VD and me

I can’t think why Jamsco didn’t think to entitle his post thusly:

Ah, Junior High. The Golden Years. The Transition Years. Yes, Vox was a geek. Or maybe geek-ish. (Actually those words don’t really fit. How about ‘Not the pinacle of coolness’?) Now, obviously he didn’t rise near the level of awkwardness that Jamsco flew to. Here’s an illustrative story….

Allow me to set the record straight on a few things:

1. I was never a part of the cool crowd at church. We left it while I was still in junior high. And I never thought they were particularly cool anyhow. In retrospect, they struck me as future burnouts. Then again, perhaps Jamsco and I have different people in mind.

2. Inflation was already exceedingly high in 1980. What I actually said was that Reagan would increase the value of money, (not the quantity), by raising interest rates, which is what Paul Volcker subsequently did. Of course, Volcker didn’t actually increase the value, he merely reduced the rate of the decline in value. Do cut me some slack. I was twelve.

3. It wasn’t a comic book, it was Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, which was actually only The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, which completely mystified me at the time. My actual Tolkein paperbacks were far too precious to take on a canoe trip where they would get wet and warpy. All right, on second thought, I suppose it could be considered a comic book.

4. Jamsco is confused as to why he remembers the eight feet. One cliff was about 20 feet high, the other was eight feet higher. I wasn’t afraid of the height, but I was definitely afraid of failing to clear a jutting tree branch below that one had to leap over from the higher cliff. I can remember wondering if you’d end up impaled there or if the branch would snap and you’d end up drowning in the water. The other cliff you could simply drop straight down. I don’t actually remember many of the guys going off the higher one except for a few of the older guys, although Jamsco may well have done so. However, I was badly sunburned that day; I haven’t been down the Apple River since.

5. Jamsco can relax. The “really neat” passage is an actual quote, but it wasn’t him.

6. My sincere apologies about the comic book… if it was me. I tend to doubt it, though, as I didn’t collect comic books – unless one counts the Bakshi – and I can’t recall ever seeing a Superman comic or any other comic around our house at any time. That being said, it does sound like me. I am so notoriously bad about remembering to return books that I simply refuse to borrow them anymore even if they are actively pushed on me.

(Game for Nerds tangent. In college, I went out with a librarian who looked up my record with the county library, which dated back to when I was twelve. Her exact words: “Oh, you are BAAAAD.” So, kids, that’s how to impress that sexy librarian with the glasses and ponytail who sits there smoldering behind the desk with her nose buried in a book. Check out sufficiently interesting books and don’t return them.. I doubt you even have to read them.)

I can’t honestly say anything negative about Jamsco. He was invariably nice to me and to everyone else, and if he was as awkward as he was tall, I never thought that was a big deal. If I had to pick out one person from that time I always thought was a fundamentally decent human being, Jamsco would have been first on the list. Although, it occurs to me that I forgot to address one more thing.

7. Vox is occasionally wrong.

Gauging interest

I’ve been hearing from a few people here and there that they would be interested in seeing me write a basic economics textbook that could be used as a homeschooling resource. I have to admit that while the idea is of some interest to me, it isn’t something that I’ve ever contemplated too seriously in the past because most textbooks are written by academics with PhDs who sell them to captive college audiences. And, of course, there is no shortage of them, so why would the world need another one?

On the other hand, a look at Greg Mankiw’s textbook, which is used at Harvard where he teaches, offers a very strong counterpoint to that argument. Consider what he declares to be the Ten Principles of Economics in his textbook entitled Principles of Economics:

1. People Face Tradeoffs.
2. The Cost of Something Is What You Give Up to Get It
3. Rational People Think at the Margin
4. People Respond to Incentives
5. Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off
6. Markets Are Usually a Good Way to Organize Economic Activity
7. Governments Can Sometimes Improve Market Outcomes
8. A Country’s Standard of Living Depends on Its Ability to Produce Goods and Services
9. Prices Rise When the Government Prints Too Much Money
10. Society Faces a Short-Run Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment

Reading this, my first thought is that it is no wonder some of his students walked out of his class. My second one is that it is no mystery why Mankiw failed to see the 2008 crisis developing and still fails to recognize the current economic depression. My third thought is that perhaps a text on basic economic principles and history is in order after all.

When I look at Mankiw’s principles, I see two reasonably solid ones, (1,2), four that are obviously incorrect or incomplete to the point of being misleading, (3,5,7,10), and four that are merely irrelevant due to being incomplete. (4,6,8,9).

Anyhow, I have to finish the current novel first, which will be sometime next summer, but it’s not too early to start taking notes and looking at the deficiencies of current textbooks. So, the two things I’d be interested in knowing is how many people might be interested in an electronic econ textbook priced around $4.99 and what areas merit being covered. For example, Felsenburgh suggested that a proper economics education should begin with the School of Salamanca, but that is obviously insane to anyone who has actually read Rothbard’s History of Economic Thought. I don’t think even homeschooled students would be able to stay focused on an economics course that begins with a diverse group of people predominantly grouped together on the basis of their arguments for the legitimacy of usury.

This isn’t to say that the Salamancans aren’t important or denigrate their contributions to economic thought, only that they are not exactly the ideal point of entry to the field.

WND column

Transfer or Tea Party?

Most Americans opposed TARP. They saw no reason to use taxpayer money for bailing out the very financial institutions that had been parasitically feeding off them for decades. But America is not a democracy. It is no longer even a representative democracy. The banking bailout, the GSE bailout and the subsequent automotive bailout were all rammed down the unwilling throats of the American public by the Goldman-controlled Treasury Department with the help of the Bush administration and congressional Democrats. It was rather like a doctor forcing a rape victim to pay for her own chemotherapy because it would benefit her rapist.*

Bipartisan support for the bailout made it clear to all and sundry that at the end of the day, the supposed divide between the Republican and Democratic parties is an imaginary one. Republicans and Democrats are nothing more than a unitary bank party.

*I know this makes no sense. That’s the point. Neither did the bailouts.

VPFL Week 9

86 Cranberry Rhyneauxs (3-5-0)
77 Greenfield Grizzlies (5-3-0)

49 GroverBeach Quixotes (4-4-0)
46 Moundsview Meerkats (5-3-0)

64 Green Reverends (4-3-1)
61 RR Redbeards (2-5-1)

67 MS Swamp Spartans (4-4-0)
61 Bailout Banksters (4-3-1)

86 Bane Sidhe (4-4-0)
80 Macau Marauders (3-4-1)

That was disappointing. I’d given up on Week 8 before the season even started, given that 4 of my starters were on a bye week. But a good performance from Foster and Turner and a solid one from Christian Ponder substituting for Aaron Rodgers would have sufficed to do the trick… if the doggone Dallas kicker had scored more than one of the 10 points projected. C’est le NFL.

Mailvox: what am I missing here?

Speaking of interlocutors, one of my occasional atheist emailers sent this in response to yesterday’s Mailvox. MD wrote:

‘ . . . the moment they decide to attempt to convince others that they are correct, they become targets.’

Never has there been a greater endorsement of the ‘new atheist’ movement than that last sentence! You’re cleverer than saying weak stuff like that.

I genuinely do not understand the point he is making here. The idea would appear to be that the New Atheism has made targets of Christians and other evangelical theists because they are incorrect. But I don’t see that this is the observable case at all. It seems to me if that X is attempting to convince others he is correct and Y decides to make X a target in response, the onus is therefore on Y to show that X is incorrect.

So, where do Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any of the New Atheists ever attempt to show that Billy Graham or John Wesley or Thomas Aquinas are incorrect? They very seldom attack anything that is even remotely recognizable as Christian theology, preferring instead to take on what appear to be poorly remembered Sunday School versions of it. The Courtier’s Reply of PZ Myers – which, to be fair, other New Atheists besides Richard Dawkins cannot be assumed to endorse – outright attempts to justify atheists knowing nothing about what they are so ineptly criticizing.

I even remarked on this bizarre failure to actually address the most basic Christian theology in TIA: “While Harris doesn’t once cite minor Christian intellectual figures such as Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Wesley, G. K. Chesterton, or even C. S. Lewis, he does find it relevant to provide one reference to Tim LaHaye, thirteen references to Hitler, Himmler, and Hess, and six whole pages dedicated to Noam Chomsky. Because, after all, no one is more suited to explain the Christian faith quite so well as an elderly author of pop religious fantasies, a trio of dead Nazis, and a left-wing Jewish linguist.”

Now Dawkins does mention Aquinas and the Five Proofs in The God Delusion, but he does little more than cry “infinite regress” and demonstrate that he has missed the point of them. (I did like his point about the natural terminator, although it doesn’t actually serve to refute any of the Five Proofs since they concern beginnings rather than ends.) He also shows that he has never actually read the Summa Theologica; it is telling to note that Dawkins immediately proceeds from his cursory glance at the Five Proofs to the Ontological Argument without realizing that Aquinas rejected it more than 700 years ago in Part 1, Question 2, Article 1 of the Summa.

“OBJECTION 2: Further, those things are said to be self-evident which are known as soon as the terms are known, which the Philosopher (1 Poster. iii) says is true of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, when the nature of a whole and of a part is known, it is at once recognized that every whole is greater than its part. But as soon as the signification of the word “God” is understood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. But that which exists actually and mentally is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word “God” is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition “God exists” is self-evident.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: Perhaps not everyone who hears this word “God” understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands that by this word “God” is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist.”

So, it seems to me that far from being the greatest endorsement of the New Atheist movement, my statement demonstrates its impotence, its ignorance, and its intellectual dishonesty.

They’re not all wrong

Harvard students walk out of Greg Mankiw’s basis economics class:

Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University, and our greater society.

As Harvard undergraduates, we enrolled in Economics 10 hoping to gain a broad and introductory foundation of economic theory that would assist us in our various intellectual pursuits and diverse disciplines, which range from Economics, to Government, to Environmental Sciences and Public Policy, and beyond. Instead, we found a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today.

A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.

On the one hand, this protest makes no sense. They’ll get no shortage of Keynesianism from Mankiw, even if most of the explicit Keynesianism won’t be provided until a subsequent macro class rather than in what is Harvard’s equivalent of Econ 101. But whether you prefer to describe Mankiw as a neoclassical or a monetarist, he’s still a Samuelsonian attempting to manage the economy in macroeconomics terms. He’s a Keynesian heretic, and would be better described as a quasi-Keynesian than an anti-Keynesian, Steve Keen’s opinion on the correct categorizations notwithstanding.

On the other, they’re absolutely right. Contra most academic programs, including the one in which I received my degree, Adam Smith is neither basic or fundamental. A proper education in economics should begin with Cantillon and Turgot.

Mailvox: it’s not about the interlocutor

AA wonders why it’s so hard to convince atheists of anything:

I’ve been debating atheists on message boards for about 5 years now and while I’m getting better at writing, I don’t think I’m seeing a lot of results. I’m just wondering, do you think there’s a place for people like me to debate on forums and then just read your blog to get ideas and material? Or is it better to carry out debates on blogs? Also –I don’t know if you have an adderall habit or what but I’m amazed at how often you post — do you do something for your attention span and work ethic?

The quote from Bartleby’s sums it up:

“He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still.”
~Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

It’s a tautology. Most atheists don’t believe in God because they don’t believe in God. If you listen to their stories and read their books, it is readily apparent that most of them became atheists between the ages of 10 and 17. There are various theories concerning why this happens, but the observable fact of the matter is that their atheism is actually less rational and less based on any reasoning than the average college student’s political party identification. All the appeals to science and so forth are nothing more than ex post facto rationalizations.

Hence all the false claims about Biblical knowledge and the attacks on Sunday School theology. What passes for their knowledge is usually the dimly remembered childhood church indoctrination. I can’t think of a single atheist who has ever been able to tell me the structure of an argument from the Summa Theologica, much less the actual content of any of the 610 arguments contained within it. And the next atheist I meet to have read Tertullian or any of the Latin Fathers except Augustine will be the first. Their ignorance isn’t merely limited to Christianity either, as they seldom know anything about the sacred works or theology of other religions except perhaps a little Greek and Norse mythology.

That being said, I am entirely open to hear other explanations for why an atheist remains an atheist after having his purported reasons for becoming an atheist destroyed from actual atheists.

The reason for combating atheism isn’t to convert the atheist. You will never see any such results. That simply isn’t going to happen because no atheist will ever cease being an atheist simply because all of his rationalizations have been shown to be factually incorrect, logically fallacious, or otherwise irrational. And that’s completely fine. The reason for shooting them down over and over again is to neutralize and counteract their effect on the weak-minded, who are even less inclined to think than the average evangelical atheist. I seldom intentionally attack atheists who make no attempt to convince others that gods and the supernatural do not exist for precisely this reason; I don’t care what they believe or do not believe. Their lack of belief has no effect on me or anyone else.

But the moment they decide to attempt to convince others that they are correct, they become targets. So, my advice is to keep doing what you’re doing, keep refining and improving your arguments, and you will likely prevent dozens, if not hundreds of people, from falling for the false arguments and incorrect logic being presented by evangelical atheists.

As for the frequency of my posting, I simply make a habit of it by sticking to a schedule. Two posts per day, period. Usually, that ends up meaning three or four on weekdays. It takes very little time; the average one probably takes between 10-15 minutes, so 2-3 posts is like watching one sitcom per day. That’s not a lot of work. I’ve recently taken the same approach to my writing and it’s been very effective. In 102 days since I started writing the first novel in the Arts of Dark and Light series, I’ve written 84,269 words, leaving me exactly 2.3 days ahead of an aggressive schedule. Only another 210,731 to go…. As for adderall, I’ve never heard of it. My only drugs of choice are cappucino and vino rosso. Three cups of the former and one or two glasses of the latter daily is my limit.

As Ecclesiastes reminds us, it’s all vanity. But one hopes that even so, some of it may be useful to others and will ultimately prove to be to the glory of God.

The week in Alpha

Monday: A method for distinguishing the gamma from the superficially sentimental player courtesy of the greatest rock band of all space and time.

Tuesday: Women often fall for liars, but are liars appealing or are women simply unable to distinguish between men who are lying from men who are telling the truth?

Wednesday: The nice guys write a letter.

Thursday: Which do women find less sexually appealing, decapitation and post-mortem sex or gooey gamma romantic gestures? It’s a tough call.

Friday: Short hair is the equivalent of 30 extra pounds on a woman.

Psychology is not science

And neither are many other pseudoscientific fields with scientific pretensions. Because the credibility of science depends upon its replicability, it naturally follows that any “scientist” who does not release his data for independent review and replication is not doing science:

In a recent survey, two-thirds of Dutch research psychologists said they did not make their raw data available for other researchers to see.

Then they are witch-doctors, propagandists, and grant-seekers, not scientists. Some years ago, I wrote about the need for Open Science. But the more that I think about it, that is redundant. Because if it isn’t open, it isn’t science. To paraphrase the OpenScience Project, if you’re going to do science, you have to release the computer code too.

“Our view is that it is not healthy for scientific papers to be supported by computations that cannot be reproduced except by a few employees at a commercial software developer. Should this kind of work even be considered Science? It may be research, and it may be important, but unless enough details of the experimental methodology are made available so that it can be subjected to true reproducibility tests by skeptics, it isn’t Science.”

This was also amusing to note in light of my contention that most scientists are completely untrained in statistics.

“Also common is a self-serving statistical sloppiness. In an analysis published this year, Dr. Wicherts and Marjan Bakker, also at the University of Amsterdam, searched a random sample of 281 psychology papers for statistical errors. They found that about half of the papers in high-end journals contained some statistical error.”

A society that deserves to die

I don’t see how you could possibly reach any other conclusion:

A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”

Now, I don’t believe in capital punishment by the state, for the obvious reason that it only encourages them. But I don’t think anyone could reasonably disagree with the idea that if we’re going to have capital punishment anyway, the decision to pursue a master’s degree in puppetry should definitely qualify an individual for immediate hanging.

Mimes should be decapitated, of course. One can’t be too careful when dealing with the nasty bastards.

At this point, I can’t even find it within myself to feel the least bit sorry for Americans any longer. It would be one thing if they were foolishly going into debt while studying something useful instead of Sociology, Black Studies, Womyn’s Studies, Business, and English. But a society where people are actually paid to teach puppetry, go into debt in order to obtain master’s degrees in puppetry, and believe that what a pseudo-revolutionary movement needs is giant puppets, is quite clearly insane and should be put down at the earliest opportunity.