Except for one chapter on epistocracy, the book addresses an army of straw men. These straw men are placed to teach informal political theory at elite universities. They preach democracy, but apparently not because democracy leads to better outcomes than alternative arrangements. By contrast, the book maintains that democracy is only as good as the outcomes it generates. Duh!
Brennan argues that, perhaps, epistocracy should be given a chance. Perhaps. To some extent, we already have a version of epistocracy. Voters do not directly decide on most policies. (When they do---for instance, in referenda---they often err badly.) The sophisticated individuals lobby, advertise, lie, and argue, thereby hijacking the votes of the less sophisticated.
Successful democracies are delicate systems. No one understands why they succeed, although many can provide a plausible rationalisation for why they might. Brennan has the right instinct: progress not by revolution, but by incremental intelligent design, trial and error.
14 December 2016
8 December 2016
"The Arrival" (2016)
Linguistic Relativity holds that a language affects the speaker’s worldview or cognition in nontrivial ways. The hypothesis is naive when applied to common languages. There is just not enough variation between the vernacular languages to inculcate individuals to substantially different ways of thinking.
Mathematics and economics are the languages that are sufficiently different from the vernacular, however, to shape reasoning in a distinctive manner. Mathematics makes one act as if arguments are won by persuasion, not by charisma. Economics puts one into the habit of identifying positive-sum games and turns one into a consequentialist.
The best gift of language one can receive are the languages of economics and, by implication, mathematics (which is the hardware on which economics runs). In 1940, Hardy praised pure maths for being useless and, therefore, harmless. We have moved some way forward since then. We have a language that is better than harmless: it is useful in opening up the opportunities to cooperate and in enabling one to think through cooperative strategies.
Mathematics and economics are the languages that are sufficiently different from the vernacular, however, to shape reasoning in a distinctive manner. Mathematics makes one act as if arguments are won by persuasion, not by charisma. Economics puts one into the habit of identifying positive-sum games and turns one into a consequentialist.
The best gift of language one can receive are the languages of economics and, by implication, mathematics (which is the hardware on which economics runs). In 1940, Hardy praised pure maths for being useless and, therefore, harmless. We have moved some way forward since then. We have a language that is better than harmless: it is useful in opening up the opportunities to cooperate and in enabling one to think through cooperative strategies.
Snowbound Blues
(Rochester, 2--4 March, 2016)
Competition extinguishes the supply of mediocrity and, with it, through habituation, the demand for mediocrity. Competition depresses the pay. Only the driven and the passionate remain---those musicians who live music and enjoy being alive.
Blues is alive; there is little point in being anything else. The scale seduces. The downbeat uplifts. The rhythm swings. Repetition reassures. The melody is free. The dancers look ahead, invent, for the dance is but a concept waiting to be operationalised.
Competition extinguishes the supply of mediocrity and, with it, through habituation, the demand for mediocrity. Competition depresses the pay. Only the driven and the passionate remain---those musicians who live music and enjoy being alive.
Blues is alive; there is little point in being anything else. The scale seduces. The downbeat uplifts. The rhythm swings. Repetition reassures. The melody is free. The dancers look ahead, invent, for the dance is but a concept waiting to be operationalised.
6 November 2016
SnowApple
(Foro del Tejedor, 5 November 2016)
Ambassadors of the periodically unfashionable country of frontiersman, artists, characters, the citizens of the world, they are. It is the country whose governments compete to seduce, whose hymn has a melody to it, whose languages evolve, compete, absorb, whose elite is nonhierarchical.
Ambassadors of the periodically unfashionable country of frontiersman, artists, characters, the citizens of the world, they are. It is the country whose governments compete to seduce, whose hymn has a melody to it, whose languages evolve, compete, absorb, whose elite is nonhierarchical.
24 October 2016
"Contrapunto" and "El Tiempo Perdido no Vuelve" by CONVEXUS
(Teatro de la Danza, Centro Cultural del Bosque, 23 October 2016)
It is a scary sight: a cargo cult of art. It is the inefficiency that is scary, for it is a symptom of a faulty mechanism.
It is a fallacy to believe that the meaningful must be ugly, depressing, or incoherent. It is easy to veil the incoherent in mystery and to assert that the broken is profound. It is the solution that is hard and requires artistic genius.
Markets promote art (along with porn, Teslas, and laundromats). So do private donations and carefully designed government programmes (especially at early stages, when the means of expression is honed, not the message). If a product would not sell---if a prototype would only attract captive audience---it has no merit.
It is the shift of the focus away from problems and towards solutions that is a key to prosperity.
It is a scary sight: a cargo cult of art. It is the inefficiency that is scary, for it is a symptom of a faulty mechanism.
It is a fallacy to believe that the meaningful must be ugly, depressing, or incoherent. It is easy to veil the incoherent in mystery and to assert that the broken is profound. It is the solution that is hard and requires artistic genius.
Markets promote art (along with porn, Teslas, and laundromats). So do private donations and carefully designed government programmes (especially at early stages, when the means of expression is honed, not the message). If a product would not sell---if a prototype would only attract captive audience---it has no merit.
It is the shift of the focus away from problems and towards solutions that is a key to prosperity.
21 August 2016
"The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" by Steven Pinker (2002)
Refreshingly, Steven Pinker believes in the humanity's ability to cope with truth. The truth he focuses on is that the blank-slate hypothesis is absurd but compelling to whose who seek an easy way to justify or generate the latest fads in political correctness or incorrectness without risking the heavy lifting of rigorous thinking. Pinker argues that scientific truths, whatever they might be, carry no moral imperative. To think otherwise is the naturalistic fallacy. Nor should one confuse one's tastes with morality; to moralise tastes is to sanction violence (i.e., the gratuitous seizure of freedoms) against the individuals whose tastes differ.
Pinker summarises the commonalities between fascism and (the ideology of) Marxism. Both claim the necessity of a violent fight of "us" (Arians or the proletariat) against "them" in order to install the natural order (Social Darwinism or communism), with "us" at the top, thus allegedly maximising the social welfare function by exterminating the inferior others. Both ideologies err in putting the idea before the man. Both ideologies rely on the human tendency to partitions others into an ingroup and an outgroup, thereby courting a negative-sum game where a positive-sum game would have profited all. Marxism, in addition, appeals to the blank-slate hypothesis to justify the stability of the destination state.
At best, an ideology is a scientific theory based on a 300-year-old evidence. At worst, an ideology is a system of beliefs that, to many, feels good to hold and that subjugates those many for the gain of the scheming few. Ideologies feed on the social science that is not methodologically individualistic and whose tenets are thus hard to observe and disprove. Methodologically individualistic social science, by contrast, is easier to discipline by observation and to interface with other sciences, such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
Pinker's reasoning is beautiful. He seeks simple fundamental principles, and then tries to explain as much as he can by appealing to these principles. He is not scared of what reasoning may uncover.
Pinker summarises the commonalities between fascism and (the ideology of) Marxism. Both claim the necessity of a violent fight of "us" (Arians or the proletariat) against "them" in order to install the natural order (Social Darwinism or communism), with "us" at the top, thus allegedly maximising the social welfare function by exterminating the inferior others. Both ideologies err in putting the idea before the man. Both ideologies rely on the human tendency to partitions others into an ingroup and an outgroup, thereby courting a negative-sum game where a positive-sum game would have profited all. Marxism, in addition, appeals to the blank-slate hypothesis to justify the stability of the destination state.
At best, an ideology is a scientific theory based on a 300-year-old evidence. At worst, an ideology is a system of beliefs that, to many, feels good to hold and that subjugates those many for the gain of the scheming few. Ideologies feed on the social science that is not methodologically individualistic and whose tenets are thus hard to observe and disprove. Methodologically individualistic social science, by contrast, is easier to discipline by observation and to interface with other sciences, such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
Pinker's reasoning is beautiful. He seeks simple fundamental principles, and then tries to explain as much as he can by appealing to these principles. He is not scared of what reasoning may uncover.
17 July 2016
"Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson (2002)
It is not the best of all possible worlds---today or at any time or place in the past. But the world is good enough if permeated by mutual respect.
An individual has lived a happy life if he has been given one chance at everything.
It is better to be a misfit and free than a misfit and tamed. It is better to be a misfit than not to be at all.
Having been neither a child nor a parent to anyone in particular, one may take pride in having been a free droplet on the crest of the breaking wave of the civilisation rolling in the right direction.
An individual has lived a happy life if he has been given one chance at everything.
It is better to be a misfit and free than a misfit and tamed. It is better to be a misfit than not to be at all.
Having been neither a child nor a parent to anyone in particular, one may take pride in having been a free droplet on the crest of the breaking wave of the civilisation rolling in the right direction.
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