When Guns Aren't Outlawed, Non-Outlaws Will Have Guns

The assertion that the Second Amendment is needed to defend against a potentially-repressive government is frequently greeted with incredulity. We have an actual case now. Dallas passed a law outlawing feeding the homeless without a license. A libertarian organization fed the homeless without a license but while armed. The police decided not to bother enforcing the law. It's a plausible guess the police would have been more stringent with an unarmed group.

Please note this is not a way to change people's minds; it is a way to intensify already-present opinions. If the activists had tried distributing heroin instead of food, there would have been arrests. An attempt to enforce an anti-homeless law would have been blamed on the police since anti-homeless laws are already regarded as dubious. An attempt to enforce an anti-opiate law would have been blamed on the activists since anti-opiate laws have widespread support.

I don't know if they could get away with hiding illegal aliens this way.

Anti-Gentrification Activists vs. Logic

The “reasoning” of anti-gentrification activists who support growth controls is the following sillygism (a reasoning process that yields a delusion):

• Landlords want to build more.
• Landlords want to raise rents.
• Therefore building more will raise rents.

This is a classic example of the fallacy of the undistributed middle. “What landlords want” is the middle term that isn't distributed.

Taking Global-Warming Hysteria as a How-to Guide

Heather MacDonald has apparently been reading the global-warming hysterics and taking their rhetoric as a how-to guide.

• Cherry picking data? Check.
• Claiming that complaints about cherry-picking data are motivated by The Establishment? Check.
• Reporting upticks and ignoring downticks? Check.
• Claiming that attempts to put data in context are a distraction? Check.
• Reporting outliers as though they were a trend? Check.
• Reporting on a statistic as that sounds like a different (and more important) statistic? Check. (“25 of the nation's largest cities ” is not the same thing as “the nation's 25 largest cities.”)

An Atheist Cliche Surfaces

A few years ago, I criticized the common atheist cliche that monotheists are disbelievers in all Gods but one:

For the record, I believe in God and Allah and Brahman and the First Cause and that Existence exists … and I also believe they are the same entity.

The atheist cliche is a classic example of circular reasoning. First, atheists assume that theists are narrow-minded fools and then point out how ridiculous the beliefs of their straw men are.

More recently, the narrow-minded fools in question have been turning up in the Instapundit comments. It's amazing how many people there agree with the atheists.

Replicating Experiments Is Not Wasteful!

I disagree with Senator Flake. The Flake list of wasteful government spending includes:

On the list, we find $1 million that went to the National Institutes of Health to study a dozen monkeys running in hamster balls on a treadmill. That's right. But as strange as the spending may seem to us taxpayers, it's not unique. The report states, "In a case of monkey-see, monkey-do, the National Institute on Aging is already spending more than $600,000 to conduct its own monkey on a treadmill study."

Replicating studies is not a waste of money. Maybe it should be privatized (we cannot trust the government to check its own results), but it is not a waste.

If scientists had paid more attention to the need to replicate studies, the stem-cell bubble of a decade ago could not have happened.

On Cultural Appropriation

On the one hand, this complaint about “cultural appropriation” is the epitome of a tempest in a teapot.

On the other hand, I’m still a bit perturbed when kosher salt is used to cure bacon.

Control Group Missing

Malcolm Gladwell's article asserting that successful entrepreneurs are not really risk takers because they structure their investments in such a way that they cannot lose lacks a control group. He needs a similar study of people who thought they could not lose but lost their proverbial shirts anyway.

Notable and Quotable

Jeff Jacoby said the following better than I could:

Human beings, by virtue of being human, are entitled to worship as they choose, to own property, to emigrate from their country, and to form peaceable associations. Those are fundamental rights, not dependent on the government's political preferences or utilitarian considerations. The freedom to engage in mutual and honest commerce is just as fundamental, and it should be just as immaterial whether lawmakers approve of the bargain struck between seller and buyer. Jones shouldn't have to lobby public officials for the right to hire Smith or teach Smith or pray with Smith, or seek Smith's opinion. Nor should he have to win government approval for the right to sell his goods and services to Smith. Not even if Smith lives in another neighborhood, or another state, or another country.

Another Recommendation to My Fellow Mathematicians

Another reason not to use Word: Not every system uses the same typefaces. You may think your article uses Brush Script, but after it's been sent from one computer to another several times, the Brush Script characters might have turned into a substitute at least once (and they're not going back). If you had used \(\rm\LaTeX\), they would have been \mathcal with no problems.

Foreign Policy and Fictional Nations

According to a recent opinion poll:

To put some of these findings about real modern day issues and Trump voters in context, 41% of his voters think Japanese internment was a good thing, to 37% who don't. And 41% of his supporters would favor bombing Agrabah to only 9% who are opposed to doing that. Agrabah is the country from Aladdin. Overall 30% of Republican primary voters say they support bombing it to 13% who are opposed. We asked the same question of Democrats, and 36% of them opposed bombing Agrabah to 19% in support.

In other words, 55% of Democrats, 50% of Trump supporters, and 43% of Republicans in general think we should have a foreign policy towards a fictional nation (just down the road from Bulungi). The refugees from the Agrabah civil war will probably turn up in the Thursday Next series.

Collatz Statistics, Part II

Part I can be found here.

I next tried plotting the lengths of the Collatz sequences against the initial values and got the following graph:

This looks like a moiré pattern.

In 1913 (see a discussion here), the US school system was apparently redesigned to slowly destroy any tendency to value learning.

The immigrant generation regards learning as objectively good.

The second generation regards learning as subjectively good.

The establishment generation has a taste for learning (when they're not getting stoned).

The legacy generation wants the easiest possible meal ticket.

You can see the effects here.

Two Seveneves Speculations

In the novel Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, the Moon explodes, causing the surface of the Earth to become uninhabitable for 5000 years. The Pingers, one of the surviving groups, are descended from people who survived in submarines in deep ocean trenches.

In view of the fact that novels about the potential uninhabitability of the surface of the Earth, such as On the Beach by Nevil Shute have been around for decades, is it possible that various navies already have plans to do something similar? Let's see… It might make sense to have an all-female crew with a gallon of frozen sperm… They would need a hydroponics and a nuclear reactor…

Speaking of On the Beach, what would Rufus MacQuarie do in that situation?

Not a Case of “Name That Party”

In a discussion of high-end shoplifting, we see:

Goldshine says confrontations do happen, like the time he had to face down a regular, well-liked customer — then also a well-known adviser to the Democratic Party — who always concluded his visits by slipping a pint of Häagen-Dazs under his sport coat. “I had to take him to the side and say, ‘First of all, if it comes out, it will ruin your career.’” And second of all? “I said, 'You’re my friend, and I love you. But you can’t come in here anymore.'”

Also see this.

A Strange New Respect

Nativists and protectionists are giving me a strange new respect for the crybullies insisting on “safe spaces.” When you can't even discuss the Chipotle E. coli problem without nativists etc. blaming it on either illegal aliens or Mexican imports, it's easy to understand the temptation to censor.

To the would-be censors: You cannot use the Ring!

To the nativists: You might try taking this little fact into account.

Enough to Kill X People

2,500 rounds of ammunition might sound like “enough bullets to kill 2,500 people.” There have been lots of other instances of the “enough to kill X people.” rhetoric. For example:

• On April 1, 2003, I pointed out the lethal doses of aspirin present in an aspirin factory.
• During World War II, the US manufactured 47 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition, enough to kill everybody on Earth at the time 20 times.
• In the 1980s Nature published a letter claiming that even if SDI worked, the destroyed missiles would spread millions of lethal doses of plutonium across the globe. I then wrote a letter (on my trusty Commodore 64) pointing out that the plutonium in question would be no more radioactive than the radon naturally present in the air. They not only printed it; I even received requests for reprints!
• The original version of this was, of course, the claim “We have enough nuclear weapons to kill everybody on Earth!”

Collatz Statistics

I've been wondering about the statistics of the length of Collatz sequences so I wrote a program to print a chart of the distribution. (It's a Python program that produces a pbm file. You'll need netpbm to get something useful out of it.) Since the length of the Collatz sequence for \(2^n\) is \(n\), it makes sense to scale the lengths by dividing them by \(\log_2 n\). The results are as follows:

I didn't expect to see an interference pattern.

A Question That Must Be Asked about the San Bernardino Shooters

One of the them was born in the USA. Was he radicalized in American schools? As I've said before:

I suspect that anti-American ideology in public school is more dangerous than anywhere else because, at least as far as youngsters are concerned, school is the Voice of the Establishment. If the Establishment says the Establishment is wrong…

Maybe we should look at schools before looking at borders or guns.

How to React to the San Bernardino Shooting and Similar Events

When among liberals say: “Conservatives are advocating border control in response to this. Don't they realize that X control is people control disguised by a euphemism? That goes for more than one value of X.”

When among conservatives say: “Liberals are advocating gun control in response to this. Don't they realize that X control is people control disguised by a euphemism? That goes for more than one value of X.”

The Purpose of College

One possible purpose of college education is to enable the elites to communicate with each other using “dog whistles” that will not be understood by the common people. Along similar lines, the purpose of graduate education is to enable people in each field to communicate without being understood by outsiders.

It is, after all, well known that college teaches cryptical thinking. (I was inspired by a recent post at Slate Star Codex.)

A Question about a Demand by New York University Protesters

Protesters at New York University are demanding (seen via TheDemands.org):

Rededicate Library from Elmer Holmes Bobst, a known anti-Semite; removal of Elihu Root’s name from the School of Law Scholarship for being an advocate of US Colonialism; renaming of the Fales Collection of English Literature within Bobst, as Fales family fortunes can be traced to colonial slavery. Rename these for POC or people of marginalized communities in the US who have been leaders in activism and advocacy of oppressed groups, OR leaders of equal style and caliber from the Global South.

Will renaming the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library to the Yassir Arafat Library be acceptable?

Pilgrims vs. Political Correctness

The Huffington Post has adopted a pro-pilgrim position this year. I doubt if it will last.

There is a defense of the pilgrims from a standard leftist viewpoint, even in years without a refugee “crisis” from Martin Ripa on Usenet:

If the Indians did owned the land, they were rich ultra-reactionary pigs and were deservedly expropriated by poor workers and peasants. Remember, the property belongs to those who need it.

If the Indians did not owned the land, then there was no theft.

Even by capitalist standards defending landlords is questionable:

“The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community.”—David Ricardo

An Odd Reaction to a Cell Phone Upgrade, Part II

Yesterday someone asked if the new cell phone I got a few years ago came from the Smithsonian. If I had my slide rule handy I would have been tempted to hit him with it.

Does Marion Nestle Read This Blog?

When I posted One Reason We Need Government-Free Science, I wondered if someone on the statist side would use similar arguments against private funding of research. It's happened.

On the other hand, funding from a private business can be countered by funding by its commercial rivals … except that, according to Professor Nestle:

As for Monsanto and the organic food industry, both “recruit scientists to speak on their behalf, [but] Monsanto has far greater resources,“ says Nestle.

On the gripping hand, out here in the real world, Monsanto's revenue is US$ 15.9 billion and the sales of organic produce amounts to $39 billion.

Two Types of People Control

One side of the political spectrum reacted to the recent Paris attack by saying it's time for common-sense gun control. They would be more believable if they hadn't reacted to nearly any news by saying that it's time for common-sense gun control.

The other side of the political spectrum reacted to the recent Paris attack by saying it's time for common-sense border control. They would be more believable if they hadn't reacted to nearly any news by saying that it's time for common-sense border control.

Both sides are ignoring the fact that they're advocating people control. They're pretending that they just want to control something abstract or inanimate.

More on Terrorists and the Refugee “Crisis”

As far as I can tell, the people behind ISIS are attempting to become so broadly hated that they will eventually be fighting everybody on Earth. They plan to put themselves in such a position that they can only be saved by a miracle. Maybe they're trying to force God's hand. (ObSF: Jamethon Black in Soldier, Ask Not by Gordon Dickson)

Of course, Syrian refugees aren't analogous to 1930s Jews; they're analogous to 1870s Catholics.

A Few Questions about the Recent Terrorist Attack

In view of the fact that the recent attack was staged from Molenbeek, Belgium, a town with a very high unemployment rate and recently run by a left-wing nutcase mayor for a couple of decades, we should ask the following questions:

1. Did any of the attackers have jobs? Preparing for such an attack must be rather time consuming. This won't be the first case of a connection between unemployment and terrorism.
2. Was there any involvement on the part of traditional leftists? A generation ago, such attacks were usually carried out by Communists. (The rest of the time, they were committed by Irish nationalists.)
3. We can continue with other questions: Could the attacks have taken place in an area where even a small fraction of the people were armed?
4. Were the suicide vests a necessarily-temporary tactic? As I've said before, “Suicide bombing is an essential part of the Enemy's strategy. It's needed to convince us that deterrence won't work. (Deterrence played an important role in defeating the Soviet Union and they don't want a repeat.)” On the other hand, when Israel was faced with a plague of suicide bombers, they did not give in and eventually the Other Side ran out of people willing to exercise their right to self-detonation. It is, after all, very hard to recruit experienced suicide bombers.
5. Was the apparent involvement of refugees a red herring? Carrying out such an attack requires an in-depth knowledge of the area and a refugee just off the proverbial boat would not have that.

In other words, counteracting such attacks might just be a matter of free the guns, cut the dole, and keep an eye on the anti-capitalist nutjobs.

Climate Change and Terrorism and Search and Replace

At Ed Driscoll at Instapundit is comparing the response to climate change and the response to terrorism and speculating that the responses of the mainstream media were produced by search and replace.

I'd be more inclined to take the people advocating emergency action to stop the climate-change crisis seriously if it weren't for the fact that most of the proposed actions (e.g, prohibiting “wasteful” devices) were advocated by the same people for years.

It's also a bit odd that people who usually congratulate themselves on opposing the Establishment are so much in favor of more regulations.

I'd be more inclined to take the people advocating emergency action to stop the terrorism crisis seriously if it weren't for the fact that most of the proposed actions (e.g, prohibiting “dangerous” immigration) were advocated by the same people for years.

It's also a bit odd that people who usually congratulate themselves on opposing the Establishment are so much in favor of more regulations.

Yes. There is much to be said in favor of writing using search and replace.

A Rule of Thumb on Immigration

Nativists occasionally assert that a high rate of immigration is an unprecedented experiment. On the other hand, the US immigration in 1907 was 1.5% of the population. So … maybe we can admit up to 1.5% of the population each year. That's more than the current rate of immigration to Europe during this refugee “crisis.”

A potential problem: The above rule of thumb implies that the 2003 Iraq invasion was the 2003 Iraq immigration. This is oddly low for a successful invasion.

Brooklyn—the City of Light

In the early days of New York City, one of the proposed city plans included a plan that resembled what was eventually done with Paris:

Mangin laid out a pastiche of grids, of varying densities, at acute angles to each other, sensitive to natural contours.

That's what happened in Brooklyn. As far as I know, nobody has seriously called Brooklyn “the City of Light.”

The plan that didn't happen in NYC (but did happen in Paris) was an instance of a common phenomenon: A centrally-planned system that tries disguising itself by imitating the superficial aspects of an unplanned system. (ObSF: The Rediscovery of Man in Cordwainer Smith's SF)

One Reason We Need Government-Free Science

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article by Matt Ridley (also see comments by Derek Lowe and ORAC) on the advantages of avoiding government-subsidized science.

One very important reason is that there is a suspicion that government-funded scientists are toeing a “Party Line“ and shading their research in politically-acceptable directions. For example, when the Koch brothers paid for the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study of global warming, the fact that it showed there has been global warming over the past few decades was far more believable than a similar study from the EPA.

The global warming fanatics have not been that eager to quote the Berkeley Earth study. Apparently, they would rather not give any credit to right-wing zillionaires. Their revealed preference is that class warfare has priority over “saving the planet.”

A Possible Downside to Legalizing “Drugs”

According to Tom Trinko, leftists tend to be occasionally anti-authoritarian as a result of the illegality of some of their favorite substances. Does that mean legalizing said substances will make them even more authoritarian? On the other hand, legalizing drugs might make them less likely to vote.

Is Jumping to Conclusions an Olympic Event?

For some reason, a recent interview with Bill Gates has conservatives outraged.

If you read the actual article, you should notice that he's mainly recommending a combination of subsidies for increased energy research, longer patent protection for energy technology, and a carbon tax. If the carbon tax is based on the IPCC's average of peer-reviewed studies, it's $43/tC. That's 12¢ per gallon of gasoline.

In other words, the actual recommendations are compatible with capitalism. I'm dubious about the need for subsidized energy research on the grounds that such subsidies frequently increase costs and it's unnecessary if the other two steps are taken but that's a quibble.

Conservatives can identify nine out of five actual examples of socialism.

How Much Kinetic Energy Is There in Continental Drift?

The Earth's mass is 5.972 × 10²⁴ kg. The speed of continental drift is 2.5 cm/year. If we put that together and assume that the motions that lead to continental drift extend through the entire Earth, we get a value of the total kinetic energy of continental drift of 1.9 × 10⁶ J (using \(E=\frac{mv^2}{2}\)). That's around ½ kilowatt hour or 450 kCal. That last is about the calorie count of a McDonald's Quarter Pounder Burger with Cheese.

Wait a moment… That doesn't sound right…

A Ninth Amendment Test Case

According to the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

At first this looks like a conclusive argument against the complaints that the Supreme Court is following Amendment Pi of the Constitution, in magic invisible ink that only special people can see … until we consider the word “retained.”

A right to gay marriage, for example, was not retained; it was invented recently. On the other hand, a right to wear a hat (according to Theodore Sedgwick) was retained:

if the committee were governed by that general principle, they might have gone into a very lengthy enumeration of rights; they might have declared that a man should have the right to wear his hat if he pleased; that he might get up when he pleased, and go to bed when he thought proper.

Even despite the fact that a member of the First Congress described the right to wear a hat as a right that should not have to be enumerated, many states violate that right when it comes to issuing driver's licenses. This might be a suitable test case for the 9th Amendment.

I won't more than mention that driver's licenses also look problematic.

The Tepid Equations

There's an attempt at applying the “Trolley Problem” at Technology Review. Should self-driving cars be programmed to swerve out of the way of a crowd even it it would mean running over an individual?

I'm not sure why that would be a problem in the real world. The forces needed to swerve are the same order of magnitude as the forces needed to stop. I won't more than mention that humans can survive a deceleration of 40g, which would bring a 55-mph car to a halt in 2.5 ft. Maybe instead of paying ethical philosophers, we should pay for better brakes.

A Note on Brainworms

Tapeworms don't only infect intestines; sometimes they're found in brains:

The closer scientists look at the epidemiology of the disease, the worse it becomes. Nash and other neurocysticercosis experts have been traveling through Latin America with CT scanners and blood tests to survey populations. In one study in Peru, researchers found 37 percent of people showed signs of having been infected at some point. Earlier this spring, Nash and colleagues published a review of the scientific literature and concluded that somewhere between 11 million and 29 million people have neurocysticercosis in Latin America alone. Tapeworms are also common in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Asia. “Neurocysticercosis is a very important disease worldwide,” Nash says.

This may explain Third-World politics. Hookworm infections were common in the southeastern US back when they always voted for Democrats. Come to think of it, I'd like to know what infection swept Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

One implication: If Third-World politics are due to brainworms, then immigration from the Third World to places with flush toilets and sewage treatment plants will help get rid of Third-World politics.

The really bizarre reaction comes from nativists, for example the commenters at Instapundit:

Geez...good thing we are letting all of those illegal aliens potentially harboring such parasites into the country.

What could go wrong?

If such worms were likely to spread in this country, they would have done so long ago.

A Star Wars Speculation

The historical model for the Star Wars series is obviously the French Revolution and its aftermath.

It starts with a revolution backed by the “money power” (i.e., the middle classes) followed by a megalomaniac seizing power temporarily. The Emperor Palpatine is clearly an analog of Napoleon. (That means, of course, that Darth Vader is an analog of Talleyrand.)

The next step will be a restoration of the Ancien Regime. There may be more revolutions later.

Solar Energy Is Not Always Associated with Hipsters

There is some evidence that the Kepler Space Telescope has found a star surrounded by solar-energy collectors (or, more likely, lots of asteroids). Some of my fellow wingnuts saw the word “solar” and figured the researchers must be hipsters trying to ignore nuclear energy. Well … Let's do some arithmetic.

The mass of the ocean is 1.4 × 10²⁴ g. This is 1/9 hydrogen. Deuterium is 1 part in 10⁴ of the hydrogen. Deuterium fusion can yield 3.4 × 10¹¹ J/g. Multiplying them all out, we get 5 × 10³⁰ J. The Sun emits 3.8 × 10²⁶ J/s. Dividing that we see that the Sun puts out as much energy as fusing all the deuterium in Earth's oceans in 13,000 seconds.

Even if we assume we can fuse all the hydrogen in Earth's oceans (using imaginary technology), that would still only bring us to four years.

Compared to space-based solar, Earth-based nuclear energy is a wet firecracker.

Occupation and Immigration

As is well known, the occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II is generally considered a success. The German and Japanese populations didn't change but having American authority made the difference.

Putting previously violent peoples under American authority? Isn't that part of immigration? The example of the post-World-War-II occupation shows that sometimes institutions matter more than people. In other words, bringing THEM over here need not turn here into there.

A Seveneves Calculation

In the novel Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, the Moon explodes, causing the surface of the Earth to become uninhabitable for 5000 years. There is a colony or two of humans who survive in deep mines. Let's calculate how deep the human hole goes.

The thermal diffusivity of rocks appears to be around 1 mm²/s. 5000 years is around 1.6 × 10¹¹ seconds. You can expect the heat from the “hard rain” to diffuse to a depth of \(\sqrt{1.6\times 10^{11}}\) millimeters or 400 meters. Three times that distance should be safe, so the colony would only have to be \(\frac{3}{4}\) miles down. It might be doable.

Will the Chinese “Credit Scores” Backfire?

The Chinese “credit scores” might backfire. They might let dissidents know they aren't alone.

On the other hand, people with low credit scores will include both dissidents and real deadbeats. On the gripping hand, people sent to prison in the Soviet Union included both dissidents and real criminals. Even despite that, being sent to prison was sometimes considered a badge of honor in the Soviet Union.

Set paranoia bit to ON: What if this is being released by China for the purpose of encouraging the United States to crack down on “Big Data”? Such a crackdown might sabotage part of the US economy.

Why Are People Getting Fatter?

One theory is that it's due to changes in exposure to pesticides:

First, people are exposed to more chemicals that might be weight-gain inducing. Pesticides, flame retardants, and the substances in food packaging might all be altering our hormonal processes and tweaking the way our bodies put on and maintain weight.

If pesticide changes are the cause, does that mean that DDT prevents obesity? Or is it due to the cyclamate ban? There's even a possibility it's due to the absence of leaded gasoline. All of these might explain why humans are getting fatter and also why lab animals are getting fatter.

On the other hand, could it be due to the decline in red-meat consumption? On the gripping hand, that would not explain the lab-animal data.

We're Waiting

Last August 11, I received the following email:

Fellow Investor,

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history and alter the course of your life.

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I know this is an extreme prediction — so extreme in fact,
that few who read these words will heed them.

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Larry Edelson,
Senior Analyst, Real Wealth Report

So what's taking so long?

A What If Speculation

According to Ex Urbe, Pope Julius II was able to bring peace to central Italy by being a treacherous deceiver:

Outcome if Julius II had been virtuous:

Julius seals his pact with Cesare. After his election, he continues to treat Cesare as a close ally, allows him to control the papal army, and use it to continue waging war in central and northern Italy. Thousands if not tens of thousands die in combat and more from bandits and disease as the chaos continues. Cesare secures Romagna and the papal states, then turns on Florence, probably Modena and Ferrara too, on the Venetian land empire, shoring himself up more and more at the cost of chaos. In the end either the Emperor invades to check Cesare's rise, or Cesare grows strong enough to make his bid to be Julius' successor, and bloody civil war erupts whether Cesare wins or loses as he and the rest of Italy battle to see whether or not the papacy will indeed become a hereditary monarchy. Death toll: tens if not hundreds of thousands.

Outcome if Julius II is a treacherous deceiver:

Cesare is instantly removed. The wars in central Italy cease. The suddenness of the change makes it easy for provincial forces, as well as papal forces and city forces, to bring about some degree of stability. The shock of the suddenness of Julius' betrayal makes everyone else wary of causing trouble. Peace is instantly restored, the Borgia Kingdom eliminated, exiles restored, Florence protected. Death toll: Cesare Borgia, plus, perhaps, a few of his guards and associates.

I'm not sure that the virtuous outcome would have been that bad. The obvious prediction from a man of faith would be that God would strike down Cesare Borgia. In hindsight, we can see that was quite likely. Borgia was already disfigured by syphilis and would probably die a year or two later, leaving a disgusting corpse. One effect: Machiavelli writes The Prince but includes the easily observable fact that God strikes down evil princes just when they seemed most secure.

I'm not sure what effect that episode would have on the Protestant Reformation, which was just around the corner ….

Out of What Bodily Orifice Did He Pull That Figure?

According to the Donald Trump Reality Distortion Field:

Illegal immigration is costing us more than $200 billion dollars a year just to maintain what we have.

[CITATION NEEDED].

Plastic Rings Fight Global Warming!

According to a recent study, sharks can fight global warming:

One of the sea turtles’ main food sources is seagrass, which store vast reservoirs of carbon within sediments. With more sea turtles consuming more seagrass, the carbon is unlocked and can be released into the earth’s atmosphere, thereby accelerating climate change.

………

“In the case of sharks and turtles, sharks eat turtles, which in turn eat seagrasses. But when sharks disappear, the turtles have a tendency to run wild and the seagrass ecosystems cannot sustain the turtle populations.

“The turtles overgraze, and, as a consequence, we’re seeing large reductions in seagrass carbon stocks.”

On the other hand, you don't need sharks to get rid of sea turtles, plastic rings can also do that:

Plastic marine debris affects sea turtles in numerous ways. Turtles caught in lost or abandoned plastic fishing gear may be injured or drowned. Those that mistake floating debris for food are at risk from intestinal compaction or tearing, digestive suppression, and exposure to chemical toxicants adsorbed by (accumulated on the surface of) the plastics. Leatherbacks, for example, are believed to mistakenly eat floating plastic bags instead of jellyfish, a primary food. Miscellaneous debris, such as plastic rings, can cut, maim or amputate limbs and cause severe and sometimes lethal infections. At least 100,000 marine animals are estimated to die as a result of plastic marine debris each year, a number that may increase dramatically with better estimates of mortality from marine debris affecting difficult-to-observe neonate sea turtles.

Drink a six-pack (in my case a six-pack of Diet Coke). You're doing it for Mother Earth.

This Is an OUTRAGE!

The Wall Street Journal's article on Ikea's test apartment is not illustrated with a photo of the apartment but a photo of a generic Ikea store. By the standards of the critics of the Planned parenthood videos, this clearly means that the article is fraudulent and the apartment does not exist!

Avoiding Conflict of Interest

The House of Representatives recently tried passing a bill about the composition of the Science Advisory Board (SAB), which provides scientific advice to the EPA Administrator that states:

Board members may not participate in advisory activities that directly or indirectly involve review or evaluation of their own work.

Some people have a problem with that. It might keep scientists from testifying about cutting-edge research. On the other hand, cutting-edge research tends to be unreliable. It takes a while for research to be properly checked.

This bill may help limit one of the most dangerous types of conflict of interest in scientific advice: scientists in love with their theories. It might even help limit the conflict of interest first noted in Genesis 41:33:

Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt.

Everything Which Is Not Forbidden Is Compulsory

According to left-wing collectivists, we must take care of the refugees. According to right-wing collectivists, we must take stop anybody in our society from taking care of the refugees. (If you hire an illegal alien, you can be penalized.) Both sides agree that everything which is not forbidden is compulsory.

Maybe we should let people make their own decisions.

The Refugee “Crisis” and Chesterton's Fence

A few decades from now, any laws passed in response to the Refugee “Crisis” will look like Chesterton's Fence. Maybe some fences really are pointless.

On the other hand, it's also worth checking to see if there were any identifiable protests like this post before removing them.

Is the Refugee Crisis Proof That the Nativists Are Right?

The wrong side of the Right has been treating the refugee crisis as conclusive evidence that BORDERS MUST BE CLOSED! I don't see it. The refugee situation is not ideal but it must be an improvement over staying home, otherwise they would not have come.

As for the worry about this as an invasion force, it's worth pointing out that the total number of refugees is less than 1% of the population of Europe. In the early 20th century the US absorbed over 1% of its population per year and we survived.

The usual nativist excuse for ignoring the early 20th-century precedent is that today's immigrants are different. On the other hand, we've heard that excuse before. It was used to close the gates in the 1920s. The nativists will not only have to explain that the immigrants are different, they will have to explain why they are differenter than last time.

To make matters worse, this crisis will be cited in the future as though it's evidence nativist theories cannot be challenged.

Explaining That RICO Lawsuit

As you may have heard, there's a petition for the Federal government to start a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit against the alleged backers of alleged “climate deniers.” This may seem counterproductive, but the people in favor of the lawsuit assume that the “climate deniers” are obeying their corporate masters and if the Forces of Light can shut down those corporate masters, the “climate denier” movement will vanish.

In case you were wondering, right-wing intellectuals are not always obedient. I won't more than mention that the wider conservative movement is not a matter of following leaders.

Clocks Don't Alarm People

People alarm people.

My guess as to what happened: Ahmed built the homemade clock, took it to school, and showed it to his engineering teacher. After receiving some encouraging words, he went to his next class and said “Look at what I made!” The teacher there heard that as a threat.

As for Ahmed's reticence, I understand that is the appropriate response to police interrogation nowadays. Maybe his parents are Martha Stewart fans and he heard of what happened to her.

Answering a Scott Adams Question

Scott Adams asks (as summarized by Randall Parker):

If the vast majority of smart people can't beat the stock market indexes why do they think they can do better at knowing who to elect as President?

The vast majority of smart people can't beat the stock market indexes because the vast majority of smart people can't beat the vast majority of smart people.

You can't jump over your shadow.

The vast majority of people can't make a better decision about selecting a President than the voters because the vast majority of people can't beat the vast majority of people.

You Won't Find These Ideas in a College Library!

Scott Alexander's discussion of Chomsky's discussion of media bias reminded of the time I read “You won't find these ideas in a college library!” in a college library.

I'm even reminded of the leftists who claimed that chain bookstores were keeping Chomsky's books off the shelves.

Trump Supporters and Communists

The blog comments by Trump supporters (you find a sample here) remind of the following story:

A Conservative Party candidate for public office in NYC was accused of being a fascist by a demonstrator. He replied “You have no more right to say I'm a fascist than I have the right to say you're a Communist.” The demonstrator then said “But I am a Communist!”

If I recall correctly, that was in National Review but I can't find it online.

The “No Bad Stuff” Clause

Statists frequently sound as though the Constitution had a “No Bad Stuff” clause. (Typical example here.) I don't know how to break it to them but the Constitution doesn't actually have a “No Bad Stuff” clause. On the other hand, the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes a “No Bad Stuff” clause in Article 29:

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Idealist translation: All good stuff! No bad stuff!
Realist translation: The preceding 28 articles guarantee hot air. Anything they promise can be set aside if someone influential decides they're inconvenient.

The Temptation of the Elves

My fellow obsessive Tolkien fans may recall Tolkien's speculation that, just as Men seek relief from death, Elves might seek relief from deathlessness. That seems a bit odd, but I think he meant that Elves might seek relief from change. You may recall that the Three Rings were intended to preserve things unchanged.

One effect of longer life spans is that most of us will see far more change in our lives than in earlier societies and we're not used to it. Anyone my age (or even a bit younger) will have the impression that “they're changing the rules every few decades.” This can be upsetting and it's understandable that many people will try slowing it down. Just when you think you know how the world works, you find that you can't get a good job any more right out of high school … or that your favorite restaurants and stores are closing … or that you have to learn how to decipher a new set of accents or ….

This may explain the efforts made to keep newcomers out of countries or neighborhoods. Please note that if you try using the One State, it's like using the One Ring. It's nature is evil and it consumes those who would wield it. For example, if you try keeping people out of your “backyard” by growth controls, you produce a zero-sum game and any newcomer will push out those stores that you want to keep.

Schrödinger's Immigrants

A new paradox has been discovered recently:

UKIP have updated Schrödinger's famous thought experiment by insisting that immigrants exist in a state of both lazing around on benefits whilst simultaneously being out there stealing British jobs.

There's another variant on the paradox: that immigrants will outbreed the natives and that they are overwhelmingly military-age males. Apparently, the refugees are mostly transsexuals.

A Plea to Political Activists

If you criticize your political opponents for defending X but not Y even though X and Y are equivalent, please do not defend Y but not X.

I was inspired by the comments here and there.

Bakers vs. Bureaucrats

The latest battle in the gay marriage war is over whether a a county clerk must issue gay marriage licenses. Such a requirement makes far more sense than requiring bakers to bake cakes for gay weddings. Engaging in business is a God-given right. Being a bureaucrat isn't. If the job violates your beliefs, you should resign in protest.

One possible effect of the controversy: An opponent of capital punishment might try to become an executioner and then refuse to serve.

A question that must be asked: What if this is a deliberate attempt by a Democrat to get a test case that can be spun as a precedent for denying the rights of bakers or pharmacists?

On the other hand, if the gay-marriage movement is for the purpose of discrediting traditional religious believers, then that would mean it is a violation of the First Amendment. This claim is not completely absurd. On the gripping hand, it's unlikely the Supreme Court will rule that it did that.

A Suggestion for Nativists, Part II

Immigration is the Global Warming of the Right.

We see the same pattern of asserting the existence of large amounts of damage while giving minimal thought to measuring either the social cost of carbon or the social cost of immigration.

I'll give a specific example of that minimal thought: Donald Trump has recently criticized the IRS for sending $4 billion in income tax refunds per year to illegal aliens. On the other hand, illegal aliens pay $11.8 billion per year in income taxes.

A Few Questions for New-Age People Who Imagine They're Scientific

• What do you mean by “linear”?
• What do you mean by “vibrations”? Can you measure the frequency in kilohertz?
• What do you mean by “energy”? Can you measure the energy in kilowatt-hours?
• Since energy and matter are the same thing, can we measure your type of energy in kilograms?
• If you're post-modern, post which modern? As far as I can tell, modernism has gone through several phases: the modernism of Descartes, the modernism of Jefferson, the modernism of Marx, the modernism of Taylor, the modernism of Toffler, …
• Did the chicken really cross the road? Or is that what THEY want you to think?
• What's your opinion of dihydrogen monoxide? Should it be banned?
• If you experimented with drugs, where was the control group?

“Hide the Decline” from Someone I Agree With

Bryan Caplan expressed approval of hiding information that might interfere with a libertarian narrative:

I've long scorned mainstream media for their relentless, misleading negativity.  Now the NYT publishes a gloriously positive story - and I wish it hadn't.

Hide the decline?

Sigh…

Now any fact I might cite while arguing with a nativist will not only be taken as propaganda (they were doing that anyway) but will also look like propaganda to formerly-neutral third parties.

A Category 5 Hurricane in a Teapot

The latest news from what passes for organized science-fiction fandom is that two groups of SF fans, the “Sad Puppies” and the “Rabid Puppies,” tried to seize/regain control of the Hugo Awards. According to the Puppies, the Hugos have come under control of a clique using block voting. (There are additional accusations that the clique consists of politically-correct people, which would be more believable if I hadn't also read accusations that George Will or Victor Davis Hanson are PC people.) In reaction to that, the two groups of Puppies encouraged their friends to join WorldCon and vote for their type of SF, followed by the Puppy brand of fiction getting more of the nominations. The earlier clique didn't take that lying down and encouraged their friends to join and vote for “No Award.” The “No Award” votes won in many categories.

In other words, we now have a group of people who appear to be left leaning who have endorsed the ethic of “Freedom, I Won't!” (Required reading: “And then there were none” by Eric Frank Russell.) We can use that as a precedent to defend the rights of pharmacists or bakers to refuse to fill prescriptions or bake cakes.

Being able to vote for “No Award” might also come in handy if the Presidential election comes down to Trump vs. Sanders.

Another speculation: What if some zillionaire (David Koch, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or George Soros) bought up and distributed a bleepload of WorldCon memberships?

Distributed Denial of Sanity

In Blindsight by Peter Watts, extraterrestrials intercept transmissions from Earth, are unable to figure out what they mean, and come to the conclusion the transmissions are a deliberate attempt to waste their time:

There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance.

The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.

Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.

The signal is an attack.

And it's coming from right about there.

I was somehow reminded of this by the way Donald Trump debates have taken over large parts of the dextrosphere. Is the Trump run an attempt to keep conservatives occupied? Is it a distributed denial of sanity?

Wordy People with a Large Vocabulary Are Telling the Truth!

According to recent research on how to get terrorists to talk (seen via BuzzFeed (seen via GeekPress)):

We hypothesized that deceptive participants would speak less and use fewer unique words than would truthful participants when interviewed about their activities.

They were able to confirm their hypothesis using a WEIRD sample of 64 people. You can be sure they were telling the truth because they used very many long words to explain it. (That's why I used the hypothetical statement above; it was much shorter than the later summaries.)

Cross posted to Small Sample Watch.

A Few General Principles for Discussing Immigration

1. There is no such thing as “unfair competition” in a capitalist system.
2. Earlier immigration waves to the US didn't turn “here” into “there.” Why would it do so this time?
3. If you find yourself saying “This time it's different.” you may be speaking nonsense.
4. When X is outlawed, only outlaws will have X.
5. Please don't say anything that sounds like “If you really believed in free speech, you'd let someone yell at you all night long while you try to sleep.”
6. If an illegal alien starts his American residence by breaking the law, does that mean he has two felonies to go?
7. Please recall there is a difference between the power of the lash and the power of the dollar.

The Watson Personality Test Results

The Watson AI program is now being applied to deriving personality predictions from writing samples. I tries inputting a sample of text from this blog and got the following results:

You are shrewd and skeptical.

You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. You are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself. And you are philosophical: you are open to and intrigued by new ideas and love to explore them.

Your choices are driven by a desire for prestige.

You are relatively unconcerned with taking pleasure in life: you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment. You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person.

Choices driven by a desire for prestige?

A Suggestion on “How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Donald?”

Appoint Donald Trump ambassador to the UN.

Lewis Carroll on Politics

Much of Lewis Carroll's mathematical analysis of politics can be applied today.

On Donald Trump: Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger.

On Occupy Wall Street: A Surd is a radical whose meaning cannot be exactly ascertained. This class comprises a very large number of particles.

On political debates in general:

1. Let it be granted, that a speaker may digress from any one point to any other point.
2. That a finite argument, (i.e. one finished and disposed of,) may be produced to any extent in subsequent debates.
3. That a controversy may be raised about any question, and at any distance from that question.

A Note on Retirement Ages

I recently attended the MOVES conference, in the course of which I heard a lecture by Richard Guy, whose 99th birthday is next month. (I'd give a detailed report on the lecture but I lost track of what he was saying while he was in the middle of identifying 50 points on the nine-point circle.)

… and how are the years treating you?

Uniformity Is Not Always a Virtue

The bureaucratic mind at work:

The US presents particular obstacles to achieving educational improvement at a national scale, deriving from its social and economic diversity and also from an entrenched tradition of “local control,” which precludes a federal role in any primary initiatives. Yet to achieve effective reform at scale requires some national coherence. This was a principal aim of the Common Core, embodied in the word “Common.” Fractions are the same in Florida and Montana; it makes little sense in a highly mobile population for the math curriculum to change at state lines. It would be like building a national railway system with different gauge tracks in each state.

When everybody is learning the same stuff, everybody will be making the same mistakes. When there are many different education plans, even people who are miseducated can learn the truth from others after graduation. When there's just one plan, there are very few such others and those that do exist will sound like (and sometimes be) crackpots.

Now You See It and Now You Don't

I'm sure anybody following the news about nutrition research has noticed the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't nature of the evidence for the benefits of eating less meat. Epidemiological research seemed to indicate that people who ate less meat tended to have longer life expectancies. Then large numbers of people tried adopting the correlates of low-meat diets (e.g., low fat) and the advantages disappeared. That might mean the correlates of a low-meat diet in the ‘wild’ differ from the correlates of such a diet when deliberately adopted. One possible such correlate is that a low-meat diet in the wild tends to be a high-beans diet. In other words, it might be a high-protein, low-methionine diet. When low-meat or low-fat diets are deliberately adopted they tend to be high-grain. Grain protein is just as rich in methionine as meat protein so, if low-methionine diets are better, those diets would be ineffective. (Or maybe there's another explanation.)

Another case of now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't evidence is that handing adolescents contraceptives lowers the abortion rate. There have been many studies that show that but areas that adopt the policy deliberately don't seem to have lower abortion rates. (The ‘blue’ states might have low adolescent birth rates but they don't have low abortion rates.) Maybe the studies are about what happens when an organization other than Planned Parenthood hands out the pills. When the policy is deliberately adopted, the people turn to Planned Parenthood and that fails. (Or maybe there's another explanation.)

Update on Senator Sanders

I thought a pro-gun liberal would be the ideal person to say “When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will have immigration.” He turned out to be a socialist who is not an international socialist instead:

Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

………

It would make everybody in America poorer—you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

Sigh.

Two Notes on Donald Trump

I've been disappointed by Donald Trump. When he first became well known, I thought “That's the man who will take the human race into space!” After all, his ego is too large for one planet. It turned out that it doesn't matter if the ego is large if the man is small.

One way the Republican establishment can fight Trump: Get him talking about guns. He's bound to reveal a belief that guns are only for licensed bodyguards. The Republican base is even more solidly pro-gun than anti-immigrant.

What If It's All False Flags?

What if the large number of people arguing on the Internet who appear to fulfilling all of the stereotypes of their nominal opponents are all false flags? What if the “Check your privilege” Social Justice Warriors are actually conservatives trying to discredit liberalism and the people whining about #cuckservatives are actually liberals trying to discredit conservatism? That would explain so much.

Uber and NASA

There's worry about whether Uber can contribute to killing the planet. On the other hand, according to NASA, we've got spares.

One disadvantage of the new planet: It's 1.5 billion years older than the Earth, which means it has \(\frac{1}{4}\) as much uranium 235 (assuming it started out with the same amount). That might make it harder to jump start a nuclear industry. On the other hand, it means fewer worries about nations run by maniacs.

Are You Sure This Is the Analogy You Want?

Some of the commenters on an Instapundit post on the GMO controversy are comparing it to the global warming and cholesterol controversies. The odd thing is that these people are critical about the claims that both Anthropogenic Global Warming and saturated fat are dangers but they regard GMO foods as a danger. The reasoning appears to be as follows: If the fear mongers were wrong about X and wrong about Y, they must be right about Z. Is it their turn to be right?

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and Its Implications for Current Controversies

Background here for those of you who were stoned in high-school history classes.

Nullification

The use of nullification (a declaration that state and local governments will not assist the Federal government to enforce some laws) by slave states has given nullification a bad name. On the contrary, nullification was also used by the free states of Wisconsin and Vermont to hinder enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The use or endorsement of nullification by liberals or libertarians (with respect to immigration law, for example) is not necessarily hypocritical.

We Won't Let You Stay Uninvolved

In the early stages, one common excuse given by supporters of shady activities (sometimes those activities have real victims and sometimes they don't) is: “If you don't like it, don't do it.” This is followed by “We won't let you stay uninvolved.” This happened in the case of slavery (the Fugitive Slave Act), the case of of selling possible abortifacients (the Affordable Care Act), and in the case of gay marriage.

Shooting the Wounded

Slavery was legal in much of the U.S. The Fugitive Slave Act was a matter of starting to eliminate the resistance. You can think of it as “shooting the wounded.”

The Confederate Flag

One excuse for flying the Confederate flag is that it's a symbol of resisting centralization. On the other hand, when it comes to centralization, Dixie fired the first shot.

Drapetomania

Drapetomania was a supposed neurosis that caused slaves to run away. The belief that refusal to submit is a sign of mental illness continues today.

Two Possible Effect of the Confederate Flag Controversy

1. People might be unwilling to get involved in moral controversies lest they be on the losing side and labeled as scum a century later.
2. People already involved in a moral controversy will be unwilling to give an inch lest they lose and be labeled as scum a century later.

Applying the above to other controversies will be left as an exercise for the reader.

A Theory about Left vs. Right

One possible description of Left vs. Right:

The Left wants to break down barriers between places and put up barriers between times. The Right wants to break down barriers between times and put up barriers between places.

The phrase “barriers between times” might be hard to decipher. You can think of destroying or denouncing traditions as putting a barrier between the present and the past. You can also think of birth control or abortion as putting a barrier between the present and the future. Leftists claim to be loyal to the future but only on the condition that it's like the present but only more so.

One consequence: The reaction of the Right to suggestions that judges should take the laws of other places into account resembles the reaction of the Left to suggestions that judges should take the laws of other times into account.

To Paraphrase Keith Laumer …

Iran has been a sponsor of terrorism for the past few decades. Now, perhaps, we shall see them breaking that precedent and entering into peaceful relations with their neighbors.

On the other hand, maybe breaking and entering is what we can expect.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders

Donald Trump is an alleged Republican who doesn't believe in the common Republican talking point: When X is outlawed, only outlaws will X.

Bernie Sanders is a Democrat who does believe that.

A Suggestion for Arkansas

For the benefit of those who haven't been keeping track of people who give dorks a bad name, the Satanic Temple is attempting to place a statue of Baphomet outside the Arkansas statehouse. After all, there is a Ten Commandments monument there and the state is not supposed to discriminate on religious grounds. The official reason for the Ten Commandments monument is that it's about the history of the Law. There is a simple way for the Arkansas state government to make that point. They should also include monuments to the code of Hammurabi, Solon's law code, and the Law of the Twelve Tables.

On the other hand, maybe they should allow it because it's beneficial if government becomes a laughingstock.

Is Instapundit Supporting Gun Control?

The first reaction to this should be to examine more complete statistics, notice that shootings are up but crime is down, and recall “More guns, less crime.”

The first reaction to this should be to say “When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.”

The right-wing stance on the Second Amendment is starting to look like the left-wing stance on the First Amendment. Left-wing motto: It's not censorship when we do it. Right-wing motto: It's not gun grabbing when we do it.

Both Sides Lost

According to Chanda Chisala:

The fact that black immigrants to the United States have shown achievements that are superior to native black Americans has been a phenomenon studied since at least the 1970′s. … What most of these theories failed to predict was that the children of these immigrants would also show exceptional achievements, especially academically. It is only in recent years, as the immigrants have stayed long enough to produce a sufficiently high number of offspring, that it has been observed that they are over-represented among high academic achievers, especially when compared to native blacks, particularly at very elite institutions.

This disproves the favorite theories of both the Left (that the black–white academic gap is due to the effects of prejudice) and the hereditarian wing of the Right (that the black–white academic gap is due to the effects of genes). The children of African immigrants have the same genes and face the same prejudices as the descendants of 18th-century kidnap victims. In other words, both sides have lost.

As for what is causing the black–white academic gap … stereotype threat might be part of the explanation. I suspect the affirmative action is aggravating that.

Uh Oh

According to Matthew L. Wald:

On the micro level, last weekend I watched a young cashier at the hardware store scan purchases and heard the customer complain that the total was wrong. I was terrified by the cashier's response. It wasn't, “No, the computer is right.” It wasn't, “let me double check.” It was, “How did you know?” When it comes to adding numbers in our heads, we've not only forgotten some skills, we've forgotten we ever had them.

ObSF: “A Feeling of Power” by Isaac Asimov.

A Visit to an Evil Room

I was at … the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing. After all, Everybody Knows that anything one of the Koch brother has ever touched is tainted with Evil.

Other also object to Dinosaur Halls.

The Best Comment on the Supreme Court's Reasoning in the Gay-Marriage Decision

… came from Dave Munger years before the decision. One of the possible replies to “Should Congress have intervened in -mumble mumble-?” at the top is:

No, that is specifically proscribed by Amendment Pi of the Constitution, in magic invisible ink that only special people can see.

Two Annoying Reactions on the Right to the Gay-Marriage Decision

Soon they will be forcing religious organizations to perform gay marriages!

The question of whether the fact that something is legal means someone can be compelled to get involved with it against his/her religion has already been brought up. Remember the Hobby Lobby case of last year? The same court responsible for the gay-marriage decision ruled in favor of the rights of people called bigots. Please note that contraception has even wider and deeper backing from the Left than gay marriage.

We will never be able to get rid of this!

Just a few days before the gay-marriage decision, the court overturned raisin-control. This was part of the left-wing agenda of a couple of decades ago, defended with the same amount of condescension we see today in the gay-marriage debate. Not every left-wing victory is permanent.

ObSF: “In a good cause, there are no failures, only delayed successes.”—Isaac Asimov

Don't Let This Crisis Go to Waste!

I'm talking about the OPM breach. Remember that?

There's a common libertarian argument: Government is usually incompetent. There's a common response to that argument on the left: Right-wing governments are incompetent because of deliberate sabotage. For example, according to a commenter on Facebook:

Republicans start with the premise that government doesn't work and has no solutions, then they fight tooth and nail to get in office and prove it.

In the case of the OPM breach we see a clear instance of government incompetence that cannot be blamed on right-wing sabotage.

I also heard that there were a few newsworthy Supreme-Court decisions. At least raisins are finally free!

Inceptionism and “Dog Whistles”

A theory about political idiots

The typical political idiot on the Internet takes his cues about what a controversy is Really About from other idiots on the other side of the controversy. This explains why lots of left-wing idiots are convinced that any discussion of academic excellence is a “dog whistle” to racists and, for that matter, why right-wing idiots frequently assume that open border libertarians are Cultural Marxists.

The inceptionism connection

I recently posted a mention of inceptionism. If a neural network is trained on one set of data and then interprets a different set, that different set will still resemble the training set to the network. For example, a cloud will look like an animal or a tree will look like a building or an intellectual snob will look like a racist or a libertarian will look like a Communist agent or …

In possibly-related news, inceptionist images are frequently described using Lovecraftian terminology.

A Brief Note on Dixiecrats

It's common for conservatives to point out that the Republicans were the party that abolished slavery and that the Democrats defended it. The standard response from Democrats is to claim the parties have switched places.

Maybe the conservatives should criticize “the identity-politics party” or “the party opposed to the 1%” or “the party that shouts down dissent” or the “party that regards disagreement as offensive” or …

In the other direction, I doubt if the Republicans have changed much.

The Conclusion Sounds Plausible …

… but I'm still skeptical of the research that purports to show that conservatives have more self control than liberals (original paper here).

In part of the research, the experimenters gave the experimental subjects fabricated data on the effects of a belief in free will. (I have criticized this style of research before.) If the researchers were willing to lie to at least one set of experimental subjects, why should we believe them now?

On the other hand, this appears to back up my theory that conservatives might do better at the Stroop test. I'd like to see this replicated by other researchers … followed by a study of the Asch test. On the gripping hand, by the reasoning in the preceding paragraph, all studies using the Asch test are dubious.

If Leftists Are Refusing to Have Children …

… why should the rest of us care?

ObSF: “What is the superlative of ‘so what’?”—R. A. Lafferty

What Happens When Random Data Is Decompressed?

A few years ago, I asked the above question. The researchers at Google have answered it, at least as far as images are concerned. One of their stranger results has been going around the Internet.

Question: Could something similar be responsible for Charles Bonnet syndrome?

Are Some Teachers AIs?

News that a computer program did better than most humans at questions on IQ tests has been going around the blogosphere. As far as I could tell, the program worked by examining published texts to see which words usually went with which. Let's consider what happens when humans use such an algorithm.

If we search high and low for examples of antonyms in published texts, we frequently see that pairs of words identified as antonyms occur in the form of “Word_A and Word_B.” That's as plain as black and white. If we generalize from that we might decide, for example, that “cat” is the opposite of “dog” or “tadpole” is the opposite of “frog.” I think the algorithm has limitations.

ObSF: “Camels and Dromedaries, Clem” by R. A. Lafferty

When Is Skepticism Justified?

Consider the following scenario: There is a school of thought that makes a theoretical prediction based on what appear to be good reasons. For some reason, the evidence to back up said prediction does not seem to be forthcoming, which is cited by people disagreeing with it. Time passes … and something resembling evidence at long last shows up. On the other hand, it's much less than the people who originally issued the prediction had in mind.

How skeptical should we be about the prediction? In a related question, what is the track record of earlier predictions that fit the pattern?

I can think of several predictions that fit the above pattern. One of them is believed by the Left. Another is believed by the Right. I am disinclined to take either that seriously. On the other hand, there are other predictions that I am inclined to take seriously that also fit the pattern.

A Consequence of China's One-Child Policy

It's producing a non-trivial number of Chinese citizens with no close relatives. If one of them has access to classified information, he/she might be willing to defect if there's nobody who can be held hostage.

If I were Chinese, I'd be wondering if Malthusian theories are part of a deliberate disinformation plan.

You Cannot Resist This

It's the Wave of the Fuschia!

A Unified Paranoid Theory

It should be completely obvious that GMO foods were developed by H1B-visa holders working for Monsanto (bankrolled by a consortium consisting of the Elders of Zion and renegade Objectivist extraterrestrials from Zeta Reticuli) using a template developed by the Freemasons (you can find it encoded in the Washington DC street plan) in order to produce a vaccine (but only when grown using radioactive fertilizer) that would both prevent circumcisions from being reversed and produce antibodies to medical marijuana.

Kindle Auto-correct

A few months ago, I turned off the auto-correct “feature” of my Kindle Fire. I recently noticed it was back and, when I tried using the settings, I saw nothing that would turn off auto-correct.

Now, when I try typing “glyphosate” on the Kindle (to comment on this thread, it turns it into “toothpaste.”

Did Agriculture Make People Worse Off?

According to Jared Diamond (in the course of a whine about the agricultural revolution):

If one could choose between being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice?

Is the choice between existence as a peasant farmer and existence as a hunter-gatherer? Or is it between existence as a peasant farmer and non-existence? There was, after all, a large in population.

As far as I can tell, the upper-class population in agricultural societies was about the same as the hunter-gatherer population. For example, in Medieval England, there were 200 men in the upper aristocracy and 1000 knights. If we assume that a typical aristocratic family included a Lord, a Lady and couple of children, the upper class would be 4800 people. According to Jared Diamond, hunter gatherers had a population density of \(\frac{1}{10}\) person per square mile, which means England's 50,000 square miles could support 5000 of them, about the same number as in the agricultural upper class. The advantages of being a hunter-gatherer also applied to the upper class. People in the upper class did not spend all day shoveling manure and had a diet with adequate protein.

In other words, the agricultural revolution did not take hunter-gatherers and turn them into peasants but added a peasant population.

Applying the above to a hypothetical society consisting largely of “ems” will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Jigsaw Politician?

From “The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven:

The state will prove that the said Warren Lewis Knowles did, in the space of two years, willfully drive through a total of six red traffic lights. During that same period the same Warren Knowles exceeded local speed limits no less than ten times, once by as much as fifteen miles an hour. …

From The New York Times:

According to a search of the Miami-Dade and Duval County court dockets, the Rubios have been cited for numerous infractions over the years for incidents that included speeding, driving through red lights and careless driving. A review of records dating back to 1997 shows that the couple had a combined 17 citations: Mr. Rubio with four and his wife with 13. On four separate occasions they agreed to attend remedial driving school after a violation.

Mr. Rubio’s troubles behind the wheel predate his days in politics. In 1997, when he was cited for careless driving by a Florida Highway Patrol officer, he was fined and took voluntary driving classes. A dozen years later, in 2009, he was ticketed for speeding on a highway in Duval County and found himself back in driver improvement school.

Things got more complicated in 2011 when Mr. Rubio was alerted to the fact that his license was facing suspension after a traffic camera caught him failing to stop at a red light in his beige Buick. His lawyer, Alex Hanna, paid a $16 fee to delay the suspension and eventually it was dismissed.

I was reminded somehow.

Another Note to My Fellow Mathematicians

Try not to use too many typefaces in the same article. You're writing math articles, not ransom notes. Also please remember that MathJax can't handle really weird typefaces.

To My Fellow Mathematicians…

Please note that the {subequations} environment in \(\rm\LaTeX\) will increment the main equation counter even when there are no equation numbers displayed. If you forget that, you might write an article in which the equation numbers skip from (17) to (20), causing the copy editors to wonder if you've discovered a new method of counting.

I Told You So

A few years ago, I warned about the possibility of terrorists infiltrating the government.

It's starting.

Maybe secret NSA surveillance is not necessarily a good thing.

Fifteen Celsius

I started breathing 59 years ago today or, as Tom Lehrer puts it, I'm fifteen Celsius.

Statistics Abuse

According to The New York Post, “You’re 45% more likely to be murdered in de Blasio’s Manhattan.”

Let's look at more complete statistics:

• First, shootings are up but crime is down. (More guns, less crime. It's not just a slogan.)
• Second, the increase in the homicide rate from the same period in 2014 to 2015 is not statistically significant.
• Third, the increase in the homicide rate from the same period in 2013 to 2015 is a flat zero.

When environmentalists cite similar statistics, I'm ready to ridicule them.

The propensity among some conservatives to take these statistics seriously reminds me of a conversation I had the first time I went to Manhattan by myself:
“Were you mugged?”
“Not that I noticed.”

The Usual Whine Is Missing

Nearly any discussion about engineers at Pajamas Media (typical example here) will include an extended comment thread full of people claiming that holders of H1B visas are competing with “Real Americans” (yes, those are sneer quotes) and driving down wages.

For some reason, that was missing from the comments on the Left's attempted War on Nerds. There was a discussion of attempted oppression of nerds with no mention of H1B visas. Nobody accused the hipsters of trying to drive down nerd wages.

Maybe it's the non-nerdy engineers who are being replaced by the H1B people. Or maybe the commenters in the right-wing division of the Professional Whining Class don't know how to pretend to be engineers.

Addendum: I fixed the link.

What Were the “Wheels within Wheels” That Ezekiel Saw?

According to most translations of Ezekiel 1:16, the creatures Ezekiel saw included a “wheel within a wheel”. Other translations have the phrase “wheel intersecting a wheel”. (In Hebrew, it's “האופן בתוך האופן”.)

The second translation seems to be nonsense since an object cannot rotate around two different axes at the same time … in three dimensions. Maybe Ezekiel saw a four-dimensional object rotating around two different axes.

Uh Oh

There's a pro-nuclear petition.

Does this mean I have to come up with something anti-nuclear now?

Set Theory and the New Math

I attended elementary school during the heyday of the “New Math” (now best known for the Tom Lehrer song). During that time, I happened to see a book in the public library about one of the topics mentioned in the New Math classes: Naive Set Theory by Paul Halmos. I insisted on taking it out. I mainly learned that there was quite a lot of math I had yet to learn.

Half a Loaf Is Worse Than No Bread

The above appears to be the motto of the activists protesting Facebook's free Internet service.

Come to think of it, that is also the basis of minimum-wage and rent-control laws.

On the other hand, maybe all this is based on the assumption that, once low-quality X is banned, high-quality X will appear by Magic.

A Better Mad Men Ending

A better Mad Men ending: Don Draper apparently dies but wakes up as Dick Whitman with a humdrum job, an intact liver, and his first wife.

Recent Progress

According to Scott Sumner:

My grandma was born in 1890 into a middle class family in small town Wisconsin. Her home probably lacked indoor plumbing, most home appliances, electric lights, telephone, TV, radio, car, etc., etc. Slightly improved from life in ancient Rome. She lived to see jet air travel, computers, atomic bombs, antibiotics, and died the week they landed on the moon.

I was born in a world of indoor plumbing, atomic bombs, jet air travel, home appliances, computers, cars, telephones, TV, radio, antibiotics. I'll turn 60 this year, and live in a world of indoor plumbing, atomic bombs, jet air travel, home appliances, computers, cars telephones, TV, radio, antibiotics, plus the internet and cell phones. Yeah, I'd say change is slowing down, really fast.

I thought I'd make a list of things I have now that I or my family didn't have 50 years ago and include the approximate date I or we acquired them:

• 1970 color television
• 1976 pocket calculator
• 1982 home computer
• 1985 vcr (and descendants)
• 1989 air conditioning
• 1991 dishwasher
• 1993 answering machine
• 1994 internet connection
• 1996 microwave
• 2002 cell phone
• 2012 e-book reader

There's been some progress.

Progress before and after 1919 or 1972

According to H. G. Wells (writing on improvements in the process of scholarly research between the time of the Library of Alexandria and 1919):

It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a middle-class English home, such as the present writer is now working in, with the inconveniences and deficiencies of the equipment of an Alexandrian writer, and one realizes the enormous waste of time, physical exertion, and attention that went on through all the centuries during which that library flourished. Before the present writer lie half a dozen books, and there are good indices to three of them. He can pick up any one of these six books, refer quickly to a statement, verify a quotation, and go on writing. Contrast with that the tedious unfolding of a rolled manuscript. Close at hand are two encyclopedias, a dictionary, an atlas of the world, a biographical dictionary, and other books of reference. They have no marginal indices, it is true; but that perhaps is asking for too much at present. There were no such resources in the world in 300 B.C. Alexandria had still to produce the first grammar and the first dictionary. This present book is being written in manuscript; it is then taken by a typist and typewritten very accurately. It can then, with the utmost convenience, be read over, corrected amply, rearranged freely, retyped, and recorrected. The Alexandrian author had to dictate or recopy every word he wrote. Before he could turn back to what he had written previously, he had to dry his last words by waving them in the air or pouring sand over them; he had not even blotting paper. Whatever an author wrote had to be recopied again and again before it could reach any considerable circle of readers, and every copyist introduced some new error. Whenever a need for maps or diagrams arose, there were fresh difficulties. Such a science as anatomy, for example, depending as it does upon accurate drawing, must have been enormously hampered by the natural limitations of the copyist. The transmission of geographical fact again must have been almost incredibly tedious. No doubt a day will come when a private library and writing-desk of the year A.D. 1919 will seem quaintly clumsy and difficult; but, measured by the standards of Alexandria, they are astonishingly quick, efficient, and economical of nervous and mental energy.

I read the above passage in the early 1970s. At the time, there had been little change since 1919. The progress since the early 1970s has been much greater.