ShrinkWrapped

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During the Bush administration, people on the Left spent a great deal of time arguing that he was a quasi-dictatorial fascist, using the attacks of 9/11 as a rationale for expanding government power.  The more reasoned comments suggested that he was far too cozy with Big Corporations; the less reasoned simply called him BushHitler.  Looking back it is clear that he made several important mistakes in executing the war on terror, especially taking as his sole prerogative the establishment of the rules by which we would conduct the war.  Consultation with Congressional Democrats early in the process might have gone a very long way toward co-opting them as partial owners of the war, and would likely have avoided some of the worst of the political opportunism of the left leaning Democrats.  Such an effort might have made the government's job slightly more difficult (the jury is out on the value of the information obtained by extreme interrogation techniques, aka torture, and a more robust process for vetting FISA decision would probably have been easily incorporated into the process, among other issues) but the positive aspects of having the Democrats on board as full participants would have likely outweighed the negative effects of slight impingement on the Executive's power. 

There is  a real chance now that the Left and Right will both repeat the mistakes of the last 8 years but with the valences exchanged.  In other words, the Obama administration is likely to over-reach without involving the Right (as it has already been doing; Obama now owns the failing auto companies) in its efforts to increase the Executive's power in the domestic arena and the Right is likely to follow the Left's past history of demonizing the party in power.

It might make for an interesting philosophical discussion as to whether such an outcome is inevitable when it comes to the question of who exercises power in a society and a good argument can be made that hyperbolic statements, ad hominem arguments, and hysterical warnings are preferable to "discussions" over politics that depend on bombs and bullets to convey their messages.

Rafique at Stubborn Facts is amazed that the Right is now behaving in a fashion similar to the Left.  He comments on an article in the Washington Times yesterday by Andrew Breitbart, Online activists on the right, unite!

The Intellectual's Affectation

Intellectuals are an interesting group of people.  When crossed with Academia, they are heirs to a very long tradition in science and philosophy that arose among the ancients, came to its fullest fruition in science beginning in the Enlightenment, and has served humanity extremely well.  That is, a belief that if one rigorously reduces a problem to its most basic constituents, the problem will become more easily solvable.  Until quite recently, science depended on the ability of researchers to engage in reductionism.  By isolating a limited number of variables, and manipulating those variables, science could arrive at a decent approximation of reality. 

[The nascent ability to manipulate large volumes of data which are conspicuously not reducible in complexity, is a recent phenomenon and has not yet been adequately incorporated in our scientific methodology; it is an evolving field of interest.]

When an intellectual has been reared in the post-enlightenment academy, he has been inculcated with the belief that if problems can only be reduced to their simplest components, then results follow.  There are problems with this conception when it involves human beings.

An example of an intellectual for whom over-simplification is the norm, while apparently lacking an awareness of the limits of knowledge, was provided last week: 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to be seen by a succession of American Presidents as central to American diplomacy and American Presidents and Diplomats are continually surprised by how difficult it is for the antagonists to find a rational solution, which always appears relatively simple and obvious to the Diplomats.  In his Press conference last week, President Obama laid out his vision of the conflict:

Its the Mind

Slow and steady progress is being made in unraveling one of the great mysteries in science, the nature of consciousness.  A European group is building a model of the brain:

Building a Brain on a Silicon Chip

A chip developed by European scientists simulates the learning capabilities of the human brain.

An international team of scientists in Europe has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn more closely than any other machine.

Although the chip has a fraction of the number of neurons or connections found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled up, says Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project, or FACETS.

The hope is that recreating the structure of the brain in computer form may help to further our understanding of how to develop massively parallel, powerful new computers, says Meier.

This is not the first time someone has tried to recreate the workings of the brain. One effort called the Blue Brain project, run by Henry Markram at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, has been using vast databases of biological data recorded by neurologists to create a hugely complex and realistic simulation of the brain on an IBM supercomputer.

FACETS has been tapping into the same databases. "But rather than simulating neurons," says Karlheinz, "we are building them."

The FACETS approach assumes that neurons are essentially simple elements; they either fire or not, depending on a reliable set of rules or instructions that are part of their structural endowment.  In this model neurons are directly analogous to programmable computer chips that either are in a binary +1 or 0 state.  Many computer scientists and neuroscientists are of the belief that the brain is simply a complex parallel processing computer; they may be right.  What is most provocative about this approach is that there may be testable hypotheses that will be answered in the next decade or two.

Michael Anissimov asks a related question:

Are Emotions Necessary for General Intelligence?

Information Warfare in a "Post-Modern" World

Last week, Abu Muqawama (Andrew Exum) took part in a New York Times' hosted discussion, triggered by the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza, concerning how best to approach Civilians Caught in Urban Combat.  The Editors of the Times introduced the discussion with some thoughts about Israel's conduct in the war:

Since Israel ended its assault on Gaza, Palestinians and international rights groups have accused it of using excessive force that resulted in a high number of civilian casualties. The Israeli military has denied these charges, but now testimony is emerging from soldiers, indicating that some of these claims have merit.

In his comments, Andrew Exum suggested that Israel might learn from the American experience in Iraq; ie, that protecting civilian non-combatants is ultimately the best way to win a counterinsurgency.  On his blog, he elicited comments and as of this morning, has received 168 comments.  He noted that he had written the Times's post prior to seeing articles in the MSM about atrocities committed by Israel:

I wrote this before I had a chance to read some of the disturbing testimonies of Israeli soldiers who fought in Gaza.

What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood.

Ha'aretz and other Israeli newspapers promise to run more of these stories in the days to come.

[A] reserve officer who looked at the transcript Wednesday said: "This is not the IDF we knew."

Ha'aretz did its part by running an irresponsible story describing atrocities that, one week later, we now know were based on hearsay and in fact described incidents that never happened. 

Scientists and Morality

Scientists spend their working lives pursuing a rational understanding of the world around them.  They are often both ignorant of, and intolerant of, the irrational.  Because they pursue a rational understanding of the world they typically do not recognize their own irrationalities.  This can be a problem when scientists venture into discussions of politics and morality.

Consider this brief note from Chris Patil at Ourobouros:

“The Essential Parallel Between Science and Democracy”

Bush administration science policy was a mini-Dark Age for American science. Religious dogma superseded evidence and there was very little room for scientists in the halls of power. As that era recedes into the past, there’s cause for optimism — President Obama began his term with a pledge to “restore science to its rightful place” in government, and he has demonstrated a willingness to seriously consider the advice of scientific experts in formulating policy. Most exciting from the biogerontologist’s perspective, he has taken steps to do so by reversing George Bush’s ill-advised and religiously motivated ban on the use of federal funds in embryonic stem cell research.

His comment includes the now standard scientist's dismissal of religious based morality and concludes with some sage advice:

... even if the establishment accepts us, we shouldn’t turn that acceptance in an opportunity to make ourselves into a priesthood that plays by special rules.

In his post, Chris Patil linked to an article in Seed magazine, which extends the argument that the Obama administration offers the potential for a new Enlightenment after the mini-dark ages of the Bush administration.  The article is authored by Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Crony Capitalism in America

Lets imagine that last year we borrowed $500,000 for a house we couldn't really afford.  Now, the house is maybe worth ~$400,000 (if we can find a buyer), we haven't paid our mortgage for the last six months, and the bank is threatening foreclosure.  We could put up (picking a round number) $25,000, have the government put up another $25,000 and guarantee tan additional  $300,000 and buy the mortgage for $350,000.  We would now have taken the house off the bank's balance sheet and moved it onto the government's tab.  If we turn around and sell the house for $375,000 (now the house is a bargain!) and we split the profit with the government, we will have made a nice %50 profit on the transaction.  If the house doesn't move, we can simply bail on the deal, we're out $25,000 and the government is on the hook for the rest.  If two deals work out of every three,we are doing pretty well; if we price the houses aggressively, and we have no reason not to, they will sell and we will make out like proverbial bandits!

There is only one problem with my plan.  There is no way the government will allow me to get in on the deal (even if I have the spare cash to invest.)  No, that is reserved for the banks, hedge funds, and other friends of Congress (although to be fair, they have some pretty powerful disincentives, since if they make so much money that it becomes an embarrassment for Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, or the President, they are likely to be threatened with exposure and bodily harm.)

This is my best guess for how these public-private partnerships are supposed to work.  The government (ie, you and me and the rest of us taxpayers) take on most of the risk and the private parties gain most of the profits.  There is a term for this kind of public-private partnership: Crony Capitalism.  Crony Capitalism has a long and glorious history, finding traditional  expression in South America and more recently coming to fruition in post-Communist Russia.

[Disclaimer: I am not a financial expert and don't claim any particular expertise when it comes to investing; if my characterization of the Geithner plan is completely askew, please correct me.  I hope I am wrong but thus far, haven't seen any reason to question my take on the plan.]

In his article in Rolling Stone, which contains many points upon which one could quibble, Matt Taibbi focuses his anger on those who engineered this mess and now are standing to profit from it:

The Treatment of Depression

Yesterday, in response to the spread of depression throughout the body politic, Bruce Kesler explained Why I’m Not Depressed. 

I’m not depressed.  Mostly because I’m a glass-half-full type, with the life experience that with difficulty and pain has seen and been shown that it is.

Depression implies a fixation upon the perceived negative forces at work, with a tendency toward paralysis of action to change them or our self.  These are unconstructive and self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.

Avoidance of or ending depressed feelings and behavior comes from attitudinal resilience and from engaging in efficacious actions.

No doubt, we’re in a mess, both of our own making and by others, and many in our political and societal elite are making it worse, with potential dire consequences.  Still, one must recognize the resilient strengths we have.  Forty-eight percent did not vote for Obama, despite a perfect-storm in his favor, and current polling shows him losing support, and even his allied media are having to take some notice of his excesses and lackings.  The US is emerging from this economic calamity relatively stronger than other countries.  The positive trend-line in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere that was hard-earned under Bush has not been abandoned by Obama, though it may become weakened.  Ordinary Americans are buckling down in their personal affairs and continuing to achieve for themselves, society, and our futures.

Bruce was concerned with the spread of despair on the Right, exemplified by the reactions of very well respected thinkers like Scott Johnson and Victor Davis Hansen but I am with Bruce on this, although as noted, the despair is spreading.

On Chaos

It would be a relief to take a break from the storm of incompetence and the lynch mob mentality that has overtaken our benighted leadership, but we are unlikely to have many opportunities to do so.  It seems to me that there are several questions hovering about that are not being addressed but are worth thinking about.

First, there is an assumption in Washington and in most of the press that the current economic crisis can be understood in relatively conventional terms.  In other words, we have seen this kind of crisis before.  That is as true when either conceptualized as a crisis caused by lack of regulation or as a result of governmental intrusion into the free markets;both approaches are conventional and ideologically consistent for their proponents and both miss the point that governments always interfere in free markets and the most important effort should be for government to focus on making the markets more transparent and responsible, rather than in attempting to manage the unmanageable. 

Second, there appears to be an assumption that "politics as usual", whether in the domestic or international sphere, will be adequate to deal with the consequences of the down turn.

I think there are good reasons to question whether either assumption is warranted; further, I believe that continuing to practice politics as usual has the real potential to exacerbate the economic crisis and precipitate international instability of a sort we have not seen in quite some time.

Part of what has brought the world's economy to its current straits can be understood as an effort to maintain a dysfunctional status quo in an increasingly dynamic world.  A "side effect" of the American experiment with liberal capitalism has been ever increasing wealth for the vast majority of Americans.  Even when wages have been effectively stagnant, the fruits of our technology have become increasingly available to even the more impoverished.  Consider that we no longer consider it unusual for a poor person to have a color TV, one or two video game systems, a computer, and at least one cell phone.  It is considered a disgrace that many poor people do not have high speed Internet access.  We have plenty of stuff.  We have more than enough food to eat (despite pockets of poverty) and we have more problems with obesity and diseases associated with affluence (Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Cancer) than with malnutrition and diseases of poverty (infectious disease, especially.)   Yet our ever increasing hunger for more stuff, as more desires are created by our incredibly innovative form of techno-capitalism, has led us to mortgage the future to try to keep up.  Thus, we have had several iterations of bubbles bursting, only to be replaced by new bubbles in a race to stay ahead of our debts.  The current approach of taking on exponentially more debt (is trillion a real number or does its magnitude make it an irrational number?) in order to maintain purchasing power cannot work indefinitely.

(An interesting question for any Quants out there: if we assume we are in a Kurzweilian proto-singularity, can the rate of increase in our wealth stay ahead of our rate of increase of our debt indefinitely?  Please state your assumptions for any calculation.)

It seems to me that there is a mismatch between the reality we are struggling with and the conventional means we are using to try to contain the crisis in our economy.

There is another mismatch that is evolving in dealing with the strategic dimensions of the current crises. 

The Roots of Anti-Semitism

In Anti-Semitism and the Paranoid Dynamic I focused on the compensatory and adaptive uses to which anti-Semitism has traditionally been directed.  Although in the long run anti-Semitism, like the paranoid delusions which are a model for the pathology, always fails.  It drains energy and attention away from productive pursuits and introduces a confounding variable that interferes with an accurate assessment of reality.  When one's sense of reality is impaired, function and adaptation suffer.  This raises the question of what fuels anti-Semitism?  As Bernard-Henri Lévy noted, in the quote I posted yesterday, anti-Semitism has protean expression, shifting its shape to fit the needs of the anti-Semite:

As always. Anti-Semitism has no fixed pattern; it does not present itself always in the same form. It’s like a virus which changes. What are the workings of its changes, what is its logic is tied, simply, to what is acceptable. It is as if anti-Semitism—without giving it an intelligence, which it doesn’t have—is searching for the precise words or intellectual schemes for allowing itself to be heard, to be supported by the most people. It is as if it were searching for the words which might help it advance, not under the flag of pure evil, but under the flag of an evil aiming sort of in a good direction.

When a particular symptom complex can be so easily applied in many disparate situations, it suggests that there are key unconscious components that need to be identified in order to understand its meaning.  Anti-Semitism has a long history, starting with the early Christians who used it to differentiate themselves frm the Jews and to discredit Judaism.  Included in their felt need to supplant the Jews as G-d's "chosen people" was a less conscious "sibling rivalry."

Once again...

work interferes with blogging.  Tomorrow I plan on looking at some of the unconscious determinants of anti-Semitism.  In a November interview with Guernica magazine (HT: Siggy) Bernard-Henri Lévy is asked about modern anti-Semitism.  His response is interesting; the emphasis is mine:

I’m a Liberal, But...
An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy

Guernica: One of the darknesses you look at in Left in Dark Times is anti-Semitism. What is the state of anti-Semitism today? Is it coming? Going away? Doing both at the same time?

Bernard-Henri Lévy: It’s doing both at the same time. Going away in its old shape. And coming back in its new shape. As always. Anti-Semitism has no fixed pattern; it does not present itself always in the same form. It’s like a virus which changes. What are the workings of its changes, what is its logic is tied, simply, to what is acceptable. It is as if anti-Semitism—without giving it an intelligence, which it doesn’t have—is searching for the precise words or intellectual schemes for allowing itself to be heard, to be supported by the most people. It is as if it were searching for the words which might help it advance, not under the flag of pure evil, but under the flag of an evil aiming sort of in a good direction.

When the Christians were anti-Semitic, they did not just say, We hate Jews. They said, We hate Jews because, unfortunately, they committed the great crime, which was to kill Christ. When Voltaire was anti-Semitic, he did not say, I hate Jews because there is something in their essence which deserves hate; he said, I hate them because they invented Christ.

And this is the sort of tricky way of assembling a big number of people around the speech of hatred. Barring that, you would have very few anti-Semites. So today, all the old processes of legitimacy are dying, are more or less dead. Not so many Christians really think that I killed Christ. Not so many followers of Voltaire really think I am guilty of having invented Christianity. Fewer and fewer believe in the racist identity of the Jews, of which people like me would be the bearers.

But we are facing the installment of a new scheme, with new arguments, new reasons, new logic, trying to make anti-Semitism again acceptable, relatively, according to the general mood of the times. In the chapter you allude to, I try to identify the words with which anti-Semitism must express itself in order to gather under its flag a reasonable number of people, which is a real danger, of course.

Read the entire interview.  Bernard-Henri Lévy is a man of the left, with a long familial pedigree.  It takes a fair amount of courage and intellectual honesty, both attributes in short supply on the Left today, for him to risk excommunication from the secular religion of leftism, yet his integrity forces the issue.  My comments to follow.