First some miscellany.
Join a podcast where - with the savvy hosts - I discuss “Machines of Loving Grace.” Richard Brautigan’s poem may be the most optimistic piece of writing ever, in all literary forms and contexts, penned in 1968, a year whose troubles make our own seem pallid, by comparison.
Of course, this leads to a deep dive into notions of Artificial Intelligence that (alas) are not being discussed – or even imagined - by the bona-fide geniuses who are bringing this new age upon us, at warp speed.
(This Monday, I keynote one of the RSA Conference tracks on this very topic.)
The mighty physics-YouTuber and host of Into the Impossible – my friend Brian Keating - says: “Here’s my exciting interview with David Brin" - Your Privacy is Overrated. So is the Government's.
Try new tactics! Regarding my longtime push for using wagers effectively, one of you offered: “British climate scientist James Annan has been making (and winning) wagers with climate deniers for a couple of decades now: At "Annan climate bet" and you'll find more examples.”
I find one particular wager demand always sends denialist cultists fleeing, in panic. No mountain of blather incantations can distract from the pure fact of Ocean Acidification due to human-generated CO2 pollution, poisoning the seas that our children are gonna need.
Regarding ocean acidification, I really like this article by three oceanographic chemists from New Zealand. It starts out at the level of high school chemistry, but takes you a lot farther into the details than most popular articles do. The basic principles are simple but the details get messy - multiple coupled chemical equilibria in regimes where the standard textbook approximations aren't valid. One thing that surprises a lot of people: the formation of calcium carbonate shells in the ocean is a net source of atmospheric CO2, not a sink. Conversely, weathering of carbonate rocks is a sink for atmospheric CO2.
Still, it boils (almost literally) down to a clear fact that would make any honest person admit: "Okay, we do got a problem, here."
Denialists are not honest persons.
== On to science ==
Caltech researchers developed a way to read brain activity using functional ultrasound (fUS), a much less invasive technique than neural link implants and does not require constant recalibration. Only… um… “Because the skull itself is not permeable to sound waves, using ultrasound for brain imaging requires a transparent “window” to be installed into the skull.” Woof.
Here's a fascinating interview with my friend Roger Penrose, rambling across so many concepts, like an alternative theory of consciousness – a time-jumping, multiverse-killing notion of reality(!) Notable here is the savvy and cogency and understanding of questions by host Andréa Morris, who Roger very clearly enjoys and respects.
== Industry! ==
Wow. Unlikely to work on the moon, alas. But still. Hope it works to scale.
== Bio & Medicine ==
In my novella “Chrysalis” I project where things might lead, if we develop Regenerative Medicine: Regrowing Limbs & Organs. Innovators in this field presented incredible result’s at Peter Diamandis’s Abundance Summit in March, sharing insights about their work on regrowing limbs and organs.
I truly like the show PBS Space Time. It’s for folks like you and me. Very informative and in-depth and fascinating. (even the advert at the end is way cool.) In this case, the topic is one I spoke to, in the classic show Life After People. What traces of our civilization’s tenure on Earth might be detectable in the near, middle and far future eras – after we are gone? And might civilizations ‘clean up’ signs of their presence, in order to make that kind of detection more difficult?
Perhaps by dumping the ‘dross’ of their cities and other messes into plate-subduction zones, the ultimate recycling system? As I show in Brightness Reef? (You’d love it! Plug.)
This Orca matriarch feeds her whole family on this Great White. Yipe!
== Linguistics: save rare languages because… ==
Grammar changes how we see.... “Just 200 years ago at least 300 languages were spoken by people in Australia. Of that enormous group of languages, most belonged to the Pama-Nyungan family, with dozens of branches that descended from a protolanguage probably spoken 6,000 years ago in the northeastern part of the continent. Since colonization began in Australia in 1788, the number of Aboriginal languages still spoken in Indigenous homes in the country has been roughly halved. Of those remaining, only 13 are learned as a first language by children. Murrinhpatha, part of the relatively small group of non-Pama-Nyungan languages, is one of these 13—forming an unbroken thread of dynamic cultural inheritance that extends back many thousands of years. The language's survival is nothing short of astonishing.” It also has some very unusual traits!
Somewhat related – studies show that humans have among the most precise and subtle awareness of both musical tonality and ‘beat’, or rhythm. Monkeys and apes have some, culminating in the display dances I portrayed in The Uplift War! Studies further show that newborn infants can heed the beat and notice when it falters, arguing for an evolved biological foundation of beat perception. Hence music – in varied forms pervasive across human cultures may have at some point offered “an evolutionary advantage to our species.”
== Bio-history ==
And speaking of speaking almost-lost languages… "We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback 'language.'" Naturally, the headlines imply vastly more 'communication' than actually happened... apparently a friendly exchange of repeated "Howdy" greetings in Humpback-speak. Still, it's a start.
Greek researchers said they spotted a dolphin with fins that appeared to have thumbs — an anomaly scientists claimed they'd never seen. I’d be very interested whether they observe anything like independent movement of this ‘digit,’ as it does have its own thumb bone. If so, all the Up[lift Institute? What did I call these in Startide Rising?
New models based on dust kicked up by the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact, 66 million years ago, have revealed that a shutdown of photosynthesis — the process by which plants use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to produce energy and oxygen — was directly linked to the fine dust ejected into the atmosphere that blocked the sun. Based on the Tanis, South Dakota site that reveals spectacular details about the event… like that it happened in the spring.
Biologists checked a theory of ‘fitness landscapes’ by starting with a quarter million specific versions of e coli, each with a different variant of a gene vulnerable to an antibiotic, and watched as mutations caused each type to drift, most often toward antibiotic resistance. Fascinating that they can experiment usefully on such scales, getting strong results.
And if you are one of those folks eager to imagine the Reaper can be beat… the blood pressure drug rilmenidine seems to slow aging in animals. That is, if "animals" = C. elegans. Good news if you're a roundworm! ‘The effect seems similar to calorie restriction, so maybe it's applicable to humans.’ More likely… not. For reasons I describe here.
== Are they like us?==
Much has been said about differences between Chimps and their cousins, bonobos, with much of the press favoring bonobo amicability and (relative) lower levels of violence. Only now along comes a fascinating observation to rattle that tree, so to speak.
Aaaaaaand while on the topic of our simian cousins...
== Final note: what a deal! ==
Open Road will - on Monday the 6th - offer my Hugo-winning novel The Uplift War in a classy e-version on many platforms and sites for just $1.99!
By Grapthor's hammer, what savings!
125 comments:
Alfred Differ in previous comments:
That essentially eliminates the virtue leaving their persons of good character (described in ideal forms in stories) as people who will not enforce social rules.
I see that. But isn't that a losing strategy. Trump Republicans are all about enforcing social rules, from Colin Kaepernick to hating on trans people to shooting unarmed black suspects. The only way one can justify libertarians aligning with them is if they're only concerned with the "liberty" of the powerful conformists not to have to be confronted with powerless non-conformists. It can be argued in those terms*, but I still say that's turning the concept of "liberty" on its ear.
Shooting someone is bad, but you wouldn't argue that in a firefight, good people are the ones who don't shoot back in self-defense. If bad people are the ones who enforce conformity to their wishes, and good people are the ones who don't push back on that, then the bad people win. It's practically self-evident.
* Trump claims that white men are the most discriminated-against group in the country today. That only makes sense if you claim that "not being treated as a superior class as much as before" is "discrimination".
Alfred, continuing prior riff -
One of my preferred noms de spurn for TFG was 'Benito Berlusconi' but it never caught on.
"Hitler liked Mussolini" - from what I've read, Hitler started with mild contempt which slid over into 'useful idiot' as Italy turned out to be, shall we say, less than adept at modern warfare. Hitler did admire Franco before the war but Franco's careful weaseling out of any WWII military commitment to a 'fellow fascist' after Hitler had committed troops to put Franco into power blew up that relationship. Tojo? Not even the right color.
I'm not actually sure that Hitler liked anyone but his dog by the end. And he pulled a Kristi Noem there, too.
"Everyone sees Hitler hiding behind the bush" because there are Hitlers* all around us. I've met at least one would-be Hitler and a lot of Himmlers**. They just don't get the chance to bring their fantasies to reality because of either their weaknesses as individuals or because the strength of the society they live in prevents their rise.
Pappenheimer
*Or Napoleons, to go back further
**Tom Cotton seems like a Himmler
Trump isn't "like Hitler" in the Nazi's worst excesses, but he clearly admires the power and freedom that that sort of dictator possesses. If he's not quite as bad, it's because there have been checks on his ability to do so, not for lack of wanting.
In Trump's early term, I did argue that it was more accurate to compare him to Mussolini than to Hitler. He's starting to imitate der Fuhrer more and more as time goes on, though,
When I said we have the lesson of Hitler to learn from, I didn't mean that every conservative or even every Republican should be considered a Hitler. I meant that when we see Trump doing the same things that Hitler did to acquire and then keep and then use power, and we think, "Hmmm, maybe we can use this to our benefit," then we are ignoring the fact that we've seen this movie before.
* * *
Ok, I'll leave off the responses to older comments, at least for now.
Larry,
But isn't that a losing strategy.
Not exactly. It is a legitimate attempt to redefine that virtue. All the virtues are defined in the 'working definition' sense that we know it when we see it. We often write them into fictional characters when no live examples live up to our ideals. Scrooge was excessively prudent turning that virtue into a vice, right? Don Quixote was excessively courageous turning that into foolishness. Too much temperance leads to self-abnegation. (Know any famous nuns?) Too little leads to Trump.
I get the strategic purpose, but these battles are usually lost. Our working definitions for virtues are pretty steady, though not over time spans of centuries. Courage and Justice have shifted in Western European cultures since 1500.
Trump Republicans ARE all about enforcing social rules, but so are Progressives who preach at us about everything from pronoun precision to women's abortion rights. One broadly held opinion among libertarians is that you are ALL too preachy and judgmental. The flip side (of course) is that libertarians show a distinct lack of that virtue called Justice, meaning they've fallen into vice. Who is right? Well… whoever wins and gets to write the history books.
So I don't see it as a losing strategy. Where I think they err is the use of losing tactics.* We CAN have reasonable debates about what constitutes justice as a good character trait. We can't do it, though, without first establishing the arena where the discussion happens and then issuing the invites.**
* I recall a story relayed to me by a fellow libertarian during the early days of the pandemic. He didn't believe it was happening and went to local hospitals and clinics with his camera and microphone to document the long lines and expenditures. The footage he captured of frightened nurses said everything that needed to be said. HE saw them as conspirators. THEY saw him as a madman who might hurt people. You could literally see this fear in their faces, but he interpreted it as fear of their sham being discovered. Obviously he wasn't prepared to accept any form of evidence that could contradict his belief.
I tried to convince him they saw him as a madman which implied he was using unsound tactics. He wasn't willing to hear me either so certain he was of his correct belief. For me it felt like trying to convince a religious zealot they might have committed an error of faith.
** I'm not sure they have a strategy at all. What they have is a vision they clearly believe.
JB gives Michelle Yeoh a Medal of Freedom. It's a good day.
On the topic of science and tech...
Cheap PV electricity and salt water are going to change a lot of industrial processes. Where costly heat was needed to break bonds the new PV's will do the work.
-----
One thing that helped me appreciate old science more came about when I learned the origins of thermodynamics as a theory. It was born of very practical problems like efficiently distilling whiskey, so when I saw it framed historically a lot of silliness around units and energy definitions fell into place.
Knowing the problems engineers face provides the stage and sets used to develop science. We rarely teach science this way, but I love it when I see it happening.
For example, many years ago I was looking at the practical problems a space settlement would face. Having something to sell to earn an income was one of them. There is not much out there on asteroids and other world that can't be found here... except for the lack of a biosphere. So I pondered the chemistry of refining platinum group metals. Messy. Toxic. PGM's are tertiary products from iron mines (normally) or secondary products from nickel mines. Iron sulfides are easier to break that iron oxides, so mineral value turns into ore value on the cost of each process.
The more I dug into the chemistry, the more I could see that heat was ALWAYS the limiting resource. Toxicity followed close behind in nations who cared to avoid poisoning their people. THAT was the hook for space settlements then. Some processes are just too toxic in a biosphere and aren't out there.
My whole idea construct crashes into ruins, though, with cheap PV electricity. Complete shambles. The way things are going right now (yay!) suggests space settlements are going to have to find a different way to make a living.
Alfred Differ...
What is an error of faith? I really don't understand what you mean? Do you mean to say "Trying to convince a zealot that his faith is wrong" or do you mean to say "Trying to convince a zealot that he is not following his faith" - or something else again?
Dr. Brin, movie suggestions from last thread -
"Moon" has great ethical and religious overtones. I do not want to give spoilers but it really delivers and would be a good companion piece to "Gattica" that you suggested.
"Silent Running" is dated and hippie-strange, but is *all* about environmental stewardship.
Alfred Differ:
Trump Republicans ARE all about enforcing social rules, but so are Progressives who preach at us about everything from pronoun precision to women's abortion rights. One broadly held opinion among libertarians is that you are ALL too preachy and judgmental.
I realize it looks that way to someone without my 1960s-era view of what a liberal should be. To me, the preachy, pronoun-obsessed lefty isn't a liberal. I know that sounds like "No true Scotsman", so I'll just leave it as an explanation of where I differ from that type of "progressive". I don't say "pregnant person" and I don't think math and logic are white colonialist affronts to non-Western cultures. And since I'm not on Twitter, I can't be flamed for my heresy.
Where I will take issue with the above is that Libertarians, at least the capital-L variety, seem to be doing what a lot of Biden-bashers or Obama-bashers do. They insist that they detest the bad characteristics of both Republicans and Democrats, but they only so assert when they're expressing opposition to Democrats. The deficit hawks do this. So do the conservative war doves. "I didn't like when Bush did it either," they'll say, but they only say it when Bush has been long out of power and a Democrat is president.
Dem-side sanctimony-junky bullies do not run a political party or the USA. The GOP's sanctimony-junky bullies operate the entire country and gave its governance to the oligarchic lords. That may change if DT roars back, the brownshirts will boss the oligarchs.
reason,
An error of faith is an honestly held conviction that runs counter to the accepted evidence of your faith. Imagine if you believed baptisms were supposed to be done a certain way, but upon studying the accepted truth discovered that they said it should be done some other way. You would be guilty of an error of faith and would likely correct that error.
It is the primary role played by priests/pastors/etc. They correct errors of faith among their charges. They could be in error too, so there might be methods for correcting them. What methods and evidence are accepted depends on the belief system, though. For example, Catholics have a fairly formal system for it… when they choose to use it.
However, one never uses this correction method to undermine the faith. Only to correct and strengthen it. When I tried to convince the guy who saw conspiracy in the early pandemic news we both initially accepted we were of the same 'faith'. The discussion ended with each of us pretty certain the other had committed a grievous error of faith. He was trying to correct me as much as I was him.
Larry,
I see a strong distinction between progressives and liberals... in theory. In practice we all kinda blend into each other's camps including the fortress the conservatives think is all theirs.
Back in the day, Molly Ivins opined that having your enemies choose your beliefs for you was a bad idea. She lived in TX and constantly got told "You're a lib'rul, so you must be for baby killing and free love!"
Most people's politics do not hew to one grain without exceptions. I personally think that liberals AND progressives are less prone to accepting one inerrant worldview* because we are more likely to read a wider variety of literature on and off line, while reactionaries tend to 'stovepipe' even if they don't rely on a Bible to do their hard thinking for them.
*I have decided to give up the word 'Weltanschauung' for Lent. No word should have a double U in it.
Pappenheimer
Global elitist authoritarian
lab-grown meat?:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68947766.amp
Mmm... global elitist authoritarian soylent green...
Self-publishing is not a new thing. Joseph Gergonne died on this day in 1859. Unable to get his mathematical papers published, he started his own journal. Both he and many famous mathematicians published important papers for 22 years. Sort of a forerunner to the best YouTube channels.
I had a similar idea 25 years ago, and published a few issues of The Will Report. Nobody read it, perhaps because it was all about FORTH :)
Apparently an old high school buddy was trying to find me on Facebook - I just sent him an email that he may owe me one Malaysian ringgit from a bet in 1978. I'd showed him that the Alpha Centauri system is a triple star system, but he refused to pay me for 4.3 years...
Pappenheimer
Also on this day in history, in 1925 the Chattanooga Times printed an add seeking someone to bring a test case for evolution in schools. They had lawyers and resources, but needed an actual client. A supply teacher named John Scopes replied. For a brief, glorious moment in time, Tennessee became the center of the Enlightenment.
scidata:
For a brief, glorious moment in time, Tennessee became the center of the Enlightenment.
Covered on the brand new WGN radio from Chicago.
I love the fictionalized version in the movie Inherit The Wind, which has Dick (Bewitched) York as the protagonist and Gene Kelly playing a reporter.
POE,
Purity Of Essence
Scidata,
My West Va. grandfather mentioned all the folks in town gathering to listen to the actual Scopes trial on the radio in real time. I think the colloquial name was the Great Monkey Trial.
TN the "...center of the Enlightenment?" Scopes lost.
Pappenheimer
Why music is such a powerful force in human life is not entirely understood, though it likely played a major role in sexual selection going way back.
When Baby Numero Uno was on the way out, they attached a heart monitor. I played calming music while my Spousal Unit was waiting, and after a while we noticed that the heart monitor synched up with the beat. Even in utero, music is powerful thing for hominids.
Paul SB
Now the monkey is on trial in NY.
—
Better to mention the Industrial Revolution than the Enlightenment; as the majority in the world probably don’t subscribe to the latter being definitely enlightening.
However, the IR is undeniable.
Pappenheimer: that is why I make the left-right contest much, much more about what liberalism has always been about – resistance to feudalism and domination by inheritance brats.
Inherit the Wind had Spencer Tracy and the mighty Frederic March. Who was president in Seven Days in May.
I'll be on the road, the next few days. Carry on.
Paul SB:
Even in utero, music is powerful thing for hominids.
My wife continued to play in a local jazz band when she was pregnant. She claimed that the baby started kicking when the music stopped, but if she played the jazz station on the drive home, the kicking would stop.
The IR is an effect following its cause... the Enlightenment.
You don't get one without the other. Even in places trying to avoid the cause, their industrialized (and wealthier) neighbors haven't.
There are several ways to do it.
All of them cause revolutions.
Larry,
Interesting. So did baby grow up to love jazz? BTW: what instrument does your spousal unit play?
There have been plenty of studies that show cognitive benefits from learning an instrument. The "Mozart Effect" OTOH, is a marketing ploy. If America's wealthy elites preferred heavy metal, they would make up some reason to say that is good for your brain.
Paul SB
"Music...played a major role in sexual selection going way back."
I have reason to believe that. I remember a night shift a long time ago, in a near-empty weather station, when I was writing a forecast up and started singing to myself the one old, old song I can sing well:
"A buck an' doe, believe it so, a pheasant or a hare,
Was put on Earth quite equally, for every man to share.
So poacher bold, as I unfold-"
Then I heard a sound behind me. My observer had come quietly into the room, and was standing behind me. She was just listening.
I apologized for the noise and stopped. But that was a weird moment.
Or, as I had one of my characters - a young half-elf - say to a bard whose songs and beauty had just sparked a duel she'd avoided by challenging the man herself and drawing first blood:
"So, does this happen often?"
"Does what happen often?"
"Men falling in love with you and bleeding."
Sapphire thought back. "Not very often, but too often."
Pappenheimer
Can you have an industrial revolution without an enlightenment? Yes, you can; you can copy someone else's revolution. But to keep it going, you need an educated population, and that's dangerous. Those orcs in Mordor might start agitating for a union...
Pappenheimer
There’re v many who think the IR came about thanks to the grace of a deity; they think the Enlightenment might have been more about information than enlightenment.
Perhaps they put more store in the Renaissance and its religiosity?
They're different. The Industrial Revolution was a social, economic, and technological one. The Enlightenment is a cognitive enhancement, that acts at all levels, from single minds to teams to cultures (and to planets, in SF stories).
Paul SB:
So did baby grow up to love jazz?
Yes, though not exclusively. She's been in band of one sort or another since fifth grade.
BTW: what instrument does your spousal unit play?
Mother and child both play trumpet.
Larry,
Trumpet? I bet the neighbors love that...
I'm not so big a fan of trumpet, so my tastes in jazz tend more toward piano and guitar. It was a tenor sax, though, that really got me into the genre. Specifically a song called "Wednesday's Child" by the Rippingtons. I think my general distaste for really brassy music is neurological, but I like trumpet when it doesn't go overboard. Haydn's Trumpet Concerto has been a fav since I was in junior high. Hopefully the ladies in your life are enjoying it.
Paul SB
Re: Trumpet
The hardest choice in my life was at 18: Trumpet or Physics. Not rich*, talented, or focused enough for both. If I could go back, I'd choose trumpet. It made me happy.
Herbie Hancock playing Cantaloupe Island with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VN8zH366M8
* I sold my horn for book money
scidata,
Very nice! I'm going to have to start looking for Herbie Hancock now.
If you have the time and the money, you could take the instrument up again, just as a hobbyist. Joy is a necessary condition for life.
Paul SB
Larry,
scidata reminds me that so much music is out on Youtube. So here's "Wednesday's Child" by the Rippingtons, courtesy the Tube of You, should you want to check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9YQVuew0gI
At some point I'm going to have to get back on topic ...
Paul SB
Pappenheimer,
…you can copy someone else's revolution.
Ha ha! Let them try. Enlightenment wriggles in past their defenses.
That educated population dignifies itself and doesn't fit into either the aristocrat or peasant classes.
The Bourgeoisie class growing is a clear sign of an Enlightenment invasion.
Look around in the world. There aren't many people left in the old peasant class. Nations can pretend to want one while holding back the other, but they aren't succeeding at it.
———
Alan,
There’re v many who think the IR came about thanks to the grace of a deity; they think the Enlightenment might have been more about information than enlightenment.
There is an easy way to explain this all from their faith framework. Given that humans have 'Received Gifts', we finally figured out how to use some of them more effectively. We already had the gifts. We just needed a bit of time to reason things out and try every other wrong idea.
This connects to our host's ideas distinguishing us from children of parents who want us to surpass them... from sheep that simply can't.
"The Bourgeoisie class growing is a clear sign of an Enlightenment invasion."
Please note that our middle class has been steadily shrinking. Does the opposite hold true? Looking at today's politics, I might venture to say "Yes."
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer:
Does the opposite hold true? Looking at today's politics, I might venture to say "Yes."
A clear sign of the Endarkenment.
A clear sign of the Endarkenment.
Just watched a Ted Talk: How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future by Scott Galloway.
(Not that it seems less bleak here, after the ministries of Finances, Research & Education, Transport and Justice being in libertarian hands for three years. I believe that is a global problem of shareholder-driven, rent-seeking, autofeudalizing capitalism.)
Pappenheimer,
Looking at today's politics, I might venture to say "Yes."
You are using goalposts that move. In the US, the Bourgeoisie encompasses practically all of us. The transformation from the old feudal arrangement is SO complete that we've split the bourgeoisie into three groups in order to maintain our interests in fighting with each other. Petite, (middle), and Haute where folks at both extremes claim the old mantles of Peasant and Aristocrat.
There is still plenty to fight about since we DO want the goalposts moving to make us reach stretch goals. However, the old fight to lift the peasants is mostly done in The West and rapidly coming to an end in most of the other nations who trade with us.
This victory is SO complete that when we do find actual peasants, we can also find someone keeping them in that state. Shoot the bastard keeping them down and his children if necessary. I won't shed any tears.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4641552-greene-fires-back-fox-news-columnist-calls-her-idiot/
“Fox News called me an idiot. That was literally their headline. They called me an idiot,” Greene said during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast this week.
Me: "Do I really have to explain what a secret is?"
Explaining yes, convincing, no—it’s all talking past them.
You’d just have to tell it to them, even with the religious today it is cross-purpose non-communication. (Except regarding Bach, d minor.)
Trump is their new messiah, small-case ‘m’. Might be centered around charisma as much as—or more—than anything else.
Plus the later years of Rome and persecution of Christians and how the Sanhedrin delivered Christ to Pilate and...
The Enlightenment began fifty decades ago; their religion 300-200.
Alfred,
In the absolute sense of 'no serfs' I'd agree, but that doesn't take away from my sense that we are backsliding. The goal posts were moved before I got here (1962). There are SF novels - serious ones, not just 'Ready Player One' - where near-future Americans are forced into indenture by economic circumstance. In my day job I deal with citizens who have taken on far more debt than they are likely to pay off before they retire, and after they retire? No chance. You can say it's their choice, but it's true that a single middle-class income used to be considered enough to support a family. Now it takes 2-3 'middle-class' incomes. That is devaluation, and reduces the chances of affordable advanced education for the family's children, unless more debt is taken on. The Enlightenment is receding.
Pappenheimer
I'm more hopeful for the future.
My generation and half of the next one were lead poisoned as children - we are low in empathy.
But we are getting older - soon we will be replaced by people who were not brain damaged.
Alfred,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Pappenheimer. While the standard of living has gone up for most people in the West since the Dark Ages, it's going back down. Given that all the world's economies are very tied together, so trouble in one place triggers trouble all over, and every time the economy takes a downturn the rich get richer, the rest of us sink lower, and the fascists win more converts, it's not looking great. And (Duncan) while we don't have as much lead circulating in the wealthier nations, the countries that produce most of our chocolate and coffee and many other agricultural products still use leaded gasoline. Archaeologists have seen time and time again that state-level societies are unstable to a great degree because of their economies. That and the things that make a society strong in the beginning usually destroys them later, especially with the conservative bias common among H. saps. When circumstances change, people have to be willing to change to adapt to them, but huge numbers of people refuse to stray from tradition and precedent right up to their graves - and they take everyone else down with them.
On that cheery note ...
Paul SB
Hi Paul
According to the BBC the last countries stopped using lead in petrol three years ago.
As far as living standards are concerned western countries are still advancing - much much slower than they should be as the elites keep stealing the cream - but still advancing.
Countries like China and India are advancing much faster - from a lower starting point.
If you look back honestly we are all much better off than we were.
Duncan,
I'm glad to hear that the lead is finally gone. Before the plague I was reading lead warnings on chocolates in some local stores, and was surprised when the clerks told me about the leaded gasoline still used in South America and Africa. Yes, we are certainly better off than 100 years ago - though maybe not so much interns of mental health. At least these days we are more and more starting to accept the fact that mental health is an actual thing and not just wimpy people whining. If we slip into a fascist regime, all bets are off.
Paul SB
Paul SB: you could take the instrument up again, just as a hobbyist. Joy is a necessary condition for life
Thank you for the encouragement, and you're soooo right about joy. A big part of playing music in my youth was the appreciation from others, especially professional musicians who said I had talent. I can never reach that level again, and trying to recapture the glory of one's heydays is a mug's game. In quiet times, when I'm alone without any audience, I still play the harmonica and keyboard just for the joy of it. We have two rabbits who seem to not hate it.
scidata:
You wistfully remind me of Harry Chapin's song about Mr. Tanner.
...
He came home to Dayton and was questioned by his friends.
Then he smiled and just said nothing, and he never sang again.
(dramatic pause)
Excepting very late at night when the shop was dark and closed,
He sang softly to himself as he sorted through the clothes.
Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
And it made him feel so happy, it made him feel so good,
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul,
And he did not know how well he sang, it just made him whole.
Fiddler’s Economics
an Underfable
Once upon a time, the Devil visited three brothers, all fiddlers, and he said to them, “Name your price.”
The eldest brother, named Blood, said, “In exchange for my soul I demand an enormous fortune.” The middle brother, named Sweat, said, “A penny will content me.” The youngest brother, named Tears, said, “Not for a fortune, nor even a penny.”
The Devil gave Sweat a magic penny; then he took their fiddles and he drilled an invisible hole into each one; a tiny hole for Blood’s fiddle, a medium-sized hole for Sweat’s fiddle, and an enormous hole for Tears’s fiddle. He explained, “Your soul will flow out of your fiddle every time you play. Thus I will be paid.”
A tiny trickle of soul leaked out of Blood’s fiddle every time he played. He played at weddings, funerals, festivals, memorials and the Opera House. His audiences paid him an enormous fortune, which he spent on wine, women, horses, mansions, gambling, scandal and an early death. The world then forgot his music, for he wrote no tunes of his own.
A moderate stream of soul flowed from Sweat’s fiddle every time he played. He adapted ancient tunes and poems to modern rhythms, melodies, themes and sentiments. His audiences paid him a comfortable income, with which he bought a small home for his large family. His grandchildren found him on his deathbed, clutching the Devil’s magic penny so hard that they had to bury it with him. Some of his music is now called traditional.
Enormous gushes of soul poured forth from Tears’s fiddle every time he played. He never made a living at it, but he played every day, and all of his tunes were his own. At the age of a hundred and one he was fiddling on a streetcorner when he ran out of soul and dropped dead.This happened centuries ago, but fiddlers still play his music today.
Moral: Sell your soul for nothing at all.
Comment: The Devil lied to the fiddlers; for he was paid not with the soul that they let out, but with the soul that they held back.
The Enlightenment began fifty decades ago; their religion 300-200.
It is an ongoing process.
It started with the discovery how to start fire and make tools, and might end in a few years to make gods in our own image.
The Romans learned from the Greeks, the Arabs from the Romans, the Italians from the Arabs (and the Chinese), the rest of Europe from the Italians. And then it started to culminate and explode.
Der Oger:
The Romans got it from the Greeks, the Arabs got it from the Romans, the Italians got it from the Arabs and the Chinese, and gave it to the rest of Europe, which gave it to the whole world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WHSVOVLmNY
@paradoctor: Nice :-)
We have a saying:"Every fad arrives from the US over here ten yeas later."
So, we are just at the start of trumpification...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/opinion/biden-trump-campus-protests-trial.html
You’ve reminded me of an old shtetl joke. What’s the difference between a Jewish optimist and a Jewish pessimist? The pessimist says, “It can’t possibly get any worse than this.”
The optimist replies, “Oh yes it can.”
My dad used to tell a different variation on that one.
"The optimist says, 'This is the best of all possible worlds.' and the pessimist agrees with him."
Another variation:
In the midst of my despair, a voice said to me:
"Smile. Be happy. Things could be worse."
So, I smiled, and was happy, and things got worse. "
Naturally, it’s proximates.
One might write the Renaissance, beginning c. five centuries ago, was the precursor to the Enlightenment: roughly 1750—
the IR not long after.
—
The Endarkment began during the ‘60s—many decided the view of progress wasn’t worth the climb. Then Watergate, the ‘Oil Shocks’...
Remarkable the public has been interested in the future, after hype from ‘60s techno-gurus. Yes, people have to be prodded with such, but gurus went too far. They predicted Mars would be colonized by early 21st century.. and afterwards, the solar system.
How many believed it? I was at a Tim Leary lecture when he predicted “you will all take a pill someday, that will make you live forever.”
Probably few subscribed to his prediction; but when Leary had left the auditorium, a senior said to me,
“you don’t know how it makes us feel, Tim saying that about ‘living forever’: it makes us feel Worthless.”
Pappenheimer,
…but that doesn't take away from my sense that we are backsliding.
I understand. I also disagree, but that's probably just a variation of the elephant being touched feeling different to all of us.
There are SF novels - serious ones, not just 'Ready Player One' - where near-future Americans are forced into indenture by economic circumstance.
Yep. I used to work in the sub-prime lending industry. I hear you.
My response is always to ensure the bankruptcy options are open for these folks.
Lenders tighten up when they don't believe some sugar daddy will bail out defaults.
It's very important that the rest of us catch people who go bankrupt. I owned a house in 2009 that lost all its equity and maybe a bit more. I avoided having to sell it by taking on renters who had NOT managed to avoid that fate with their house. They made decent renters and just needed a chance for the years to pass for the bankruptcy to roll off their record. When it did, they bought a place again and I sold mine.
t's true that a single middle-class income used to be considered enough to support a family.
Yes, but it is important to understand WHY it doesn't anymore. There were a number of things back then you couldn't buy for any amount of money because they didn't exist. Nowadays you can, but we are shielded from the true costs. The biggest being health care options. I've I'd been diagnosed in 1973 with what they found out about me in 2013, I likely would have died a very miserable death. The therapy might have worked for a while, but produced bladder cancer before the original issue returned on top of it all. Our health care options have exploded… as have the costs.
Education costs have also absolutely exploded. It's really not that hard to figure out why.
That is devaluation…
Not quite. Could be, but since then many women have entered the job market. Many prices have adjusted to this reality making what was once a luxury (nice bit of extra income) into a necessity. Markets DO that without us having to hunt for any villains.
———
The Enlightenment is receding.
Nah. Perspective illusion. The post-WWII era is over. The Cold War is over.
The global economy has shifted from recovery through catch up to full steam ahead.
Humanity as a whole has never been more liberated and dignified in what people chose to do.
Liberty and Dignity are at the core of the Enlightenment.
PSB,
…every time the economy takes a downturn the rich get richer…
The wealthiest in the US took an absolute beating during the financial collapse around 2008. A few managed to escape through bailouts, but most did not. They've all recovered by now like many of us who are not in the top-most strata.
The people who see the most down sliding right now are the folks who can't compete by continuing to do what they do.
Makes them Reactionaries in large numbers. Their loudness is not a good indicator of broader conditions, though.
The Enlightenment began with successful Dutch resistance to Hapsburg rule. In the middle of a frickin' war with one of Europe's great powers, the Dutch found a way to get rich.
NO ONE got rich(er) by going to war short of stealing their victim's treasure. Zero-sum? No. Actually negative sum. The Dutch did something weird and got rich WHILE AT GLOBAL WAR in a positive sum way. (Don't tell me about colonies... that's negative sum. Most Dutch wealth was locally grown.)
------
Nothing compares.
The AVERAGE dutchman saw a tripling of his real income.
[Everyone else in Europe at the time saw the old historical impacts of war. Impoverishment, plague, etc. In the HRE the usual horror show of a proxy war was the norm. ]
The English later copied (and adapted) when they tossed out their Stuart King for a Dutch one.
Alfred,
In the short-term, the richest 1% of Americans lost around 36% of their wealth, but that still left them with way more money than all the rest of the country combined. Since then, that top 1% went way beyond recouping their losses. 15 years later, the average American still hasn't recovered. People who have more money than God can afford to lose a whole lot. The momentum of their fortunes will usually kick in and they end up with even more money they couldn't possibly live long enough to spend. The snowball effect.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/11/01/how-wealth-inequality-has-changed-in-the-u-s-since-the-great-recession-by-race-ethnicity-and-income/
Paul SB
Alfred Differ said...
"The wealthiest in the US took an absolute beating during the financial collapse around 2008. A few managed to escape through bailouts, but most did not. They've all recovered by now like many of us who are not in the top-most strata."
What Paul SB said. I'm left wondering what sources you are drawing on for that analysis. Markets don't do things like what happened in the great economic down-turn of 2008 by themselves. They do things like that when regulation has failed and the foxes have found a way into the hen house. The wealthiest among us caused that crises, enriched themselves from it and as usual passed the losses onto the masses to deal with. When a market, like the infamous derivatives market, is "valued" at an order of magnitude higher than the estimated total value of planet Earth, that's a clear sign of theft.
The 1% can withstand a temporary loss of 36% of their wealth with little to no hardship compared to the masses. Especially when, ultimately, they gain from it. Privatize profits, and socialize those losses, that's the ticket. How many of the too-big-to-fail corps honored the terms of the agreements they made in order to receive their government bailouts? One? None?
Wealth disparity has accelerated in the US. And yes, it really matters. Particularly in a country like the US that has such poor safety nets that we are an outlier among wealthy nations on metrics that measure such things, like health outcomes and infant mortality. We tend to be grouped with small, much poorer nations when it comes to things like that.
"It's every man for himself, cried the elephant as he danced among the chickens."
- Tommy Douglas
"Corporate welfare bums"
- David Lewis
Paul SB,
In the short-term, the richest 1% of Americans lost around 36% of their wealth, but that still left them with way more money than all the rest of the country combined.
Indeed. It's very much a power law.
15 years later, the average American still hasn't recovered.
I have issues with what gets measured.
In 2007 my neighbor two doors down owned a bigger house than I did. On paper he had a lot of equity because house prices had been climbing. His mortgage was an utter fraud, though. His stated income was fabricated. His 'job' involved operating a hot dog cart that was actually broken down and parked on the curb out front. In 2007 he looked like a wealthy guy. In 2009 his kids were knocking on our door asking for food. He wasn't wealthy in 2007 or 2009. It was all fraud.
I get that the richest have recovered and continued, but I'm deeply suspicious of wealth statements involving real property because Trump isn't the first guy to play games that offer textbook descriptions of bank fraud.
Yes… the gap between haute and petite is large and growing. Socio-economic differences and racial differences are almost synonymous.
I'm just taking issue with your broad brush statement that the rich keep getting richer with each downturn. Downturns have little to do with it. What little connection there is comes from the fact that they can afford to ride out their investment losses long enough for markets to recover. It IS hard to do that when you have little to invest, but the poorest among us have investments that aren't exposed to those kinds of forces.
If you have no real disposable income, your largest category of 'investment' is what you manage to learn. Human capital essentially. It's value depends on what's happening in the labor market. The stuff is perishable but cheap internet access is making it easier to retool your head.
Darrell E,
Markets don't do things like what happened in the great economic down-turn of 2008 by themselves.
Oh yes they do. They are analogies for the tulip craze.
Regulation can hamper them OR make them worse.
Depends on the incentives people perceive.
When a market, like the infamous derivatives market, is "valued" at an order of magnitude higher than the estimated total value of planet Earth, that's a clear sign of theft.
The real signal that most people missed was the cost of an insurance policy that covered defaults on revenue streams related to bonds that bundled various grades of mortgages. The cost was low for a long time signaling that underwriters fully expected government bailouts and wouldn't charge higher prices based on a belief that bailouts wouldn't happen. Turns out they were mostly right, so the theft involved taking from the public to make policy payoffs when defaults finally happened. (Is it any wonder why I lean toward seeing taxation as theft? That's where the bailouts were expected to be filled.)
And yes, it really matters.
Agreed. We might disagree on what to do about it, but I agree that wealth disparity is a serious problem.
The AVERAGE dutchman saw a tripling of his real income.
I don't assume that it was the deciding factor, but don't having to pay taxes to the Emperor, various nobles and the Church and spend the money locally might have helped. (And maybe there is a solution in it: Seeing the drain of profits, ressources, talent and chances conducted by international investment corporations as a tax to feudal dynasties you gain no benefit for.)
I might point out that the 80 Years War was fought in what was basically a fortified swamp; each town was well protected and sections of land could be flooded to make them impassible unless you happened to bring boats - one famous siege was relieved by a fleet of shallow-draft vessels breaking the dikes in front of them rather than an army marching up. It was a seesaw war of sieges rather than battles, with probably the first successful bourgeois revolution in Europe mixed up in Anglo-Franco-Hapsburg machinations and a religious conflict. I'm pretty sure that the towns laid under siege did not see an increased standard of living during those sieges, by the way, though if your data are correct the area as a whole flourished. Maybe having so many sides helped trade to slip between the cracks - I do know that Spanish shipbuilders relied on Baltic naval stores trans-shipped by - you guessed it - the Dutch. And of course, the Spanish efforts were not helped by repeated declarations of bankruptcy.
Pappenheimer, in his wheelhouse
P.S. one of things that decided the whole conflict was repeated underpayment or even nonpayment of the Spanish Army of Flanders, which mutinied in place and caused enough destruction of even allied territory to swing many undecided towns to the rebel Dutch, who managed to stay fiscally solvent to a greater extent (although not completely - the Dutch prided themselves on paying their troops monthly, but then you find out that the Dutch 'military month' could be as long as ten normal months.)
Pappenheimer
Alfred,
I take your meaning about real estate fraudsters. However, just how representative do you think the neighbor with the hot dog stand was? The snowball effect means that the biggest snowballs get most of the snow.
Here's an excerpt from Pew:
Wealth gaps between upper-income families and lower- and middle-income families are at the highest levels recorded. Although lower- and middle-income families overall experienced gains in wealth in recent years, they were not large enough to make up for the losses these families sustained during the recession. Thus, in 2016, the median wealth of lower-income families was 42% less than in 2007 and the median wealth of middle-income families was 33% lower. Indeed, the net worth of these families in 2016 – $10,800 for lower-income families and $110,100 for middle-income families – was comparable to 1989 levels.
The experience of upper-income families is markedly different. Their losses in the recession were smaller and their recovery was stronger. By 2016, upper-income families had a median wealth of $810,800, 10% more than prior to the recession in 2007. Moreover, the median wealth of upper-income families is at the highest level since the Federal Reserve started collecting these data in 1983. Consequently, the recession drove wealth inequality between upper-income families and lower- and middle-income families to the highest levels recorded. In 2016, the median wealth of upper-income families was seven times that of middle-income families, a ratio that has doubled since 1983. Upper-income families also had 75 times the wealth of lower-income families in 2016, compared with 28 times the wealth in 1983.
And the link for anyone who wants to read the whole thing: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/11/01/how-wealth-inequality-has-changed-in-the-u-s-since-the-great-recession-by-race-ethnicity-and-income/#:~:text=Consequently%2C%20the%20recession%20drove%20wealth,that%20has%20doubled%20since%201983.
Paul SB
A quick question for Dr. Brin (if you're around),
I have been reading a few stories recently that take place on extra-solar colonies necessitated by the abandonment of Earth, due to climate change, of course. Does that count as Climate Fiction, or is it only Cli-Fi if it takes place on Earth and is centered around preventing Earth from becoming uninhabitable?
Paul SB
Der Oger,
For taxation/theft to count enough, the nobles and church would have had to take about 2/3 of a family's real income. That is difficult to do even with lots of goons around because much of the real income isn't monetized. Think of the daily tasks done around the home by the wife and kids. They don't get paid in silver… but if the family had others doing the work there WOULD have been silver exchanged. Real income measures try to monetize all that stuff and then add it to the actual silver flowing in.
To get real income for the average person to grow 3x (near Amsterdam it was closer to 6x) a LOT of things had to be happening that got assigned high prices. Missing nobleman/thieves would do the trick, but not because they weren't there to steal things. They weren't there to PREVENT things.
———
In my professional life, we see this liberation effect on project teams when the one everyone looks to in order to get decisions made isn't there. Either everything stops happening or people learn other ways to make decisions happen. Maybe someone steps into the 'noble leader' role. Maybe they decentralize power. There are a number of ways the team can keep moving forward.
What the Dutch did was decentralize from the simple fact that no one left had sufficient authority to force things. Bosses had some authority, but not as much as the Nobles had earlier. Decentralized decision making leads to weird things being tried. Innovations that might succeed or fail tried by people who had no noble titles to risk. It wasn't so much that they INTENDED to decentralize, but that's the direction they took. So… things weren't prevented.
We saw the same thing in the US. There was simply no way a local, state, or federal government could prevent people from trying what they wanted to try through most of our history. Ignore the fact that we love our guns and this was still the case. Things weren't prevented.
In the minds of people who become accustomed to 'not being prevented' their actions soon turn into 'good ideas!' if they make them wealthy. Shortly after that… not being prevented becomes a God-Given Right.
———
I think the Enlightenment had less to do with the obviously visible outcomes like industrialization and our great enrichment. It was mostly about slipping out of mental shackles in sneaky ways that made it difficult for things to be prevented. The Dutch rebellion against Hapsburg rule likely started with one settle of Nobles trying to get out from under another set, but it finished with a moderately unshackled Bourgeoisie sinking enough treasure fleets and surviving enough sieges to force the Spanish Crown into bankruptcy multiple times.
In the tragically lethal history of European wars, that result is truly astonishing. It's the black swan that should shock students of history. (Need a better analogy for our friends from Down Under.) Real income growth of 3x for the average person is astounding enough, but during a war that posed an existential threat it should shock.
Then the English went Dutch and it happened again… without the existential war.
That's what the Enlightenment did… and is still doing as it works through the rest of the world.
It's a Human phase change.
Pappenheimer,
After I read your earlier explanation for your posting handle, I figured you had to know a thing or two about the era. 8)
Fortified swamps certainly do lead to good defensive odds, but seeing what happened to Antwerp earlier probably helped early to stiffen a few spines and discourage negotiated surrenders. So… siege after siege after… yep. Expensive.
The real income growth of 3x (higher in Amsterdam) is not easy to explain, though. It wasn't just about Dutch shipping. It was more about Dutch markets changing gear. Everyone seemed to get busy doing things and making money doing it.
Sure… Baltic shipping was a big deal. Polish wheat for sale! Etc. That was just part of it. Look at the stuff the average person had in their house. Those little details cost money and those exploded in volume. You can see it in the artwork of the time and antique stores of our time.
It is historically weird for that to happen to a people at war against a Great Power. Swamp or not, that's weird.
Paul SB,
However, just how representative do you think the neighbor with the hot dog stand was?
More so than many would like to admit. Remember that I used to work in the subprime industry. I knew the kind of customer my neighbor was. We specialized in serving them. For an extra point or two on the loans, we'd work out how to get them the credit they needed to participate in the American Dream.
No matter whose book you read, take financial statements from 2007 with a heavy dose of skepticism. If you value your sanity, do not use 2007 to baseline any estimate of what was really going on. Think about how skeptical people used to be at the mere notion of paper money. What we were doing in 2007 was more like vapor money.
The experience of upper-income families is markedly different.
Of course. That happens to anyone with a significant bond portfolio. Lower income families had vapor equity in their real properties which were often mortgaged at levels above their value.
What DID cause damage to the upper income folks is their bond values were tied to vapor mortgage revenues which were underwritten with insurance policies that did not charge enough* to cover the real risk. Bond values plummeted when insurers couldn't cover defaults.
That damage didn't wipe them out, though, so of course they recovered. People who get wiped out have nothing to use to recover with… hence the disparity.
* This is where the REALLY big fraud was happening. This is where certain people walked away with billions because their companies were highly leveraged while their CEO's had no real skin in the game. Monstrous.
However, they couldn't have done what they did without all the little monsters like my neighbor who were complicit in bank fraud. LOTS of people were complicit from him to the loan officers to the mortgage buyers to the foolish bond buyers. Lots. It was a strange time when everyone thought they could get away with crap.
Alfred
I beg to differ - IMHO the big change was that enough of the enabling inventions and ideas had been made - without those it would not have happened.
The downward move of decision making helped a lot - but it was not the enabling step.
The other regions did not make the improvements because the "powers that be" in those countries fought tooth and nail against them.
Alfred,
Neal Stephensen's "Baroque Cycle" trilogy is an engaging if not entirely accurate* rendering of the period, starting with the 1683 relief of Vienna from The Turk and branching out as far as Moghul India and the New World. Stuff was definitely going down. Add Newton and Leibniz as dueling, neither entirely-on-kilter representatives of the Enlightenment.
i.e. he did a lot of research and then made stuff up, like a whole extra country. The trading details in Amsterdam ring true, though. And the fact that Amsterdam was heavily involved in the slave trade.
Pappenheimer
Duncan,
It wasn't the downward move of decision making. That's was how things sped up, but it has to be explained. That's where the removal of people who prevented things comes in. As you said about other regions, their powers-that-be fought it. Among the Dutch, those people had been partially eliminated.
What the downward move of decision making did was dignify and liberate a larger slice of the community. Dignifying and Liberating the Bourgeoisie set off a change that is still echoing today because the peasants under us didn't just vanish in a puff of smoke. They got hired away from the farms.
-----
I know you like your toolkit explanation, but through much of history the Chinese had way more tools in their kit that the people living among their livestock in Europe did. The Chinese also had a large number of people dedicated to preventing things.
The toolkit available to the Dutch grows larger than the Chinese one AFTER the Dutch start getting really rich. Toolkit expansion was necessary for the resistance, but it had to be funded.
Then the English copied and adapted and got even richer than the Dutch. The English did a better job of liberating themselves and even began to question mercantilism at some point. Adam Smith didn't invent that suspicion out of thin air. It was already evident in the minds of some Dissenters.
Hi Alfred
China is/was a single piece of land with a couple of superb river systems - that made it easy to maintain a single "sovereignty" - and gave the "people dedicated to stopping change" a lot of power.
Europe is geographically a mess - a lot of peninsulas connected together with high mountain ranges further breaking the place up.
China has a single sovereignty - Europe always had at least a dozen!
A European country that did the change repression that some Chinese emperors did would have been conquered by its neighbours
Plus, naturally, the Chinese are genetically closely related to each other.
Regarding the Fiddler Economics...I quote from A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
"Ahh but Richard it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if he should loose his soul… but for Wales Richard?"
I love that story and that film.
“Chrysalis”, referenced in the primary post above, is perhaps one of Dr. Brin's best works, not because it is either the most factual or most prophetic, but because it fulfills science fiction's primary objective of asking 'What if our most cherished assumptions are mistaken?'.
This story questions the directional nature of progress; it wonders 'out loud' if evolution goes forwards, backwards, sideways or slantways; and it suggests that certain absurd religious beliefs may represent actual 'fact' while our most treasured facts are fantasies.
The science fiction approach is one that Dickens, Tolkien & Chesterton referred to as the 'Moor Eeffoc' effect & one that Knight used to such fine effect in his "To Serve Man", but it has very little to do with prophetic accuracy, a progressive political orientation or a zealous acceptance of the current factual narrative.
I've attached a link to Brin's “Chrysalis” (below) so you may enjoy it for yourself:
https://future-sf.com/fiction/chrysalis/
Best
GMT:
I love that story and that film.
It was my late father's favorite movie.
OGH is also fond of that film/play. Cynics may call it a triumph of self-interest, as all those on the take profit, and the only victim is a man of principle.
However, to quote a certain green goblin, there is one other.* Perhaps several.
* heh! Just realised Yoda delivers that line using standard grammar.
Henry VIII reminds me of someone...
No. Definitely NOT Hari Seldon :)
Tony Fisk:
* heh! Just realised Yoda delivers that line using standard grammar.
Hey, maybe it wasn't Yoda's Force-voice saying that after all. Maybe someone else chimed into the conversation. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Marjorie Taylor Greene epic fail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/us/politics/greene-johnson-vacate.html
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday easily batted down an attempt by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him from his post, after Democrats linked arms with most Republicans to fend off a second attempt by G.O.P. hard-liners to strip the gavel from their party leader.
The vote to kill the effort was an overwhelming 359 to 43, with seven voting “present.” Democrats flocked to Mr. Johnson’s rescue, with all but 39 of them voting with Republicans to block the effort to oust him.
Members of the minority party in the House have never propped up the other party’s speaker, and when the last Republican to hold the post, Kevin McCarthy, faced a removal vote last fall, Democrats voted en masse to allow the motion to move forward and then to jettison him, helping lead to his historic ouster.
...
The result has been the empowerment of Democrats at the expense of the hard right, the very phenomenon that Ms. Greene raged against as she rose on the House floor on Wednesday — drawing boos from some of her colleagues — to lay out a scathing case against Mr. Johnson and what she called the “uniparty” he empowered.
Even from the POV of her "logic", I don't see why she would expect Democrats to join with her instead of joining with Johnson. Her beef is that Johnson as Republican Speaker should oppose anything Democrats want. Well, Democrats are opposing what she wants. Isn't that their job, according to her?
If Democrats are empowered, that's her own doing, by making it clear that Johnson couldn't do anything at all with only Republican support.
Oh, and from "Hamilton":
You don't have the votes.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
You don't have the votes.
You're gonna need Congressional approval, and
You don't have the votes.
Such a blunder, makes me wonder
Why I even bring the thunder.
“Xi Says China Will ‘Never Forget’ the US Bombing of Its Embassy.” Ah selective memory. How convenient to ‘never forget’ a regrettable error, but ‘never remember’ the name Anson Burlingame (look him up!)… or America helping Sun Yat-sen (four times!) to finally rid China of a monstrous Imperium… or the Flying Tigers … or the $trillions (in current dollars) of aid that kept 1930s-40s China alive… or the fantastic decades of economic miracle since 1985 wrought with the crucial help of indulgent US trade policies and paid for by the American consumer….
Selective memory is SO convenient. But Robin Williams sang a song in Alladin that I wish Atony Blinken would sing loudly! (Saw him speak at RSA in San Francisco: a mighty and wise grownup and nerd. Still, he needs to make that song a central theme of US diplomacy!)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-07/xi-vows-to-remember-flagrant-us-bombing-of-chinese-embassy
Just back from the HUGE AI & software security conference called RSAC in SanFran. My keynote was well attended 300-400 or so. Antony Blinken's had 7000 in attendance. And man what an impressive fellow! mature, well-spoken, knowledgeable, ticking off problems and how we're trying to deal with them.
If ANY of you know preening poseurs looking for excuses to betray the blue coalition, remind them: It's the appointments, stoopid.
2x:
“This isn’t Spain, this is England.”
Second time, it wasn’t reassuring.
Trying to imagine Kristi Noem running for office in England and boasting of shooting a dog. You don't mess with the RSPCA. They'd have her "...gaskin slit, moules shown to the four winds, welchet torn asunder with many hooks and figgin placed upon a spike..."
Pappenheimer
P.S. if she didn't have a figgin, they'd issue her one, then spike it.
Kristi Noem might be just the creature for a "Drumph!" restoration (AKA, sloppy seconds) cabinet post.
Sums up statecraft Admirably:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WM_wSV6XUqI
AB many of us won't click any link provided by someone who won't first describe it - thus proving not a bot.
I'm encouraged by all this analysis. It's buttressing my POV that psychohistory is more useful for modeling/explaining the past/present than for predicting the future. Only wider experience, wisdom, and forbearance can do the latter. I especially like the focus on geography. Mastering one niche leads to success, but mastering many vastly different niches leads to sapience.
Re: receding Enlightenment
Two vignettes that powerfully counter this perception by reifying first Pax Americana and then the Rational West:
1) a Japanese band whose playlist ranges from traditional to J-pop to classic-rock . Here's a soulful rendition of CSNY's "Helpless":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia5qJ-yEhWg
A fierce clash of civilizations has become an intelligent and nuanced friendship.
2) one of the new Canadian warships enters San Diego harbor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T69Rd50MqY
Allies forever, despite ham-handed KAOS contrivances.
There are many more, I mostly enjoy those with a Canadian connection.
Here's our port just up the coast. Technically a naval base, but much of the dock space is dedicated to commerce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMu4-0tgSaA
In the video you can see the building where I work most days, but the commercial ships tell the real story around here. The Chiquita boats bring in a large percentage of the bananas people in the western US eat. The big roll on/roll off boat brings in cars from South Korea mostly. We bring in the occasional missile destroyer that needs some engineering TLC, but most Port Hueneme traffic is commercial and international.
Nearby there is another harbor (Oxnard) dug out for the smaller boats that range from personal yachts to fish and squid catchers. A few miles further north there is another one of these harbors associated with the city of Ventura.
LOTS of boats coming and going all the time. Watch at the mouths of these places and you can see the local economy humming. Evidence of things not being prevented.
scidata thanks for The Lady Shelters. Chick can really do Mick!
Re: Lady Shelters
Yes, they're good. The lead guitarist also does vids of traditional Japanese music - quite beautiful, as well as the over-dubs of keyboard & stuff. They play the US-pop stuff staying true to the original, which is refreshing ironically. The Temptations, Who, and Stones covers are done the way I remember them from ancient times. Sometimes go have to go far afield to find your way home.
Someone from Quarrel (Quora) recently recommended I read Them Hartmann, so I just finished his "Hidden History of Neoliberalism." It was fairly brief, but had quite a lot to say about the Friedman?Hayek/Mises paradigm that has guided America since the Reagan Administration on both sides of the political fence.
I didn't know that Hayek was such a flaming racist. After leaving Austria for the UK, he considered sending his children to America, but he was afraid they would be put up with a negro family, and he didn't like "dancing negroes." But then, he learned economics at the knee of Ludwig von Mises, who stated plainly that a good nation supports the interests of its dominant race.
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Neoliberalism-Reaganism-Greatness/dp/1523002328/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.lDc7u_oN02Lsijwn4Tprhtg0OVSi5sgvxlJCGV8juDniTRV7EtHnMonZqLwh1dtvgjCbaRlQRDS33glef6xZNRXklTa-GkwwX0lUWPvYrp41ZumPBm8S-2HP6FB02bofInOvl1DEF5iKjwk0LXLgLbe7o1MQLeH0pfSyPy3Rd-xuBhLmVttQJoi2cqZjraS7of10hui3qDM1dXnKXZoxjA0va-Au5v8nH-AEct6ci3wqFX0sNq7Bznp_wvgL_Os7tGQaSq7ttvLgAgxkkUEP6JoHL7MNFxCzPsge4vSUc_8.YAiC7duydQLu7RzcMjg8eDp2b_U3MLhfKos8Isy--Kg&qid=1715291737&sr=8-1
@Paul SB,
Thom Hartmann has published a boatload of books. He's also had a radio show on WCPT in Chicago since the days of Air America back in the mid aught-aughts. For many years, he was on during my drive time, and I listened to him religiously. For years before Bernie Sanders actually ran for president, he did a weekly appearance on Thom's show called "Breakfast with Bernie."
I've sort of stopped listening, partly because the timing no longer fits my schedule, but also because his accurate descriptions of current events have become too depressing. That's not his fault--he's only the messenger. But since the Trump years, my tastes in progressive talk radio have drifted from the factual analysis of a Thom Hartmann and gravitated to the shameless irreverence of a Stephanie Miller. Thus do our times shape us.
That Bernie Sanders thing mentioned above was actually "Brunch with Bernie".
The writer regrets the error. Carry on.
Larry,
Understandable. Reality is not good for anyone's mental health. But I suspect that reading his work would give you lots of ammo to use in verbal or pixelated sparing with the fascists. Unfortunately with my hippocampus, it all dribbles out after a short time. That's why I bring these things up even when they might not have much relevance to the topic at hand. Others will remember and use the knowledge.
Paul SB
Hi Paul
I looked at that book - $20 for the Kindle - I'm too much of a Scotsman to spend that!
Scidata,
If Henry VIII reminds you of rumpt, remember that young Harry jousted - in fact, a horrific jousting injury (his horse rolled over him) left him with permanent leg damage and another one (struck through an open visor by a lance) may have caused lifelong migraines. His injuries probably exacerbated his later weight gain.
I'll grant you massive egos for each*, but Henry at least walked the walk (when he could.) Jousting was a ridiculously dangerous 'sport' - pretty much lightly controlled warfare, like American football. Very, very few in the SCA do it, and not just for financial reasons. Hell, I've ridden and I wouldn't have done it even as a young man.
Pappenheimer
*I've written elsewhere, only slightly tongue in cheek, that Henry's court garb was a health hazard because he must have had trouble seeing over the top of his codpiece.
Duncan,
It's a whole lot cheaper on this side of the Big Water. Why are books so expensive there?
Paul SB
Paul SB,
If that wasn't enough, Hayek's mid-50's visit to the US (and seeming research change) was mostly about getting a divorce. That's the way it worked back then. You had to be well off enough to live where it was legal… and then you could both leave legally.
Real academics tend to be real human beings. One of the undercurrents that drove me away after grad school is I had seen what it was going to take to succeed professionally. There were VERY FEW happily married men in the department. The few who appeared to be often had wives willing to live essentially separate lives. Ugh.
——
Lots of people were racists back then. The better measure is whether they adapted as the world did. Reactionaries don't.
Pappenheimer,
Yes, I was aware of Henry VIII's injuries, and you do make a good point. File it under 'Does misfortune cause depravity or does it reveal it?'. It's been a question for theologians and playwrights down through the ages. Way above a transistor whisperer's pay grade.
Biden's holding off weapons for an Israeli invasion of Raffah now (apparently) insures that he loses the Jewish vote and the progressive/pro-Palestine/Arab vote.
And yet, the conclusion below is self-evidently true, which means that the protesters against Biden and Democrats are hurting their own cause. Unless their agenda is really more about undermining American democracy than it is about Palestine.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/May10-2.html
...
In any case, the cards are very clearly on the table. If Democrats are running the show in 2025, there is at least some possibility that the Palestinian people will be considered in policy-making. If the Republicans are running the show, it's a blank check for the Israeli government.
DT is losing the brain worm vote to RFK. Panic sets in.
Unfortunately, from what I'm seeing over the past 6 months, Biden is losing voters among academics and others with high level degrees. And I'm not talking about students or "studies" scholars, but folks in the sciences. The issue is Israel. Many from this demographic are negative about Biden because they think Biden supports Israel too much, while many are negative about him because he doesn't support Israel enough. From where I am sitting both views are detached from reality.
I could almost excuse these folks because of the shit state of journalism these days, which is an order of magnitude worse when the subject is Israel / Palestine, but this demographic is supposed to be the ones that are savvy about verifying things rather than taking reporters and news articles at their word.
Awhile back I commented that to me it looked (at that time) as if there was no way that Trump would win this upcoming election, but that there was still plenty of time for some new event(s) to change things. That seems to be happening. The events doing the trick are everything about the Israeli / HAMAS conflict. The horribly biased and incompetent reporting of it by Western mainstream media, the Woke college kids being roused by professional "activists" to protest on college campuses, the incredible renewal of antisemitism, etc, etc, . . . it's a real shit show. I've never seen anything like it before, life-long liberal academics in science fields saying they aren't sure they can vote for Biden, and Biden wants HAMAS to win.
Fucking delusional. Too many people in this world are too susceptible to a dangerous degree of delusion for us to survive. I think we're going down.
Alfred,
My thesis advisor had three kids and often complained about not having enough time with them. Yeah, an academic's life is not enviable. Minimal pay, minimal respect, treated as scapegoats by the massive Illiterati. They have to deeply love what they are doing.
Even without the bigotry that lurks behind the works of Hayek, Friedman, and Von Mises, 40 years of abject, miserable failure, and the massive misery it has caused, is proof enough that Neoliberalism is hugely maladaptive for the human species. If we can't root it out, and all the anti-human beliefs behind it, extinction here we come.
Paul SB
Darrell,
Make sure your passport is up to date. America is looking more and more like a Margaret Atwood novel all the time.
Paul SB
Paul & Darrell. Jeez chill. (1) Bernie, Liz, Stacey, Jaime and AOC all will be busting their butts to prevent single-issue preeners from doing their usual flouncing-sanctimony betrayal.
(2) I remain willing to take odds on whether Trump will remain the GOP nominee on Election Day. I don't see how the oligarchs aren't at least pondering options... including the Howard Beale one.
Dr. Brin,
I hope you're right. Not holding my breath, though. The fascists don't need a majority to turn a country into a brutal dictatorship. I can't think of too many who actually had a majority. Sure as hell not Trump.
I'd recommend my latest reading to you, but I suspect there's little in there that you don't already know. How has your gift of the Book Fairy been going?
Paul SB
Paul SB,
I think y'all are too ready to pick on Hayek, Friedman, and Von Mises. The problem lies more with the people who followed them. There was a scene involving Tatcher in Parliament thumping one of Hayek's books. It was the big Constitution of Liberty one. His comment on that was she obviously didn't understand what he was saying.
For example, if you ACTUALLY read Hayek, you'd find he was fairly liberal in the old sense of the term and that essentially no one has tried what he suggested. He DID point out that liberalism can get along well enough under a benign dictatorship (he was thinking of Austria), but that was mostly a reflection of the fact that the liberal democracies of the time were all behaving like socialism was the correct thing to do. Central Planning, State Ownership, etc.
Near the end of his life the liberal democracies had moderated their approach leaving much more room for pricing mechanisms in open markets, but no one except the academics paid him any attention by then. Very few of them too at least until he got his award.
———
America is looking more and more like a Margaret Atwood novel all the time.
My wife was hinting at this the other day. I just shook my head and pointed out how many of us would go to war about it. We haven't said much. I told her I'd buy a gun and use it… and so would a lot of other guys.
So… no. It's just reactionaries doing their reacting. I'm content to let women vote (have their say) before I get so upset that I shoot anyone. [I don't even own a gun... yet.]
Alfred,
Hayek and Von Mises invented Neoliberalism, and Neoliberalism is what has gutted the middle class in America and the UK, turned Russia and much of Latin America into 2-class oligarchies. Everywhere these guys' ideas have been applied it has been an economic disaster that created tremendous misery. However logical their ideas might seem, the track record is horrific, brutal, and extremely profitable for the scummiest of people. Be more practical.
"My wife was hinting at this the other day. I just shook my head and pointed out how many of us would go to war about it. We haven't said much. I told her I'd buy a gun and use it… and so would a lot of other guys."
I sure hope you're right, but liberals and progressives are often the kind of peaceniks who refuse to own guns, while the right-wing fascists love and hoard guns. And guns are expensive, which is why most people don't own them, regardless of the law. That's not good for We the People anywhere in the world.
Paul SB
The LEAST valiv praise of Atwoon are claims 'it could happen here." Polemcs do not have to be plausible to be effective! It's a great, firebrand polemic! But sine 70%+ of women AND men in the US would fight to the death against such events, well...
Paul SB,
Hayek and Von Mises invented Neoliberalism...
No. It is attributed to them. It was invented by people looking for a rationalization for their politics.
I haven't read Von Mises enough to defend him or even be sure I should. I HAVE read Hayek. I have many of his books. All sorts of nonsense gets attributed to him by people who think they know what he meant and by many more who simply assert that his work supports their POV.
Hayek struggled with what label applied to his POV. His best description put him in squarely with the old Whigs... and no one knows what that means anymore. He settled on 'classical' liberal but fully expected people not to know what that meant either. He rejected the Libertarians of the early movement (70's) and likely would have nothing to do with their mongrels who claim to follow Von Mises.
These kinds of movements have goals of their own and latch onto economists and political philosophers (a decent description of Hayek) to provide a framework to their thoughts. The first generation to do so misinterprets their ideological founder and the second generation turns those errors into dogma. By that time their opponents have vilified the supposed founders and no one bothers to read the original papers and books. THAT what is going on here.
If you want to play a small game to test this, try quoting Hayek and then paraphrase his meaning. I'll track down the book or paper and offer what I think he actually meant. You work from the secondary and tertiary sources who think they know and I'll work from translated originals. (Hayek's early work was in German and I can't read it.)
Remember that Hayek self identified as an economist up until WWII when most every academic in that field began to ignore him. After that he drifted toward political philosophy and emergent systems and became something of a forgotten academic figure until Thatcher thumped that book. He wasn't inactive, but being on Popper's (another Austrian) side of things didn't help with his popularity.
The best author to describe Hayek's view of how things should work was actually Popper.
Paul SB,
And guns are expensive...
Sadly... no. And that's not why most people don't own them. Most of us who don't simply don't want to be in a position where we'd shoot someone. Or something. Especially our kids by accident.
They really aren't that expensive, unless you want to buy a really nice one. A decent night out with a good meal for your date will set you back more.
You don't even have to buy them anymore. The 3D printed ones are beginning to show up in war zones. Those aren't great, but they still shoot.
I encourage you to stick to your comfort zone imagining your neighbors as peaceful people, but if some group actually tried something stupid to enforce Atwood's scenario you'd find out otherwise. LOTS of us actually love our mothers, wives, and daughters.
I don't own a gun, but Alfred's right. In the US, guns are cheap. Pulling a trigger is easy. Ending a life isn't. (I've never killed anyone and intend to die being able to say the same.)
If you are planning on picking up a gun for home defense before or after the fighting breaks out, stick with a shotgun. Price is $240-400 for a perfectly adequate one. Pros=does not need a lot of training to hit something within its effective range and unlikely to kill neighbors by accident a few houses away. Can be loaded with less deadly ammo, like rock salt, and still sound just as scary. Cons=limited range if you are attacked on your way to scavenge the local quick-E-mart, but that's probably picked clean of unspoiled food anyway.
If you want something good for actively joining in fighting outside your house, an ar-15 rifle without any bells or whistles will cost $500-700. Anyone with corrected vision in prone supported position can learn to shoot a stationary target out to 100 yards in a few weeks, assuming your heart rate is low. If target is shooting back, your heart rate will not be low. Most humans, even trained ones, will aim high under stress and therefore are likely to endanger neighbors, local cats, squirrels in trees etc. Please note that the important targets are unlikely to be stationary. Don't worry - nearly all fire in modern infantry combat is simply to keep the target's head down so you can maneuver, i.e. run away or find a position to shoot them from relative safety. (Assumes plentiful resupply of ammunition; good luck with that).
Pistols can be had dirt cheap but are generally useless in combat situations* unless you are highly trained or within baseball bat distance. If you are within baseball bat distance, I suggest the bat, which will not jam. ('People' like the Columbine dips were shooting at unarmed children). You are also less likely to engage in 'friendly' fire, which is not.
*with one proviso - any firearm going off tends to make humans flinch and possibly retreat, thus reducing one's karma load. These things are incredibly loud.
Pappenheimer
P.S. looking at the Ukraine war, learning to fly a drone might actually be more effective in a hot war than learning to shoot. I suspect that kamikaze civilian drones with small c4 payloads are the guerilla weapon of the near future.
P.P.S. all of the above is a long way of saying that it will be hard to prepare for actual neighborhood combat. You will likely be in a state of shock that it has come to this and as wildly inaccurate as the people shooting at you, except for the small percentage of humans who find out they actually like this crap. Remember Achilles' choice - a great warrior, but most of the other members of the Greek host lived longer than he did.
Also, DON"T use a printed firearm if you like being able to count to ten and see the results
Pappenheimer
In response to the recent NY Columbia riots, Rabbi Buechle declared that (1) NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy and added that It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety.
To insist on eternal defenselessness & dependence, this is madness.
Gun up while you still can & keep it in reserve like any other insurance policy because there's a YUGE difference between being peaceful & resilient and being harmless & dead.
Best
Alfred,
It sounds like we have a parallel between Hayek and Adam Smith, in terms of strategic misuse. Just like how countless hundreds of millions of people use Jesus' Golden Rule to justify hate, sadism, and murder. But that brings up a point I've made here many times: never worship any one man. No matter how smart someone's words may seem to you, me, or anyone else, once you say you're a follower is this person or that, the misuse, abuse, watering-down for the "unwashed masses" and every other abuse the happens when some idea gets an -ism attached to it. That's exactly why I eschew labels and go for the smorgasbord approach. That and the fact that no two humans are exactly alike, so no matter how hard we try to conform, every idea is a different experience for every individual. The truth may be out there somewhere, but no two humans will ever have exactly the same take on it. Subscribing to an -ism creates inflexibility, and the #1 rule of life is still Adapt or Die.
On the subject of dying, I have to explain to people all the time the number of times a gun kills the owner or a member of the owner's family is orders of magnitude higher than when it's used to "defend the home." You get it, and I get it, but huge numbers of people out there, including people who are not especially fascist, don't know the actual facts.
And if it came down to the decent human beings against the fascists, an average pistol isn't too huge a layout, but good luck with that when the ChristoNazis have assault rifles. They have you outgunned in terms or range, rate of fire, and sheer power to inflict damage. Then, of course, there's the Armed Forces. If a sack like The Grope becomes Commander-in-Chief, don't doubt he'll send in the army on anyone who tries to defend freedom and our democratic republic. Hellfire missiles beat pistols.
Paul SB
Smorgasbordism: Try everything, and if the Swedish Meatballs were good yesterday but smell rancid today, don't eat them.
There's an -ism I can get behind.
Paul SB
onward
onward
Post a Comment