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.