The Guardian on... tolerance?

Andrew Brown writes in the Guardian of Yetis and realities.

Living in a world where yetis do and don't exist
Yeti scientists have shown we can bounce through different realities, where what's regarded as 'real' is ambiguous at best.

Scientific hunters for the yeti are easy to recognise: they want to bring back the corpse of some other animal altogether. Most recently, a team led by Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford sorted through 36 samples of supposed yeti fur using the resources of modern genetics and reported their findings with the full scholarly apparatus, including a footnote referencing Tintin in Tibet as the source of "Captain Haddock's suspicions that the yeti was an ungulate".

I see the piece as a welcome affirmation of uncertainty in an often over-certain world. Not quite an unambiguous plea for tolerance though.

Some myths are of course actively pernicious. The stories spread by Aids denialists or anti-vaccine cranks have helped kill thousands if not tens of thousands of people. It's a public duty to go after them.

It's a public duty to go after them - really? In all cases? Actually I suspect Brown's criteria may be pretty tight here, but unfortunately it's a notion many Guardian readers seem to adopt too well and too widely.

Maybe Brown could have included Marxists as an illustration of death-dealing cranks too. Merely to illustrate how complex and confused human notions of reality can be - to widen the spectrum a little. Or perhaps he knows his readership too well for that. I like his last paragraph though.

Normal people – well, everybody, actually – are adept at bouncing through these different "realities" like lumberjacks bounding over spinning logs. We live quite comfortably in worlds where yetis do and don't exist, where they're real in stories and not in the Himalayas. The only dangerous scientists are those who don't understand this or don't believe it's true of themselves, and that they only believe true facts. You couldn't accuse these latest yeti hunters of that. The reference to Tintin proves it.

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Dolphins don’t buy books

From Wikipedia

We can be fairly sure dolphins don’t read books simply because we never find sodden pages of dolphin literature on the beach. Anyhow they have no money to buy them.

The dolphin’s lot is abject penury with nothing to read and a diet of cold fish. If they were as bright as some folk make out, they’d do something about that.

Yet suppose human intelligence is merely a complex feature of the natural world. In that case it may be interesting to take dolphin illiteracy and indigence a little further. For example, what if some of our important inventions are not peculiar to humans, but arise naturally from a high level of intelligence and co-operative social organisation?

The two inventions I’m obviously suggesting here are money and books. Paper books are under competitive pressure from electronic devices such as the Kindle and the internet generally, but functionally there is an important equivalence. So I’ll use the word book for traditional or electronic media.

Books are a route by which many adults further their education as they see fit Money is mostly how people manage their material lives as they see fit. Books and money help maintain two of our key freedoms, the freedom to share labour and the freedom to understand what others have understood before us - or at least their opinions.

To my mind it is tempting to imagine inventions which might be common to intelligent species across the universe. In other words, certain socially important inventions could arise naturally on any suitable planet supporting a species of sufficient social intelligence. Perhaps there is a universal logic of exchange and all intelligent social beings would understand both money and books.

Of course we are constrained by our humanity and it is too easy to picture alien species which conveniently share some of our characteristics. Klingons and Dr Who for example. Yet the conjecture is potentially testable because it could be verified if SETI ever makes contact with another intelligent species.

Life being what it is we expect things to be rather more complex though – we expect to be surprised. Also, if dolphins turn out to be as intelligent as we are, then the idea is wrong to begin with because dolphins don’t seem to have much use for money or books. Although as far as I can see, dolphins don’t seem to be particularly intelligent.

So in an odd and inverted sense it may be anthropocentric to assume that money and books must be purely human inventions. On the other hand, it may be that this line of thinking really is anthropocentric and we will never contact an alien intelligence because we cannot recognise intelligence other than our own. And how common is that!

Yet natural law looks very much like the universal language of nature and we would not search in the first place if we did not believe our intelligence to be at least a little more than narrowly human. Surely any contact with non-human intelligence would have to be based on some mutually understood natural regularities – or natural laws.

As things stand this is all lighthearted speculation, but maybe one day it won’t be. Certain aspects of social life could turn out to be aspects of all intelligent life, taking us beyond the range of any telescope - philosophically at least. 

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Democrat vs Republican economics

Eric Zuess' book "They're Not Even Close" compares the economic record of the American political parties from 1910-2010. His analysis shows that most aspects of the US economy are historically stronger under Democratic control than under Republican control. This is also true for the individual states, in that those which lean Democrat have a strong correlation with a robust economy and educational attainment.

Given that Republicans are strongly in favour of self-reliance, big business and the free market, while the Democrats have inclusion and the common good as their official platform planks, this data appears to be counter-intuitive. It does, however, explain why the Democrats have a hard time getting anything done, as they try to please everyone.

One possible explanation is the Game Theory of John von Neumann and John Nash. In brief, many human interactions, including economic transactions, can be modeled as a finite collection of players playing a game. Each player has a finite set of possible decisions/strategies, and a pay-off function, which depends on all of the current choices being made (for a very good explanation, see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium ).

Nash showed that each such game has at least one Nash equilibrium. This is a choice of strategies such that, if any single player changes their choice, their pay-off will decrease. Getting there requires perfect knowledge of all other choices, which is most easily achieved by cooperation.

For a brilliant and simple example of the dangers of pure competition, consider Martin Shubik’s bidding game: We auction off $1 to a group of players. The highest bidder wins it. However, the wrinkle is that the top two bidders have to pay. The only possible non-negative pay-offs for the group as a whole require cooperation, with the maximum being one player bidding 1 cent, and the others not bidding at all.

These models explain why wolves do better than tigers, and ants beat everyone.

So what is it that Democrats do ‘better’? I would argue the concept of public spending as investment, not waste. Here are the kinds of projects usually funded by Democrats, but vehemently fought by Republicans.

Infrastructure – build better roads, water systems, airports etc, and companies can move products and workers more efficiently. In addition, construction involves well-paid jobs, which increases the tax base.

Entitlements – as onerous as this word is to hard-working people, we don’t often see the elderly starve to death, or massive epidemics. Every US city is probably safer than Buenos Aires. How would that change if the poor were actually living on the streets in large numbers?

Education – better-educated people make for a better society, are healthier and less likely to commit crimes (except for fraud).

Science – a bigger contributor to economic growth than abundant natural resources. The problem is that it requires huge investment for unlikely pay-off. This is generally not what companies like to do. Those that do so want results to be proprietary, which necessarily stifles the free exchange of information that progress requires.

So what can we conclude? Mathematics can predict that some cooperation is better for the economy than pure competition.

However, this prediction is after the fact, which is much less useful than before. The only people who will accept the original data are those to whom it is emotionally satisfying, namely economists and Democrats. Republicans will find a way to ignore or explain it away. In other words, the book is sadly unnecessary.


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Wimbledon decimal tennis shock!

The game of tennis will be substantially revised as part of a general scheme to harmonise sporting rules, EU Commission President-Elect Jean-Claude Juncker announced today.

"The scoring system in tennis is long overdue for reform," said Mr Juncker. "What is this 15 and 30 points, this first-to-6 games in a set, this ridiculous 3 sets to win a women's match? 3 is a number for witchcraft and superstition. In a rational, scientific world there is no place for measures that are divisible by this barbarian number."

Uncorking his third bottle, he continued, "5 sets for men is better, but still only half as good as 10. And if the winner of each set has to achieve 10 games of 10 points each, then the theoretical minimum points playable are 1,000 instead of, er, 120 - stupid figure," he hiccuped, "or 72 for the ladies of course, blessem."

"And consider the enormous increase in productivity," said the President-Elect in a louder voice, thumping the table so that the remaining seven unopened bottles rattled in their ranks. "The spectators will have far greater value for their money, and the emergency treatment of many exhausted players and onlookers will provide more work for the medical services of which we Europeans - including you British - are so justly proud. This is why the Sports Directive will include provisions for building many new hospitals, employing thousands in long-term projects."

"This is only the start," said Mr Juncker as he forged on with his personal rehydration program. "Why twelve apostles? We could easily dispense with two.

"And if Pluto is reinstated and we add Ceres, there would be 10 planets, instead of this messy 8 and bits. Remind me to tell you about the European Vishnu Plan - destruction of the asteroid belt, comets, the Oort Cloud, sorry I shouldn't be revealing that yet, off the record, urp, I'll have you all on the European Arrest Warrant if you publish that, what have I done with the corkscrew...?"


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Decoding the peak resources panic

Occupy Transylvania protests in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein"

John Michael Greer (The Archdruid) repeats his familiar message this week: we are in slow decline (what James Howard Kunstler calls "The Long Emergency") now that energy sources are becoming scarcer and more expensive. The latest twist in his ever-elegant sermon is the general breakdown of respect for our superiors, so that they cease to serve as exemplars for the underclass, who have set up their own anti-heroes as models of behaviour.

Well, I agree, but only up to a point. The British working class was rioting away at various times in the eighteenth century, over bread shortages and fears of Papism, so social unrest and the celebration of highwaymen are nothing new.

Doubtless there will be resource crises from time to time, and surely oil, gas and coal will not last forever. It must also be a concern that the world's population has boomed and some parts - including the UK - have become hostages to fortune because they cannot feed all their people from their own lands. Age imbalance is a worry, too, with a growing proportion of oldies who can't work - or don't expect to - and who cost so much in personal attention and medical treatment.

It was The Ecologist magazine that first drew my attention to eco-issues, with its call for a demographically-planned reduction in population so that we could climb down the ladder rather than fall off it. A sharp drop in the birth-rate would be a catastrophe for society, argued "Blueprint For Survival" in 1972. Since then, the global headcount has risen from 3.8 to 7.2 billions.

But we haven't hit the buffers of resource constraints yet; that's not what is causing our societal tensions now; at least, not directly. AK Haart argues that behind public fretting about the environment is the anxiety of the Western middle class, concerned for its own material prosperity and social status.

It's now generally known that the real income per hour of the American middle class has stalled since The Ecologist's article was published, largely because the moneyed class used globalisation to undercut them. In the nineteenth century, Chinese workers built railroads in California; now, Asian workers make things for us but in their own countries, and international firms and dark pools of cash in the Caribbean reap the benefits without having to accept the usual lifelong obligations of master to servant. The circle has been squared by debt, at first through issuing Treasury bonds and latterly through reinvestment in the USA - real estate, equities. It's selling the family silver to maintain an unrealistic standard of living.

It's not just the chippy Occupy Wall Street crowd that points out how the rich have become incredibly richer under this scheme - and how the socio-economic crisis threatens to overwhelm even the privileged. In an essay for Politico Magazine (htp: Paddington), billionaire Nick Hanauer argues the case for increasing the minimum wage so that, as Henry Ford understood, a wealthier workforce can stop claiming benefits, pay more in taxes, spend more and create more employment. Unlike some of his fellows, he is not planning to purchase posterity's good opinion (or forgiveness) with charitable donations; he seeks to fix the broken machine.

Whether this is possible in the context of untrammelled free trade is questionable. The drive for ever-closer economic union seems relentless; when the WTO stalled at Doha, the Trans-Pacific Partnership forged ahead. Now the tanks of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are crushing sovereign powers under their tracks and threaten to roll right over the National Health Service.

Perhaps nothing can stop the megalomaniac folly except full-scale disaster and the pitchfork army that Hanuaer envisages.


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What is Cameron up to?

Apparently, one of Tony Blair's guiding principles was to avoid battles he could not win. Sound enough and obvious enough, so what was David Cameron up to with his handling of the Jean-Claude Juncker appointment?

From the BBC.

David Cameron has insisted his failure to stop the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker for the EU's top job is not his "last stand" in Europe.

The UK prime minister admitted it would make securing the reforms he wants harder but he vowed: "I am not going to back down."

EU leaders voted 26-2 to reject Mr Cameron's plea to prevent Mr Juncker becoming European Commission president.

Labour said it had been a "humiliating defeat" for a "toxic" prime minister.

Mr Cameron said the selection of Mr Juncker, whom he regards as an outdated Brussels insider committed to closer political union, was "a bad day for Europe".

Surely there is a puzzle here, because the outcome was obvious from the start. It was a battle Cameron could not win and he was bound to come out of it as a feeble loser. So why do it? Why make a big deal of the matter? I only see one possibility but perhaps there are more.

Cameron may have been advised that in fighting the Juncker shoo-in he would attract enough support from other EU leaders to allow him to pose as a kind of moderate EU sceptic.  This in turn could attract a significant slice of the UKIP vote during next year's general election. Yet as neither outcome was likely, he may have been set up.

Well that's the best I can do - I'm scratching my head over this one. Maybe he's simply a plonker

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Climate and the demise of the middle class

To my mind, the climate change controversy has more to tell us about human anxieties than science. For instance, Sackers recently sent me these two links.

Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains

Attention climate deniers: This scientist will give you $10,000 for actual proof that global warming is a hoax

The first writer seems to think it's okay for climate scientists to alter past temperature data and anyone who disagrees is the zombie spawn of Fox News. Something like that. The second seems keen to bash any idea that climate orthodoxy has a few skeletons in the closet.

Whatever one thinks of these two items, neither addresses the core CAGW issue which has become too simple for prevarication. The climate itself settled the matter a few years ago when it failed to warm as predicted. Nobody has the faintest idea where global temperatures are going nor why. Not even next month's temperatures. At this stage it's all guesswork and chutzpah.

So the passion in these pieces cannot arise from genuine concern about catastrophic global warming because it isn’t warming - let alone catastrophically.  So what is it all about? Why do people still express themselves in such extreme ways? I do too by the way – from my side of the fence. More often than I’d like anyhow. 

To my mind the CAGW debate is wholly political which is where the passion comes from. It’s about the global demise of the middle classes, their increasing irrelevance as a powerful social class and their demotion to worker-consumers just like everyone else but the elite.

It’s about the prospect of having to compete globally for such basics as energy, raw materials and food. About the possibility that these necessities could become scarce if developing counties consume them with the same profligacy as we still do. Or if they are better able to afford them - and isn't that something to think about?

Certainly when I read blogs, newspaper items and comments on climate change, CAGW proponents tend to use language which does not tie in with what the climate is actually doing. Or rather what it isn't doing. I rarely detect genuine concern about global temperatures.

It’s almost always about bashing sceptics or it's about consumption. CO2 emissions are used as a symbol for consumption - they always have been. The Guardian has wittered away about consumption since I first started reading it fifty years ago – probably longer. It’s not a new refrain. If I remember rightly, PVC should have run out by now, but that’s another story.

Sceptics can be similarly extreme, but I think that may be for different reasons. Or it may not – hard to tell amid the unlovely fog of passion.

To my mind the flaky CAGW science deflects our attention from the real problem which appears to be this deep-rooted anxiety about the future – which I’ll admit to sharing. I don’t want my central heating switched off in winter and I don’t want a world of two monolithic social classes - Them and Us.

The future seems threatening as ordinary middle class people lose whatever political power they once had – even the power to be a social class. So perhaps we would be better off framing the debate in terms of anxiety about the future, accepting that such anxieties cannot always be rigidly rational and scientifically valid.

Perhaps we should also accept that widespread and essentially political anxieties ought to be brought out into the open rather than hidden behind environmental rhetoric and unattractive aggression or simulated and equally unattractive condescension.

As a CAGW sceptic, that’s a debate I would find easy enough to join and maybe find common ground with those who are anxious about political power, natural resources and willing to frame arguments in these terms rather than pretending to understand the climate, or pretending to know that others understand it.

If we humanise the debate in this way, if we take account of the emotional aspects and admit that it is perfectly reasonable to be anxious about our political future, such as the possibility that we might not have a political future, then maybe we’d get somewhere.

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