Category: Uncategorized

They CAN give America four As

S&P readies a belated upgrade to U.S. debt:

The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said late on Monday that its president, Deven Sharma, who has become the public face of the firm in the wake of its historic downgrade on the United States’ long-term debt rating, will step down and leave the company by the end of the year. The decision by Mr. Sharma to resign comes as the ratings agency is under pressure from several fronts, including an inquiry by the Justice Department into its ratings of subprime mortgage securities and a push by activist investors to break up its parent company, McGraw-Hill….

His replacement, Mr. Peterson, 53, is currently the chief operating officer of Citibank, the banking unit of Citigroup.

I note that the one thing the New York Times does not assure us was that the management change was not the result of the recent downgrade of U.S. debt. No doubt Mr. Citibank already understands that an review of that decision and eventual restoration of AAA status is in the best interest of his continued employment.

Unless, of course, it is decided the time is right to debut the new, super-safe, guaranteed AAAA rating.

Neocons worry about future credibility

Or rather, the lack thereof. Didn’t anyone ever read them the tale of the boy who cried wolf?

In itself, the Libya intervention was “small.” Yet coming in the wake of two substantial wars that have stretched our military capacity to its limits, Libya felt to many like the straw that broke the camel’s back. Our military was skeptical about this war from the start. A palpable public shift of sentiment against interventions, even among conservatives, has been precipitated by an action in Libya that seemed only loosely tied to America’s security interests.

This is a shame, because the transformations in the Arab world are taking a decidedly dangerous direction. Quite possibly, we will someday face the need to intervene in situations in which our security really is under threat. Let’s hope the public hasn’t been so exhausted by then that it hesitates to support what must be done.

Translation: dammit, we’re not going to be able to sell America on invading Iran! Anybody around here speak Chinese?

Now that’s just CRAZY talk

Talk of Obama’s resignation is heating up:

Democrats will be looking at a massacre in the Senate, and that’s not even including already-endangered seats in Nebraska, Missouri, Montana, and New Mexico, which just elected its first Republican woman governor last year. Democrats could wind up losing enough seats to give Republicans a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate if Obama chases away the white working-class vote that he’s been alienating for the past two years on ObamaCare and now his disastrous economic performance. If unemployment starts rising and growth remains low in the next few months, Democrats may insist on Obama finding a graceful exit before the primaries.

And guess who that leaves with an open path to the Democratic nomination? Hillary Clinton. She can step into the void with promises to return America to the economic policies of her husband. The Left may not have much love for Hillary any longer, but she was winning the very working-class Democrats in the 2008 primaries that Obama is losing to the Republicans now. States like Pennsylvania and Michigan would snap back into place for Democrats, and perhaps Wisconsin as well. Having Obama off the top of the ticket would take some of the downward pressure off of some other Senate races, and Hillary would likely be a plus in most.

If Hillary took Obama’s place in 2012, Republicans would face a much tougher electoral map. They would still have the advantage of running against Obama’s record, but the GOP may not capture that disaffected Democratic working-class vote if Hillary also ran against Obamanomics and promised a return to Clintonian prosperity.

That prediction from last summer isn’t looking quite so wildly insane now, is it…. Of course, if I do turn out to be correct, the only logical explanation will be that I have a Five-Pound Brain.

WND column

The Summer of our Discontent

This has been a most peculiar summer. In the U.S. it has been blazing hot, while across Europe the weather has been unseasonably cool. Despite an increasing number of momentary flashes of societal breakdown, from Athens and London to Philadelphia and Vancouver, the social mood has been relatively calm. In fact, it has been almost too calm, as if the usual instigators of unrest are concerned that creating the usual sparks might set off a conflagration that would threaten to engulf them as well.

The markets are in a precarious state, too. The Dow is behaving erratically, with giant movements both upward and downward, but predominantly down, in much the same way that it was behaving in the bear market that ran from October 2007 to March 2009. That downward slide took more than 50 percent off the Dow, and a repetition of similar magnitude would be expected to bottom around 5,000. Should that happen, we can reasonably anticipate that gold, which has risen from $320 in 2002 to $1,850, will be approaching the 1:1 ratio that Robert Prechter predicted back when the ratio was 50:1.

Supply, Demand, and the Interest Rate

I swear, Neo-Keynesians must never look at debt statistics. I mean, they literally NEVER seem to look at them! Our favorite Nobel Prize-winner comments on what is supposed to be the mysterious failure of interest rates to rise in line with the massive expansion of government debt since 2008 and erroneously concludes that this proves his belief in unicornsthe ability of government to borrow indefinitely without affecting interest rates:

I mean, common sense — or at least common sense as the WSJ sees it — would tell you that massive government borrowing would send interest rates soaring. And that’s certainly what the WSJ editorial page told its readers would happen. Only us fancy-schmancy Keynesians said otherwise; and here’s what actually happened:

Yes, interest rates have declined from 4.7% in 2007 to 2.3% in 2011 even as government borrowing has almost doubled, but what Krugman fails to point out is that the neo-classicals at the WSJ were assuming, incorrectly, that the private demand for debt, (a 12x larger factor), would continue to increase, and therefore increased government borrowing added on top of that would cause overall debt to expand in excess of its average annual post-WWII rate of 8.7%. This OVERALL increase in demand for debt would increase the price of debt, thereby causing interest rates to rise. All very sensible and perfectly in line with both post-war economic history and basic economic theory alike.

However, what the WSJ failed to anticipate was that despite the 82.9% increase in government borrowing since 2008, total debt outstanding only grew 4.8% in 2008 and actually SHRANK 0.32% in 2009 and 0.87% in 2010. That’s not a liquidity trap, that’s a 22.5% demand gap between the overall amount of debt anticipated and the actual amount borrowed!

Even an Econ 101 student knows what happens to price when supply goes up and demand goes down. The price goes down. Interest rates are at historic lows for the obvious reason that OVERALL demand for debt, relative to GDP, is at historic lows as well, even though the federal government sector has increased rapidly. The WSJ made what at the time appeared to be a safe and perfectly reasonable assumption, given that between 1946 and 2007, there had never been a single year in which overall debt grew less than 4%. Their assumption also happened to be absolutely wrong, but the incorrect nature of that assumption does not mean that Krugman and his fancy-schmancy Keynesian-imagined exception to the law of supply and demand is therefore correct.

Conan the Torturer

The intrepid Leo Grin isn’t what one would call delighted with the new Conan movie:

Saw Conan the Barbarian last night. Revoltingly stupid, incomprehensibly plotted and edited, and overflowing with the kind of quasi-erotic torture porn (seemingly pulled wholesale out of a serial killer’s wet dreams) that’s become a staple of both fantasy literature and Hollywood films this century. Easily one of the worst films I’ve seen during decades of painfully slumming through mediocre genre fare — I daresay even Uwe Boll (the ham-fisted director commonly seen as the modern era’s answer to Ed Wood) has never made anything this irredeemably rotten.

I daresay we can soon expect to hear from the admirers of the New Epic Nihilism informing us that Leo has once again managed to miss the point, that the new Conan the Barbarian film is, in fact, a brilliant reinvention of a genre that had grown tired and stale, that it is admirably adult in its moral ambiguity and creative depravity, and may be the greatest film since Citizen Kane. Which leads me to contemplate two things. First, since when did “adult” come to imply torture, incest, and rape? I mean, I enjoy spending a quiet Saturday night creeping about the bushes at the local university armed with chloroform and a knife in search of a new friend to bring back to my soundproofed playroom as much as anyone, but sometimes one would like a little escapism in one’s fantasy entertainment. You know, just a simple quest to find the Macguffin, defeat the Foozle, and save the world or something would be nice.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

I also thought Sean Stiennon’s recent post on Elf Opera in Tang China was worth reading. He highlights the same problem with current fantasy fiction, albeit from a different perspective, that I first addressed in my essay published in BenBella’s Reinventing Narnia.

Mailvox: the Muslim myth

The aptly named Sub Specie has fallen for a common legend believed by many of the half-educated and historically illiterate:

“If it weren’t for the goddamn Muslims, we wouldn’t have great ancient literature!!! They preserved it for us, you know. Oh, fcuk, no, you didn’t know…did you? Not only did they preserve all that s#it, but they contributed so much to math, medicine and science (ironically while Europe was a chaotic s#ithole full of rotting bodies).”

It’s always interesting to receive what apparently is intended as a history lesson from someone who quite clearly knows nothing of the Eastern Roman Empire. The idea of “the Arab transmission of the classics” is false, as should be readily apparent to those who are aware that most of the ancient works lost to the West were “discovered” in conquered Spain, not the Middle East. Moreover, it is obvious that the Muslims did not contribute much of their own in the interim period when they possessed the Greek classics and the post-imperial Latins did not.

“The Arab transmission of the classics is a common and persistent myth that Arabic commentators such as Avicenna and Averroes ‘saved’ the work of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers from destruction. According to the myth, these works would otherwise have perished in the long European dark age between fifth and the tenth centuries, had the Islamic philosophers not preserved them by translating them into Arabic, to be passed on to the Latin philosophers in the West after the reconquest of Spain from the Muslims during the twelve and thirteenth centuries. This is incorrect. It was actually the Byzantines in the East who saved the ancient learning of the Greeks in the original language, and the first Latin texts to be used were translation from the Greek, in the 12th century, rather than, in most cases, the Arabic, which were only used in default of these. “

Wängsty is still at it

In which R. Scott Bakker demonstrates that there is more fantasy in his philosophy than there is philosophy in his fantasy.

By way of clarification, no one asked him about the ‘absolute’ of anything. I’m not sure I understand, otherwise (and would welcome clarification). Is he saying he doesn’t believe in the question? Or is he saying the truth or falsity doesn’t matter, so long as people do what he wants them to do? Or is he actually biting the bullet, saying, ‘I really don’t know whether my claims are right or wrong, but I don’t care one way or another, so long as people seem to believe me.”

Or is he simply avoiding the question once again.

It appears I have to write very slowly or Bakker will be again unable to follow what everyone else has understood. I initially ignored the question because I thought it was rhetorical. After he started suggesting I was avoiding it, I gave the only answer I considered to be meaningful. But what I am saying, and what I have believed from the start, is that it is a stupid and irrelevant question. There is no such thing as “certainty” and Bakker’s entire certainty/uncertainty framework is a false one. Not only are there no “Grand Prize Winners” in the sense that he means it, I don’t know a single person who genuinely believes they are a Grand Prize Winner either. The basic philosophical framework he has presented is as fictitious as his novels.

Here is my return question for him. (1) What are ten historical examples of “certainty” causing more material harm than uncertainty?

Now, if I were a follower of Theo, I would like to know what the hell he’s talking about. Why should they take someone who doesn’t care about the accuracy of his views of faith seriously? Or, if he does take the accuracy (as opposed to the consequences) of his claims seriously, why should they trust the claims of someone who doesn’t take the likelihood they are wrong seriously.

They take me seriously because I have a strong track record of being much more accurate than the average commentator or media expert over nearly a decade of writing columns. When your predictions help people make 475% on their investments during a bear market, help them avoid going underwater on their homes by correctly nailing housing prices within $300 one year in advance, and correctly anticipate a global financial crisis several months in advance, it tends to give you a certain amount of credibility. I am always aware that there is a possibility I am wrong. Anyone with an IQ over 80 is. But Bakker can’t seem to grasp the concept of probability. Everyone is wrong sometimes. Pataki anyone? The Lizard Queen? But the verifiable fact of the matter is that I am wrong far less often than most despite the predictive risks I take, and when I am wrong I am still usually in the general vicinity.

For example, I predicted that Obama would not be the 2012 Democratic nominee over one year ago. I said he would be encouraged not to run by the Democratic Party elders. At the time, everyone thought that was absolutely insane and the prediction was much mocked by many among the Dread Ilk. While I still may be turn out to be wrong, no one is laughing at it anymore, least of all Obama’s advisors, now that the Washington Post is reporting the very activity that I predicted last year.

One of the things that seems to make democracy such an effective form of governance, for instance, is its capacity for reform, for adapting to new social realities. It’s ugly, it’s prone to error, but the institution is designed to eventually get it right.

Bakker must be a historical illiterate. Cicero knew better than this more than 2,000 years ago. The American Founding Fathers knew better more than 200 years ago. Democracy is not “designed to eventually get it right”, it is designed to eventually collapse into dictatorship. Also, of all the “democracies” in the world, Switzerland is the only one that is even remotely democratic in the proper sense of the term. Bakker clearly doesn’t understand that modern pseudo-democracies are structured in such a way as to prevent meaningful reform and periodically release political pressure while ensuring the continued rule of the political elite.

From De Re Publica:

“I have reasoned thus on the three forms of government, not looking on them in their disorganized and confused conditions, but in their proper and regular administration. These three particular forms, however, contained in themselves from the first, the faults and defects I have mentioned, but they have still more dangerous vices, for there is not one of these three forms of government, which has not a precipitous and slippery passage down to some proximate abuse. For after that king, whom I have called most admirable, or if you please most endurable—after the amiable Cyrus, we behold the barbarous Phalaris, that model of tyranny, to which the monarchical authority is easily abused by a facile and natural inclination. Alongside of the wise aristocracy of Marseilles, we might exhibit the oligarchical faction of the thirty despots, which once existed at Athens. And among the same Athenians, we can shew you, that when unlimited power was cast into the hands of the people, it inflamed the fury of the multitude, and aggravated that universal licence which ruined their state.”

The reason science has so outstripped its competitors boils down to creative flexibility in the face of supercomplexity. Multiple researchers with multiple hypotheses, embedded in a system that selects for accuracy. You never ‘go all in’ – rather, you hedge your bets, always realizing the complexity of things is such that you could very well lose. And you listen closely to those making contrary bets around you, realizing that they are at least as likely to be holding the winning hand as you.

This section is simply ridiculous from start to finish. Bakker obviously knows little about how science and scientists actually operate. Scientistry is a corrupt and politicized institution that makes increasingly little use of scientody. He needs to read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as he clearly isn’t familiar with the problem of scientific paradigms, nor does he realize that the only reason science has been so astonishingly successful in the West is because it has ridden on the back of free enterprise and technological development. The Soviet Union devoted a higher percentage of its GDP to science than the West did and was still driving 1950s automobiles forty years later.

It may be true that we are all possessed of three-pound brains. It is also empirically and historically demonstrable that some individuals put those three pounds to more systematic and effective use than others.

And I have a second question for Bakker. (2) On what basis does he assume that I am any more certain, or any less skeptical, than he is?

BONUS ANSWERS: Eric asked: If human action on earth is of importance, and that action is shaped by belief (both facts asserted in his answer) then that belief and the correctness thereof must “matter.”

When did I say that human action on Earth is of any importance? I implied precisely the opposite in citing Mises. Human action only matters, it only CAN matter, in the subjective sense, so the belief and the correctness of the belief can only matter to the acting man, except in that there happen to be any material consequences of those actions to others.

How do we KNOW if we are Acting Correctly?

By ascertaining if the consequences of the action accord harmoniously with the results predicted. Or, if you prefer, by their fruits you shall know them.

Publishing update

First, The Deported has been accepted for publication in the Halloween edition of Stupefying Stories. This actually marks my third-ever submission of a short story for publication and my first-ever acceptance, as I had a (dreadful) story rejected by Asimov’s in 1989 and a (pretty good) novella rejected by Black Gate in 2009. (In fairness to John O’Neill, it was a bit of a stretch for BG.) Ten points to the first one to guess what literary lion’s style is being imitated in the story; if you are one of the few who happen to know already, do keep your mouth shut!

Second, I’ve been informed by a publisher that they would like to publish the first book in the Arts of Dark and Light series. I sent them a sample and they particularly liked what they termed the rich depth of the world. Nothing is final yet, but I see no reason we won’t be able to work things out shortly; I was completely surprised to hear they were interested in publishing such a monster. Arts of Dark and Light is set in the same world as Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy, but is more accessible and vastly larger in scope. Translation I: No more untranslated Latin or structural limits set by 700-year old theological treatises. Translation II: we shall see if I can do any better in producing a work of epic fantasy than the authors of the various works I have criticized in the last few months.

So, if it turns out well, I shall owe a debt of gratitude to Messrs. Abercrombie, Bakker, Erikson, and Martin, as it was reading their work that first caused me to begin thinking “Sweet Silmarillion, I could do better than this.” And by Martin, I expect you understand that I am referring to the last two books only, which are significantly inferior to the first three. Robert Jordan doesn’t count, as I would rather read Jack Torrance’s epic seven times than subject myself again to the deplorable Wheel of Time. I like to think that the name was a result of Jordan being a sadist who gave fair warning; that series should have been listed in an addendum to the Geneva Convention.

Anyhow, if nothing else, we already know Arts of Dark and Light will have a gorgeous cover. So we have that going for us….

Solve for X

If scientists wish to better understand why the rest of humanity sometimes doesn’t view Asimov’s “Nightfall” as a classic cautionary tale, but rather as a cheerful little story with a happy ending, this sort of thing might be why:

The Alliance for Human Research Protection speaks out against a US government-proposed anthrax vaccine experiment on children. Such an experiment would sacrifice children’s welfare, much as canaries sent into the coal mines were sacrificed. The National Biodefense Science Board,convened a two day meeting of the Anthrax Vaccine Working Group at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services. The July 7 meeting was open to the public, followed by a closed meeting on July 8.

I propose a new law that dictates any scientist who seriously proposes experiments on unconsenting children that involves lethal diseases be officially stripped of human status and turned over to cosmetic research laboratories. I mean, precisely how obtuse do you have to be to fail to understand that this sort of thing is simply not done?

“Performing experiments in non-consenting children, especially when they do not have a condition the experiment is designed to address, is carefully regulated.”

Carefully regulated? Why is it regulated, carefully or not? It should be completely illegal. And the Tuskeegee experiment was far from the last time this sort of thing happened, as they’re still doing similar experiments with clueless, uninformed people even today.

The amazing thing is that many scientists genuinely believe they should be running the world. I think a much more relevant debate is whether the rest of the human population should take them out and shoot them in preemptive self-defense now or simply keep a closer eye on the myopic bastards. The usual arguments about the niftyness of technology and increased populations don’t really matter all that much when the only extant threats to human existence have all been produced by scientists.

Since so few scientists, and even fewer science fans, have any capacity for comprehending logic, I will put the argument into mathematical terms. It doesn’t matter how many positive integers you add together if in the end, you multiply the sum by zero.

Here is the test: Sum(1:N)*0 = X. Solve for X. Then explain what value of N will cause a change in the value of X.