Author: VD

Mailvox: in which the shining void is reached

MH stumbled across the column today:

I think Richard Dawkins is tremendous, and I’m not a socially maladjusted loser, although must admit that being called that is quite a convincing argument that perhaps I’m wrong! Maybe I should rethink my ways or I’ll be called names. I essentially believe in freedom, capitalism, individualism, and reason. I’m a conservative in all things non god-related, and can’t stand progressives and their broken ideas. What I don’t understand about conservative sites like wnd is that they can be so right on so many things, then at the last second have to throw in, oh we also believe in god, santa claus, and the easter bunny.

My experience tells me that people today believe in god mostly because of family pressures, or the mistaken idea that life has no meaning on Earth if they don’t so they can’t let go of the idea. But god is like phlogiston, an idea that had some usefulness before understanding of how the world works progressed to the point where it was obvious it was a human proposal that was just incorrect and needed to be discarded. The common thread between most progressive ideas is the desire to reach a certain conclusion at all costs, the determination that their conclusion must be true because they want/need it to be, then embark on a complex mission of torturing logic so they can desperately avoid reality. Most conservative ideas however embrace reality for what it is — until you get to this one glaring exception they can’t seem to let go of.

What book(s) would you recommend for someone seeking to learn more about people like yourself who seem otherwise incredibly intelligent yet can’t seem to let go of this one bad idea? I’m seeking books based on rational arguments, preferably low on the name-calling intimidation tactics you personally seem fond of that just undermine your cause.

First, I’d like to point out that I only described Richard Dawkins’s biggest fans – the former RD.Net crowd – as socially maladjusted losers. Any substantial perusal of those old forums will suffice to prove my point, further supported by Dawkins’s own reaction to his erstwhile fan club. Second, the connection that you are missing between freedom, capitalism, individualism, reason, and a belief in God is that the first four are heavily dependent upon the fifth. This is not controversial; non-Christians and even non-believers such as Socrates, Seneca, and Voltaire have subscribed to it. You would do well to examine the difference between historical pagan societies and Christian society before concluding that your phlogiston hypothesis is even remotely credible. Keep in mind that you still live in a heavily Christian society, where even the atheists, as Michel Onfray points out, are Christian atheists. And, as I’ve pointed out, it is already clear that it is not secular scientopia that is the post-Christian heir, but rather a return to paganism.

I don’t read apologetics, so I’m afraid I can’t recommend much in the way of a positive, non-argumentative case for Christianity although I’m sure a number of commenters here will have some recommendations for you. My Christian faith and my allegiance to Jesus Christ stems from my experience and observation of evil, so it’s not a line of reasoning that is likely to make a great deal of sense to anyone who lacks it. But I would greatly encourage you to read Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian War, Caesar’s Commentaries, and other works of pre-Christian history so that you will have a more accurate picture of what a society without God is like. Then, perhaps you will have a better perspective on the connection between those things you accept and that which you reject.

JC also shares his two cents:

Day:

Your slide show isn’t all that impressive. I’ll cross the IQ bridge first and get it out of the way. My IQ is 156 and I’m an atheist. I suppose that stupid ignorance would be blissful, but I can’t swallow Christianity.

Religion has been around longer than modern science – your point?

Here’s the deal, Vox. I don’t believe that an invisible man in the sky is talking to you. I think you’re blowing smoke – like the religious have done for centuries.

JC
Member and Sponsor – American Atheists

The relevant question isn’t if the slideshow is impressive or not, but is it accurate or not? It’s interesting how nearly every atheist who has emailed or commented today hasn’t dared to take any direct issue with any of the refutations and claim that the New Atheist arguments are, in fact, correct. And anyone with an IQ of 156 should have absolutely no trouble understanding the point regarding the significance of the degree to which religion preceded science in light of Sam Harris’s claim that religion + science = human extinction.

But, since even atheists with 156 IQs apparently have some trouble applying basic logic, I will spell it out. Since religion has only caused 7% of the wars in human history and has never once threatened the existence of the species in 11,600 years, at least 93% of the threat to continued human existence will remain even if religion is eliminated tomorrow. This means that the threat of extinction has virtually nothing to do with religion, it is the direct result of science. If the threat is real – and naturally we must assume that Sam Harris, PhD, knows whereof he speaks – then logic dictates the only way to eliminate it is to end science. To the extent that religion and science are in opposition, then, the only rational response to the threat of human extinction is to embrace religion, regardless of one’s personal beliefs in any religious tenets, and make full use of it to the maximum extent possible in order to eliminate science.

But I am humbly grateful to JC. While I can envision a more perfect state of indifference, it would take ten Siddharthas medidating ten centuries to reach this amazing state of Śūnyatā to which his assertion of his opinion has propelled me…. I can see… everything! I can feel… everything!

The blade is sharpened

And time is fast running out:

The war over mark-to-market accounting is about to get hot, again. In coming weeks, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is likely to propose that banks expand their use of market values for financial assets such as loans, according to people familiar with the matter. That departs from current practices in which banks hold loans at their original cost and create a reserve based on their own view of potential losses.

This has to be done, but the banks are going to fight it with everything they’ve got. The reason is because, by my estimate, the values of those loans, as well as the securities and derivatives based on those loans, are around 41% overvalued. That means that marking to market rather than marking to fantasy will eradicate about $15.6 trillion from the credit markets.

Even in an economy with a $14 trillion GDP, this is likely to have an impact.

Congress, led by Barney Frank, forced the FASB to permit what has been little more than legalized accounting fraud in order to keep the banks out of bankruptcy. But because the so-called financial rescue plan has failed, the important question now is whether the politicians are determined to go down fighting alongside the banks or whether they will finally break ranks and try to save themselves by sacrificing the banksters to the vengeance of an angry public.

Monday column

Against the New Atheism

Now that its moment in the media sun has passed, the New Atheism is fading fast. Richard Dawkins has repeatedly demonstrated why he needs to be put out to intellectual pasture. He published an entire book dedicated to passing off an inference as a fact before belatedly discovering what everyone else knew already; his biggest fans are an unpleasant collection of socially maladjusted losers. Christopher Hitchens was repeatedly beaten up in debates by various Christians before being physically beaten by Syrians he had provoked. He then took Dawkins’s OUT campaign a little more literally than anyone had expected and announced that he was an occasional homosexual. Sam Harris’ two accomplishments have been to create the amusingly misnamed Reason Project, which was founded for much the same reasons and is expected to have about the same success as Air America, and to publish a wildly irrational attack on one of America’s most celebrated and accomplished scientists in the New York Times that was completely disregarded by the Obama administration as well as everyone else.

No one has any idea what Daniel Dennett has been doing, but that’s understandable because no one, including the atheists who claim to be his fans, actually reads his books.

Here is the slideshow addressing the seven New Atheist arguments mentioned in the column.

Atheist argument query

I’m in the process of putting together a tool that I think people may find useful in confronting aggressive atheists making spurious arguments. TIA has its place, of course, but the reality is that few people on either side of the debate are never going to read more than a few pages of any of the books that address the matter. Here are the seven New Atheist arguments that I’ve already addressed; you may note that I have chosen to select arguments that can be easily and graphically refuted utilizing empirical evidence.

Religion Causes War
Religion Inspires Violence
Religion Inhibits Science
Sam Harris’s Extinction Equation
Sam Harris’s Red State Argument
Atheists Commit Less Crime
Richard Dawkins’s Improbability of Divine Complexity

What arguments most demand attention in your opinion? Which arguments are most often brought up by the militant atheists of your acquaintance? Alternatively, if you are an atheist, what are the arguments that you feel most powerfully make the case for atheism?

Mailvox: Deflation vs inflation

JB inquires regarding the matter:

Congratulations, it looks like you’re right about deflation vs. inflation. I thought based on the historical example of other systems going belly up that inflation was always the final scenario. But your grand graphs of credit implosion are everything a rubbernecker could wish for in twisted limbs and crashed clunkers.

I’m still not clear on what’s going on, and I’d like to run a few questions by you. Credit contraction is ~ to GDP contraction, yes? So if deflation is keeping pace with reduction of goods and services, then prices should remain constant, right? Consumer goods are a subset of that. Are you predicting deflation from the consumer’s perspective, and if so, why? What I’m getting at is that even though the credit bubble’s magnitude dwarfs all other considerations, its implosion doesn’t logically necessitate consumer deflation, as far as I can understand. I guess your main reason there won’t be inflation, besides the impossible magnitude of the credit bubble, is that the Fed is private and won’t order the whirlybirds aloft. Why do you think a legal technicality like that is going to stop the Fed’s big brother, the US Federal Government? Given the trend, shouldn’t we be more surprised if any banks at all manage to remain private?

First of all, let me say that the question is far from settled. I understand the inflationary case and it is a perfectly reasonable one, albeit based on general principles that I do not believe apply in the specific case of the peculiar U.S. monetary system. I’m going to address the matter in more detail in a column and explain why I expect the debt-money supply to decrease to a certain, specific level at a minimum. However, the easiest way to achieve a basic understanding of the issue is to look at this chart which incorporates the latest Federal Reserve flow of funds account of total debt outstanding.

The red line amounts to the case for inflation. This is the Federal spending that the inflationistas assume can grow indefinitely and has, in fact, increased by $2 trillion since the third quarter of 2008. However, even this 35% increase in 18 months has not been sufficient to counterbalance the ongoing credit contraction in the household, financial, and state & local government sectors. Moreover, that Federal spending increase is now coming to an end even as the contraction in the financial sector doubles its speed and state & local spending hits the insolvency wall.

In answer to your questions, GDP contraction is not equal to debt contraction even though debt is a primary factor in sustaining GDP growth. Because GDP is disproportionately weighted towards government spending and because the G component of GDP is dependent solely upon the growth in government debt rather than overall debt, GDP can increase even in the face of overall debt contraction. But it cannot do so for long, as the chart above indicates. As far as the banks go, because they are insolvent by every meaningful accounting measure, they have already been quasi-nationalized because although their profits remain private, their losses are charged to the public.

Reading in the real world

While I admire the generous purpose behind John Scalzi’s The Big Idea posts, in which he provides space to an author to explain The Big Idea underlying his newly published book, I have to admit that I have tended to have little interest in most of books that have been featured there because I simply don’t read much SF/F anymore. I increasingly find that I’d rather play it.

Since John doesn’t do much the way of non-fiction at Whatever and because the Ilk tend to be more interested in exposure to more serious subjects than the latest attempt to adultize angst-filled teen vampire/wereseal novels, it occurs to me that a similar feature might be welcome here, especially in light of how Mr. Rockwell was kind enough to provide me with space at his site to introduce RGD the week it was published. So, if you are the author of a non-fiction book in the field of history, politics, economics, or science that has been published since August 2009, I’d like to invite you to email me a 500 to 2,000-word account of what you believe to be worthy of note about your new book accompanied by a link to an image of the cover.

On a barely tangential note, this afternoon I had what I thought to be a fantastic idea for my next non-fiction book. Reflecting on the missing Life of Epaminondas, I completely cracked up over the thought of writing Godwin’s Lives, which would be a set of parallel Lives ala Plutarch purporting to compare one classic historical figure with a modern one, albeit every classic figure would be compared to Hitler. Needless to say, this is why Spacebunny seldom asks me to share what I’m thinking.

And to return to the subject, more or less, I’m presently reading Makers of Ancient Strategy, edited by Victor Davis Hanson. It’s a very good collection of essays and I will post a review of the book next week. However, it was a little startling to encounter VDH’s brief rebuttal – a fairly effective one, to be honest – addressed to the “many commenters” who had referenced the Athenian attack on Syracuse in criticizing the American invasion of Iraq. I suspect he may have had this column in particular in mind.

Letter to Vox Day VIII

Luke continues our dialogue. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this isn’t going to end anytime soon. I will respond before the end of the month, but in the meantime, I will put a few of Luke’s commenters straight:

1. Vox happens to be a genius by the dictionary’s numerical definition. Nevertheless, Vox does not believe he is a genius because he rejects that definition in favor of alternative and less specific definitions that are based upon uniquely superlative intellectual accomplishments. Writing the occasional novel, demolishing the central New Atheist arguments, and correctly anticipating the global financial crisis are certainly intellectual accomplishments, but they are neither unique nor superlative.

2. As will eventually become clear, Vox is not rejecting any of the suggested criteria out of concern for their potential effect on his theories. As a general rule, it is a mistake to project one’s own predilection for intellectual dishonesty on others; at the very least, one should wait to see what the justifications are before passing judgment.

3. Vox has no authority on these matters and has no problem whatsoever with having his epistemology examined or exposed. This accusation is ironic, for as Luke and many of the VP readers know, it is usually the atheist camp that prefers to avoid epistemological examinations.

4. The fact that you don’t understand a point Vox made is not prima facie evidence that Vox is being obscure or even insufficiently clear. If a majority of the readers understood it without any trouble, logic dictates that you consider the probability you are either insufficiently informed or insufficiently intelligent to understand it.

Above the law

It’s a “gimmick” when banksters do it. It’s criminal fraud whenever anyone else does:

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc used accounting gimmicks and had been insolvent for weeks before it filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, but there was not extensive wrongdoing, a court-appointed examiner has found.

In a 2,200-page report made public on Thursday, examiner Anton Valukas, chairman of law firm Jenner & Block, reported the results of his more than year-long investigation into who could be blamed for the firm’s collapse, which deepened the global financial crisis.

The examiner said that while some of Lehman’s management’s decisions “can be questioned in retrospect” and the firm’s valuation procedures for its assets “may have been wanting,” those responsible for the firm had used their business judgment and were largely not liable for the firm’s collapse.

So, Lehman’s management ran the company into insolvency, then committed weeks of fraud to hide that fact, but somehow they “were largely not liable” for the collapse of the company? How is that even remotely credible? Especially in light of how the FDIC has made it perfectly clear that most banks are fraudulently hiding their present insolvency by assigning hugely exaggerated values to their assets. Even by the FDIC’s overly conservative measure of “estimated losses”, it is obvious that there is a huge gap between reported assets and actual assets.

This can be computed by subtracting the average FDIC-seized bank’s deposit liabilities from its reported assets, then adding the estimated losses. In 2009, this average asset gap was $505 million against reported assets of $1,229 million, or 41.1%. In 2010, the average asset gap is presently running $272 million against reported assets of $638 million, or 43.7%. This indicates that the smaller banks are every bit as insolvent as the bigger banks. As are the giant banks; Karl Denninger explained the probable extent of their balance sheet fraud a few days ago:

So let’s be generous and assume that the “big banks” are over-valuing their assets by 25% – the lower end of the range of what the FDIC says is, through actual experience, what’s going on, and add it all up.

Bank of America shows $2.25 trillion in assets.

Citibank shows $1.89 trillion in assets.

JP Morgan/Chase shows $2.04 trillion in assets.

And Wells Fargo shows $1.31 trillion in assets.

This totals $7.49 trillion smackers.

The FDIC’s experience with seizing banks thus far suggests quite strongly that all four of these entities are lying about these valuations, and that were they to be seized the loss embedded in them (and for which you, the taxpayer would be responsible) is somewhere between $1.49 and $2.99 trillion dollars.

Based on the last two years of data, the actual gap between the assets and liabilities of the Big Four is actually more like $3.2 trillion, or roughly the size of Citibank and Wells Fargo put together. Despite their failure to act, the FDIC obviously knows about this. By way of evidence, here was the FDIC’s response to one of the Market Ticker’s readers who asked about the difference between bank-reported assets and FDIC-reported estimated losses: “That’s the value the bank had them on their books on their year-end financials, but the true value is much less. It is similar to someone in Las Vegas saying that their house is worth $300,000 because that’s what they paid for it three years ago, but the reality is, if they had to sell it in today’s market, they’d only get $250,000 for it. The FDIC has to sell assets in today’s market.”