Tag: philosophy

Mailvox: holding scientists accountable

BT wonders if the Italians are taking a science fetish one step too far in holding scientists accountable for their failure to correctly predict an imminent earthquake:

I know you are skeptical about the scientific community. But don’t you think that this is an extreme step- unless somebody can prove that they deliberately did not carry out their duties, isn’t it unfair to expect them to be superknowledgible? Can we see this as a result of the secular society going too far by putting science in an infallible pedestal that they are now expecting the scientists to answer every question? Just like may be how the priest sorcerer would have been held accountable for any “false prophesies” in the old clans on questions of winning battles or where to cultivate?

This actually represents an interesting attack on Naturalism. If we are to take the Naturalist perspective, which insists that science is not only the “most reliable source of knowledge” but “the best description of reality”, then obviously scientists must be held more responsible than other individuals who depend entirely upon less reliable sources of knowledge such as personal experience, testimonial evidence, hearsay, and documented historical evidence.

If an accountant can be held liable for failing to properly advise his clients about the probable consequences of information he possesses on the basis of one of these less reliable sources of knowledge, than obviously scientists should similarly be held liable for their similar failures when damages are suffered by the public, especially when the public is paying their salaries.

It would certainly be interesting to see a scientist who subscribes to Naturalism, or more likely, a science fetishist, to simultaneously attempt to argue that a) science is the most reliable source of knowledge but b) scientists should not be held responsible for avoidable damages suffered by other parties caused due to the inherent unreliability of science.

It’s an intriguing question, because this dichotomy between claims made on the behalf of science and the legal responsibilities of those who utilize it fundamentally calls into account the basic validity of science as a source of knowledge.

Naturalism is dead

Alex Rosenberg doesn’t realize he’s out of date already:

Naturalism is the philosophical theory that treats science as our most reliable source of knowledge and scientific method as the most effective route to knowledge.

To which I point to the obvious rebuttal: “Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade.”

Obviously, the scientific method is no longer the most effective route to knowledge. It’s not even close to being the most effective route. Ludence, or the combination of reason, game programming, and mass game playing, is obviously far more effective. Unsurprisingly, Alex turns out to be an atheist, an academic, and prone to making all the usual epistemological errors.

“Naturalists recognize that science is fallible. Its self-correction, its continual increase in breadth and accuracy, give naturalists confidence in the resources they borrow from physics, chemistry and biology. The second law of thermodynamics, the periodic table, and the principles of natural selection are unlikely to be threatened by future science. Philosophy can therefore rely on them to answer many of its questions without fear of being overtaken by events.”

I always enjoy how they try to sneak Daniel Dennett’s atheist logic in there hoping that no one will notice. “You can trust biologists. Because physicists get amazingly accurate results.” And, as we know, the principles of natural selection and the idea of it being the core mechanism of evolution are being threatened as never before thanks to genetic science.

But the most amusing thing is the fundamental logical error at the heart of naturalism. He refers specifically to physics, but he means science when he writes “We should be confident that it will do better than any other approach at getting things right.” Sure. Just have faith. Because past results are always indicative of future results.

UPDATE – It’s officially time to shut down the National Science Foundation.

As CNS News reported, $762,372 of your money was spent — under the stimulus, of course — by the National Science Foundation to study . . . interpretive dance.

Do you want to understand why an economist would have such contempt for science and scientists? The National Science Foundation spending over $750,000 on interpretive fucking dance would be Exhibit A. Let scientists fund themselves if they want to do science. It’s long past time for the separation of science and state.

What feminism is

In Gloria Steinem’s own words:

“Feminism starts out being very simple. It starts out being the instinct of a little child who says ‘it’s not fair’ and ‘you are not the boss of me,’ and it ends up being a worldview that questions hierarchy altogether.”

In other words, it is an intrinsically childish ideology founded on an abstraction and defies empirical reality and the entire historical record of Man. That sounds about right.

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.

I am not arrogant

John Scalzi argues the case:

As there already exists a “McKean’s Law” with respect to words (“Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error”), allow me instead to suggest what I will henceforth label “McKean’s Inversion,” to wit:

The adjective a person says they are is frequently the thing they are not.

To put it in writing terms, it’s a fine example of “show, don’t tell.” Classy people don’t need to assert they’re classy, they do classy things. Funny people don’t have to assure you they’re funny, they simply make you laugh. Kind people don’t need to verbally advertise their kindness, because it’s evident in their lives. All of which is to say the way to be seen as funny, or kind, or humble, or classy, is to be that thing. And if you are, chances are pretty good other people will note it.

My take? McKean’s Inversion applies to idiots, the deceitful, and the insecure. The idea that every cocky chick magnet is a loser with a hard drive full of Japanese schoolgirl porn, that every strutting All-Star is a bench-warming fraud, and every salty ex-Ranger is really a blustering coward is a bizarre mix of Churchianity and middle class fear of failure. The flaw in the logic is that while X people don’t need to assert X, this does not in any way justify the conclusion that they cannot assert it or that asserting it – a few highly specific cases aside – necessarily implies its negation.

Who were three of the most infamous trash talkers in the history of the NBA? Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Gary Payton. Shall we therefore conclude that they were inferior basketball players? What was the most famous of Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs? The one he hit in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, otherwise known as his “called shot”. Any high-performance competitor knows there is nothing more demoralizing to an opponent than telling him exactly what you’re going to do to him and then doing precisely that, because it drives home the fact that he hasn’t been tricked or outmaneuvered somehow, he has been beaten by someone who is completely out of his league.

The fact that the mediocre often overrate themselves doesn’t mean that the superlative are unaware of their own superiority or are unwilling to admit it. I have never seen false modesty among the genuinely superior; it is, however, quite commonly seen among the merely competent who utilize it in an attempt to be perceived as better than they genuinely are.

The nonsensical aspect of McKean’s Inversion can be seen in the way that my assertion of my own superior intelligence and breathtaking arrogance is a) sometimes interpreted as evidence that I am really not all that intelligent while b) never being taken as evidence that I am not arrogant. In other words, it is applied in precisely the same uneven manner as the references to my family by critics who like to stress my relationship to one nationally-known individual, (usually apropos of nothing), while never, ever, mentioning my equally close relationship to another, internationally-known, individual.

The proof is always and only in the pudding. “The adjective a person says they are” carries no intrinsic meaning in and of itself, but merely offers a useful means of ascertaining that person’s integrity and capacity for self-judgment when the adjective is compared with independent observation. I happen to consider people who overrate themselves to be self-deluded and a little pathetic, but I believe people who habitually underrate themselves to be dishonest, manipulative, and intrinsically untrustworthy. And I am much more wary of the latter than the former.

There is nothing humble about telling lies to make yourself look better in others’ eyes.

I am the anti-hero

I certainly would have made a point of reviewing R. Scott Bakker’s books sooner if I had any idea that his response to my review would prove so vastly amusing:

This brings me to what I was most curious about, back when: What would Theo make of the thematics of the trilogy. To be honest, I thought this was where he would spill the most pixilated ink. Why? Because reading his blog, I realized that in many respects I had written the trilogy for him, for people who really, really, really think they’ve won the Magical Belief-and-Identity Lottery.

And this, if Vox Day is to be believed, is Theo in a nutshell. The Grand Prize Winner. Reading his blog, I had the impression of drawing circles inside of circles:

Fiscal conservatives…

Social and fiscal conservatives…

White, social and fiscal conservatives…

White, male, social and fiscal conservatives…

White, male, English-descended, social and fiscal conservatives…

White, male, English-descended, Anglican, social and fiscal conservatives…

I’m sure the list goes on, but this was as far as I was able to go. What began as snobbish hilarity quickly turned into consternation and a kind of baffled, dare I say? disgust. Discussions of partitioning America along more ‘rational’ identity-driven lines, of the ‘behavioural profile of African-Americans,’ of the ‘proper place of women,’ of the forced resettlement of immigrants, of the ‘flaws of democracy’ made me realize that Theo had more than a few fascistic leanings. I’m still shaking my head.

While I always appreciate a proper Genetic Fallacy, even more amusing is an inept one. I had no idea that I was a socially conservative Anglican, but now that I have been apprised of this I shall certainly do my best to acquire a Book of Common Prayer and start writing regular paeans to Sarah Palin and Rick Perry. I’m not precisely sure what “fiscal conservative” is supposed to mean nowadays, as this tends to sound rather like “gravity conservative” or “knows how to use an Excel spreadsheet” in light of the recent events in political economy. But I am white, male, and of English descent, to be sure. He could have even quite reasonably added “arrogant bastard” and “chick magnet” if he felt that would help his case somehow.

Of course, the Dread Ilk will no doubt see the humor inherent in the idea that the author of The Morality of Rape could possibly be “really, really, really offended” by its fictional depiction. Apparently Bakker didn’t get the “rape apologist” alert.

For all that he attempts to strike a contemplative pose, Bakker reveals a parochial and Panglossian view of the world as well as an ironic failure to contemplate its harsh and brutal reality even while attempting to portray it. And it is entertaining indeed to see the erstwhile champion of a thousand shades of grey proving my previous point about his adherence to a conventional substitute morality; on what basis could an amoralist possibly justify consternation and disgust? Aesthetics? As for the idea that a quad-lingual expatriate who has lived everywhere from Japan to Italy is an extreme example of parochialism, well, I can’t say I’m terribly concerned about what a Canadian who grew up in Ontario, went to university in Ontario, did grad school at Vanderbilt, and then moved back to Ontario happens to think on the matter….

His ideological ignorance is as nonsensical as his failure to understand the difference between diagnosis and prescription. Being one of the better-known libertarians in the media, #25 at the last ranking if I recall correctly, I am much, much farther away from any sort of fascist leanings than Bakker, whose politics appear to be fairly similar to those of the historical Italian Fascisti. And I should very much like to see Bakker attempt to defend ideas such as democracy being flawless, material sexual equality, and so forth, as it would likely prove even more entertaining than his inability to understand the aesthetic value of morality in fiction.

But all of this is beside the point. Either my criticism of his work stands or it does not. Is my review fair? Of course it is. I wouldn’t sacrifice my critical integrity simply to slam someone I disliked intensely and I don’t dislike Bakker. I don’t even know him. The more significant question is if my review of The Prince of Nothing is more accurate and relevant than those that have attempted to lionize Bakker as the third coming of George R.R. Martin. That, I leave to the readers to decide.

Bakker is a talented wordsmith. He is a very good world builder. He is more intelligent than the average genre writer, historically literate, and reasonably well-educated. Unfortunately, he is also an incompetent and juvenile philosopher who subscribes to an outmoded view of art. The latter tends to insert itself in the way of the stronger elements of his writing, particularly when it comes to the characters. Preaching no more lends itself to secular fiction than it does to religious fiction and should Bakker ever decide to control his instinctive desires to lecture and transgress, he will be the better writer for it.

But that is no concern of mine. It makes absolutely no difference to me if Bakker chooses to heed the criticism I have offered or not. I didn’t write the Black Gate review for his benefit and I am quite accustomed to most people ignoring me, regardless of whether I publicly advise them to buy gold at 323.30 (2002) or predict a $43,300 fall in housing prices (2008). I don’t expect Bakker to agree. I don’t even expect him to understand.

Instead of resorting to an ineffective ad hominem response, it would have been much more interesting if Bakker had simply explained why he felt it was so vital to show so much of the sex and rapine that fills his work, what it adds to the story, and why he feels his philosophical meanderings add to the story rather than detracting from it. However, give Bakker credit for correctly anticipating that I would like his work. I did. Being a fan of epic fantasy, I merely find it to be disappointing that he refuses to aim higher.

The original MPAI

“[B]efore some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people one cannot instruct.”
– Rhetoric, Aristotle

With the benefit of an additional 2,333 years of human history, the only way this statement could be improved upon would be to replace the word “some” with “most”.

Science is inferior to Revelation

If one wishes to compare the relative effectiveness of Science and Revelation, it is first necessary to be sure one is comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges:

ONE of the great strengths of science is that it can fix its own mistakes. “There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong,” the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. “That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

If only it were that simple. Scientists can certainly point with pride to many self-corrections, but science is not like an iPhone; it does not instantly auto-correct. As a series of controversies over the past few months have demonstrated, science fixes its mistakes more slowly, more fitfully and with more difficulty than Sagan’s words would suggest. Science runs forward better than it does backward.

Why? One simple answer is that it takes a lot of time to look back over other scientists’ work and replicate their experiments. Scientists are busy people, scrambling to get grants and tenure. As a result, papers that attract harsh criticism may nonetheless escape the careful scrutiny required if they are to be refuted…..

Even when scientists rerun an experiment, and even when they find that the original result is flawed, they still may have trouble getting their paper published. The reason is surprisingly mundane: journal editors typically prefer to publish groundbreaking new research, not dutiful replications.

In other words, real Science in practice is very different than ideal Science in theory. This is not a surprise. But it inevitably leads to the observation that if we are to compare Science and Revelation at all, we must compare theory with theory and practice with practice. The asserted superiority of Science is based on its supposedly self-correcting nature. But science that is never replicated is not going to be corrected, therefore Science in practice cannot be justified by this non-existent self-correction.

Furthermore, so long as one appeals to this nonexistent self-correction, one is appealing to an ideal Science in theory. But to this, one must compare a similarly ideal Revelation in theory. And, obviously, a direct line of information from the Creator of the Universe is far superior to a mere repetition of a scientific experiment; in this specific case, a literal appeal to legitimate divine authority is no logical fallacy. From the Platonic perspective, it is clear that ideal Science is inferior to ideal Revelation.

The remaining question is if the flawed version of Science as it is actually practiced, without self-correction, is superior to whatever flawed versions of Revelation are practiced, to the extent we can even hope to distinguish between the real and the flawed forms of the latter.

As for the appeal to Carl Sagan’s reasoning, we need merely note that Sagan is know to be either a historical illiterate or a deeply dishonest science propagandist; in either case, one has little choice but to dismiss his judgment with regards to the subject.

Umberto Eco on Stephen Hawking

I was thinking about addressing Stephen Hawking’s absurd new book, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to bother even picking it up, let alone reading it. Fortunately, Umberto Eco was willing to do the dirty work for us:

Philosophy is not Star Trek

In “The Republic” of last April 6th, there appeared a preview of the book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, introduced with a subtitle that more or less reprised a passage from the text: “Philosophy is dead, only physics can explain the cosmos”. The death of philosophy has been announced on various occasions and therefore the announcement made little impression, but it seemed to me it must be balderdash to have claimed that a genius like Hawking would say such a thing. To be sure that “The Republic” had not erroneously summarized the book, I went and bought it, and the reading confirmed my suspicions.

The book appears to have been written by two hands, although in the case of Hawking the expression is sadly metaphorical because, as we know, his limbs do not respond to the commands of his exceptional brain. However, the book is fundamentally a work of the second author, whose qualifications are described on the cover as having written some episodes of “Star Trek”. In the book, one can see the beautiful illustrations that appear to be conceived for a children’s encyclopedia from a bygone time; they are colorful and engaging, but do not actually explain anything about the complex physical, mathematical, and cosmological theorems they are supposed to illustrate. Perhaps it is not prudent to trust one’s destiny to the philosophy of individuals with rabbit ears.(1)

The work begins with the fixed affirmation that philosophy no longer has anything to say and only physics can explain:

1)How we can comprehend the world in which we find ourselves.
2)The nature of reality.
3)If the universe had need of a creator.
4)Why there is something instead of nothing.
5)Why we exist.
6)Why this particular set of laws exists instead of some other.

As you see these are typical philosophical questions, but it must be admitted that the book demonstrates how physics can, in some ways, serve to answer the last four, which appear to be the most philosophical of all.

The problem is that in order to attempt to answer the last four questions, it is necessary to have answered the first two. It is those questions which, in a large way, are what one requires in order to say that something is real and if we know the real world as it is. Perhaps you will recall from your philosophical studies at school that we understand by attribute what the intellect perceives of a substance,(2) it is something outside of ourselves. (Woody Allen adds: and if so, why are they making all that noise?) Either we are Berkeleyans(3) or, as Putnam said, brains in a vat.

Well then, the fundamental answers that this book puts forward are exquisitely philosophic and without these philosophical answers not even the physicist could say “because he knows” and “what he knows”. In fact, the authors speak of “a realism dependent on the models”, that is, they assume that “other concepts of reality independent of description and theory do not exist”. Therefore “other theories can satisfactorily describe the same phenomenon by means of different conceptual structures” and all that we can perceive, we know, and we say of reality depends on the interaction between our models and that thing which is outside but that we know only due to our perceptive organs and our brain.

The more suspicious among the readers will have already recognized a Kantian phantasm, but it is clear the two authors are proposing that which in philosophy is called “Holisticism” and by others “internal realism”. As you see, it is not a treatise of physical discoveries, but of philosophical assumptions, that stand to sustain and legitimize the research of the physicist – those which, when he is a good physicist, can only address the problem of the philosophical foundations of his own methods. We already knew, we were already familiar with these extraordinary revelations, (evidently due to Mlodinow and to the company of Star Trek), for “in antiquity there was an instinct to attribute the violent actions of nature to an Olympus of displeased or malevolent gods”. By gosh, and then, by golly.(4)

(1) “Orecchie da leprotto”. Literally, “the ears of the hare”. I’m not familiar with this phrase, which could mean anything from implying that the two men are asses (think Pinocchio) to a leafy green vegetable found in salads. Or it may simply be referring to Mlodinow’s background in television. Seeing as it’s Eco, one hesitates to guess. But one thing is certain; it’s not a compliment.
(2) I think this refers to Spinoza’s philosophy of mind. Some school. But do they know how to put condoms on bananas?
(3) Philosopher George Berkeley, who argued against rational materialism and considered the idea of “matter” to be unjustified and self-contradictory.
(4) “Perdinci e poi perbacco”. It’s an Italian expression that doesn’t necessarily translate well, but indicates a lack of surprise. The sense of dismissive sarcasm should be readily apparent.

As my Italian is better described as “conversational” rather than “fluent”, don’t put too much confidence in my translation. The four italicized notes are mine and therefore may be incorrect. Regardless, it should be clear that Eco is describing a material example of how, once more, science has climbed to the summit of another intellectual mountain, only to find the philosophers already there.