Jumblies, Part II

Part I is here.

The map of Clintonesia brings the following to mind:

Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Pointing out that their top people are environmentalists, their staffers are depressed, and they went to a a political campaign with argument that had holes is just icing on the cake.

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

AI EEEEE!!!!

According to Zoltan Istvan (earlier discussed here) on AI:

Regardless what happens in the future, it’s safe to say AI will not be an entity speaking to us in hackneyed parables, or telling us to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands if we sin. It probably also won’t threaten us with a hopeless fiery hell of eternal punishment for our lack of faith.

He knows that … how? For one thing, if an AI is sufficiently influential, whatever it says will become so well known that it will sound hackneyed.

It’s far more likely the greatest tool our species has ever created will tell us how to end world poverty with inventive technologies, how to best fix the Earth of the environmental degradation we’ve caused, and how to heal ourselves of all disease and live indefinitely via radical science.

Speaking of hackneyed… It will tell us how to solve the problems that seemed most pressing back when Zoltan Istvan was doing laps in amniotic fluid?

• Isn't fixing little things like poverty or environmental “degradation” much easier than AI?
• Is there environmental degradation? Isn't the air a lot cleaner than it was in 1973?
• Hasn't absolute poverty gone way down steadily in the past generation?
• The health question may also have been solved by the time we invent AI.
• The best reason for believing in fast technical progress in AI, Moore's Law, appears to be slowing down.

Maybe Zoltan Istvan believes that technical progress in a field will be fast or slow depending on whether the speed justifies his personal prejudices.

It Took Over Six Decades

… but we finally have a replacement for the the Third-Avenue El. According to Isaac Asimov shortly after the el was removed:

When they tore down the el, our mayor did say
That soon in its place there would be a subway.
 ’Twould be new, ’twould be clean,
 ’Twould be painted white and green,
So give three cheers for our bright new subway.
 No el, No el,
 No el, No el,
So give three cheers for our bright new subway.

Snarky Comment Comes to Sad End

They're tearing down the Nanotech Furniture building.

Now where will we get cyclohexane?

It's about Euphemism Time!

Years after I recommended multiple mirrors, scientists have finally realized the danger of putting scientific data under centralized control and are doing something constructive about it.

The danger is potentially real. First, it is possible to claim that restricting such data is not censorship on the grounds that censorship is only a matter of the government restricting private parties. (If the government had not tried monopolizing the data, such an argument would even be valid.) That argument might confuse the voters enough for the powers that be to get away with it, at least in an otherwise-popular administration. Second, the centerpiece of the nativist argument (at least when nativists are talking to libertarians) is that foreigner immigrants might affect the average opinion in this country in a non-libertarian direction. If government action is acceptable for the purpose of changing public opinion, that might be used as an excuse for censorship. Third, Trump will have a “pen and a phone.” It might be possible to delete large amounts of data before being restrained. Even if it is technically illegal, punitive measures can also be tied up in bureaucracy. If Hillary Clinton got away with it, Trump can get away with it.

We should applaud this privatization. It might protect data from President Melissa Click someday. The only problem is that this hadn't occurred years ago.

A Common Phenomenon

Last year, I mentioned:

The experiment might be an example of a common phenomenon: Leftists attempting to devise an objective test that they imagine will prove conservatives are scum. This is then followed by dropping it when the test gives answers they don't like.

More recently, social scientists have been looking for the Magic Test that proves all open-minded people agree with the Left. They have one (science curiosity) but it's easily criticized so they're looking for more … with a certain lack of success.

On the other hand, maybe conservatives have taken enough of those tests to be able to fake open mindedness. On the gripping hand, how would we tell if liberals are faking?

Is “Organic” a Synonym for Good?

According to a Fark contributor:

Australian term of the year is "Democracy Sausage", a traditional snack served at polling places. In the US a Democracy Hot Dog is when you vote for organic beef but get one made from lips and rectums

The problem with pointing out the many fallacies involved here is that one does not know how to begin.

Who Is Winning the Culture Wars?

According to a Mark Tushnet, a left-wing law professor:

The culture wars are over; they lost, we won.

That might be true of gay rights. On the other hand, on abortion and guns, we right-wing ideologues are the wave of the future. The only way to oppose RFRA laws and not look bad in 2053 is to come up with some way they don't apply to abortion. The left may have trouble getting that past their current base.

Schrödinger IV

Apparently pro-Trump areas are in a quantum superposition of having great job growth and being full of failures despairing over their unemployment.

Also see Schrödinger I, Schrödinger II, and Schrödinger III.

Why “Blue” Cities Have More Government

I disagree with the usual left-wing take (“Big cities need more government.”) and the usual right-wing reaction to that (“If big cities need more government, they must be parasitic on the rest of us.”). If big cities need better policies, I think that means less government.

The reason blue states have more government is that they are better able to get away with counterproductive policies. For example, NYC can have a gun-control law that would cause a gang takeover of any other city. Since NYC is too big for one gang to take over, it can get away with it.

California can have environmental regulations that would mean the fast bankruptcy of any state that didn't have Silicon Valley in it. Since California has Silicon Valley, it's undergoing a slow bankruptcy instead.

What, If Anything, Were They Thinking?

I've you ever wondered why refugees from “blue” areas sometimes vote for policies similar to the place they fled, you can see a typical example of their beliefs here:

@MarketUrbanism I scoff at the idea that organic development and free market capitalism are the same. Free market is why ppl left cities.

— Kate Wagner 🏘 (@mcmansionhell) November 26, 2016

A Few Notes on the Latest Flag-Burning Controversy

President Hillary would have the flag burners arrested for the unauthorized emission of greenhouse gases.

Question: If burning the flag is an exercise of free speech, is destroying currency also free speech?

Flag burners should be sentenced to act like idiots in public. In other words, nothing need be done.

What Would a Settlement near Sirius Look Like?

The Sirius system is likely to have a very high ratio of available power to planetary mass. What would a civilization in the Sirius system look like?

First, there would not be very many settlements and those settlements would have to be far from the star and, probably, from each other.

Second, they must be very sparing of mass. Instead of having heavy farms, it might make sense for the colonists to genetically engineer some photosynthetic ability so they might have some green body parts.

In addition, body parts in general should be as light as possible. One way to save mass is to avoid having unused muscles. That can be done by putting most of the muscles in the trunk and using tendons to move the limbs. They would need some means of switching the muscles from one tendon to another but I'm sure the genetic engineers will be up to it. The limbs would not need much of a blood supply and might even have a bluish color.

Their ships would also have to spare mass (but could waste energy). They can spare mass by not having a pressurized hull but instead keep the passengers in space suits. This might be uncomfortable but if they go fast enough the voyages would be brief.

In other words:

Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

Coming up with an excuse for the Quangle-Wangle or Pobbles will be left as an exercise for the reader.

The Victims Resemble the Oppressors

Restricting competition isn't always a matter of social class X squeezing social class Y. The victims of restricting competition are frequently in the same class as the winners.

Restricting competition in academia (i.e., tenure) might be responsible for the exploitation of adjunct professors. Restricting competition in the blue-collar realm (i.e., unions) is associated with collapsed cities such as Detroit. The spread of professions with restricting competition into the small-business realm (i.e., occupational licensing) is correlated with the declining rate of business formation.

In other words, you can't blame restricting competition or even resistance to restricting competition on class prejudice.

Building a Silmaril

The news of the development of a crystal that can extract useful energy from radioactivity might be the first step in creating a Silmaril in our universe.

If a crystal is radioactive and can use that radioactivity to pump a laser in the same crystal it would act much like a Silmaril. It would give back any light that it's exposed to amplified. If it were hidden away in Morgoth's horde, the heat from the radioactivity would accumulate and burn anything it touches.

A Third Schrödinger Population

In addition to Schrödinger's immigrants and Schrödinger's conservatives, we see Schrödinger's liberals, in a quantum superposition of neighborhoods in lily-white/inner-city states.

What Were They Thinking?

What were the MSM people thinking?

On the one hand, accusations that conservatives are racists have been common for decades in the less-mainstream media outlets on the Left. On the other hand, such accusations have been more restrained in MSM outlets until this year. Maybe what happened is that the MSM people balance the non-mainstream leftists with NRO-type conservatives. On other occasions, the following exchange might happen:

Fringe leftists: Romney is a racist!
MSM people: Is Romney really a racist?
NRO conservatives: There's no way Romney is a racist.
MSM people: Okay, we'll talk about the 47% instead.

This year, the following happened:

Fringe leftists: Trump is a racist!
MSM people: Is Trump really a racist?
NRO conservatives: We'd rather not defend a protectionist.
MSM people: Okay, Trump is a racist.

What were the Trump primary voters thinking?

My best guess is that they regarded his business success as a matter of prowess instead of diligence and figured that diligence doesn't seem to be working. They apparently think that this “alpha-male” will fix the American economy by shear force of will and get back everything they imagine foreigners have stolen.

What were the Trump general-election voters thinking?

My best guess is that they figure that we elected and re-elected Obama and that proves the US is no longer racist and that they can go back to voting Republican.

Another Schrödinger Population

In addition to Schrödinger's immigrants, there's also Schrödinger's conservatives, they're both over-privileged and too poor to buy tickets to Hamilton. They're in a quantum superposition of poor/privileged states.

It's amazing how much the supposedly opposite sides sound alike.

If the EmDrive Works…

… it still might not be that useful.

At 1.2 mN/kW and 4300 W/kg, that's an acceleration of \(5.16\times10^{-4}~\text{m/s}^2\).

A bit slow. It can go 80 million km (the distance between the orbits of Earth and Mars) in about 9 months.

The above needs a correction.

A What-If Speculation

A suggestion for an alternative religion clause of the First Amendment:

Neither the United States, nor any subdivision of it, shall ever be construed to support, endorse, or be founded upon any religion or religious principle; nor shall the government intrude upon the free exercise of religion so long as such exercise is injurious to no one; nor shall any religious institution participate in any election campaign or public vote. The United States shall be a secular nation with separation of church and state. No religious test or affirmation of any sort shall be required of any employee or official of the United States government, nor of any state or other part, nor by any entity receiving federal funding.

On the other hand …

• What would “nor shall any religious institution participate in any election campaign or public vote” have done to the Abolitionist movement?
• The phrase “…nor by any entity receiving federal funding” might produce problems for organizations that pay taxes and have to compete with other organizations that are allowed to accept federal funding that helps balance the taxes.
• The phrase “…so long as such exercise is injurious to no one” might be interpreted as allowing lawsuits by unemployed Real Americans against people sheltering illegal aliens.

A Few More Election Notes

Trump did about the same as Romney as a percentage of the white vote and slightly better as a percentage of the non-white vote. Maybe identity politics is not the wave of the future after all.

In a related story, the sane Republicans in Congress did better than Trump. It looks like the Republican Party in general lifted Trump. The GOP Establishment had the coattails and the Trump supporters should thank them.

We Told You So, Part I

So… Trump is willing to keep the ban on discrimination on health-insurance applicants with pre-existing conditions. It is, after all, a “settled value in this country” (along with not voting for Trump and not having the Chicago Cubs win the World Series). It's been settled for time immemorial, which, if you're a “policy wonk,” means the past six years. Such discrimination is almost as bad as discrimination in real-estate deals.

A Clarification

When I said:

If Trump wins and governs on the Left, I promise not to say “We Told You So” more than once a week.

I meant that such reprimand should not be made in more than one post per week in any given network. In other words, only one post per week on Blogspot, only one post per week on Disqus, only one post per week on Twitter, …

Did the Get-out-the-Vote Effort Backfire?

The get-out-the-vote effort by Democrats might have might have backfired. The numerous calls I received warning me that a Republican victory meant an end to “choice” nearly made me vote for Trump. Then I recalled that Trump also disregards the rights of potential Americans.

One Nasty Effect of the Trump Triumph

It's causing some people on the Right to have a strange new respect for an omnipotent Federal government.

When discussing nullification, please note that nullification was also used by Wisconsin and Vermont to resist the Fugitive Slave Act. In addition, the Tariff of Abominations was an instance of blatant federal overreach and well worth resisting.

Which Trump Did We Elect?

We still don't know if we elected the Good Trump (who's tolerant of the “bitter clingers” in flyover country) or the Bad Trump (who's intolerant of people based on birth).

A test case: A religious organization could harbor an illegal alien and claim it's required by Exodus 22:21. The Good Trump (who was elected by evangelicals trying to defend the RFRA) will go one way and the Bad Trump the other.

What Will President Trump Do?

Some of presumed President-elect Trump's positions will be applauded by libertarians and conservatives but others won't. For example:

• Applauded by Conservatives and Libertarians:
  • Stop cap and trade
• Applauded by Libertarians and not Conservatives:
  • Bring soldiers home (until he has a hissy fit)
  • Critical of compulsory vaccines
  • Legalize drugs (Some people think he will.)
• Applauded by Conservatives and not Libertarians:
  • Border wall
• Applauded by neither:
  • Tariffs
  • Supporting a local option on fracking
  • Critical of vaccines (The claim that vaccines cause autism can be used as a reason to ban vaccines.)

I have no idea on what he will do about health care and I suspect neither does he.

Please recall that last time we had a President who tried appealing to white identity politics, we got the EPA and wage–price controls.

A Few Notes before the Election

Whichever side wins the election will be the wrong one. The fact that it won means it's big enough to be dangerous.

If all of your hopes and dreams can be derailed by a chance event such as a close election, something is wrong.

The worst effect of President Trump is likely to be a tendency to think of the Democrats as the anti-racist party. I plan to deal with it by trying to locate the oldest edition of The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. I can find. It's an ode to the founder of the Democratic Party, one of our most racist Presidents.

The worst effect of President Clinton is likely to be a tendency to think that cover-ups work. This will encourage both cover-ups and conspiracy theories.

The Conservative Case for Hillary?

The conservative case for President Hillary: What if at her inauguration she takes off her mask and says “You just elected a Goldwater girl! For years, I watched liberals infiltrate one conservative institution after another and vowed to do the same thing to them. I spent decades infiltrating the Democrats and told nobody but my pals on Wall Street. Now it's payback time!”

On the other hand, the likelihood of this being true is around zilch.

Disclaimer: The above post was written while under the influence of caffeine. Is that why Mormons think of it as a dangerous drug?

Cubs Technologies

A few years ago, Arnold Kling wrote Red Sox Technologies about electronic technologies that have proponents perpetually saying “Wait 'til next year!” Since then the Red Sox have won World Series and two of the technologies (E-book readers and social networking) have come into common use.

It's clearly time for Cubs technologies, industrial technologies that have proponents perpetually saying “Wait 'til next year!” So… Rev up your fusion-powered air cars!

Not from the Usual Suspects

The historical ignorance among college students cannot come from the Usual Suspects:

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”

This is not due to college professors; the students had that miseducation when they entered college. It was also not due to “Fundamentalists”; Any Fundamentalist would know about Egyptian slavery.

A possible effect: Someone who believes that slavery was something distinctively American and who is also determined to be patriotic might be proud of being a bigot. Maybe that's where the “deplorables” came from…

Deplorable Arithmetic

If half of the US population is Republican leaning …

And if 40% of those are Trump supporters (in contrast to Trump tolerators) …

And if half of those are deplorable …

Then only 10% of the US population are that type of deplorable. Sounds okay.

The Front Label and the Back Label

On the front label it says “No GMOs.”

On the back label it says “25% JUICE.” The first two ingredients are water and sugar. The pomegranate juice that's supposed to be a superfood (this week) is the sixth ingredient.

Throw away the wheat and keep the chaff.

The Russians Are Coming!

It's harder to make threats when you're regarded as a has-been.

For that matter, the hacked e-mails are pretty much a nothingburger. At best, they reveal stuff that's already known (Hillary and Co. are obnoxiously arrogant) and are one of the reasons she's not 50 points ahead. If anything, they make me slightly more likely to vote Democratic since it looks like no major secrets were put at risk … unless the Russians are still holding out.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Russians get out of this. Do they have a mole in the Trump organization ready to shut down oil and gas exports? Do they think the Trump administration is about to stop nukes and fracking? Or do they hope for a war between the US and China that makes them Number One?

Donald Trump and Arthur C. Clarke Had Something in Common

They both lost a billion dollars.

Outer Space Settlement Killer Apps

The most obvious reasons for space colonization (to deal with resource shortages and to take care of satellites) are technically obsolete.

Another possible use is regulatory arbitrage, i.e., escaping obnoxious laws. This comes in two varieties:

1. Escaping laws against activities that people do not want nearby. Problem: competition from places on Earth (Las Vegas, Switzerland, or even seasteading or Antarctica)
2. Escaping laws against activities that people do not want anywhere. Problem 1: Colonies in deep space are sitting ducks and planetary surfaces are almost as easy to bomb as Earth's surface. Problem 2: Do you really want to help Roko's basilisk?

The best guess for a killer app is zero-gravity tourism. (We might even have zero-gravity residence as in “Abercrombie Station” by Jack Vance.) It's something unavailable on the Earth. Once we have a demand for large amounts of mass in orbit, it will make sense to have asteroid colonies as well to supply them. The asteroid colonies in turn might also be used to regulatory arbitrage since they are more defendable than either deep-space colonies or planetary surfaces.

A Suggestion for a Research Program for Social Science

It has recently been discovered that people with “science curiosity” don't always agree with people who actually know something about science, in particular the science-curious people are more likely to agree with left-wing theories than science-knowledgeable people. What other differences are there?

Are the science-curious people more likely to be atheists? Are they more likely to think of energy as something mystical? Do they have the foggiest idea of what “infinity” means? Do they think the moon disappears when you close your eyes? How stoned are they anyway?

Explaining an Absurd Line in a Review

According to Ezra Glinter, while reviewing The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End by Cixin Liu:

While Liu's humanity on the whole is conservative, some characters—both heroes and antiheroes—are determined to save civilization at all costs.

(seen via NRO Corner).

As far as I can tell, here “conservative” means a disbelief in change, with a corollary that it is no necessary to react to change. That might even be true of some conservatives. On the other hand, Leftists also disbelieve in change, although on the left that usually takes the form of a belief that it's possible to change one thing and any other changes that might cause can be disregarded (e.g., that businesses won't react to minimum-wage laws).

Million? I Thought You Said Billion!

The following factoid has been going around the Web:

• 1 in 3,408 chance of choking to death on food

• 1 in 3,640,000,000 chance of being killed by a refugee in a terror attack

Source: US National Safety Council, Cato Institute

This is a potentially misleading statistic since the more relevant fact is the chance of being murdered by a foreign-born terrorist in general, which is 1 in 3.6 million per year.

On the other hand, it doesn't matter because either figure shows the absurdity of the Skittles analogy.

PS: Trump hotels aren't so safe either.

America and the “Splinter Cultures”

I've started reading Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer (about the fact that the British colonial settlers of North America were not a homogeneous group and could be divided into Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers) and it sounded familiar. It resembles the Splinter Cultures of the Dorsai series by Gordon Dickson. The Friendlies were an analog of Puritans, the Cetans were an analog of Cavaliers, the Exotics were an analog of Quakers, and the Dorsai were an analog of Borderers.

One lesson we can learn from it is that the US was multicultural from the start.

Specific Examples of Multiplying Maximum Extent by Maximum Intensity

If you want specific examples of the following stupidity:

There's also the belief that to determine the importance of anything, you can multiply its maximum extent by its maximum intensity.

you can consider the belief that open borders is a “dog whistle” for White genocide. If the extent of areas where white people can be found does not change but the maximum percentage goes from 100% to 90%, that means 10% of whites have been killed off, at least in StupidWorld. In addition, if another race is 100% in at least one area and can be found in all areas, that means it has taken over StupidWorld. (This also explains how the same people can claim that race X is taking over and that race Y is also taking over without seeing any contradiction.)

You can also find a similar idea in environmentalism. If at least one person has died because of pollutant X and if pollutant X can be found everywhere on Earth, that means the human race is done for … but enough about dihydrogen monoxide.

General Political Stupidity

I've been trying identify the causes of political stupidity that are independent of sides. Two the commonest causes are: 1) the belief that there are only two sides; 2) ignoring the possibility of change.

If there only two sides …

If there are only two sides, politics becomes a zero-sum game. Anything done to the other side will not backfire and you will not offend potential allies. In addition, anybody dissenting from your platform must be a traitor.

If change won't happen…

If change won't happen, you can get away with treating human beings as chess pieces to be moved off, on, or around the board as desired and who won't actually react to that.

“High” and “increasing” are synonyms; “low” and “decreasing” are synonyms.

Today's anything can be projected into the indefinite past and future. You can assume historical controversies can be easily mapped onto today's.

Variation: Anything that does change, changes in the direction favorable to our side's argument.

Other causes

There are other causes. For example, there the always popular belief that pointing to the existence of a problem means the solution you're offering will work.

There's also the belief that to determine the importance of anything, you can multiply its maximum extent by its maximum intensity.

We're Waiting

We were promised a sea-ice collapse! When will we get one?

My Reaction to a Fark Headline

Fark recently ran the following capsule summary of a news item they were linking to:

Huge organization known for tripling and quadrupling down on mistakes, corruption, and bad policy endorses Presidential candidate who most closely emulates similar behavior

I honestly had no idea of which candidate they meant until I used the mouse-over.

Addendum: It happened again!

A Sixteen-Year Political Cycle?

Calvin Trillin, in his essay “The New, New Right” (quoted here in a different context) noticed that conservative political activism tends to revive every sixteen years. At the time, that was limited to 1946, 1962, and 1978, but it has continued with 1994 and 2010. Will the pattern continue?

There's a possibly-associated phenomenon. Six years after the revival, it goes awry and is hijacked by a moderate and/or a crackpot. (Moderates: Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush the Younger, and Donald Trump. Crackpots: Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Donald Trump).

The Trump Movement Summarized

The Trump movement is apparently based on the theory that any American who wants to buy from foreigners, hire foreigners, sell to foreigners, or rent to foreigners is part of a basket of deplorables.

The outrage with which the Trump supporters greeted the phrase “basket of deplorables” is almost hypocritical enough to be classified as leftist.

What Does This Imply about Human Biodiversity Research?

According to a recent study of publication bias:

Findings of statistically significant differences between groups or treatments tend to be treated as more worthy of submission and publication than those of non-significant differences.

What does this imply about human biodiversity research?

In a related story, in linguistics there appears to be a lack of evidence that genetic explanations of language are more reliable than “blank slate” theories.

Why Does Deep Learning Work?

According to Henry Lin and Max Tegmark, Deep Learning works because it reflects the structure of the universe on every level. The theory that the universe has the same structure on every level sounds familiar.

Nuclear-Powered Piston Engines, Some Figures

A few years ago, I came up with a plan for getting power from controlled nuclear fusion: nuclear-powered piston engines:

Imagine a piston engine in which the cylinders are the size of the Vehicle Assembly Building and the spark plugs are replaced by nuclear bombs.

Let's see… A megaton is \(4.184\times10^{15}~\text{J}\). A typical pressure in a piston engine is about 1 MPa or \(10^6~\text{J}/\text{m}^3\). In other words, you would need a volume of \(4.184\times10^9~\text{m}^3\). That would be a cube a mile on a side.

The Vehicle-Assembly Building isn't big enough. Even the Boeing Everett Factory isn't big enough. Even a building the area of the largest Target import warehouse and the height of the Burj Khalifa misses by a factor of 30. Bummer.

This isn't a matter of “Wait for next year!” It's a matter of “Wait for next century!”

There Goes the Neighborhood!

The coyotes are moving in.

The coyotes originally came to these parts to protest at Acme's headquarters but decided to settle in.

Meanwhile, out west a roadrunner hears the call of the Big Apple …

A Consequence of Time Lag in Learning Mathematics

Time lag in learning mathematics is a well-known phenomenon:

I think the answer is supplied by a phenomenon that everybody who teaches mathematics has observed: the students always have to be taught what they should have learned in the preceding course. (We, the teachers, were of course exceptions; it is consequently hard for us to understand the deficiencies of our students.) The average student does not really learn to add fractions in an arithmetic class; but by the time he has survived a course in algebra he can add numerical fractions. He does not learn algebra in the algebra course; he learns it in calculus, when he is forced to use it. He does not learn calculus in a calculus class either; but if he goes on to differential equations he may have a pretty good grasp of elementary calculus when he gets through. And so on throughout the hierarchy of courses; the most advanced course, naturally, is learned only by teaching it.

This is not just because each previous teacher did such a rotten job. It is because there is not time for enough practice on each new topic; and even it there were, it would be insufferably dull. …

It has a corollary: Nobody understands cutting-edge mathematics, not even the people discovering it. That might explain why people took the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics seriously. Quantum mechanics could not be understood until it was used to discover other things.

Two Type of Caveman Politics

According to Glen Reynolds:

These evolved instincts served hunter-gatherer cavemen well (which is why they’ve survived) but they don’t work very well in a world where health care, instead of being something that members of a tribe provide for people they’ve grown up with, is something that has to be procured from strangers who make a living providing it. And, as McArdle notes, trying to sell socialism by pretending that society is one big family doesn’t actually help: “Nationalizing the health care system does not fix this fundamental disconnect between our evolved instincts and the inevitable necessities of a modern economy.”

Another example of caveman politics: The theory that anybody new coming in diminishes the wealth or the jobs of the rest of us.

Current politics in the US is a matter of two groups of cavemen fighting it out.

Decisions, Decisions …

I've already decided to vote Libertarian for President. (It's bad enough that a President might nominate Earl Warren; I don't want to vote for an Earl Warren Republican.)

On the other hand, the Libertarians are also running candidates for Senator in my state and Congressman in my district. The incumbent Democrat (Charles Schumer, the New York state embarrassment) got 66% of the vote last time, so I suppose swing voters will have little effect. The Congressman, Steve Israel, got 52% of the vote last time and is retiring. The Republican candidate may have a chance. What's more important is that a Donald Trump defeat will look more impressive in an otherwise Republican year, so I suppose I have to support non-Trump Republicans. I plan to vote Libertarian for President and Senator and Republican for Congress.

Where the ETs Are hanging Out

There's evidence a relatively-nearby galaxy is mostly dark matter.

According to the Kaehler–Oh–Krummenacker theory, that might mean ETs there are conserving solar energy.

Paranoid Theories about Epipen

What if the purpose of the Epipen price hikes (from a company run by the daughter of a Democratic Senator) is to get voters upset at Big Pharma in order to elect the the Democrats, the supposed enemies of Big Pharma?

A similar theory: What if the purpose of is to fool conservatives who should know better (the Epipen monopoly is a matter of crony capitalism, not intellectual property) into defending Epipen and therefore discredit capitalism?

I assume that the Epipen people should have known they could not get away with it, so I came up with purposes in which “not getting away with it” is the point. On the other hand, maybe they really are idiots…

One Problem with Lawsuits over Inherited Art

The lawsuits over inherited art stolen by the Nazis might be used as a precedent by Palestinians claiming their land was stolen in 1948 or even by people claiming reparations for slavery. I have criticized such claims on Usenet (whatever happened to that?) on the grounds that

In the United States, events that occurred for than 40 years ago are regarded as part of the "dead past" and relegated to museums.

That might also apply here.

Should We Push Government Activity to Higher or Lower Levels?

Well… It depends. Government spending should usually be pushed to lower levels (when possible). The advantages or disadvantages of a new bridge, etc. can be seen more easily nearby, especially when it's paid for by the local people.

Government regulation, on the other hand, should sometimes be pushed to higher levels. It has very large externalities. For example, zoning laws in suburbs frequently increase rents in the inner city. In the other direction, anti-gentrification regulations push the upper middle class out of cities and increases commutation times. This even applies to national governments. The US ethanol mandate increases prices all over the world. If a UN resolution called for the US to stop the ethanol mandate I might even have a strange new respect for the UN.

I was reminded of this by the controversy over the attempt to have the Colorado state government rein in regulation of fracking by local governments.

Screening Immigrants

Screening immigrants might sound like a good idea (it's even part of American traditions too) but it can be easily abused. For example, the Page Act of 1875 was based on screening immigrants but, in practice, it was used to exclude Chinese women. (It was succeeded by the frankly bigoted Chinese Exclusion Act.)

If you're any type of conservative (whether paleocon, neocon, theocon, tea partier, 1% person), do you really want to bet that today's civil servants won't be prejudiced against people you want to admit?

Another Thought about Cultural Marxism

The Trump movement is causing me to take Cultural Marxism more seriously. I had earlier dismissed concerns about Cultural Marxism on the grounds that most of it was already present in the US. The Trumpkins are making me take Cultural Marxism seriously, not because of their arguments but because the are an example of the same phenomenon.

The earlier band of Cultural Marxists took ideas already present and gave them a slant that benefited the Soviet Union. For example, both “perople have the right to cross borders” and “people have the right to reject foreign influence” were already present in the US. The Cultural Marxists reconciled them by encouraging the idea that if you get to a place by land, you are thought to have a right to stay there and possibly even take it over. If you get to a place by water, you don't. (I've mentioned this before.) This makes Russian imperialism look more legitimate than imperialism from the rest of Europe.

Another effect of Soviet influence: The Soviet Union was an oil exporter, so they gained from anything that helped suppress energy production in the US. For example, suppressing nuclear energy would fit. Price controls on oil and natural gas would fit. Concern about the greenhouse effect would fit in the days before international agreements on climate change.

This influence went on hold for a decade while the Russians were unable to keep much secret. It has recently revived but they had to switch sides because, now that we have international agreements on climate change, they had to drop concern about the greenhouse effect. The Trump movement, in addition to being effectively allied with the Russians on other issues, includes a surprising number of people, judging by the comments here, who are willing to suppress fracking. I doubt if that's true of home-grown American conservatives. I didn't believe the Trump movement was backed by an oil exporting nation until I read those comments.

On the other hand, maybe I'm getting too suspicious.

A Note on New York's Clean Energy Standard

New York state's Clean Energy Standard actually includes support for nuclear energy (in a related story, Hell froze over).

On the other hand, it also includes s*bs!dies (of $17.48 per MW-hour). On the gripping hand, this might be justified if anthropogenic global warming really is a major problem. So… let's see how much this costs per ton of carbon. Natural gas (the major current competitor) emits 1.22 pounds of CO₂ per kW-hour, there are 2204.62 pounds per metric ton, and 12 grams of carbon will produce 44 grams of CO₂. Putting all that together, we get $115.82 per ton of carbon. This is more than the average estimate according to IPCC but is within the range. (You can tell the IPCC is doing actual science, unlike the IPCC worshipers with “science curiosity,” because they include error estimates.) The subsidies for “renewable” energy, on the other hand, are $45 per MW-hour. That's $298.17 per ton of carbon. This is pushing the upper envelope.

The implication for the intellectual honesty of anybody who complains about the $17.48 and ignores or applauds the $45 will be left as an exercise for the reader.

My Party Nominated Samuel Burchard

In the current election, the best hope for Libertarians would be a right-leaning group that strongly distrusts the current Republican nominee, for example Mormons. So Gary Johnson said:

"I mean under the guise of religious freedom, anybody can do anything," Johnson said. "Back to Mormonism. Why shouldn't somebody be able to shoot somebody else because their freedom of religion says that God has spoken to them and that they can shoot somebody dead?"

Johnson concluded by saying he saw "religious freedom, as a category, of being a black hole."

This rivals Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.

On Naming Institutions after Nasty People

At Yale, they're considering renaming buildings named after people who are currently considered nasty. On the one hand, we might not want to honor them. On the other hand, we should not simply erase them from history. My recommendation is to name nasty things after nasty people. For example:

• The Pete Seeger Sewage Treatment Plant. (If idealists who defended slavery don't get a free ride, I see no reason idealists who defended Stalinism should get a free ride.)
• The Karl Marx Toxic Waste Dump.
• The LBJ postage due stamp.

An alternative possibility is to wait a century, look for things considered nasty in 2116 that the leaders of the renaming movement of 2016 were involved with and name the nasty stuff of 2116 after them.

We should vote on that now. If we wait until 2116, we might find the potential organizers in 2116 are unwilling to organize.

“Science Curiosity” Moves the Goalposts

Social scientists embarrassed at the fact that the most numerate people were unwilling to believe what they were told (which counts as irrationality in SocialScienceWorld) moved the goalposts from numeracy to science curiosity. People with more actual knowledge of science tended to be polarized about such issues as global warming or fracking. On the other hand, people with more “science curiosity” tended to be less polarized, i.e., they were more likely to agree with left-wing propaganda.

The important part is how science curiosity is measured. It's based on “whether people had read books about science, attended science events, or were inclined to read science news over other types of news.” That's a bit ambiguous. The books might include Nuclear Power Killed my Poodle (cited in Science Made Stupid) or Space–Time and Beyond and similarly for the events and the news items. We might be speaking of people who “f*cking love science” but don't know anything about it. Some of the other measures of science curiosity are even worse. People with science curiosity are more likely to watch TV shows about science and read news stories with “Surprising” in the title, i.e., they were more likely to read clickbait.

The clincher is that the article did not mention nuclear energy or GMOs.

I suspect this research simply means there is a correlation between gullibility and television watching.

Sigh

The Republicans aren't the only party to nominate a caricature. The Libertarians have also done so. Apparently, Johnson took “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” as a dogma instead of a dumbed-down version of libertarianism. I hope he's not pro-gun control.

Some Republicans are holding their noses and voting for the Party. Some Democrats are holding their noses and voting for the Party. I'm a Libertarian and I will be holding my nose and voting for the Party.

On the other hand, Johnson has gone off drugs for the campaign. After he's been off drugs for a few more months, he might change his mind. (In case you were wondering, my response to “legalize it, don't criticize it” is “Let's do both!”)

An Argument against the Bloggs Test

I frequently use the Bloggs test (the term “Bloggs test” comes from Princeton Review) to analyze studies:

1. Figure out what Joe Bloggs (an average reader) would conclude from the report. If the report was strongly stated, it was probably either written by an activist who was trying to get people to believe that conclusion or by someone who based it on the activists' press releases.
2. Determine the strongest potential piece of evidence that would point in the same direction. If that evidence were true, the report would have mentioned it.
3. In the absence of such evidence being mentioned, conclude that it doesn't exist.

The problem with that is not everybody uses the strongest piece of evidence. For example, the commonest evidence cited that women can be great scientists (the career of Marie Curie) isn't the strongest evidence in that direction. Emmy Noether is a much better example.

I was inspired by the noted crackpot Jim Donald, who called the Bloggs test “the poster-girl principle.”

Trump vs. Agreements

Let's look at how Trump treats agreements. Trump:

1. Pays little attention to the Constitution.
2. Is willing to ignore treaties.
3. Regards defaulting on bonds as an option.
4. Has gone bankrupt several times.
5. Is now on his third wife.

In other words, he regards agreements as simply irrelevant. Other politicians occasionally break their word. In Trump's case, it is a rule.

The only question is whether a State of the Union address from President Trump will include “How could you believe me when I said ‘I love you’ when you know I've been a liar all my life?” On the other hand, it might include “And, dear friends, if I'm elected, I'm all right, Jack—screw you all!”

A Downside of DNA Memory Storage

DNA memory storage has a potential downside. It might escape into the wild and recombine with bacterial genes. I'd hate to come down with a bad case of SQL.

“Punch Back Twice as Hard”

Apparently if you tell people to punch back twice as hard, the different factions of your followers will start punching each other.

Maybe that isn't something to imitate.

On the other hand, maybe Bernie should have said “Vote your conscience.”

Differences between Trump Supporters and the Globalists/Neocons/Establishment/Whatever

• Both sides are concerned about foreign menaces. The Globalists/Neocons/Establishment/Whatever (GNEW) are concerned about foreign governments. The Trump supporters are concerned about foreigners underselling Real Americans.
• Both are concerned about invasions. The GNEW are concerned about armies with guns shooting people. The Trump supporters are concerned about invasions of nannies, landscapers, and contract programmers.
• Both sides believe there are limits to government. The GNEW believe those limits are set by a series of agreements such as constitutions or treaties. The Trump supporters believe those limits are set by imaginary lines on a map.

Public-Opinion Poll

“We're conducting a short public-opinion poll on current events. If you are registered to vote, please press 1.” I press 1.

“Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Obama administration? Please press 1 for favorable and 2 for unfavorable.” I press 2.

“Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton? Please press 1 for favorable and 2 for unfavorable.” I press 2.

“Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump? Please press 1 for favorable and 2 for unfavorable.” I press 2.

“If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Please press 1 for Hillary Clinton and 2 for Donald Trump.” I press 3.

“I'm sorry that was not a valid response. Please try again. If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Please press 1 for Hillary Clinton and 2 for Donald Trump.” I press 3.

“I'm sorry that was not a valid response. Please try again. If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Please press 1 for Hillary Clinton and 2 for Donald Trump.” I hang up.

A Few Notes on Trump vs. Cruz

Who's doing the half-time show?

To the Trump people: Cruz spent much of his career being called a bigot or a crackpot. Did you think a boo or two would faze him?

The wicked flee when no man pursues (Proverbs 28:1). Cruz did not come out either for or against Trump. He ended by taking about conscience. The fact that Trump supporters took that as being against Trump says something about their consciences.

The claims that Cruz destroyed his political career sound familiar.

The Most Annoying Part of the Trump Movement

The most annoying part of the Trump movement is the propensity of Trumpkins to accuse any critic of Trump or his presumed policies of being the sort of leftist who just wants to fit in. For example:

Looks like even Reason contributors are worried about not being invited to the right cocktail parties.

OTOH, libertarians are anti-social malcontents. Not being invited to parties is a reward.

Along similar lines, they will accuse libertarians of being stoners. Speaking as a libertarian who hasn't used drugs, I find that very annoying indeed … especially since I used to walk out of parties when they started handing out “funny cigarettes” … in the 1970s … at SUNY @ Stony Brook. Admittedly, it doesn't take much to get me to leave a party.

The worst part is when they accuse conservatives who have been called names by leftists for years of being afraid of being called names. That would indicate that the Trumpkins are not exactly people who have been following conservatism.

Social Science Done Right

File at eleven…

There's a common technique in psychological research: Researchers give the experimental subjects fabricated data. Much of the time, the subjects refuse to believe it. This is classified as irrational behavior.

There is a paper that avoids this problem. Instead of assuming that justified skepticism is irrational, they test for gullibility. As a bonus they also use a large sample size and look at more than one end of the political spectrum. Maybe this should embarrass the social scientists treat skepticism as irrational of use small sample sizes or look at just one end of the political spectrum.

In case you were wondering, they find gullibility all over.

A Different X Each Time

I would take warnings that antibiotic X is last recourse and bacteria are becoming resistant to it more seriously if it weren't a different X each time.

I would take warnings that corporation X is eliminating all competition more seriously if it weren't a different X each time.

I would take warnings that nation X is overtaking capitalist America more seriously if it weren't a different X each time.

I would take warnings about the dangers of immigrant group X more seriously if it weren't a different X each time.

A Counterexample to the Bayesian Truth Serum

The Bayesian Truth Serum looks like one of the best possible ways to get judgments that avoid the problem of “groupthink.” There's only one minor problem: Groupthink isn't the only human failure mode.

According to the Bayesian Truth Serum, the most reliable judgments are those that are more common than people expect. (The expected common judgments are those caused by groupthink.) The most recent cases of that are the Trump movement and Brexit. I'm not sure about Brexit, but the Trump movement is an example of something recommended by the Bayesian Truth Serum that does not reflect good judgment.

The Trump movement avoids groupthink but it is an example of System I thinking. It follows the instinctive premises present in each human mind.

How to Stop Homophobia

It's quote simple. According to Jay Friedman, a taste for spices is incompatible with homophobia. According to J. Klinesmith, T. Kasser, and F. T. McAndrew, touching guns causes people to use more spices. All we have to do is provide more more gun licenses.

What Is America? Part II

Ideally, America is a place where you get to make your own decisions instead of having them made for you by either your neighbors or a bureaucracy. In particular, it's a place where you have the right to not bake cakes or take photographs for people whose lifestyles you disapprove of.

On the other hand, one political party wants regulations that say you MUST make some deals and the other wants regulations that say you MUST NOT make some deals. Everything not forbidden is compulsory.

Also see Part I.

Anti-Inductive Phenomena and Baire Category

I've mentioned on occasion that markets are anti-inductive. There is a connection between anti-inductive phenomena and one of the more apparently-useless branches of mathematics: point-set topology.

You can think of real numbers as sequences of digits. It turns out that the set of real numbers corresponding to anti-inductive sequences is a dense G_δ point set, i.e., the complement of a set of first category.

Maybe someday we'll also find a use for the Banach–Tarski paradox.

What Is America?

Ideally, America is a place where you get to make your own decisions instead of having them made for you by either your neighbors or a bureaucracy. In particular, it's a place where you have the right to hire foreigners, rent to foreigners, buy from foreigners, and sell to foreigners.

I have to mention that latter point because some people regard those rights as some kind of giveaway to the foreigners.

Addendum: Part II is up.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Has a Bit of a Point

Neil deGrasse Tyson's suggestion for the constitution of Rationalia

Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence

has come in for mostly justified criticism on the grounds that some political controversies are about values rather than beliefs.

On the other hand, some people make the opposite mistake. For example, Donald Trump and supporters think the free-trade controversy is a matter of some people being disloyal to America rather than believing free trade is better for Americans. (As for the actual merits of free trade… From a factual point of view, it has not caused a decline in American manufacturing. From a theoretical point of view, every dollar sent overseas come back eventually.)

What Brexit is About

It is a matter of locally-sourced, artisanal government. Does this mean I have to hate it now?

On the other hand, the proposal for the UK to join the US reminds me of the following line from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: “If you're sick of one version, we push you into the other.”

On the gripping hand, national governments serve a very important purpose: They protect the world from each other.

Anti-Anti-Trump Rhetoric and Other Controversies

There's a common trope on the anti-anti-Trump side: that it's bad idea to call the other side “idiots.” (This was earlier discussed here.) If calling people “idiots” is a bad idea … How are we supposed to characterize opponents of nuclear energy or GMOs?

Why Use Negotiated Agreements Instead of Unilateral Free Trade?

Any democratic nation that tries unilateral free trade will find it's opposed by people who think of trade as a giveaway to foreigners. In order to prevent that, we use negotiated agreements instead. Most voters are willing to accept the possibility of gaining from exports to the other side (until they stop trusting governments).

In other words, when Donald Trump and allies criticize NAFTA or TPP on the grounds that the treaties involved are a bureaucratic boondoggle, they are offering to rescue us from a problem they caused.

A Few Comments on Brexit

Judging by the effect of Brexit on the pound, Britain has just voted itself the low-cost producer of nearly everything.

“Which is better—to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?“—Mather Byles

Question: Is the Brexit vote for or against free trade? The Brexit supporters seem to disagree.

Addendum: I forgot to add that a year ago, I would have applauded this. Now …

What Kind of World Are We Going to Have When These People Graduate?

What kind of world are we going to have when students who have been protected from American traditions graduate?

In view of the fact that Trump did better in “blue” states and in view of the fact that Trump supporters are very well informed on the latest antics of Social Justice Warriors but have only a superficial grasp of free-market economics, maybe what we'll get is President Trump.

R-Selection, k-Selection, and Politics

There's a common theory that left-wing ideologies are correlated with r-selected genes and right-wing ideologies are correlated with K-selected genes. This is rather dubious, at least as far as the present line-up of American politics is concerned.

The current home of left-wing ideologies appears to be among descendants of Puritans whereas the current home of right-wing ideologies appears to be among descendants of Borderers. The conflict may seem strange considering that both groups started out as Calvinist. On the other hand, the Puritans were obviously K-selected and the Borderers were obviously r-selected. Maybe the theory made sense back in the days of Andrew Jackson or William Jennings Bryan.

My earlier comments on this can be found here.

Labels I Would Like to See

This product is bottled water. If you can't figure out if it's gluten-free, maybe you could ask someone on the staff of the group home.

This product contains ingredients obtained from genetically-modified organisms. If you demand an explanation, we will send a team of experts with the IQ, common sense, and social skills of Sheldon Cooper to explain it. For a small consideration, we could arrange for a Cliff Clavin analog to meet you at the bar of your choice.

This product is vegan cat food. This is NOT a cruelty-free product because an attempt to serve this to a cat will be painful to at least one animal, probably you.

What Species Would Become Dominant on Earth If Humans Died Out?

Raw Story is asking the above question. There are many possibilities. What if they all became sophonts?

You could have beavers and otters running seaports. The dolphins might try to have a selective breeding program to develop hands (if it works, the dolphins could join the beaver–otter partnership). Increased competitive pressure from the cetaceans might require cephalopods to develop intelligence. Inland, you might find squirrels and raccoons. Fithp-like elephants might form the military class. Parrots could become the radio announcers (if they haven't done so already).

Politics in this world would be even more tribal than in ours. To take just one example: Would beavers seek an alliance with squirrels or an alliance with dolphins? Is rodent solidarity more important than aquatic solidarity?

Two Notes on the Orlando Terrorist Attack

• Some massive terrorist gun attacks are by Muslims and some aren't by Muslims. Every last one of them is in a “gun-free” zone.
• Judging by their choice of targets, Islamic terrorists really really hate unarmed Westerners. Maybe we should stop provoking them.

A Note on Elon Musk's Obsessions

On the one hand, Elon Musk wants to put a colony on Mars. On the other hand, Elon Musk also believes we live in a simulation.

What if sending human beings too far away triggers a buffer-overflow bug?

I No Longer Care

After years of being called bigots many conservatives don't care.

I must have a fast reaction time. After just months of being called a “cuckservative,” I no longer care.

PS: We're used to being called names.

Who Are the Rioters?

There have been riots at Trump rallies. I have an important question: Who are the rioters? The most plausible groups don't overlap much:

1. Illegal aliens and their relatives.
2. Sanders supporters.
3. Black Lives Matter.
4. Trade unions trying to elect Trump.

The rioters are burning American flags and chanting “America was never great.” This sounds like any of the first three groups and may be even be done by the fourth group as part of a literally false-flag operation. In particular, this protester doesn't look Mexican.

In Defense of Climate Modelling

In a recent article, Megan McArdle points out that there are uncertainties in climate modelling and compares it to economic modelling. In defense of the climate modellers, there is a difference between the climate models and the economic models. The climate does not read papers studying it. The people composing the economic system do.

In other words, improved understanding of the climate might make it more predictable. Improved understanding of economics will be used by human beings to make the economy even more complex. This is a consequence of the fact that markets are anti-inductive. (The consequences of more phenomena becoming anti-inductive is explored in “The Law” by Robert Coates.)

A Clarification

When I said that I want Ted Cruz to imitate Libertarians, I did NOT mean that he should strip at the 2020 Republican Convention.

A Few Notes about the Libertarians

Not every Libertarian has smoked dope. I haven't. I believe in drug experimentation but I was in the control group. Before I was a libertarian, I thought it might make sense for the government to increase the size of the control group. I no longer trust it to do that.

The Libertarian Party has run pro-life candidates on occasion (1988 and 2004). It's important to recall that so we can argue with future statists who try blaming abortion on capitalism.

I must admit the Libertarian Party includes some nutcases. One of them has provided me with an incentive to lose weight. I don't want to look like that.

So… It's Johnson

The Libertarians have nominated Gary Johnson. I can now vote for someone pro-open-borders and pro-deregulation. The bad news is we now have three candidates unwilling to apply FIW (Freedom I Won't) principles to gay marriage.

Could this be the Libertarian breakout year? If the Free State Project has had enough of an effect, could Johnson carry New Hampshire? According to Dante, the Ninth Circle is already frozen over.

More realistically, can the Libertarians do well enough to cause future President Cruz to adopt parts of our program?

A Speculation on the First Chapter of Genesis

The creation story makes more sense if we assume it is something occurring outside both space and time. Each ‘day’ God added something else to all of space and time.

1. He created light, which requires electromagnetism and relativity.
2. He created surface tension (“Let there be a meniscus in the midst of the fluids and let it divide the liquids from the gases.”), which requires atoms and molecules and quantum mechanics. (He was not entirely satisfied with that.)
3. He created solid land. This implies gravity.
4. He created luminous bodies. This requires nuclear physics.
5. He created evolvable life. This requires fine tuning earlier laws in such a way as to permit DNA, etc.
6. He created humanity. If this includes human history, it implies more fine tuning to allow technology. (For example, a minor increase in the mass of the neutron will cause uranium 235 to decay to nonfissionable neptunium 235. God wants us to have nukes.)

Then God took a break for the weekend.

What Happened to the Republican Party This Year

They ate the Wub.

Explanation: In “Beyond lies the Wub” by Philip K. Dick, anybody who ate the Wub would be possessed by the Wub. The Republicans chased, caught, and ate the anti-foreign vote and wound up getting possessed by it.

What I've Been Reading

• Unsong by Scott Alexander, in which an archangel installed a system (known to mundanes as “physics”) in order to control malware, only to find it's vulnerable to a buffer-overflow bug.
• A news item, in which Symantec installed systems in order to control malware, only to find they're vulnerable to a buffer-overflow bug.

This is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence.

A Theory about the Trump Movement

I suspect the basis of the Trump movement is the belief that success should only be based on prowess instead of diligence. All else is commentary. The Trumpkins resent foreign competition and immigration because they think of it as based on the unfair use of diligence by foreigners. They don't trust the Establishment because they think of it as a fraudulent establishment by diligent people who have usurped the role of people of prowess. They especially dislike Ted Cruz for his use of diligence and lack of prowess.

Is an “Earl Warren” on Donald Trump's List of Potential Supreme Court Justices?

Donald Trump has released a list of potential Supreme Court Justices. How do we know this list doesn't include a version of Earl Warren? You may recall that Earl Warren was also noted for sending Japanese-Americans to concentration camps. A willingness to crack down on foreigners is not enough.

It may even be a bad sign. The leftward drift of formerly-conservative Supreme Court Justices might have the following explanation: Much of the time, conservative is a synonym for “willing to crack down on people who are Not Like Us.” When such a conservative becomes a Supreme Court Justice, the people who are Like Us changes from the middle classes to the political activist class.

Never forget: The archetypal liberal Supreme Court Justice appointed by a Republican was a blood conservative.

Every Food Fad Is More Idiotic Than the Last

First, there was organic food.

Then there was locally-sourced food.

Next came non-GMO food.

Now there's biodynamic food … from a farm fertilized by the very finest bulshytt. Every food fad manages to be dumber than the one before. How is this mathematically possible?

Why Were Leftists Able to Describe the Trump Movement Accurately?

My theory is that leftists were able to describe the Trump movement accurately because their description was an accurate description of right-wing Democrats. It had little to do with conservatives in general, partly because right-wing Democrats are conservative on only a handful of issues.

Over the past generation or two, right-wing Democrats have been joining the Republicans. That accelerated over the past eight years. As a result, they formed a critical mass this year, which exploded and was able to take over the Republicans. They were helped by the fact they were united behind one candidate while traditional conservatives were debating the relative merits of Senators and Governors or the relative importance of electability vs. purity.

If Hillary is elected but Trump comes close, she might take steps to bring them back. If Trump is elected and ignores his base, they may get discouraged next time. In either case, in 2020 or 2024, we will probably see more than one would-be Trump. That may keep them from taking over again.

On the Other Hand …

… if you want to make sure your group doesn't take over, you may want to recruit @ssholes. Just make sure they're @ssholes who do too little instead of too much. You don't want someone who sends the IRS after his enemies. You do want someone who tries shutting down the government by refusing to cooperate.

Addendum: Typo in title fixed.

“He's Our @sshole”

Some people (including people who should know better) are pro-Trump on the grounds that we need “our @sshole” to counteract the Other Side (typical example here). The best response to that came from Slate Star Codex:

Long before a group can take over society, it reaches a size where it needs to develop internal structure and rules about interaction between group members. If you collect a bunch of people and tell them to abandon all the social norms like honesty, politeness, respect, charity, and reason in favor of a cause then the most likely result is that when your cause tries to develop some internal structure, it will be overrun by a swarm of people who have abandoned honesty, politeness, respect, charity, and reason.

For example, when we look at occasions when the Other Side tried adopting “our @sshole” tactics, we see purges and persecutions aimed their former allies. I'm reminded of a well-known Ludwig von Mises quote:

I have pointed out that the worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.

Nice Doggie

On the one hand, Donald Trump has a history of contributing to liberal causes. On the other hand, Trump supporters claim that was only because he needed to for business purposes.

I'm reminded of the saying “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.” Trump was clearly saying “Nice doggie.”

On the other hand, we don't know who he's saying it to or where the rock will be aimed.

If Trump wins, he might govern from the Left. If so, we'll see a repeat of the “even Nixon” argument, familiar to anybody old enough to read newspapers in the 1970s. It went approximately as follows:

Even Nixon, the most conservative President in living memory with the biggest electoral victory found it necessary to impose price controls and bargain with Communists. That shows how Republican ideologues are hopelessly obsolete.

Brace yourselves.

Anti-Math Prejudice

In a recent incident, a professor was taken off a plane because he was writing … math.

This is nothing new. During the Franco–Prussian War, the mathematician Sophus Lie was arrested on suspicion of being a Prussian spy because his notebooks were full of incomprehensible symbols.

What's after the “Age of Em”?

According Robin Hanson, there's a strong possibility that the next exponential mode will be dominated by robots emulating human personalities. This includes the following speculation:

This era may only last for a year or two, after which something even stranger may follow.

My guess is that the age after that will resemble “Slow Tuesday Night” by R. A. Lafferty and the one after that will be the long-awaited “AI Foom.”

“That may be an end or a beginning, but from here it is out of sight.”—J. D. Bernal in The World, The Flesh, and The Devil

I Meant to Do That!

Yet another excuse for determinism comes from the observation that some people (around 10%) will say “I meant to do that!” about things they had no control over.

Are they scraping the bottom of the barrel yet? Do they think the observation that some people tend to say “I meant to do that!” has never been noticed before? By the way, what was the sample size? (It's frequently pathetically small for this type of study.)

The Yudkowsky–Moore Law Is Firing Warning Shots

According to Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Moore's Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.

You can think of the Trump and Sanders campaigns as the political equivalent:

Moore's Law of Mad Politics: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the political system drops by one point.

People aren't getting dumber but now idiots can get behind political movements they would never have heard of a decade or two ago.

Light and Conception

Back in the 1970s, the Daedalus column in New Scientist speculated that a flash of light was emitted when the soul entered the fetus (the highlighted passages are those that I used to find the articles). More recently, it turns out that a flash of light is emitted at conception.

On the other hand, it's not a single photon.

A Comparison between Coal and Nukes

I understand there are people defending coal on the grounds that nuclear waste (or maybe unclear waste) is so terrible. Let's run some numbers.

A typical coal reactor will use 53.8 Tons/hour for 100 MWe. That's 538 T/hr for 1000 MWe. Since there are 8760 hours/year, that's 4,712,880 T/yr.

Coal contains 1–4 ppm of uranium. At the low end, that means a 1000 MWe coal-burning power releases around 5 tons of nuclear waste per year.

On the other hand, the fission products are temporarily more radioactive than uranium. On the gripping hand, in the long run, they are less radioactive. A natural uranium or thorium atom will release 50 MeV of radiation by the time it decays. The fission products will release less than half of that.

I'll Probably Vote Libertarian for President This Year

My main quarrel with the Libertarians is with their foreign policy. In view of the persistently lame trickle of terrorist acts (a decade ago, it looked like the terrorists would pose an increasing danger to the US but that hasn't materialized) and the increasing irrationality of the complaints about foreigners (that they're both overcharging and underselling? that they're taking over uninhabited islands?), a Libertarian foreign policy doesn't look so bad.

Some people warn me that a Libertarian vote is a vote for Clinton. Others warn me that a Libertarian vote is a vote for Trump.

As for the claim that closed borders are necessary to have a nation, that would imply that the US was not a nation before 1881.

A What-If Scenario for President Trump

A what-if scenario: Donald Trump is elected and takes all steps necessary to expel illegal aliens. In 2024, the Democrats have their chance and finally elect their dream candidate: President Melissa Click.

What will she do with the agencies and programs that Trump established?

It Begins …

Left-wing nonsense is starting to invade Passover seders. This time, it's treating “Fair Trade” as though it were the same as opposing slavery. It's not.

There was, of course, also an orange on the seder plate. It should have been a navel orange.

A Brief Note on the New York Primary

AAAAIIIIEEEE!!!!

Speaking as a New Yorker, I'd like to apologize for my neighbors.

On the other hand, Trump didn't get a majority everywhere. I'm considering moving to the 10th or 12th CDs.

On the gripping hand, maybe this was simply a matter of “Our hometown boy made good!“ If so, this also means New York has finally become part of ‘flyover country.’

A Few Notes on the Facebook Flap

There is some reason to suspect Facebook might try to swing the election. On the other hand, if Facebook were able to swing elections, we would have already elected a cat.

More seriously, I looked up the recipients of contributions from Facebook employees in the last election cycle at OpenSecrets. 45% of the donations were to Republicans. In other words, politics at Facebook is balanced enough for any shenanigans to leak.

On the other hand, although Silicon-Valley companies cannot do something under the proverbial table, they appear to be currently leaning left on some issues openly. That may be an effect of the Trump campaign. Last year, much of the Right claims pro-immigration means Left. This year, immigrant-heavy industries actually turn Left. Are you surprised?

On the gripping hand, a year ago this would have seemed more worrisome. Since then I've seen George Will called a liberal, a move to central planning of toilets described as religious liberty, a simultaneous claim that a demographic is both essential to the economy and being replaced, and a Chinese creation of artificial islands described as a threat to international order. I now take stuff from the right wing with the proverbial grain of salt.

It Made More Sense Decades Ago

Blake Stacey's variation on Atlas Shrugged makes more sense in the Atlas Shrugged universe (in which most technical progress stopped as soon as John Galt called his strike) than in ours. In our universe, it's hard to get good goons these days.

On the other hand, a few minor changes could rescue it. First, most of the remaining “good-goon” industries in the US are in union-hostile areas, so the mechanic would have to be from such an area. Second, in those areas, anti-foreign prejudice takes precedence over anti-business prejudice. Francisco d'Anconia (or possibly Ragnar Danneskjöld) would have to be in the torture seat. The mechanic would blame the problems on foreign influence.

Hang in There!

Will the development of brain implants that enable paralyzed people to move cause people considering euthanasia for that reason to have second thoughts?

How will this affect the Right to Die movement?

Another Suggestion for the American Mathematical Society

In addition to ensuring that the {subequations} environment works the way many authors think it works, it can be made more customizable by replacing the definition of {subequations} with the following:

\def\subeqform{\alph}
\def\subeqpunc{}
\newenvironment{subequations}{%
  \refstepcounter{equation}%
  \protected@edef\theparentequation{\theequation}%
  \setcounter{parentequation}{\value{equation}}%
  \setcounter{equation}{0}%
  \def\theequation{\theparentequation\subeqpunc\subeqform{equation}}%
  \ignorespaces
}{%
  \ifnum\c@equation=0%
   \setcounter{equation}{\value{parentequation}}%
   \addtocounter{equation}{-1}%
  \else
   \setcounter{equation}{\value{parentequation}}%
  \fi
  \ignorespacesafterend
}

If authors want the {subequations} to be numbered (1-i), (1-ii), etc., they can simply add:

\def\subeqform{\roman}
\def\subeqpunc{-}

A Few Notes on the “Magic Dirt” Claim

It is common for people on the wrong side of the Right to claim immigration deregulation is based on the theory that the US is made of “Magic Dirt.” On the other hand, the Magic Dirt theory does explain why there's more support for gun control among Europeans than among European Americans. It would explain why Eisenhower wasn't a Nazi.

There have also been studies of what terrains produce free societies. To quote from Not to Mention Camels by R. A. Lafferty:

… just a silly idea except that I have some good samples of that silly idea on the slide now.

For that matter, the theory that the same people in a different situation can be more productive has a very strong piece of evidence in its favor: the existence of economic growth. That's not because the human race is improving. Would you deny the existence of economic growth on the grounds that it requires a belief in “Magic Times”?

I won't more than mention that “turning the US into Mexico” has benefits.

There Goes the Neighborhood!

There was a Trump rally not far away.

Couldn't it be a Grump rally instead? Make America Irate Again!

In a related story, this Trump supporter is wrong about nearly everything.

A Question for the Anti-Pesticide, Anti-Vaccine, Anti-GMO People

What is your explanation for the decline in the age-adjusted cancer mortality rate even for cancers other than lung cancer? What are we doing right?

If it's astounding improvements in cancer treatment, would that imply that maybe Big Pharma might actually be helpful?

Two Consequences of Absurd State-Level Minimum-Wage Laws

• Poor people leave areas with higher minimum wages. A few years later, left-wing sites carry articles showing high increases in per-capita incomes in “blue” states.
• The increasing unemployment rates in some areas cause the election of demagogues blaming perfidious foreigners.