

Of the different grounds which have been taken in opposition to the plan of the convention, there is none that was so little to have been expected, or is so untenable in itself, as the one from which this particular provision has been attacked. If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force. If it cannot avail itself of the former, it will be obliged to recur to the latter. To render an army unnecessary, will be a more certain method of preventing its existence than a thousand prohibitions upon paper. "

THE 2ND AMENDMENT IS NOT ABOUT AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT. Fed29 is the words of the guy who wrote the damn thing.

Now, I support a right to own firearms. Yes, within limits, as I've written here recently.
Do I think that Dr. Brin's Jefferson Rifle is a worthy compromise with lawful gun owners? Also, yes.
But we cannot pretend that an individual right to bear arms existed in the constitution. It is an invention of an activist SCOTUS 14 years ago, and was not the law of the land before that. It was not the law of the land in 1852, and not in 1968.

It is not "extreme" to know our history, or to point out that Scalia made up a legal doctrine out of thin air with Heller. What is "extreme" is maintaining that a 14-year old legal decision retroactively changes a 234 year old pact.

Alan Brooks said...

Just read Dave’s Jefferson Rifle piece, and he’s correct that we shouldn’t hastily dismiss gun owners as nuts. What I found works in communicating—not that it changes minds—is evoking Jesus. Dyspeptic Deplorables won’t even really listen to secular arguments. But if you say “Jesus doesn’t approve of people being overly-fond of firearms”, they might more readily pay attention.
(And if they dump their idiosyncratic religion on me, will pay them back in their own coin.)
They won’t pay real attention to secular arguments, because if they derived from a doting family, they’ve been inculcated with their filial beliefs since they can remember. A good friend was perfectly reasonable, except that his family beliefs would surface regularly, and he’d calmly make Guiteau remarks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MGVraepNj04

Paradoctor said...

Pre-Heller, the Second Amendment was a compromise between the right to bear arms, and a well-regulated militia. Scalia's activism cancelled the first 13 words of a 27 word amendment. Roe v Wade was also a compromise, between the rights of fetus and woman, divided by trimesters. Heller and Dobbs are absolutist violations of necessary compromises, with predictably chaotic and unjust consequences. The center-left is now the conservative faction, in the non-Orwellian sense of the word 'conservative'.

Since Heller, we have suffered under a half-repealed Second Amendment, with malign consequences self-evident to all but idiots, ideologues, insurrectionists, gun-runners, foreign agents, and organized crime. I propose that we repair the Second Amendment by this simple re-write:

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated State militia shall not be infringed."

This is a single clause, unambiguously phrased, which explicitly balances rights (right to bear arms) and responsibilities (well-regulated militia).

Paradoctor said...

For more about the "Second Amendment Repair Act":
http://paradox-point.blogspot.com/2022/05/second-amendment-repair-act.html

Alan Brooks said...

You’ve convinced us, but it doesn’t look as if the confederates can be convinced. Perhaps after they die off, their inheritors can be reasoned with; but we are talking at cross-purposes with the dyspeptics.
They are peddling Faith.
If we don’t Believe that all fetuses must be saved, we are infidels. If we don’t Believe that regardless of consequences, the right to bear arms is absolute, we are ‘communo-socialists’.
Only thing I’ve found that works in communicating with them is referencing their religious beliefs. “You call yourselves spiritual, when you are some of the most materialistic people who have ever lived?”
“You call yourselves Christians, when your prisons are hate factories?”
“You call yourselves moral, after electing the moral imbecile Trump and trying to re-elect him?”
Talking to them from a secular perspective is two-way monologue—not dialogue.

Robert said...

If we don’t Believe that regardless of consequences, the right to bear arms is absolute, we are ‘communo-socialists’.

Yeah, but they don't believe that. They are perfectly OK with a whole bunch of arms restrictions. Sawed-off shotguns. Explosives. Tear gas. Most states don't let you wander around with a sword, even in states with open-carry. There's a whole raft of martial arts weapons that are criminal to possess - weapons that are a hell of a lot less lethal than an AR-15.

And hell, try being armed and black and see how long you last in a lot of places.

They believe that their sort of people have the absolute right to have guns like AR-15s. I don't notice them demonstrating for the right to carry other arms. Or for the rights of blacks to be armed, and stand their ground when they feel threatened…

Alan Brooks said...

“They believe that their sort of people have the absolute right to have guns like AR15s”

Sure, that’s what we’ve been talking about all along.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

I don't know how economists ever got started on the idea that the value of property is only what it can be traded for. Seems awfully circular to me.

It's not hard to see if you read their history. Every other thing they've tried to decide value fails miserably.

Remember that you CAN estimate prices on things that aren't traded. That doesn't mean we trade them, though. The estimates are always constructed by choices presented between a thing not traded and a thing traded. Would you accept $10M in exchange for one year of incarceration in a minimum security prison? If yes… would you accept $9M instead? At some point in the questions, you'll waffle and we've found an estimate for the price of your liberty.

Dave Sim's unified theory

Ugh. The primary beef I have with modern quantum theories is their over-reliance on "observers" in the explanatory narrative. The equations don't need "observers", but without them in the narrative it isn't always clear when to collapse the wave function. So… observers strike me as a hat tip to animism. Just say no.

…the issue [abortion] has been thrown back to the states…

Yah. I don't mind it being thrown back to the States if that's all they were doing. It obviously isn't. States are moving on other fronts to limit the liberty of women and this is just one of the battles.

Amendment #14 makes it pretty clear that States have limited powers to deprive us of liberty recognized at the federal level.

Just to point out that (in most cases) the money to remunerate her for that work does not exist.

You are confusing cash with money. If a recognized obligation exists, money exists whether or not the coins or IOU's exist to represent it. Cash is symbolic of a debt, but a recognized debt IS money in the most fundamental sense. We make and destroy it daily.

There is LOTS of obligation within families that goes unrepresented and can't be traded. Most of us don't want it to be tradable, so there is little point to minting the symbols. You might still see some of them, though.


Robert,

…women's work was not valued as contributing anything to a marriage during a divorce.

That's how I remember it too. I respect the point and see it as a failure in the Family Court systems. I don't think it wise to carry their argument into economics, though. Do that and we have those courts trying to evaluate the value of everything we do whether monetized or not. They aren't qualified and juries who might get involved are even less so.

Alfred Differ said...

matthew,

I'm re-reading that one now and a couple of them around that one since Hamilton was inclined to use a high word count... and expected readers to know the context. [#24 is kinda fun as it shows how Hamilton attacked disingenuous arguments.]

Anyway... I'll have them re-read by tomorrow. Just wanted to say I'm doing it before I run off at the mouth.

reason said...

Larry, Alfred

"I don't know how economists ever got started on the idea that the value of property is only what it can be traded for. Seems awfully circular to me."

Yes that is a famously circular argument but I don't think it comes from economists. Value and price are two completely different things as the example of diamonds and water is often trotted out to illustrate. Exchange price shows relative scarcity not value.

reason said...

And famously of course "a trader is someone who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing".

Robert said...

Just saw this in the news:

Last week, the Florida Department of Education announced that military veterans, as well as their spouses, would receive a five-year voucher that allows them to teach in the classroom despite not receiving a degree to do so.

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2022/07/20/military-veterans-spouses-can-now-teach-without-degree-florida/10084909002/

Question for those who've been in the military: what special training and qualifications do military spouses get? "Married to someone who served two years without getting a bad conduct discharge" seems a pretty low bar to set for a teacher (who otherwise would need a university degree and special courses).

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

Would you accept $10M in exchange for one year of incarceration in a minimum security prison? If yes… would you accept $9M instead? At some point in the questions, you'll waffle and we've found an estimate for the price of your liberty.


Yes, but it's a lot more nuanced than that. I might accept $5 Million in exchange for one year's detention (though why the deal makes sense to the payor I don't know), but that doesn't mean I would accept $50 Million for 10 years or $250 Million for 50 years.

More to the point, though, the reason I would accept a sum of money which frees me from ever having to worry about a boss firing me is because I would be trading one year of liberty for many years of a different kind of liberty.

Robert said...

“They believe that their sort of people have the absolute right to have guns like AR15s”

Sure, that’s what we’ve been talking about all along.


Emphasis on "their sort of people" and "guns like AR-15s". They're OK with arms limits, just not for themselves and their favourite weapons. That's a qualified right, not an absolute right.

Robert said...

I don't think it wise to carry their argument into economics, though. Do that and we have those courts trying to evaluate the value of everything we do whether monetized or not.

If economics discounts the importance of voluntary work, that means that decisions made based on the "science" of economics have a much greater chance of being wrong. A great many urban planning projects failed because the planners ignored voluntary work and non-monetary exchanges (mothers taking turns watching each others children, for example, rather than paying for a daycare) when planning new developments. Or designing transit systems around those who travel for paying work (excluding trips by caregivers for school, doctors, shopping, etc.).


Your courts are a separate problem. And frankly, I doubt that they will pay attention to economic theories. They've steadily ignored biology, sociology, statistics… to say nothing of legal precedent itself. Qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture are apparently both perfectly constitutional, after all.

A federal appeals court recently decided that a St. Paul, Minnesota, cop was shielded from a lawsuit that alleged she fabricated a witness tampering charge because she was working on a federal task force at the time, in a decision that further expands the already vast immunities granted to federal law enforcement.

The case at the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was against officer, Heather Weyker, a cop who, in addition to the witness tampering charges, "likely" had fabricated a non-existent child sex-trafficking ring and apparently falsified testimony in court and to a grand jury, according to multiple federal court rulings and news reports. The investigation of the dubious sex-trafficking ring led to the false arrest of 30 Somali refugees, some of whom spent years in federal prison, those rulings found.
.
.
.
As of last month, Americans can no longer sue individual Customs and Border Protection agents at all, for any kind of constitutional violations. And, local police can no longer be sued for using statements and other evidence obtained without issuing the "Miranda" warnings.

The 8th Circuit’s ruling continues the trend of extending police powers — and shrinking the scope of Americans’ civil rights.


https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-empowered-lie-about-investigations-after-federal-appeals-court-ruling-2022-07-20/

This kind of thing astounds me — like what convoluted legal reasoning allows this but criminalizes miscarriage?

https://www.techdirt.com/2021/12/22/dea-gives-former-marine-back-86900-cops-took-him-during-nevada-traffic-stop-caught-body-cam/

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

Emphasis on "their sort of people" and "guns like AR-15s". They're OK with arms limits, just not for themselves and their favourite weapons. That's a qualified right, not an absolute right.


I don't think anyone is arguing here, just saying the obvious in different ways with different levels of innuendo and sarcasm.

It would be quicker and easier just to say, "They believe that their sort of people are the rightful owners of the country, and all others are guests, hired help, or criminal trespassers." All else follows from that.

scidata said...

The erudite and logical debates here in CB are impressive, especially to a hack like me. However, the other side isn't listening. It's all Ivanhoe for them*; the Foxites are masters at fomenting 'chaos fever'. Beautifully described by William Hurt in CHANGING LANES (2002):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEodx0CTTgE

* almost all; citizen science and computational thinking do have some penetrating power

Unknown said...

Alfred,

value vs. worth

When the elected Arbenz government of Guatemala decided to expropriate much of United Fruit Company's Guatemalan land holdings in 1954*, they paid UFC what UFC had given as the land value for tax purposes. UFC screamed that the plantations were worth far more. They'd cultivated (heh) high connections in the US government, and shortly thereafter, the CIA was ordered to overthrow Arbenz.

*at the time, 72% of Guatemalan land was owned by 2% of the populace (per Wiki).

Pappenheimer

Robert said...

Pappenheimer, that grift still seems to be alive and well, considering the practices of a certain ex-president concerning tax bills for his real estate holdings…

Alan Brooks said...

This is as bizarre a piece as could be read. And this man’s family is not safe driving with him in his new home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/us/kentucky-bunker-civil-war.html

Jon S. said...

I'm interested, Alan, but I'm not giving the New York Times my money or my information for any reason whatsoever. Synopsis, by any chance?

Alan Brooks said...

The guy is a former Kentucky Representative. Struck it rich in liquor and used his position in the House to lobby for a better deal in liquor sales. Complete conspiracy fanatic: blames Obama. Paranoid about being attacked, built a multi-million mansion with nine bedrooms. A giant bunker but little security.
Someone broke in, killed his daughter, so he now lives in a motor coach. But one does not wish to be in the coach with him driving—he might drive off a cliff.

Robert said...

Someone broke in, killed his daughter

Specifically, someone broke in who had been researching homes with bunkers because he was paranoid that the CIA was after him and wanted somewhere safe…

If the father hadn't been a conspiracy nut and built a giant NBC-proof bunker, and if he hadn't advertised the bunker putting his house on the market, the other crazy guy wouldn't have broken into his house and shot his daughter.

Cari Burstein said...

Jon, I rarely remember to use my NYT gift links so here's a link to read the article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/us/kentucky-bunker-civil-war.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DKDmwbiPkORIuN_VvQbqlyItEu2TeWXppKMaEuQLltx_UZP1BoT0PghKq4r6k_And_r5OvDCRx1ojRXLs8_HjjMWKzeLghnfjm5UKLdWXuX6zA2SYjJRJgqMZhJ1uqinIMkq3VA6UijIkFqPQlBJx7TTYHbTDb_KW7TkUjZ6jVK03U-QI0WOpGWD_MntX667wIdQ1aC1KuX2ooqC9nq4saYIVLSf65ex0we8P-gqETA3hoLOqqAZ43R4vVn9Z6oOTAfekiuTLoDeAt_dHCH84&smid=url-share

David Brin said...

Evoking Jesus only works on a fe.

Their core religions are FEAR and Macho and money.

My wager gambit elicits all three, putting them in FEAR of losing both macho and money.

They flee. Always. After raving and whining and distracting and howling... they always, always run away. It is the ONLY thing that always, always makes them flee.

Alan Brooks said...

If it weren’t for houses of worship, I wouldn’t talk to any deplorables anymore. They get around to asking to join their churches, so my reply is that their politics are insipid. They ask, why is that? Because they’re merely parroting what someone told them.
It was like that in HS, male students would periodically say “blacks lower property values”, because they were told—usually by their fathers—so. Whether a house of worship or HS, they’re giving second or third-hand opinions.
Speaking of which, when a LoCum sticks with his specialty (in his case, the medical profession) it’s worth it. But when such people go into freshman HS sociology/politics, it’s what they picked up from family & peers.
Someone defecates in their brains and forgets to flush it. Not all their fault: as with gun owners, we don’t want to quickly dismiss them as nuts; could be that their advisors are the nuts.

locumranch said...

They flee. Always. After raving and whining and distracting and howling... they always, always run away. It is the ONLY thing that always, always makes them flee.

Until they do not.

The belief that any stated 'rule' can somehow compel obedience, this is a common logical fallacy, insomuch as (immaterial) (abstract) rules cannot compel, extort or enforce.

Enforcement requires the physical application of force -- it says so right in midterm -- but, even so, enforcement & compulsion are not enough to instill the non-intrinsic quality of obedience into the unwilling or incapable.

It's a tautological truth that (1) only those who 'obey' possess the capability for 'obedience and (2) those who 'disobey' (or are forced to obey) cannot be said to possess intrinsic 'obedience', much in the same way that the irresponsible cannot be forced to 'be responsible'.

Likewise, only the very foolish would conclude that those who choose to 'flee' or 'run away'(when faced with confrontation) will ALWAYS choose to do so, as if that decision was a matter of RULE OBEDIENCE, rather than a matter of self-interest & cost/benefit analysis.

Just don't be surprised when your opponents don't do what they're SUPPOSED TO DO, and plan accordingly, soon & soonest, while you still have time.


Best

Alan Brooks said...

You ought to write about the medical profession, and not gobbledygook sociology.

Larry Hart said...


Likewise, only the very foolish would conclude that those who choose to 'flee' or 'run away'(when faced with confrontation) will ALWAYS choose to do so...


Speaking of fleeing...

Josh Hawley scampering like a bunny through the halls of Congress was the funniest laugh-out-loud moment of the January 6 hearings. And I'm gratified to see that I'm not the only one who noticed...well, as the openly gay sound tech on Stephanie Miller's radio show mentioned, "He runs with his heels hitting his butt, the way I do."


He's never gonna be president now.

scidata said...

Josh Haulass is trending on SM.

Alan Brooks said...

Don’t know what LoCum is getting at; has something to do with BF Skinner.

Larry Hart said...

@Alan Brooks,

What he's getting at is always the same, whether the subject is Rorschach, Vladimir Putin, or himself. "Don't expect the players who aren't winning to keep playing the game by your rules." Of course, when the inevitable response is, "Well, then, you're not welcome in our game" the rebels scream "unfair!" and demand their own rights to be protected by the rules they themselves repudiate.

David Brin said...

Spevt the day at Comic-con. And hence was out of touch, alas. But great discussion.

Alan Brooks said...

Someone is usually only comprehensively familiar with their specialty. So though I almost comprehend what he is attempting to impart, an ongoing mystery is:
why doesn’t LoCum discuss his own specialty: the medical professions?
That way, his comments would be college level—rather than 10th grade high school.

Alan Brooks said...

Appears he is often referencing reverse-discrimination; yet his understanding of sociology/politics is lacking—thus he is inchoate.
Perhaps this is something LoCum can grok: Russia has a great abundance of weapons (As you know, enough to vaporize Ukraine.) But Russia is short on cannon fodder, so every Russian military personnel who is killed, incapacitated or captured, is one less to deal with later on. It’s unlikely Crimea will be returned to Ukraine (Hitler called Crimea “Russia’s aircraft carrier”) but Ukraine might be able to preserve more of its independence than it would have if it wasn’t fighting so hard. Right now, we don’t know.

Larry Hart said...

A letter from a reader to the site...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jul24.html#item-1

...
I have to finish with a piece of comedy. Good God, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sure does scamper like a frightened little mouse! A run like that should be immortalized in song and the lyrics should go something like this: "When danger reared its ugly head/He bravely turned his tail and fled/Yes, Brave Sir Josh turned about/And gallantly he chickened out/Swiftly taking to his feet/He beat a very brave retreat/Bravest of the brave, Sir Josh!" But, in all fairness, he might not have been scurrying away from the violent mob. Instead, maybe he was chasing after his rapidly shrinking political aspirations! Scamper away, Little Hawley, scamper away!

Larry Hart said...

Alan Brooks:

Appears he is often referencing reverse-discrimination; yet his understanding of sociology/politics is lacking—thus he is inchoate.


A false equivalence between "demanding to be treated with equality and justice" and "demanding to be treated with the deference and privilege that my group considers part of its identity." Locum things those are the same thing.

His complaints boil down essentially to, "If all races are to be treated as equals, then I refuse to take up the White Man's Burden."

locumranch said...


What he's getting at is always the same, whether the subject is Rorschach, Vladimir Putin, or himself. "Don't expect the players who aren't winning to keep playing the game by your rules."

Close but no cigar, even though the point I do try to make is almost 'always the same', the point being that you can't hide behind the very same unalterable rule-of-law that you yourself have nullified & altered.

It never ceases to amaze, this complete lack of either self-awareness or intellectual consistency, exhibited by a cast of opportunists who (1) practice 'inclusion' by virtue of exclusion, (2) pursue 'equality' through the dispensation of extra special protections and privileges, (3) natter on about women's rights while rejecting women as a discrete biological category and (4) seek to secure their own inalienable, inviolate & unalterable rights by altering, violating and IMPROVING what Biden refers to as the 'non-absolute' rights of others.

Alan_B's suggestions are par-for-the course and I encourage him to lead by example & practice what he preaches, but I won't hold my breath because asphyxiation would be certain.


Best

Larry Hart said...

@locumranch,

You're railing at a caricature of actual liberals based upon some loudmouths on Twitter who FOX and their ilk present as representative of Democrats and liberals in general.


a cast of opportunists who (1) practice 'inclusion' by virtue of exclusion,


Exclusion only of those who don't respect the rules the included play by. How many times here on this list has the issue come up of banning individuals, and how many times have I in particular argued against banning. The only exceptions are for trolls who span the list so frequently as to make it un-readable for everybody else. I've never argued for banning based upon not liking the views of you or anyone else. The liberal who screeches for the elimination of any viewpoint which makes him feel bad is a small, powerless minority on social media, not representative of liberals and Democrats.


2) pursue 'equality' through the dispensation of extra special protections and privileges,


What, asserting that "Black Lives Matter" is claiming an extra privilege for blacks? The extra privilege of not being treated as more disposable than others? That's a different thing, in fact the opposite thing of an extra privilege.


(3) natter on about women's rights while rejecting women as a discrete biological category


Again, those who reject "woman" as a category are a small (though screechingly loud) subset on social media, which I tend to ignore completely. Liberals do allow for nuance as to who identifies as a woman, but that's not the same as denying that womanhood is a thing. In fact, if a trans woman insists on being called "her", she is obviously recognizing womanhood as a category. And Dave Sim to the contrary, plenty of people seem to want to be a woman, even if they weren't born one.


(4) seek to secure their own inalienable, inviolate & unalterable rights by altering, violating and IMPROVING what Biden refers to as the 'non-absolute' rights of others.


Rights can be in conflict, and one of the jobs of civilization is to sort out competing claims. Improvement is what happens over time in a functioning society. You say it like that's a bad thing.

David Brin said...

onward

onward