Case study: after some browsing I casually tossed my keyboard aside in such a way that the F1 key got pressed continuously by a cable. By the time I noticed what was going on, Firefox was trying to open 50+ help tabs. Which of course slowed it to a crawl.
I killed Firefox only to try to edit the profile.js file. gEdit promptly froze on me as well. And examining the file with OpenOffice made me give up in disgust. So I tried to reopen Firefox hoping it would not try to open all of those tabs, or let me close them as fast as they were opening. And of course, it froze my computer.
So I try to reboot my computer but control-alt-delete doesn't work and I have to do a hard reboot. And when I get back into my computer it demands to know whether I want to restart the last session of Firefox (hell no) or start it with a clean slate (fuck no). So I hit ESCape which somehow doesn't cancel but defaults to clean slate. Okay no panic, last time I did that I was able to kill Firefox and get back my previous session. So I proceed to do this and I find out that profile.js has been completely wiped clean. Not a trace of the original dozen tabs I had open exists anywhere. They aren't in history, they are nowhere.
Now Firefox and Unix weenies will dismiss it all as a bunch of "accidents" or even worse claim it was my fault - it's always the user's fault as far as incompetent programmers are concerned. But there's at least two dozen principles of systems design that have been fucked up the ass in this case.
And what's tying it all together? Massive arrogance. Massive overweening I-know-what's-best-for-you-even-though-I-hold-you-in-utter-contempt arrogance. This "accident" could not have happened except that at every single step of the way, the programmer decided that he knew what was "best" for the user and decided to inflict it on them.
Even Internet Explorer, which is barely useable, didn't have that much arrogance. Whenever IE crashes, which is often, it's feasible to recreate your list of open windows by going through your history. But not Firefox because the history doesn't keep anything as simple as the pages that have been opened (programmer model) or the pages that are open at that moment in time (user model). Instead, the programmer decided to be "smart" and keep only the pages that have been opened by user action. So now those tabs which were initially opened by me an unknown number of weeks ago are nowhere in history.
And it's like this all the way down the line. Why did Firefox freeze my computer? Because Unix system programmers are morons incapable of comprehending the user model of scheduling (the main interface window has absolute priority and applications inherit resources from open windows) and also were incapable to sticking to the batch programming model which Unix's incompetent designers built into it initially. They had to get "smart" and fuck it up.
This travesty is the direct result of programmers' addiction with adding "features" over the users' dead bodies. Features which proceed to interfere with basic functionality in ways that make it unreliable or non-existent. Because programmers are mindless robots incapable of comprehending good versus evil. Like the mad engineers working on atomic weapons, warplanes, biological weapons and anti-children mines, they only care about getting a shiny new device. Not something constructive for the world.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Time's Arrow
Scientific American has an article about time's arrow this month. I've written about this subject a month ago and I've known about it for years. This is all yawn-inducing crap. And yet I regularly see so-called scientists oohing and aahing about it in pretend amazement while giving the subject a pretentious name like "The Cosmological Arrow Of Time". There is nothing special about the human perception of time being asymmetric.
Human bodies and human minds are computational devices so it's really obvious that they should work from a low-entropy state to a high-entropy state. After all, general computation has this nasty habit of producing entropy. So much so that it all-but requires the production of entropy to happen. Hence why complex computations like human minds only happen in ways that allow for the production of lots of entropy.
Furthermore, the low-entropy state of the big bang doesn't need any explanation - it's just a quirk of our universe. To the extent that it needs an explanation then the Anthropic Principle is explanation enough. If our universe didn't have a low-entropy end somewhere (ie, a "past") then it could never support complex computations like human minds to observe it.
All this painfully-forced "amazement" on the part of physicists is another example of how difficult certain people (the physicists involved) find it to believe that their subjective impressions have no relation to the laws that govern the universe. Here the subjective impression of time "flowing" versus the physical reality of its being a static dimension with the quirky property of conserving information. Elsewhere the subjective impression of being indivisible versus the quantum mechanical fact of decoherence.
Even physicists start cooing like idiots when reality starts demanding they give up some cherished notion they grew up with. It's painful to watch. The only thing more painful is when perfectly obvious facts like the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis are rejected out of hand. Or when something like Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems gets brutally butchered.
Human bodies and human minds are computational devices so it's really obvious that they should work from a low-entropy state to a high-entropy state. After all, general computation has this nasty habit of producing entropy. So much so that it all-but requires the production of entropy to happen. Hence why complex computations like human minds only happen in ways that allow for the production of lots of entropy.
Furthermore, the low-entropy state of the big bang doesn't need any explanation - it's just a quirk of our universe. To the extent that it needs an explanation then the Anthropic Principle is explanation enough. If our universe didn't have a low-entropy end somewhere (ie, a "past") then it could never support complex computations like human minds to observe it.
All this painfully-forced "amazement" on the part of physicists is another example of how difficult certain people (the physicists involved) find it to believe that their subjective impressions have no relation to the laws that govern the universe. Here the subjective impression of time "flowing" versus the physical reality of its being a static dimension with the quirky property of conserving information. Elsewhere the subjective impression of being indivisible versus the quantum mechanical fact of decoherence.
Even physicists start cooing like idiots when reality starts demanding they give up some cherished notion they grew up with. It's painful to watch. The only thing more painful is when perfectly obvious facts like the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis are rejected out of hand. Or when something like Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems gets brutally butchered.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Guaranteed Basic Income
The justification for a basic income is pretty simple and even obvious after you know about it.
There's only so much land on the Earth. Nobody is making any more and nobody made what's already there. So who should have it? Well the only just answer is that the land should be divided up each and every year into equal shares and these shares split up equally.
So from the fact you were born you have a human right to 1/(humanity's size) of all the land on Earth. And while we're at it, also all the oceans, all the fish, all the petrol in the ground, all the coal, all the forests, all the ... well you get the idea.
Now if we're sophisticated then we're going to allow people to sell off their rightful annual share of the natural resources on the Earth to the highest bidder. And that my boy, is the guaranteed basic income.
There's another argument that the basic income should be augmented with the share of the labour rent in the economy. Labour rent is the extra value you derive from having a job which some unemployed person can't derive because there aren't enough jobs to go around.
But this argument is iffy to say the least because the economy is bounded by resources. So the reason jobs are scarce is because natural resources are scarce, and we're already providing a basic income due to the scarcity of natural resources. So providing one for the scarcity of jobs would be double-counting. Maybe.
Anyways, when natural resources are so plentiful that everyone can grab as much as they want, then the price of untouched natural resources falls to zero and the guaranteed basic income falls to zero. But in *our modern world* where natural resources are very, VERY scarce, the price of untouched natural resources is extremely high and should be high enough to ensure someone's survival.
This is not the only argument for supporting people in financial straits by the way. There is also the argument from economic efficiency. There are many, many situations where it's best to charge everyone the same fee regardless of how much of a resource they use. This happens when keeping track of everyone's usage is going to cost more than the resources themselves.
Well as it happens you can invert the argument to talk about people's un-renumerated contributions to society. For example, raising your children has economic value to society. Raising them well has even higher economic value to society. These are benefits.
So is writing novels and publishing them online for free distribution. So is dispensing knowledge online. So is volunteering to sustain a community like all the people who run those Craigslist forums do.
The point is, all of those things provide net economic benefits to society as a whole. Should the people who provide them be left to starve to death? Should they be called chumps and laughed at? If you think these people should be rewarded then you've got a problem.
How do you measure people's contribution to society? Even better, how do you measure it without destroying it? Because it's a documented fact that when you start putting a price to people's un-priced voluntary contributions then their motivation disappears.
The answer is that just like charging everyone for oxygen or municipal water or sewers, it's not possible. The measuring apparatus would cost more money than it would save by preventing fraud. So you know what's the solution? The most efficient solution that's not totally unjust? Cut everyone a check and have done with it.
There's only so much land on the Earth. Nobody is making any more and nobody made what's already there. So who should have it? Well the only just answer is that the land should be divided up each and every year into equal shares and these shares split up equally.
So from the fact you were born you have a human right to 1/(humanity's size) of all the land on Earth. And while we're at it, also all the oceans, all the fish, all the petrol in the ground, all the coal, all the forests, all the ... well you get the idea.
Now if we're sophisticated then we're going to allow people to sell off their rightful annual share of the natural resources on the Earth to the highest bidder. And that my boy, is the guaranteed basic income.
There's another argument that the basic income should be augmented with the share of the labour rent in the economy. Labour rent is the extra value you derive from having a job which some unemployed person can't derive because there aren't enough jobs to go around.
But this argument is iffy to say the least because the economy is bounded by resources. So the reason jobs are scarce is because natural resources are scarce, and we're already providing a basic income due to the scarcity of natural resources. So providing one for the scarcity of jobs would be double-counting. Maybe.
Anyways, when natural resources are so plentiful that everyone can grab as much as they want, then the price of untouched natural resources falls to zero and the guaranteed basic income falls to zero. But in *our modern world* where natural resources are very, VERY scarce, the price of untouched natural resources is extremely high and should be high enough to ensure someone's survival.
This is not the only argument for supporting people in financial straits by the way. There is also the argument from economic efficiency. There are many, many situations where it's best to charge everyone the same fee regardless of how much of a resource they use. This happens when keeping track of everyone's usage is going to cost more than the resources themselves.
Well as it happens you can invert the argument to talk about people's un-renumerated contributions to society. For example, raising your children has economic value to society. Raising them well has even higher economic value to society. These are benefits.
So is writing novels and publishing them online for free distribution. So is dispensing knowledge online. So is volunteering to sustain a community like all the people who run those Craigslist forums do.
The point is, all of those things provide net economic benefits to society as a whole. Should the people who provide them be left to starve to death? Should they be called chumps and laughed at? If you think these people should be rewarded then you've got a problem.
How do you measure people's contribution to society? Even better, how do you measure it without destroying it? Because it's a documented fact that when you start putting a price to people's un-priced voluntary contributions then their motivation disappears.
The answer is that just like charging everyone for oxygen or municipal water or sewers, it's not possible. The measuring apparatus would cost more money than it would save by preventing fraud. So you know what's the solution? The most efficient solution that's not totally unjust? Cut everyone a check and have done with it.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Right-Libertarianism's Defects As A Morality
Dave on reddit gave an excellent explanation of Why So Many Programmers Are Right-Libertarians, bringing up many good points. It wasn't a complete explanation though, so I brought up the couple more points I could think of. I also took the opportunity to chronicle my own insights into moral theory while doing that. And since I've been putting off writing part 2 of Morality for so long, long enough that there's a part 3 planned now, I figured this would at least be something.
[Dave] missed the fact that right-libertarians are extremely superficial thinkers. If they were REALLY good at following logical implications all the way down the chain of reasoning then they would inevitably run into the fact that absolute property rights justify slavery. And from this single reductio ad absurdum the whole system that spawned this atrocity collapses.
Not that this is the only problem there since without a moral system to give it meaning, the term "coercion" is hollow. Is it coercion to stop someone from coercing you? If you say yes then you annihilate the concept of coercion. If you say no then you must define a morality that prioritizes interpersonal actions by different actors so as to answer which are less coercive than others'.
The right-libertarians' axiom of "I was there first" is ludicrous as a morality since it violates the second basic self-consistency check which every moral system must pass to merit the name. A moral system must not adjudicate different outcomes depending on point-of-view or order of events. A moral system is ONE system, one viewpoint, for ALL of the group.
(The second basic self-consistency check is really a lemma off of the first self-consistency check. Which itself is a theorem that stems pretty directly from the definition of a morality as the rules which a group should obey for the benefit of the group. The theorem is this: since the group is the entity that reasons about and applies the rules, there can't be an internal inconsistency in the application of the rules when the group applies the rules. The lemma just extends this to time order by noting that logic transcends time.)
To get back on topic, you also have to add in the fact that right-libertarians are incapable of creativity. Because if they were capable of creativity they would have an independent conception, one not arrived at by deductive reasoning, of social justice. And this conception of social justice would be in direct violent conflict with right-libertarian precepts on a constant basis.
There do exist perfectly logical and coherent systems but they aren't well-known so you essentially have to create them. That's what I ended up doing using possession as a basis and weaving human rights together with procedural freedom. I ended up having to recreate the whole foundation of human rights too.
The thing is, creation comes from creativity and that's something all but exceptional programmers lack. A person certainly doesn't demonstrate the least shred of creativity by parroting others' systems of thought whole.
I recommend you examine the philosophy and politics entries on my blog. Especially the one on morality.
I'll leave you with a little fact. What mathematics is to all the hard sciences, the language which underlies all the other fields and unifies them together. So too psychology is to all the social sciences. If you don't know psychology, and by and large economists don't, then you can say nothing about systems of human beings.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Science Fiction versus Fantasy
Have you read anything by Julian May? Her Pliocene Exile series has dwarves, elves and magic powers. Only the dwarves and elves are really exiles from a dimorphic alien species who came to earth because their sentient ship determined it was biologically compatible, and the magic is psionics.
Then in her Moon series, magical amulets are communications devices made by a sadistic species of energy beings who live, or are, the Aurora Borealis. They call themselves the Greater Lights and you properly greet them in your request for favours by saying "All hail the Cold Light Army".
There is no difference between science fiction and fantasy except for this: science fiction is rationalistic whereas fantasy is mystical. That's why there exists the dichotomy between ray guns, aliens, psionics versus wands, elves, magic. Talking trees? Baah, that's just biotechnology!
No, the real reason why LOTR is fantasy is because of JRR Tolkien's crap about the Maiar, powerful spirits that rule the world. Also because of his feudalism. In a science-fiction context you can portray feudalism, as Julian May does, but you can't say this is how the world should or ought to be.
So when princes win kingdoms in science-fiction, it's because they're smarter, stronger and braver than anyone else. It isn't because they've got any Divine Right To Rule. And when the humans struck down the elves' tyranny in May's Pliocene Exile series, this was a GOOD thing. Not like in LOTR where the humans' defiance of their elvish overlords in the divinely preordained order resulted in them being destroyed.
When Picard the starship captain defies the gods then this is good. When Paksennarion the paladin defies the gods then this is evil. Because in a rationalistic worldview the universe is to be controlled and subjugated, but in a mystical one the universe is to be feared and propitiated.
Given that our civilization is entirely the result of rationalists, it amazes me that we allow the magical thinkers to enjoy the fruits of civilization instead of driving them into the wilds to die of starvation. I remain hopeful this is only because we haven't figured out how to eugenics the mysticism out of human DNA, yet.
No comment on this subject can be complete without reference to David Brin's essay on the romantics now only available at the internet archive from its former URL (http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle.html). The only non-Romantic mystical writer I know of is Ursula K LeGuin in her Earthsea series.
Oh and the Romantics are still with us today. They're calling themselves Greens now. And they're just as dedicated to anti-industrialism as ever. They've given up the hierarchy bit but have more than made up for it in sheer misanthropy.
Then in her Moon series, magical amulets are communications devices made by a sadistic species of energy beings who live, or are, the Aurora Borealis. They call themselves the Greater Lights and you properly greet them in your request for favours by saying "All hail the Cold Light Army".
There is no difference between science fiction and fantasy except for this: science fiction is rationalistic whereas fantasy is mystical. That's why there exists the dichotomy between ray guns, aliens, psionics versus wands, elves, magic. Talking trees? Baah, that's just biotechnology!
No, the real reason why LOTR is fantasy is because of JRR Tolkien's crap about the Maiar, powerful spirits that rule the world. Also because of his feudalism. In a science-fiction context you can portray feudalism, as Julian May does, but you can't say this is how the world should or ought to be.
So when princes win kingdoms in science-fiction, it's because they're smarter, stronger and braver than anyone else. It isn't because they've got any Divine Right To Rule. And when the humans struck down the elves' tyranny in May's Pliocene Exile series, this was a GOOD thing. Not like in LOTR where the humans' defiance of their elvish overlords in the divinely preordained order resulted in them being destroyed.
When Picard the starship captain defies the gods then this is good. When Paksennarion the paladin defies the gods then this is evil. Because in a rationalistic worldview the universe is to be controlled and subjugated, but in a mystical one the universe is to be feared and propitiated.
Given that our civilization is entirely the result of rationalists, it amazes me that we allow the magical thinkers to enjoy the fruits of civilization instead of driving them into the wilds to die of starvation. I remain hopeful this is only because we haven't figured out how to eugenics the mysticism out of human DNA, yet.
No comment on this subject can be complete without reference to David Brin's essay on the romantics now only available at the internet archive from its former URL (http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle.html). The only non-Romantic mystical writer I know of is Ursula K LeGuin in her Earthsea series.
Oh and the Romantics are still with us today. They're calling themselves Greens now. And they're just as dedicated to anti-industrialism as ever. They've given up the hierarchy bit but have more than made up for it in sheer misanthropy.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
The Hydrogen Economy
Idiots parrot all the time how the Hydrogen Economy is going to save the status quo. To a first order analysis this is ludicrous since fuel cells are overcomplexified expensive pieces of crap and hydrogen can't be transported.
However, say we did away with all the futuristic vapourware, what could "hydrogen economy" possibly mean then? Well, it could mean very high temperature nuclear reactors that produce hydrogen thermochemically at very high efficiencies. Assuming the hydrogen produced were cheap enough, there are plenty of applications for it.
Reducing iron ore to pig iron would be one of them. Pig iron can be efficiently turned to steel in an electric arc furnace, without the use of coal. By that point in time, all electricity would be produced by nuclear reactors and coal power plants would have been removed from the equation.
So what would happen to the current production of 1 billion tonnes of coal annually? Well some of it would certainly go to calcinating clinker for concrete cement. Assuming this could be displaced somehow, and assuming enough hydrogen were produced cheaply enough, then it should be possible to transform all of that coal into some synthetic fuel.
Currently, coal to liquids is extremely expensive partly because some of the coal must be burned in order to produce the hydrogen to synthesize the hydrocarbon chains. Assuming this weren't a problem then 1 billion tonnes of coal per year converts into about 30 million barrels per day of synthetic fuel. This falls far short of the current 80 million barrels per day the world uses but it's certainly ... interesting.
However, say we did away with all the futuristic vapourware, what could "hydrogen economy" possibly mean then? Well, it could mean very high temperature nuclear reactors that produce hydrogen thermochemically at very high efficiencies. Assuming the hydrogen produced were cheap enough, there are plenty of applications for it.
Reducing iron ore to pig iron would be one of them. Pig iron can be efficiently turned to steel in an electric arc furnace, without the use of coal. By that point in time, all electricity would be produced by nuclear reactors and coal power plants would have been removed from the equation.
So what would happen to the current production of 1 billion tonnes of coal annually? Well some of it would certainly go to calcinating clinker for concrete cement. Assuming this could be displaced somehow, and assuming enough hydrogen were produced cheaply enough, then it should be possible to transform all of that coal into some synthetic fuel.
Currently, coal to liquids is extremely expensive partly because some of the coal must be burned in order to produce the hydrogen to synthesize the hydrocarbon chains. Assuming this weren't a problem then 1 billion tonnes of coal per year converts into about 30 million barrels per day of synthetic fuel. This falls far short of the current 80 million barrels per day the world uses but it's certainly ... interesting.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Ambient Power
Eco-zealots always whine that if only so-called "renewable" sources of energy had gotten as much research & development money as nuclear then they would have become just as profitable.
Well first of all, we're really talking about ambient energy since nuclear is just as renewable as anything powered by the Sun. The Uranium and Thorium our planet inherited from supernovas during its formation is only going to disappear through radioactive decay. And that won't be for many billions of years.
Second of all, nuclear power became profitable within a decade of its invention. Meanwhile, it's been more than 140 years since photovoltaics have been invented, and more than four decades since NASA has been funding their R&D, and what do we have? Bupkis. What does that tell you?
People seem to think that engineering can do anything, achieve anything. That it's just a question of waving your magic fairy wand and pouring enough money into it. Well it's not. And it's really very, very simple why it isn't. It goes like this:
Well first of all, we're really talking about ambient energy since nuclear is just as renewable as anything powered by the Sun. The Uranium and Thorium our planet inherited from supernovas during its formation is only going to disappear through radioactive decay. And that won't be for many billions of years.
Second of all, nuclear power became profitable within a decade of its invention. Meanwhile, it's been more than 140 years since photovoltaics have been invented, and more than four decades since NASA has been funding their R&D, and what do we have? Bupkis. What does that tell you?
People seem to think that engineering can do anything, achieve anything. That it's just a question of waving your magic fairy wand and pouring enough money into it. Well it's not. And it's really very, very simple why it isn't. It goes like this:
- solar power is a DIFFUSE form of power
- this means that you need a MACHINE to concentrate solar power
- in our physical universe, a machine must be made of MATTER
- matter COSTS MONEY
Add it all up and what do you get? Solar power will always be more expensive than nuclear power. Always. Now and for all time.
The only reason hydro doesn't suffer the same fate is because we can use pre-existing mountains and ravines as the collectors. Once dam-builders have to pay for mountains, and this will happen when we start dismantling the Earth for a Dyson sphere, then hydro power will no longer be profitable.
Ambient forms of energy are inherently inferior and no amount of chanting by arch-druids and channeling the power of Gaia is going to change physics.
Oh Nos, Wage Inflashun !!
There's been some worrying about wage inflation happening in odd places like Oklahoma. Let's straighten it out.
Wage inflation is good, asset inflation is bad. Wage inflation benefits workers at the expense of non-workers while asset inflation benefits property owners at the expense of the poor.
Of course, to the Fed, pundits and right-wing economists, who are all shills to the overclasses, it's the reverse. This is why a housing bubble is not considered price inflation, but wage inflation is the work of Satan and must be combatted forthwith. Forsooth!
What's Been Going On
Contrary to popular opinion, any recent price inflation is not a direct function of the asset inflation that's been going on. It's rather a minor side-effect of the means by which it was achieved. Using lots of easy and unregulated credit for asset owners.
Other means of inflating assets exist which would have no effect on overall prices. One is increasing competition for assets, say by moving to a double-income family model which restricts free time and mobility (of commutes) thus artificially narrowing options for workers.
Another is decreasing density which decreases the total number of possible homes within the commuter's habitable area. This is just decreasing supply of homes by squandering very scarce land to build them on. It also contradicts the claims of suburbia advocates who say they are providing affordable homes.
Yet another means of inflating assets is to re-price the assets out of the hands of the locals by, for example, opening up assets to ownership by rich foreigners. Needless to say, sharpening wealth disparities helps this process along.
What Hasn't Been Going On
A final way to cause asset inflation is restrictions on their formation, say if there is a timber or brick shortage for housing. Squandering land would be a special case of this. About the only asset inflation which a sane economy should ever worry about is that caused by resource shortages.
There is a good way of dealing with resource shortages, it's to slow down the economy by scaling back legal working hours. This spreads the pain uniformly instead of concentrating it among borrowers (ie, everyone but the smart rich) as is done by hiking interest rates.
But this is irrelevant because it is the only cause of asset inflation we are NOT seeing, except for land squandering. So basically, all the current causes of asset inflation are the product of an insane society with an insane economic and financial system.
It's Been Going On For Decades
So I hope you see what's been happening. For decades there has been asset inflation without price inflation. Due to the political class being shills to the rich. Recently this asset inflation has been put into overdrive by madmen willing to endure price inflation. What's important to note is that it would take decades of wage inflation to redress the social balance and see a modicum of justice.
Oh yeah, and when someone like Milton Friedman says something astonishingly idiotic like "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." what he's really saying is that he doesn't give a damn about the allocation of wealth between rich and poor. Which he wouldn't, being a right-wing shill.
Wage inflation is good, asset inflation is bad. Wage inflation benefits workers at the expense of non-workers while asset inflation benefits property owners at the expense of the poor.
Of course, to the Fed, pundits and right-wing economists, who are all shills to the overclasses, it's the reverse. This is why a housing bubble is not considered price inflation, but wage inflation is the work of Satan and must be combatted forthwith. Forsooth!
What's Been Going On
Contrary to popular opinion, any recent price inflation is not a direct function of the asset inflation that's been going on. It's rather a minor side-effect of the means by which it was achieved. Using lots of easy and unregulated credit for asset owners.
Other means of inflating assets exist which would have no effect on overall prices. One is increasing competition for assets, say by moving to a double-income family model which restricts free time and mobility (of commutes) thus artificially narrowing options for workers.
Another is decreasing density which decreases the total number of possible homes within the commuter's habitable area. This is just decreasing supply of homes by squandering very scarce land to build them on. It also contradicts the claims of suburbia advocates who say they are providing affordable homes.
Yet another means of inflating assets is to re-price the assets out of the hands of the locals by, for example, opening up assets to ownership by rich foreigners. Needless to say, sharpening wealth disparities helps this process along.
What Hasn't Been Going On
A final way to cause asset inflation is restrictions on their formation, say if there is a timber or brick shortage for housing. Squandering land would be a special case of this. About the only asset inflation which a sane economy should ever worry about is that caused by resource shortages.
There is a good way of dealing with resource shortages, it's to slow down the economy by scaling back legal working hours. This spreads the pain uniformly instead of concentrating it among borrowers (ie, everyone but the smart rich) as is done by hiking interest rates.
But this is irrelevant because it is the only cause of asset inflation we are NOT seeing, except for land squandering. So basically, all the current causes of asset inflation are the product of an insane society with an insane economic and financial system.
It's Been Going On For Decades
So I hope you see what's been happening. For decades there has been asset inflation without price inflation. Due to the political class being shills to the rich. Recently this asset inflation has been put into overdrive by madmen willing to endure price inflation. What's important to note is that it would take decades of wage inflation to redress the social balance and see a modicum of justice.
Oh yeah, and when someone like Milton Friedman says something astonishingly idiotic like "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." what he's really saying is that he doesn't give a damn about the allocation of wealth between rich and poor. Which he wouldn't, being a right-wing shill.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
How To Think About EROEI
Some eco-zealots claim the nuclear industry has an EROEI of 10 or 2 or even negative. Ha!
The right way to think about EROEI is to invert it. 1/EROEI is, more or less, the proportion of your industrial economy which must be devoted to producing energy. This assumes the energy industry is no more energy-intensive than other sectors of industry. A not-unreasonable assumption.
So if you have an EROEI of 10 then 1/10th or 10% of your industrial economy must be devoted to producing the energy for the rest of the industrial economy. If you have an EROEI of 30 then this falls to 1/30th or 3%, for a 7 percentage point difference.
Given that booms to recessions happen on a change of just a few percentage points in production, 7 pps of energy overhead matters a hell of a lot. Actually, even pushing up the EROEI to 90 reduces the overhead to 1% which improves the industrial economy. Pushing the EROEI beyond 90 can't improve the industrial economy significantly and that would explain why it isn't done.
Having said all that, you have to ask yourself whether or not you would have noticed if 1/10th of ALL industry everywhere (steelmaking, concrete kilns, road building, automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, even television manufacturing) was devoted to just producing energy.
You have to ask yourself whether an EROEI of just 10 for a vital component of the energy sector (and nearly ALL of the energy sector of France) passes any kind of sanity checks.
And if you still want to know, nuclear power has an EROEI of 90.
The right way to think about EROEI is to invert it. 1/EROEI is, more or less, the proportion of your industrial economy which must be devoted to producing energy. This assumes the energy industry is no more energy-intensive than other sectors of industry. A not-unreasonable assumption.
So if you have an EROEI of 10 then 1/10th or 10% of your industrial economy must be devoted to producing the energy for the rest of the industrial economy. If you have an EROEI of 30 then this falls to 1/30th or 3%, for a 7 percentage point difference.
Given that booms to recessions happen on a change of just a few percentage points in production, 7 pps of energy overhead matters a hell of a lot. Actually, even pushing up the EROEI to 90 reduces the overhead to 1% which improves the industrial economy. Pushing the EROEI beyond 90 can't improve the industrial economy significantly and that would explain why it isn't done.
Having said all that, you have to ask yourself whether or not you would have noticed if 1/10th of ALL industry everywhere (steelmaking, concrete kilns, road building, automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, even television manufacturing) was devoted to just producing energy.
You have to ask yourself whether an EROEI of just 10 for a vital component of the energy sector (and nearly ALL of the energy sector of France) passes any kind of sanity checks.
And if you still want to know, nuclear power has an EROEI of 90.
Why Nuclear Plants Shouldn't Be Made Safer
By Carolus Obscurus in response to a (poor) article on nuclear's EROEI.
In fact, nuclear plants are so safe that their safety may have been counterproductive --- it can argued that for every life saved in improving the safety of nuclear plants several lives have been lost in constructing those super-safe plants. Can't present a graph here but obviously at some stage the rising fatal accident rate associated with increased investments in constructing safe buildings will intersect with the declining fatal accident rate resulting from the added safety.
Not easy to explain to the general public, though. The individual deaths of 100 construction workers employed in building nuclear plants is not headline news. But if a sparrow falls within a radius of ten miles of an operating nuclear power station Greenpeace and co. will start turning on the waterworks ....
Sparrows near Three Mile Island at leukemia risk, Greenpeace claims
In spite of theoretical safety concerns, in practise in the West nuclear power has been several orders of magnitude safer than coal, which has killed plenty of people.
In fact, nuclear plants are so safe that their safety may have been counterproductive --- it can argued that for every life saved in improving the safety of nuclear plants several lives have been lost in constructing those super-safe plants. Can't present a graph here but obviously at some stage the rising fatal accident rate associated with increased investments in constructing safe buildings will intersect with the declining fatal accident rate resulting from the added safety.
Not easy to explain to the general public, though. The individual deaths of 100 construction workers employed in building nuclear plants is not headline news. But if a sparrow falls within a radius of ten miles of an operating nuclear power station Greenpeace and co. will start turning on the waterworks ....
Sparrows near Three Mile Island at leukemia risk, Greenpeace claims
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Right-libertarians, aka Propertarians, aka Market Fundamentalists, aka Satanists
Or, There Is No Such Thing As "Anarcho"-Capitalism
"Anarcho"-capitalists believe that property rights should trump human rights. They believe that human beings have no rights at all and that property, THINGS, have all the rights. They have no conception nor any desire for justice. They are also fixated on inanimate objects rather than human beings. And they fetishize the ownership relation, believing that all things should be owned / anthropomorphized. They are mentally ill and they are extremely repellent.
In "anarcho"-capitalist philosophy, a person is a thing to be owned. They will cheerfully admit this except they will give you a song and dance about how people should own themselves. The only problem is that ownership is distinguished from possession precisely in that you can sell, lease and destroy an owned thing. So a person who owns their body (as opposed to possessing it as their human right) is by definition capable of selling it. So "anarcho"-capitalists literally believe in slavery.
This should not be any kind of surprise to you since the "freedom to contract" (ie, absolute bindable contracts) is literally nothing more than the ability to enslave your future self to the word of your present self. You could contract yourself out for a billion years of labour as the scientologists do. Or you could enter into a contract you later find despicable because your values were fundamentally altered in the meantime. The propertarians care not because they have successfully enslaved you and they expect you to be obedient.
In fact, the logical extension of the freedom to contract is that you can abduct and kidnap someone, rape and torture them until they break, and then have them "freely" sign a contract which retroactively legitimizes what you did to them by declaring themselves to be your slave. After all, physics does not recognize a difference between future and past, so why should contracts? If you can enslave your future selves, then why not be allowed to enslave your past selves?
Propertarians love slavery. Their "freedom of property" is enslaving all humanity to objects, things. Their freedom of contract is nothing but outright slavery. And even their "owning yourself" is just their attempt to hide their love of slavery in plain sight.
"Anarcho"-capitalists, right-libertarians, market fundamentalists and satanists ARE SLAVERS.
And if you are not repelled by them then there is something deeply wrong with you.
Oh and I call them Satanists because the Satanic Bible was in fact inspired by Ayn Rand. And because it's really all the same thing, right-libertarianism being about the legalisms of egotistical shitbags while satanism is the rituals of egotistical shitbags.
"Anarcho"-capitalists believe that property rights should trump human rights. They believe that human beings have no rights at all and that property, THINGS, have all the rights. They have no conception nor any desire for justice. They are also fixated on inanimate objects rather than human beings. And they fetishize the ownership relation, believing that all things should be owned / anthropomorphized. They are mentally ill and they are extremely repellent.
In "anarcho"-capitalist philosophy, a person is a thing to be owned. They will cheerfully admit this except they will give you a song and dance about how people should own themselves. The only problem is that ownership is distinguished from possession precisely in that you can sell, lease and destroy an owned thing. So a person who owns their body (as opposed to possessing it as their human right) is by definition capable of selling it. So "anarcho"-capitalists literally believe in slavery.
This should not be any kind of surprise to you since the "freedom to contract" (ie, absolute bindable contracts) is literally nothing more than the ability to enslave your future self to the word of your present self. You could contract yourself out for a billion years of labour as the scientologists do. Or you could enter into a contract you later find despicable because your values were fundamentally altered in the meantime. The propertarians care not because they have successfully enslaved you and they expect you to be obedient.
In fact, the logical extension of the freedom to contract is that you can abduct and kidnap someone, rape and torture them until they break, and then have them "freely" sign a contract which retroactively legitimizes what you did to them by declaring themselves to be your slave. After all, physics does not recognize a difference between future and past, so why should contracts? If you can enslave your future selves, then why not be allowed to enslave your past selves?
Propertarians love slavery. Their "freedom of property" is enslaving all humanity to objects, things. Their freedom of contract is nothing but outright slavery. And even their "owning yourself" is just their attempt to hide their love of slavery in plain sight.
"Anarcho"-capitalists, right-libertarians, market fundamentalists and satanists ARE SLAVERS.
And if you are not repelled by them then there is something deeply wrong with you.
Oh and I call them Satanists because the Satanic Bible was in fact inspired by Ayn Rand. And because it's really all the same thing, right-libertarianism being about the legalisms of egotistical shitbags while satanism is the rituals of egotistical shitbags.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Universal Principles, or Why Chemistry Is An Inferior Body Of Knowledge
Qualities of a Body of Knowledge
What are some relevant qualities by which we may judge the quality of a body of knowledge? We can start with the ratios of rules to facts and of facts to phenomena. We'll go on with the universality of principles, the extent of knowledge, and the simplicity & organizing power of concepts. So when we look at chemistry, what do we see?
In chemistry, there are too many rules for the facts we know. There are too many facts for the phenomena we know. Rules are so far from universal that they can never be called principles - as proved by the fact you can't name a single one that belongs entirely to chemistry. Knowledge of phenomena is very limited. And all concepts are ad hoc, baroque and with limited power.
Principles of Chemistry
But what about "Ka x Kb = Kw" and "all endothermic reactions speed up with increasing temperature"?
The problem with those principles is that they are very far from universal. Although chemicals can be acids or bases, most of them are neither. How exactly is it meaningful to talk about the pH of Uranium Oxide? Or steel? And as for reactions, the problem there is that chemical reactions consume themselves and so they have a nasty tendency of being intermittent. We're not talking then about something that persists but rather something that flickers to life and then winks out. Most chemicals are not in the middle of a reaction!
Concepts of Chemistry
What exactly are the fundamental concepts of chemistry anyways? The chemical bond is one. Unfortunately, talking about the universal laws of bonding would just be a repetition of quantum electrodynamics and electrostatic attraction.
Valence shell electron theory is a staple of chemistry. It explains the periodicity of Mendeleev's table. But Mendeleev's table itself explains nothing further. It only talks about how some chemicals are similar to other chemicals, not why they are the way they are in the first place.
Chemistry doesn't explain why there's two electrons to an orbital (physics does that) and it doesn't explain the shapes or numbers of orbitals (physics sortof does that). Hell, it's not even possible to account for the colour of gold without dragging general relativity into the mix!
Actually, if anything has any claim to being a fundamental concept of chemistry, it's orbitals. That's because orbitals are critical in chemistry yet they are far too complex to compute using physics. They're an emergent property.
Pity the orbitals don't really matter in the far reaches of chemistry. Certainly, everything is made out of them, but it doesn't seem to matter. Probably because when it comes down to it, there's only a few of them that matter at all.
Let's compare with physics.
A Brief Look At Physics
Absolutely everything in the physical universe is made out of energy. For something to even exist, it has to be made out of energy.
Do you know why photons can only travel at the speed of light? It's because if they didn't then there would be a reference frame in which they are at rest. And since their rest mass is zero, this would mean they have absolutely no energy. Thus there would be a reference frame in which a photon does not exist and another in which it does exist. And that's absurd.
Literally, Physical Existence = Energy.
Space then is a near-universal. Everything exists in space except for space itself. Space may or may not be a property that emerged from superstrings.
Information is another near-universal. Everything that exists save possibly space itself holds information in order to exist. The laws of thermodynamics are laws about information. 'entropy' can be defined as 'information we don't care about' thus neatly demonstrating why it has no role in the fundamental laws of physics. Information is a conserved quantity which follows specific laws.
From these concepts alone, it is possible to formulate a theorem about the maximum possible rate of computation in a volume of space at any non-zero temperature. Any attempt to compute more would require more energy, which would increase the energy density past the point a black hole would form which would disconnect you from the heat sink and destroy your ability to compute anything. That is a pretty fantastic thing when you think about it.
And Back To Chemistry
Chemistry has nothing like it. There are a few different orbitals and there are a few types of bonds ... but there seem to be too few types of bond to matter and the different orbitals hardly matter. So no universal laws and no universal theorems. I'm not sure why chemistry is so fragmented but it's a shame.
And that's why chemistry is an inferior body of knowledge.
What are some relevant qualities by which we may judge the quality of a body of knowledge? We can start with the ratios of rules to facts and of facts to phenomena. We'll go on with the universality of principles, the extent of knowledge, and the simplicity & organizing power of concepts. So when we look at chemistry, what do we see?
In chemistry, there are too many rules for the facts we know. There are too many facts for the phenomena we know. Rules are so far from universal that they can never be called principles - as proved by the fact you can't name a single one that belongs entirely to chemistry. Knowledge of phenomena is very limited. And all concepts are ad hoc, baroque and with limited power.
Principles of Chemistry
But what about "Ka x Kb = Kw" and "all endothermic reactions speed up with increasing temperature"?
The problem with those principles is that they are very far from universal. Although chemicals can be acids or bases, most of them are neither. How exactly is it meaningful to talk about the pH of Uranium Oxide? Or steel? And as for reactions, the problem there is that chemical reactions consume themselves and so they have a nasty tendency of being intermittent. We're not talking then about something that persists but rather something that flickers to life and then winks out. Most chemicals are not in the middle of a reaction!
Concepts of Chemistry
What exactly are the fundamental concepts of chemistry anyways? The chemical bond is one. Unfortunately, talking about the universal laws of bonding would just be a repetition of quantum electrodynamics and electrostatic attraction.
Valence shell electron theory is a staple of chemistry. It explains the periodicity of Mendeleev's table. But Mendeleev's table itself explains nothing further. It only talks about how some chemicals are similar to other chemicals, not why they are the way they are in the first place.
Chemistry doesn't explain why there's two electrons to an orbital (physics does that) and it doesn't explain the shapes or numbers of orbitals (physics sortof does that). Hell, it's not even possible to account for the colour of gold without dragging general relativity into the mix!
Actually, if anything has any claim to being a fundamental concept of chemistry, it's orbitals. That's because orbitals are critical in chemistry yet they are far too complex to compute using physics. They're an emergent property.
Pity the orbitals don't really matter in the far reaches of chemistry. Certainly, everything is made out of them, but it doesn't seem to matter. Probably because when it comes down to it, there's only a few of them that matter at all.
Let's compare with physics.
A Brief Look At Physics
Absolutely everything in the physical universe is made out of energy. For something to even exist, it has to be made out of energy.
Do you know why photons can only travel at the speed of light? It's because if they didn't then there would be a reference frame in which they are at rest. And since their rest mass is zero, this would mean they have absolutely no energy. Thus there would be a reference frame in which a photon does not exist and another in which it does exist. And that's absurd.
Literally, Physical Existence = Energy.
Space then is a near-universal. Everything exists in space except for space itself. Space may or may not be a property that emerged from superstrings.
Information is another near-universal. Everything that exists save possibly space itself holds information in order to exist. The laws of thermodynamics are laws about information. 'entropy' can be defined as 'information we don't care about' thus neatly demonstrating why it has no role in the fundamental laws of physics. Information is a conserved quantity which follows specific laws.
From these concepts alone, it is possible to formulate a theorem about the maximum possible rate of computation in a volume of space at any non-zero temperature. Any attempt to compute more would require more energy, which would increase the energy density past the point a black hole would form which would disconnect you from the heat sink and destroy your ability to compute anything. That is a pretty fantastic thing when you think about it.
And Back To Chemistry
Chemistry has nothing like it. There are a few different orbitals and there are a few types of bonds ... but there seem to be too few types of bond to matter and the different orbitals hardly matter. So no universal laws and no universal theorems. I'm not sure why chemistry is so fragmented but it's a shame.
And that's why chemistry is an inferior body of knowledge.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Natural vs Artificial
From a lovely little discussion I just had.
There is a fundamental magical difference between anything artificial and anything natural.
In fact, this magical difference is even enshrined in physics in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The laws of physics are deterministic until human beings get involved at which point they become magically non-deterministic (whatever that means).
It is also enshrined in the Lockean doctrine of "natural rights" which the USA believes in. Negative rights are natural (don't require human action) and positive rights are artificial (do require human action). In the communist doctrine of human rights, there is no distinction.
This magical difference is why watching someone drown to death is okay but drowning them yourself is wrong, as every red-blooded American is taught to believe since true freedom is the freedom to drown.
This magical difference is why 4 to 8 milliSieverts per year of natural radiation is perfectly acceptable. But 0.05 milliSieverts per year due to standing outside of a nuclear plant 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year is totally unacceptable.
So now you know the reason why the actions of quadrillions of natural cosmic rays is unimportant compared to a few dozen artificial beams in the LHC. Obviously the latter are much more threatening to us in magic-magic land.
If it just happens then it's nature's revenge or proof of the sinfulness of humans.
Nature is Mother and God is Father, you know. And they LOVE us even as they beat us. In fact, that's WHY they beat us. Because we deserve it!
Magical thinkers "reason" using magic because they're incapable of using logic. In fact, they're incapable of grasping any abstract concept at all.
Hence why they have to recycle the few concepts they do have. Which invariably turn out not to be abstract like "mortality risk" but rather concrete anthropomorphizations like "mother won't be pleased".
Mother won't be pleased with us making black holes on our own. In fact, mother won't be pleased with us doing anything, being independent like and saying what a murderous fucking bitch she is.
There is a fundamental magical difference between anything artificial and anything natural.
In fact, this magical difference is even enshrined in physics in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The laws of physics are deterministic until human beings get involved at which point they become magically non-deterministic (whatever that means).
It is also enshrined in the Lockean doctrine of "natural rights" which the USA believes in. Negative rights are natural (don't require human action) and positive rights are artificial (do require human action). In the communist doctrine of human rights, there is no distinction.
This magical difference is why watching someone drown to death is okay but drowning them yourself is wrong, as every red-blooded American is taught to believe since true freedom is the freedom to drown.
This magical difference is why 4 to 8 milliSieverts per year of natural radiation is perfectly acceptable. But 0.05 milliSieverts per year due to standing outside of a nuclear plant 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year is totally unacceptable.
So now you know the reason why the actions of quadrillions of natural cosmic rays is unimportant compared to a few dozen artificial beams in the LHC. Obviously the latter are much more threatening to us in magic-magic land.
So if a black hole 'just happens', its okay, but if we make it ourselves: no way!
If it just happens then it's nature's revenge or proof of the sinfulness of humans.
Nature is Mother and God is Father, you know. And they LOVE us even as they beat us. In fact, that's WHY they beat us. Because we deserve it!
Magical thinkers "reason" using magic because they're incapable of using logic. In fact, they're incapable of grasping any abstract concept at all.
Hence why they have to recycle the few concepts they do have. Which invariably turn out not to be abstract like "mortality risk" but rather concrete anthropomorphizations like "mother won't be pleased".
Mother won't be pleased with us making black holes on our own. In fact, mother won't be pleased with us doing anything, being independent like and saying what a murderous fucking bitch she is.
Why economics isn't a science
Some unredeemable fools claim that various and sundry economists, notably Friedrich Hayek, are "empirical". This is unbelievable bullshit, but to appreciate the absurdity of that statement, one must know what 'empirical' means in the first place. Which is something economists uniformly don't know.
What does empiricism mean?
Empiricism means that you collect experimental evidence in order to test theoretical models. Those theoretical models are then verified or disproved to the extent that they conform to the experimental evidence. Most crucially, a single mismatch between any part of a model and the corresponding experimental evidence is sufficient to disprove the model.
What do economists mean?
Economists mean that they dream up whatever model they like and if some tiny subset of the model happens to match the experimental evidence then it is verified. It is by no means necessary for a model to match all of the evidence or even most of the evidence. It is sufficient for the model to match some of the evidence for it to be considered "empirical".
For instance, it is possible (and it has been the case) that a model whose every single assumption is violated by reality is still considered correct because some of its conclusions (the ones the economists particularly like) happen to match the evidence.
In fact, it's worse than even that because economic "models" are not even required to be causal. This is actually what the economists mean by "empirical". They mean that the models they dream up are purely analytic tools that have no basis in reality, logic or causality.
To an economist, not only is it perfectly acceptable to model the real physical world as an AD&D fantasy, ignoring the fact that elves, orcs and goblins don't exist. No, far more than that, it's acceptable for the proposed AD&D fantasy to be fuzzy and ill-defined. It doesn't even have to be coherent!
Economics is what you get when you get people to manipulate a bunch of meaningless symbols and numbers. Symbols and numbers which they've had to memorize because they don't actually mean anything. Not in the real world and not in any world since economics falls short even as pure mathematics.
What does empiricism mean?
Empiricism means that you collect experimental evidence in order to test theoretical models. Those theoretical models are then verified or disproved to the extent that they conform to the experimental evidence. Most crucially, a single mismatch between any part of a model and the corresponding experimental evidence is sufficient to disprove the model.
What do economists mean?
Economists mean that they dream up whatever model they like and if some tiny subset of the model happens to match the experimental evidence then it is verified. It is by no means necessary for a model to match all of the evidence or even most of the evidence. It is sufficient for the model to match some of the evidence for it to be considered "empirical".
For instance, it is possible (and it has been the case) that a model whose every single assumption is violated by reality is still considered correct because some of its conclusions (the ones the economists particularly like) happen to match the evidence.
In fact, it's worse than even that because economic "models" are not even required to be causal. This is actually what the economists mean by "empirical". They mean that the models they dream up are purely analytic tools that have no basis in reality, logic or causality.
To an economist, not only is it perfectly acceptable to model the real physical world as an AD&D fantasy, ignoring the fact that elves, orcs and goblins don't exist. No, far more than that, it's acceptable for the proposed AD&D fantasy to be fuzzy and ill-defined. It doesn't even have to be coherent!
Economics is what you get when you get people to manipulate a bunch of meaningless symbols and numbers. Symbols and numbers which they've had to memorize because they don't actually mean anything. Not in the real world and not in any world since economics falls short even as pure mathematics.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Modern Myths
Someone asked me what are the greatest myths that people hold today.
The biggest myths are probably this:
first, that popularity is more likely to make something true rather than false.
second, that authority is more likely to make something true rather than false.
third, fourth and fifth, that there is something called the scientific method which the scientific community uses which grants it legitimate authority.
These are the main epistemological myths. The number of domain-specific myths are legion.
There is the myth that democracy is electioneering, thus that Cuba is less democratic than France, let alone Canada, let alone the USA.
In physics there is the myth that nondeterminism is intelligible and meaningful.
In metaphysics there is the myth of functional eliminationism, that qualia do not exist.
In politics there are the myths that human rights are anything other than a communist programme and that property is in any way compatible with human rights.
In economics, that financial (aka mainstream, Austrian, Chicago, etc) economics has any bearing to reality and is anything other than a rationalization for economic predation.
There is the myth of Relativism in anthropology, the myth that anthropology is a science instead of an anti-science. The myth that history is a science instead of record-keeping.
There is the myth that human cognition is unitary, that it can't be categorized in levels.
There is the myth that morality applies universally to all humans regardless of cognitive capacity.
There is the myth that genetic diversity is more important than intellectual diversity.
There is the myth that physical reality is magically different from mathematics.
There is the myth of magic, of descendance, of origins, of provenance, of essence, which inflicts all magical thinkers.
There is the myth that the past was better, that the elitism and exceptionalism of feudalism is "grand".
There is the myth that sacred (fearsome and incomprehensible) is good and profane (understood and controlled) is bad.
The most personal myth is that your parents weren't abusive when you grew up because hey, you love your parents right?
The greatest of all domain-specific myths is that complex systems (humans, cities, societies, countries, economies, even transportation networks) are linearalizable. That they can be reduced down to linear superpositions of component parts.
But if you give up the first five, the rest fall down one after the other like dominos.
The biggest myths are probably this:
first, that popularity is more likely to make something true rather than false.
second, that authority is more likely to make something true rather than false.
third, fourth and fifth, that there is something called the scientific method which the scientific community uses which grants it legitimate authority.
These are the main epistemological myths. The number of domain-specific myths are legion.
There is the myth that democracy is electioneering, thus that Cuba is less democratic than France, let alone Canada, let alone the USA.
In physics there is the myth that nondeterminism is intelligible and meaningful.
In metaphysics there is the myth of functional eliminationism, that qualia do not exist.
In politics there are the myths that human rights are anything other than a communist programme and that property is in any way compatible with human rights.
In economics, that financial (aka mainstream, Austrian, Chicago, etc) economics has any bearing to reality and is anything other than a rationalization for economic predation.
There is the myth of Relativism in anthropology, the myth that anthropology is a science instead of an anti-science. The myth that history is a science instead of record-keeping.
There is the myth that human cognition is unitary, that it can't be categorized in levels.
There is the myth that morality applies universally to all humans regardless of cognitive capacity.
There is the myth that genetic diversity is more important than intellectual diversity.
There is the myth that physical reality is magically different from mathematics.
There is the myth of magic, of descendance, of origins, of provenance, of essence, which inflicts all magical thinkers.
There is the myth that the past was better, that the elitism and exceptionalism of feudalism is "grand".
There is the myth that sacred (fearsome and incomprehensible) is good and profane (understood and controlled) is bad.
The most personal myth is that your parents weren't abusive when you grew up because hey, you love your parents right?
The greatest of all domain-specific myths is that complex systems (humans, cities, societies, countries, economies, even transportation networks) are linearalizable. That they can be reduced down to linear superpositions of component parts.
But if you give up the first five, the rest fall down one after the other like dominos.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Mankiw's Idiotic Tall Tax
Another day, another idiocy comes spouting out of the mouth of that neo-liberal shill Mankiw. No wonder he has to disable comments on his blog.
As anyone who knows (real, not fake) economics and is willing to rub two thoughts together will be able to tell you, Mankiw's argument is a sham. It's a complete strawman because progressive income tax is based on a concept of equality of outcome. And another little concept about the differential moral utility of money. These may be concepts that Mankiw scorns and wishes didn't exist (he's certainly trying to ignore them) but they do.
So when Mankiw assumes that taxing "entrepreneurial genius" (whatever the fuck that means) is the same as taxing entrepreneurial outcome, he is being a lying whore and a two-faced duplicitous son of a bitch.
That's because taxing "entrepreneurial genius" is all about equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome. Taxing "entrepreneurial genius" is also neutral towards the differential utility of money, something progressive taxation is not since the whole point of it to change people's behaviour. In other words, the two types of taxation are violently opposed.
And despite the fact Mankiw casually treats taxing "entrepreneurial genius" as an acceptable stand-in for taxing revenues, he knows the two aren't equivalent because he prefers taxing opportunity. That's because, as any good shill must, he doesn't like taxes that affect people's behaviours but believes taxation should let criminals be criminals.
As a moral person, I violently disagree with Mankiw's amoral prescriptions. As a systems designer, I violently disagree with needless duplication (between revenue-generation and moral incentives). So I vastly prefer taxing outcome and not opportunity.
Finally, as a dissident, I despise a lying shill like Greg Mankiw.
It is a testament to the utter depravity of mainstream economics that nobody has yet stood up to throw egg into Mankiw's smug lying face.
As anyone who knows (real, not fake) economics and is willing to rub two thoughts together will be able to tell you, Mankiw's argument is a sham. It's a complete strawman because progressive income tax is based on a concept of equality of outcome. And another little concept about the differential moral utility of money. These may be concepts that Mankiw scorns and wishes didn't exist (he's certainly trying to ignore them) but they do.
So when Mankiw assumes that taxing "entrepreneurial genius" (whatever the fuck that means) is the same as taxing entrepreneurial outcome, he is being a lying whore and a two-faced duplicitous son of a bitch.
That's because taxing "entrepreneurial genius" is all about equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome. Taxing "entrepreneurial genius" is also neutral towards the differential utility of money, something progressive taxation is not since the whole point of it to change people's behaviour. In other words, the two types of taxation are violently opposed.
And despite the fact Mankiw casually treats taxing "entrepreneurial genius" as an acceptable stand-in for taxing revenues, he knows the two aren't equivalent because he prefers taxing opportunity. That's because, as any good shill must, he doesn't like taxes that affect people's behaviours but believes taxation should let criminals be criminals.
As a moral person, I violently disagree with Mankiw's amoral prescriptions. As a systems designer, I violently disagree with needless duplication (between revenue-generation and moral incentives). So I vastly prefer taxing outcome and not opportunity.
Finally, as a dissident, I despise a lying shill like Greg Mankiw.
It is a testament to the utter depravity of mainstream economics that nobody has yet stood up to throw egg into Mankiw's smug lying face.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Complex Systems
I've always known that systems science (aka systems theory and cybernetics) is in a sorry state. But this was driven home to me this morning when a senior professor in the field commented that "systems mean different things to different people". Hmmm, does it, really?
Systems science is supposed to be abstract, so it doesn't matter whether the system you're talking about is biological or industrial or urban. And indeed, all three of those systems are examples of matter-value systems. Well, what other kinds of systems are there?
It turns out there are 2x2 kinds of systems. There are information systems and matter systems. And each of those can be either pure or valued. So physical systems are pure matter, software are pure information systems. And industrial systems in general are matter-value.
What do I mean by a valued system? I mean one which processes the value of its elements. Or put more baldly, a metacircular system. One that redesigns itself to suit an internalized conception of its own purpose.
An FPGA-based computer whose CPU reprogrammed itself on demand would be an example of an information-value system. But there are other, much more common, systems that fit this category: political systems.
So ignoring chimeras like health systems, we have software, political, physical and industrial systems. And that is all.
Systems science is supposed to be abstract, so it doesn't matter whether the system you're talking about is biological or industrial or urban. And indeed, all three of those systems are examples of matter-value systems. Well, what other kinds of systems are there?
It turns out there are 2x2 kinds of systems. There are information systems and matter systems. And each of those can be either pure or valued. So physical systems are pure matter, software are pure information systems. And industrial systems in general are matter-value.
What do I mean by a valued system? I mean one which processes the value of its elements. Or put more baldly, a metacircular system. One that redesigns itself to suit an internalized conception of its own purpose.
An FPGA-based computer whose CPU reprogrammed itself on demand would be an example of an information-value system. But there are other, much more common, systems that fit this category: political systems.
So ignoring chimeras like health systems, we have software, political, physical and industrial systems. And that is all.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Unemployment in Europe
These were a couple of the comments in a reddit thread today about European unemployment.
Which got me to thinking, this is bad? I'd like to point everyone to the fact that natural resources are becoming scarce. All useful jobs have to do with the extraction, transformation and distribution of these natural resources. Which are becoming scarce.
So useful jobs are scarce. Either people must scale back their motivation or they must become destructive. Germans and Swedes have decided on the former, Americans and English on the latter.
As petrol, lumber, land, grain, wool, rubber, steel, copper, and all other commodities become increasingly scarce, we can either be satisfied with less or we can fight more energetically for what's left.
And don't anyone dare say that everyone should become a programmer / engineer or artist / designer. Most people don't have the analytical functioning for the former, or the creativity for the latter.
Mind you, I'm not a doomer. In fact, I consider doomers to be anti-civilization scum. The current scarcity of natural resources is not a permanent fact of life. It's a product of China and to a lesser extent India rapidly modernizing.
When Nautilus Minerals' venture finally comes online, massive new sources of copper, gold and other minerals will increase their supply.
When 2nd generation high temperature superconductors become available, the demand for copper for generators will be vastly reduced.
And when the world starts building nuclear power plants and mass transit systems in earnest, then demand for petrol and coal will be reduced while supply of both electricity and transportation will increase.
Scarcity of natural resources and the poverty it is associated with,, are not inevitable. They're just unavoidable right now. We might as well make the best of our situation by kicking back and taking it easy.
Hang around playing xbox and commenting on reddit about how much the US sucks - much like everyone else in Germany. Nyuck nyuck nyuck.
I know! It's the same in Sweden (i spend some time there)...
Socialised hispeed internet is a killer of motivation!
Which got me to thinking, this is bad? I'd like to point everyone to the fact that natural resources are becoming scarce. All useful jobs have to do with the extraction, transformation and distribution of these natural resources. Which are becoming scarce.
So useful jobs are scarce. Either people must scale back their motivation or they must become destructive. Germans and Swedes have decided on the former, Americans and English on the latter.
As petrol, lumber, land, grain, wool, rubber, steel, copper, and all other commodities become increasingly scarce, we can either be satisfied with less or we can fight more energetically for what's left.
And don't anyone dare say that everyone should become a programmer / engineer or artist / designer. Most people don't have the analytical functioning for the former, or the creativity for the latter.
Mind you, I'm not a doomer. In fact, I consider doomers to be anti-civilization scum. The current scarcity of natural resources is not a permanent fact of life. It's a product of China and to a lesser extent India rapidly modernizing.
When Nautilus Minerals' venture finally comes online, massive new sources of copper, gold and other minerals will increase their supply.
When 2nd generation high temperature superconductors become available, the demand for copper for generators will be vastly reduced.
And when the world starts building nuclear power plants and mass transit systems in earnest, then demand for petrol and coal will be reduced while supply of both electricity and transportation will increase.
Scarcity of natural resources and the poverty it is associated with,, are not inevitable. They're just unavoidable right now. We might as well make the best of our situation by kicking back and taking it easy.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Definitions of Intelligence
I looked through Definitions of Intelligence and I was struck by how contemptible all these definitions, in fact their entire approach, was. None of them says anyhing about intelligence per se.
They serve merely as a heuristic which an intelligent agent can employ in order to gauge intelligence. Making these "definitions" entirely circular since they depend on what they define in order to be meaningful!
This can be seen simply by looking at the properties of these "definitions" of intelligence and observing that none of them have anything to do with intelligence. What are these properties?
The point being that whatever makes an agent intelligent can't be the same thing that makes it an agent, otherwise there couldn't be stupid agents.
Is interaction a feature of intelligence? Are environments a feature of intelligence? Is success a feature of intelligence? No, they are not. Not individually and not in any combination. Intelligence isn't what something does, it's what something is.
And that fact is blindingly obvious to anyone of intelligence who has worked or known underachieving gifted children. But perhaps not to imbeciles who wish to deny the notion of gifted intelligence out of petty jealousy.
You see, gifted children are just as likely to become highly unsuccessful in life as they are to become highly successful. So they are "unsuccessful" in "many wide environments". Does this make them unintelligent? Hardly!
Are bacteria intelligent because they can colonize more environments than a human being? Is a single human being stupid because he or she cannot survive in any environment if left alone? Are a thousand idiots more intelligent than a lone genius? Yet this is what the "final definition" implies.
Clearly the standard approach to defining intelligence has deep flaws if it suffers from such trivial counter-examples. The fact these are never noted, let alone addressed, nevermind countered, marks the authors of such work as imbeciles.
Now obviously it's too much to ask an imbecile what intelligence is. Yet this is exactly the absurd situation we are presented with on that page. Definitions produced by imbeciles in a process of group-think. They are entirely unoriginal and the mere aggregation of them adds nothing to them.
They serve merely as a heuristic which an intelligent agent can employ in order to gauge intelligence. Making these "definitions" entirely circular since they depend on what they define in order to be meaningful!
This can be seen simply by looking at the properties of these "definitions" of intelligence and observing that none of them have anything to do with intelligence. What are these properties?
- goals
- success
- interaction
- environments
The point being that whatever makes an agent intelligent can't be the same thing that makes it an agent, otherwise there couldn't be stupid agents.
Is interaction a feature of intelligence? Are environments a feature of intelligence? Is success a feature of intelligence? No, they are not. Not individually and not in any combination. Intelligence isn't what something does, it's what something is.
And that fact is blindingly obvious to anyone of intelligence who has worked or known underachieving gifted children. But perhaps not to imbeciles who wish to deny the notion of gifted intelligence out of petty jealousy.
You see, gifted children are just as likely to become highly unsuccessful in life as they are to become highly successful. So they are "unsuccessful" in "many wide environments". Does this make them unintelligent? Hardly!
Are bacteria intelligent because they can colonize more environments than a human being? Is a single human being stupid because he or she cannot survive in any environment if left alone? Are a thousand idiots more intelligent than a lone genius? Yet this is what the "final definition" implies.
Clearly the standard approach to defining intelligence has deep flaws if it suffers from such trivial counter-examples. The fact these are never noted, let alone addressed, nevermind countered, marks the authors of such work as imbeciles.
Now obviously it's too much to ask an imbecile what intelligence is. Yet this is exactly the absurd situation we are presented with on that page. Definitions produced by imbeciles in a process of group-think. They are entirely unoriginal and the mere aggregation of them adds nothing to them.
Now, if someone capable of originality had been asked to come up with something insightful, they might get "living representation" or something else that would provoke deep thought. Something that has a chance of being right.
Followed up in a formal theory of intelligence.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Choice, diversity and competition
Choice is bad, diversity is good, competition is evil. And the sooner people learn to differentiate between them, the better.
Competition
Competition is defined by sociologists as the willful destruction of your adversaries. Competition is making other people lose. It is anti-social and psychopathic.
Economic competition on a large scale is economic warfare. The victims' bodies (bankrupt businesses) litter the landscape to be picked clean by vultures (called consumers by biologists).
Diversity
Diversity is good because it allows people to use whatever is most closely suited to their needs. If you have a range of numbers from 5 to 10 then none of them are particularly close to 5900. If you increase the range of numbers available to between 0.005 and 10,000 then you'll likely get something much closer to 5900. The same goes for products in general. Diversity adds value, so long as it's actually made use of.
Choice
Choice is a cost, not a value. Nobody wants to choose between three different sizes of toothpaste or 4 different brands of Whitening Toothpaste. Choices impose costs on people, the cost of choosing. Something which is definitely a cost since it is not enjoyed and is avoided wherever possible. It's the reason why people develop routines. The reason they take the same seat in the meeting room after the break. To avoid choosing.
So competition for the sake of competition is evil. Too much diversity that forces an overload of choices on people is evil. And meaningless choices that don't add to diversity are evil too.
Competition
Competition is defined by sociologists as the willful destruction of your adversaries. Competition is making other people lose. It is anti-social and psychopathic.
Economic competition on a large scale is economic warfare. The victims' bodies (bankrupt businesses) litter the landscape to be picked clean by vultures (called consumers by biologists).
Diversity
Diversity is good because it allows people to use whatever is most closely suited to their needs. If you have a range of numbers from 5 to 10 then none of them are particularly close to 5900. If you increase the range of numbers available to between 0.005 and 10,000 then you'll likely get something much closer to 5900. The same goes for products in general. Diversity adds value, so long as it's actually made use of.
Choice
Choice is a cost, not a value. Nobody wants to choose between three different sizes of toothpaste or 4 different brands of Whitening Toothpaste. Choices impose costs on people, the cost of choosing. Something which is definitely a cost since it is not enjoyed and is avoided wherever possible. It's the reason why people develop routines. The reason they take the same seat in the meeting room after the break. To avoid choosing.
So competition for the sake of competition is evil. Too much diversity that forces an overload of choices on people is evil. And meaningless choices that don't add to diversity are evil too.
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