Theodore Dalrymple Speaks for Me

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Loquitur Veritatem

Among the proofs that we [humans] were not made for happiness but on the contrary often seek out its opposite is the fact that so many of us follow the news closely, though we know it will make us wretched to do so. We pretend that we have a need to be informed and are shocked when we meet someone who hasn’t the faintest idea of what is going on in the world. How can he bear to be so ignorant, how can he be so indifferent? It is our duty as citizens of a democracy to be informed, or to inform ourselves, even at the cost of our own misery; because, of course, news rarely gives us reasons to rejoice.

Economic news is almost always bad. The currency is too strong or too weak, never just right. The interest rate is too high or too low. Inflation is worryingly slow or fast. Natural resources are running out or no longer needed, and all the equipment to obtain them is redundant. Too much is imported and not enough exported, or vice versa. The minimum wage is too generous or too mean or should not exist at all. Shares are overvalued or undervalued, but however they are valued, the next crash is round the corner—though, of course, no exact date can be put upon it, which somehow makes the anxiety all the greater.

Political news, especially in relation to foreign affairs, is yet worse. The leaders of even the best countries are scoundrels, otherwise they wouldn’t be leaders. They are incompetent in everything except self-advancement and self-preservation. They don’t care a fig for the man in the street (of whom one is one). Whoever replaces them, however, will be even worse. Not for nothing did Gibbon tell us that “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”

The main point:

For the vast majority of those who follow the news, there is nothing they can do about it. They follow the news not because, by doing so, they might make it better, or because they will base any personal decisions on it, but because they are addicted. Somerset Maugham pointed out that great readers often read because they have the equivalent of withdrawal symptoms (in this case, boredom) if their eyes do not fall on print for any length of time, and they would rather read a railway timetable or the label of the ingredients of a prepared food that they have never eaten than nothing at all. “Of that lamentable company am I,” said Maugham—and so am I.

People are addicted to news that has a deleterious psychological effect on them but that they are impotent to affect [emphasis added].

I scan several dozen blogs a day and occasionally dip below a headline on Fox News if the subject interests me. But I am in search only of tidbits of interest (e.g., more examples of governmental malfeasance, more studies that debunk “climate change”, more proof that official reactions to the coronavirus were wrong-headed, more evidence that the election of 2020 was rigged to unseat Trump). In general, I eschew “news” (usually propaganda) about current events for the reason a vampire eschews sunlight: It shrivels my soul.

Where It All Went Wrong

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Loquitur Veritatem

When the usual suspects were rioting, looting, and destroying their own habitat last summer (and many previous summers), did you wonder what happened to the Riot Act? Said act, in its original (British) form, provides that

if any persons to the number of twelve or more, being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace, at any time after the last day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, and being required or commanded by any one or more justice or justices of the peace, or by the sheriff of the county, or his under-sheriff, or by the mayor, bailiff or bailiffs, or other head-officer, or justice of the peace of any city or town corporate, where such assembly shall be, by proclamation to be made in the King’s name, in the form herin after directed, to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, shall, to the number of twelve or more (notwithstanding such proclamation made) unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously remain or continue together by the space of one hour after such command or request made by proclamation, that then such continuing together to the number of twelve or more, after such command or request made by proclamation, shall be adjudged felony without benefit of clergy, and the offenders therein shall be adjudged felons, and shall suffer death as in a case of felony without benefit of clergy.

Would that it were so in these times.

But it isn’t so because the sob-sisters, bleeding-hearts and weeping-willies — who have always been with us — have for centuries (if not millennia) chipped away at the protections that keep the bad guys more or less in line. They have likewise chipped away at standards of performance.

The effective abolition of the death penalty in this country is just the tip of the melting iceberg of punishment.

Awards for showing up are symptomatic of the erosion of standards.

The two phenomena have been conjoined in the left’s treatment of law-enforcement. There are too many felons running loose because pre-felonious crimes aren’t punished harshly enough (a failure that is often justified by the demographic characteristics of offenders); felonies aren’t punished harshly enough; paroles are too easily granted; police (those who are still on the force) are increasingly edgy about “mistreating” suspects who resist arrest; and affirmative action has ensured that law-enforcers are no longer as strong or quick-witted as they were in the past.

What did happen to the Riot Act (British version)? This:

The death penalty created by sections one, four and five of the act was reduced to transportation for life by section one of the Punishment of Offences Act 1837.

The Riot Act eventually drifted into disuse. The last time it was definitely read in England was in Birkenhead, Cheshire, on 3 August 1919, during the second police strike, when large numbers of police officers from Birkenhead, Liverpool and Bootle joined the strike. Troops were called in to deal with the rioting and looting that had begun, and a magistrate read out the Riot Act. None of the rioters subsequently faced the charge of a statutory felony. Earlier in the same year, at the battle of George Square on 31 January, in Glasgow, the city’s sheriff was in the process of reading the Riot Act to a crowd of 20-25,000 – when the sheet of paper he was reading from was ripped out of his hands by one of the rioters.

The last time it was read in the Scotland was by the deputy town clerk James Gildea in Airdrie in 1971

The act was repealed on 18 July 1973 for the United Kingdom by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973, by which time riot was no longer punishable by death.

There is still a riot act in the United States, and it is sometimes used. Its use by President Trump during the Antifa-BLM riots of 2020 provoked the usual reactions: “Trump is a racist.” “Trump is Hitler.” And the left’s allies in the media simply refused to acknowledge the riots or, when they couldn’t be tossed down the memory hole, insisted on referring to them as “protests” (“mostly peaceful”, of course).

But the history of the Riot Act in Britain, which died from disuse long before it died officially, tells the sad tale of how sob-sisters, bleeding-hearts, and weeping-willies — and leftists — have undermined the rule of law and made the world a less-civilized and less-safe place for the vast majority of its denizens.

None of this would have happened if God had smitten Adam and Eve for their transgression. Perhaps that’s where it all went wrong.

Seriously, though, it all went wrong in the way that most good things go bad. Just a little tweak here to make someone happier and a little tweak there to make someone else happier, and the next thing you know: the think is all tweaked out of shape. It’s like making a mountain out of a molehill: a shovelful at a time over a long period of time will do the trick.

Related posts: Most of the posts listed here.

What Do Wokesters Want?

Posted on May 19, 2021 by Loquitur Veritatem

I am using “wokesters” as a convenient handle for persons who subscribe to a range of closely related movements, which include but are not limited to wokeness, racial justice, equity, gender equality, transgenderism, social justice, cancel culture, environmental justice, and climate-change activism. It is fair to say that the following views, which might be associated with one or another of the movements, are held widely by members of all the movements (despite the truths noted parenthetically):

Race is a social construct. (Despite strong scientific evidence to the contrary.)

Racism is a foundational and systemic aspect of American history. (Which is a convenient excuse for much of what follows.)

Racism explains every bad thing that has befallen people of color in America. (Ditto.)

America’s history must be repudiated by eradicating all vestiges of it that glorify straight white males of European descent. (Because wokesters are intolerant of brilliance and success of it comes from straight white males of European descent.)

The central government (when it is run by wokesters and their political pawns) should be the sole arbiter of human relations. (Replacing smaller units of government, voluntary contractual arrangements, families, churches, clubs, and other elements of civil society through which essential services are provided, economic wants are satisfied efficiently, and civilizing norms are inculcated and enforced), except for those institutions that are dominated by wokesters or their proteges, of course.)

[You name it] is a human right. (Which — unlike true rights, which all can enjoy without cost to others — must be provided at cost to others.)

Economics is a zero-sum game; the rich get rich at the expense of the poor. (Though the economic history of the United States — and the Western world — says otherwise. The rich get rich — often rising from poverty and middling circumstances — by dint of effort risk-taking, and in the process produce things of value for others while also enabling them to advance economically.)

Profit is a dirty word. (But I — the elite lefty who makes seven figures a year, thank you, deserve every penny of my hard-earned income.)

~~Sex~~ gender is assigned arbitrarily at birth. (Ludicrous).

Men can bear children. (Ditto.)

Women can have penises. (Ditto.)

Gender dysphoria in some children proves the preceding poiXXXX

Children can have two mommies, two daddies, or any combination of parents in any number and any gender. And, no, they won’t grow up anti-social for lack of traditional father (male) and mother (female) parents. (Just ask blacks who are unemployed for lack of education and serving prison time after having been raised without bread-winning fathers.)

Blacks, on average, are at the bottom of income and wealth distributions and at the top of the incarceration distribution — despite affirmative action, subsidized housing, welfare payments, etc. — because of racism. (Not because blacks, on average, are at the bottom of the intelligence distribution and have in many black communities adopted and enforced a culture the promotes violence and denigrates education?)

Black lives matter. (More than other lives? Despite the facts adduced above?)

Police are racist Nazis and ought to be de-funded. (So that law abiding blacks and other Americans can become easier targets for rape, murder, and theft.)

Grades, advanced placement courses, aptitude tests, and intelligence tests are racist devices. (Which happen to enable the best and brightest — regardless of race, sex, or socioeconomic class — to lead the country forward scientifically and economically, to the benefit of all.)

The warming of the planet by a couple of degrees in the past half-century (for reasons that aren’t well understood but which are attributed by latter-day Puritans to human activity) is a sign of things to come: Earth will warm to the point that it becomes almost uninhabitable. (Which is a case of undue extrapolation from demonstrably erroneous models and a failure to credit the ability of capitalism — gasp! — to adapt successfully to truly significant climatic changes.)

Science is real. (Though we don’t know what science is, and believe things that are labeled scientific if we agree with them. We don’t understand, or care, that science is a process that sometimes yields useful knowledge, or that the “knowledge” is always provisional, always in doubt, and sometimes wrong. We support the movement of recent decades to label some things as scientific that are really driven by a puritanical, anti-humanistic agenda, and which don’t hold up against rigorous, scientific examination, such as the debunked “science” of “climate change”; the essential equality of the races and sexes, despite their scientifically demonstrable differences; and the belief that a man can become a woman, and vice versa.)

~~Illegal immigrants~~ migrants are just seeking a better life and should be allowed free entry into the United States. (Because borders are arbitrary — except when it comes to my property — and it doesn’t matter if the unfettered enty ro illegal immigrants burdens tax-paying Americans and takes jobs from working-class Americans.)

The United States spends too much on national defense because (a) borders are arbitrary (except when they delineate my property), (b) there’s no real threat to this country (except for cyberattacks and terrorism sponsored by other states, and growing Chinese and Russian aggression that imperils the economic interests of Americans), (c) America is the aggressor (except in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Gulf War I, the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and in the future if America significantly reduces its defense forces), and (d) peace is preferable to war (except that it is preparedness for war that ensures peace, either through deterrence or victory).

What wokesters want is to see that these views, and many others of their ilk, are enforced by the central government. To that end, steps will be taken to ensure that the Democrat Party is permanently in control of the central government and is able to control most State governments. Accordingly, voting laws will be “reformed” to enable everyone, regardless of citizenship status or other qualification (perhaps excepting age, or perhaps not) to receive a mail-in ballot that will be harvested and cast for Democrat candidates; the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico (with their iron-clad Democrat super-majorities) will be added to the Union; the filibuster will be abolished; the Supreme Court and lower courts will be expanded and new seats will be filled by Democrat nominees; and on, and on.

Why do wokesters want what they want? Here’s my take:

They reject personal responsibility.
They don’t like the sense of real community that is represented in the traditional institutions of civil society.
They don’t like the truth if it contradicts their view of what the world should be like.
They are devoid of true compassion.
They are — in sum — alienated, hate-filled nihilists, the produce of decades of left-wing indoctrination by public schools, universities, and the media.

What will wokesters (and all of us) get?

At best, what they will get is a European Union on steroids, a Kafka-esque existence in a world run by bureaucratic whims from which entrepreneurial initiative and deeply rooted, socially binding cultures have been erased.

Somewhere between best and worst, they will get an impoverished, violent, drug-addled dystopia which is effectively a police state run for the benefit of cosseted political-media-corprate-academic elites.

At worst (as if it could get worse), what they will get is life under the hob-nailed boots of Russia and China:; for example:

Russians are building a military focused on killing people and breaking things. We’re apparently building a military focused on being capable of explaining microaggressions and critical race theory to Afghan Tribesmen.

A country whose political leaders oppose the execution of murderers, support riots and looting by BLM, will not back Israel in it’s life-or-death struggle with Islamic terrorists, and use the military to advance “wokeism” isn’t a country that you can count on to face down Russia and China.

Wokesters are nothing but useful idiots to the Russians and Chinese. And if wokesterst succeed in weakening the U.S. to the point that it becomes a Sino-Soviet vassal, they will be among the first to learn what life under an all-powerful central government is really like. Though, useful idiots that they are, they won’t survive long enough to savor the biter fruits of their labors.

Centrism: The Path to Dystopia

Posted on May 18, 2021 by Loquitur Veritatem

Centrism is the habit of seeking compromise between opposing positions. It is the expression of the centrist’s personality, not a political philosophy. (I speak from personal experience with a self-proclaimed centrist who is chameleon-like in his willingness to adapt to his political environment — integrity be damned.)

Centrism fails because it doesn’t offer a concrete position to which one might adhere. Centrism is nothing but a reluctance or refusal to choose between concrete positions. A centrist has no principles to offer, unless you think of indecision and conflict avoidance as principles. But they are in fact the personality traits that underlie centrism.

Conflict is unavoidable — at least when it comes to political conflict that involves the foundational principles of governance. There are only two foundational principles that are viable in the long run: conservatism of temperament and left-statism (see this). Conservatism of temperament underlies ideological conservatism, which propounds government that is limited to the defense of life, liberty, and property — where liberty is negative liberty, the right to be left alone.

Left-statism is also a matter of temperament. As I say here,

If there is a distinction between “liberalism”, “progressivism”, and left-statism, it is one of attitude rather than aims. Many a “liberal” and “progressive” wants things that require oppressive state control, but is loath to admit the truth that oppressive state control is required to have such things. These naifs want to believe the impossible: that the accomplishment of the “progressive” agenda is compatible with the preservation of liberty. The left-statist simply doesn’t care about liberty; the accomplishment of the left-statist agenda is the end that justifies any and all means. Those “liberals” and “progressives” who aren’t left-statists by attitude are merely useful idiots to hard-core, Lenin-like left-statists.

So in the battle between conservatism and left-statism, the centrist abets left-statism by encouraging compromises that allow it to creep into governance step by step. As the Chinese proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. All it takes to achieve left-statist aims is to keep moving toward them as centrists clear the way by giving in, a foot at a time.

Political centrists include any Republican who has or would collaborate with Democrats on any matter that led or will lead to the further empowerment and aggrandizement of the central government. Religious centrists include any Catholic cleric who would or does administer Holy Communion to a “pro-choice” politician. Judicial centrists include any justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who rescues a statist policy (e.g., John Roberts’s rescue of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate by calling a penalty a tax). I am sure that you can add to that list.

There is plenty of centrism around. But the only excusable centrism is the kind that is practiced out of politeness, to avoid pointless conflicts (e.g., Thanksgiving dinner arguments about politics and football). The rest of it is just weakness in the face of left-statism, weakness that is not and will not be rewarded by favors from left-statists when they prevail.

To quote Karl Popper:

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

The defense of toleration may well require something that centrists cannot contemplate: a violent showdown with leftists.

Related reading:

Roger L. Simon, “How ‘Woke’ May Be Leading Us to Civil War“, The Epoch Times, May 9, 2011

“Tyler Durden”, “The American Cyber Stasi Will Suppress All Digital Dissent in Biden’s Dystopia“, ZeroHedge, May 11, 2011

“We Believe”

Posted on January 23, 2021 by Loquitur Veritatem

Unless you live in Deep-Red territory, you will have seen one or more of these in your neighborhood:

These signs are displayed in front of two of the ten houses on my short street. I’m surprised that there aren’t more, because I live in Deep-Blue Austin.

At any rate, sign-sighting tells me something about the persons who post the signs — in addition to their visceral leftism, virtue-signaling (to others of their ilk), and pathetic resort to sloganeering as a religion-substitute.

What is the meaning of each slogan? Here are my interpretations:

Black live matter — We don’t care about black-on-black murder (and other crimes). We don’t care about the demonstrably higher rate of criminality among blacks. We just want to wallow in white guilt about the rare instances in which white (and sometimes non-white) police officers unjustifiably kill blacks.

No human is illegal — This is a bit of nonsense which signifies support for illegal immigration. It labels the believers as persons who disrespect the rule of law and are eager to import more votes for left-wing politicians.

Love is love — This is another bit of nonsense which signifies support homosexuality and the “marriage” of homosexuals. It signifies an eagerness to reject civilizing social norms, as long as the results don’t directly affect the eager believer.

Women’s rights are human rights — This defies translation. Perhaps it means that women are human beings, which is a rather banal statement. And what are “human rights”, anyway? They seem to consist of a list of things that do-gooders would like to force the “haves” to pay for so that they (the do-gooders) can feel better about themselves.

Science is real (or is it “racist“?) — We don’t know what science is, but we believe things that are labeled scientific if we agree with them. We don’t understand (or care) that science is a process that sometimes yields useful knowledge, or that the knowledge is always provisional and always in doubt. We support the movement of recent decades to label some things as scientific that are really driven by a puritanical, anti-humanistic agenda, and which don’t hold up against rigorous, scientific examination. (Examples are the debunked “science” of “climate change”; the essential equality of the races and sexes (despite their scientifically demonstrable differences); and the belief that a man can become a woman, and vice versa.)

Water is life — I don’t water my property, and you shouldn’t either. (Well, may you should quit cooking, taking showers, and washing your car. Watering my property is a way of preserving vegetation that absorbs CO2, provides shade, and harbors wildlife — so there!)

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere — This is more incoherent nonsense. Imagine a regime that condones the stoning to death of adulterers, and imagine a regime that punishes such activity. Does the first regime somehow infect the second one? Or is it possible that the second regime might be a threat to the first one. Of course, true believers who post yard signs filled with nonsense are the kind of people of support regimes of the first kind because they are anti-American and not beholden to “decadent” Western values, such as the prohibition of stoning as punishment (or the defense of the millions of victims of abortion).

Thinking about Thinking — and Other Things: Desiderata As Beliefs

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

This is the fifth post in a series. (The previous posts are here, here, here, and here.)This post, like its predecessors, will leave you hanging. But despair not, the series will come to a point — eventually. In the meantime, enjoy the ride.

How many things does a human being believe because he wants to believe them, and not because there is compelling evidence to support his beliefs? Here is a small sample of what must be an extremely long list:

There is a God. (1a)

There is no God. (1b)

There is a Heaven. (2a)

There is no Heaven. (2b)

Jesus Christ was the Son of God. (3a)

Jesus Christ, if he existed, was a mere mortal. (3b)

Marriage is the eternal union, blessed by God, of one man and one woman. (4a)

Marriage is a civil union, authorized by the state, of one or more consenting adults (or not) of any gender, as the participants in the marriage so define themselves to be. (4b)

All human beings should have equal rights under the law, and those rights should encompass not only negative rights (e.g., the right not to be murdered) but also positive rights (e.g., the right to a minimum wage). (5a)

Human beings are, at bottom, feral animals and cannot therefore be expected to abide always by artificial constructs, such as equal rights under the law. Accordingly, there will always be persons who use the law (or merely brute force) to set themselves above other persons. (5b)

The rise in global temperatures over the past 170 years has been caused primarily by a greater concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which rise has been caused by human activity – and especially by the burning of fossil fuels. This rise, if it isn’t brought under control will make human existence far less bearable and prosperous than it has been in recent human history. (6a)

The rise in global temperatures over the past 170 years has not been uniform across the globe, and has not been in lockstep with the rise in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The temperatures of recent decades, and the rate at which they are supposed to have risen, are not unprecedented in the long view of Earth’s history, and may therefore be due to conditions that have not been given adequate consideration by believers in anthropogenic global warming (e.g., natural shifts in ocean currents that have different effects on various regions of Earth, the effects of cosmic radiation on cloud formation as influenced by solar activity and the position of the solar system and the galaxy with respect to other objects in the universe, the shifting of Earth’s magnetic field, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates and its molten core). In any event, the models of climate change have been falsified against measured temperatures (even when the temperature record has been adjusted to support the models). And predictions of catastrophe do not take into account the beneficial effects of warming (e.g., lower mortality rates, longer growing seasons), whatever causes it, or the ability of technology to compensate for undesirable effects at a much lower cost than the economic catastrophe that would result from preemptive reductions in the use of fossil fuels. (6b)

Not one of those assertions, even the ones that seem to be supported by facts, is true beyond a reasonable doubt. I happen to believe 1a (with some significant qualifications about the nature of God), 2b, 3b (given my qualified version of 1a), a modified version of 4a (monogamous, heterosexual marriage is socially and economically preferable, regardless of its divine blessing or lack thereof), 5a (but only with negative rights) and 5b, and 6b. But I cannot “prove” that any of my beliefs is the correct one, nor should anyone believe that anyone can “prove” such things.

Take the belief that all persons are created equal. No one who has eyes, ears, and a minimally functioning brain believes that all persons are created equal. Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, didn’t believe it:

On September 18, 1858 at Charleston, Illinois, Lincoln told the assembled audience:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality … I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men….

This was before Lincoln was elected president and before the outbreak of the Civil War, but Lincoln’s speeches, writings, and actions after these events continued to reflect this point of view about race and equality.

African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, for his part, remained very skeptical about Lincoln’s intentions and program, even after the p[resident issued a preliminary emancipation in September 1862.

Douglass had good reason to mistrust Lincoln. On December 1, 1862, one month before the scheduled issuing of an Emancipation Proclamation, the president offered the Confederacy another chance to return to the union and preserve slavery for the foreseeable future. In his annual message to congress, Lincoln recommended a constitutional amendment, which if it had passed, would have been the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The amendment proposed gradual emancipation that would not be completed for another thirty-seven years, taking slavery in the United States into the twentieth century; compensation, not for the enslaved, but for the slaveholder; and the expulsion, supposedly voluntary but essentially a new Trail of Tears, of formerly enslaved Africans to the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa….

Douglass’ suspicions about Lincoln’s motives and actions once again proved to be legitimate. On December 8, 1863, less than a month after the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln offered full pardons to Confederates in a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction that has come to be known as the 10 Percent Plan.

Self-rule in the South would be restored when 10 percent of the “qualified” voters according to “the election law of the state existing immediately before the so-called act of secession” pledged loyalty to the union. Since blacks could not vote in these states in 1860, this was not to be government of the people, by the people, for the people, as promised in the Gettysburg Address, but a return to white rule.

It is unnecessary, though satisfying, to read Charles Murray’s account in Human Diversity of the broad range of inherent differences in intelligence and other traits that are associated with the sexes, various genetic groups of geographic origin (sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, etc.), and various ethnic groups (e.g., Ashkenazi Jews).

But even if all persons are not created equal, either mentally or physically, aren’t they equal under the law? If you believe that, you might just as well believe in the tooth fairy. As it says in 5b,

Human beings are, at bottom, feral animals and cannot therefore be expected to abide always by artificial constructs, such as equal rights under the law. Accordingly, there will always be persons who use the law (or merely brute force) to set themselves above other persons.

Yes, it’s only a hypothesis, but one for which there is ample evidence in the history of mankind. It is confirmed by every instance of theft, murder, armed aggression, scorched-earth warfare, mob violence as catharsis, bribery, election fraud, gratuitous cruelty, and so on into the night.

And yet, human beings (Americans especially) persist in believing tooth-fairy stories about the inevitable triumph of good over evil, self-correcting science, and the emergence of truth from the marketplace of ideas. Balderdash, all of it.

But desiderata become beliefs. And beliefs are what bind people – or make enemies of them.

Reflections on Aging and Social Disengagement

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

Aging is of interest to me because I suddenly and surprisingly find myself among the oldest ten percent of Americans.

I also find myself among the more solitary of Americans. My wife and I rattle about in a house that could comfortably accommodate a family of six, with plenty of space in which to have sizeable gatherings (which we no longer do). But I am not lonely in my solitude, for it is and long has been of my own choosing. Lockdowns and self-isolation haven’t affected me a bit. Life, for me, goes on as usual and as I like it.

This is so because of my strong introversion. I suppose that the seeds of my introversion are genetic, but the symptoms didn’t appear in earnest until I was in my early thirties. After that I became steadily more focused on a few friendships (which eventually dwindled to none) and decidedly uninterested in the aspects of work that required more than brief meetings (one-on-one preferred). Finally, enough became more than enough and I quit full-time work at the age of fifty-six. There followed, a few years later, a stint of part-time work that also became more than enough. And so, at the age of fifty-nine, I banked my final paycheck. Happily.

What does my introversion have to do with my aging? I suspected that my continued withdrawal from social intercourse (more about that, below) might be a symptom of aging. And I found this, in the Wikipedia article “Disengagement Theory“:

The disengagement theory of aging states that “aging is an inevitable, mutual withdrawal or disengagement, resulting in decreased interaction between the aging person and others in the social system he belongs to”. The theory claims that it is natural and acceptable for older adults to withdraw from society….

Disengagement theory was formulated by [Elaine] Cumming and [William Earl] Henry in 1961 in the book Growing Old, and it was the first theory of aging that social scientists developed….

The disengagement theory is one of three major psychosocial theories which describe how people develop in old age. The other two major psychosocial theories are the activity theory and the continuity theory, and the disengagement theory [is at] odds with both.

The continuity theory

states that older adults will usually maintain the same activities, behaviors, relationships as they did in their earlier years of life. According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continuity of lifestyle by adapting strategies that are connected to their past experiences [whatever that means].

I don’t see any conflict between the continuity theory and the disengagement theory. A strong introvert like me, for example, finds it easy to maintain the same activities, behaviors, and relationships as I did before I retired. Which is to say that I had begun minimizing my social interactions before retiring, and continued to do so after retiring.

What about the activity theory? Well, it’s a normative theory, unlike the other two (which are descriptive), and it goes like this:

The activity theory … proposes that successful aging occurs when older adults stay active and maintain social interactions. It takes the view that the aging process is delayed and the quality of life is enhanced when old people remain socially active.

That’s just a social worker’s view of “appropriate” behavior for older persons. Take my word for it, introverts don’t need it social activity, which is stressful for them, and resent those who try to push them into it. The life of the mind is far more rewarding than chit-chat with geezers. Why do you suppose my wife and I will do everything in our power to stay in our own home until we die? It’s not just because we love our home so much (and we do), but we can’t abide the idea of communal living, even in an upscale retirement community.

Anyway, I mentioned my continued withdrawal from social intercourse. A particular, recent instance of withdrawal sparked this post. For about fifteen years I corresponded regularly with a former colleague. He has a malady that I have dubbed email-arrhea: several messages a day to a large mailing list, with many insipid replies from recipients whose choose “reply all”. Enough of that finally became too much, and I declared to him my intention to refrain from correspondence until … whenever. (“Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”) So all of his messages and those of his other correspondents are dumped automatically into my Gmail trash folder, and I no longer use Gmail.

My withdrawal from that particular node of social intercourse was eased by the fact that the correspondent is a collaborationist “conservative” with a deep-state mindset. So it was satisfying to terminate our relationship — and devote more time to things that I enjoy, like blogging.

It’s the 1960s Redux

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

The death of George Floyd, which was caused (if only indirectly) by a member of the Minneapolis Police Department, has met with predictable reactions:

1. Trump is to blame for creating an “atmosphere of hate”.

2. The cop’s behavior is symptomatic of “systemic racism” in the United States.

3. Ergo, rioting — not just in Minneapolis but in some other large cities as well.

My thoughts:

1. The “atmosphere of hate” line is high irony, inasmuch as Trump and those who support him are targets of unremitting hatred. There’s a lot of psychological projection at work here.

2. The charge of “systemic racism” is symptomatic of systemic stereotyping by leftists who don’t want to acknowledge the next point and its consequences (discussed below).

3. Persons of low intelligence are more prone to violence than their more-intelligent peers.

The underlying problem hasn’t changed since the wave of urban riots in the 1960s:

Blacks, on average, are significantly less intelligent than whites of European descent, East Asians, and Ashkenzi Jews (a special class of whites of European descent).

Therefore, blacks generally earn less than than members of the other groups because (a) they are less employable and (b) their skills are less valuable (except for the small fraction of blacks who make it big in sports and entertainment).

Blacks, like most human beings, tend to live among persons who are similarly situated: economically, culturally, and racially. “Racism” is a two-way street.

Because large cities contain high concentrations of low-income blacks, resentments can quickly generate violence — not just where a triggering event occurs but wherever low-income blacks are concentrated.

A triggering event — like the death of George Floyd — ignites the simmering and long-standing resentment that must be felt among a large segment of the black population. That resentment is about the failure of blacks generally to advance relative to whites. The source of the resentment is found in the rhetoric of white “liberals”, who constantly peddle this untruth in return for black votes:

The social and economic distance between blacks and whites is due to white racism, and nothing else.

Another Big Lie from the left yields another tragic consequence.

Release Your Inner Introvert

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

I believe that the tendencies toward introversion and extraversion are inborn. But like many innate traits, their expression is influenced by environment. A born introvert, for example, may have to act like an extravert because of his job, the friends he has made, or some other social aspect of his life.

But lockdowns have allowed tens of millions of persons to work at home rather than in an office. And lockdowns have greatly altered socialization: no dining out, no social gatherings, no church-going, etc.

Such changes, I suspect, have caused many millions of suppressed introverts to discover that they are happier than they were before the lockdowns began. Work is less draining because it is less “close up and personal”. The absence of socialization comes as a surprising relief — no more anxiety about what others might do or say that requires a response or comment; no more anxiety about participating in events the one doesn’t really enjoy.

Not all reborn introverts will continue to enjoy their new freedom, of course. But many of them will do more of their work (perhaps all of it) from home if they are given the option of doing so. And many of them will allow some social “obligations” to lapse, and feel good about it.

So lockdowns have a liberating aspect. Who knew?

A Word to the Unwise

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

This post is aimed at young-ish heterosexual males, though persons of other persuasions may find it amusing — or provocative.

It’s hard to tell love from lust when you’re in your late teens or twenties, and possibly even your thirties. But if you are inclined to wed, proceed cautiously. Here are some reasons for caution:

!. There are lots of good fish in the sea. Don’t be bowled over by the first woman who returns your infatuation, or the one who catches you on the rebound from a failed relationship.

2. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. If you take obligations seriously — and you should if you want a happy marriage — you are inviting years and decades of repentance if you make the wrong (hasty, uninformed) choice.

3. If you are not a “liberal” at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain. Men and women don’t always follow the same political path through life, and divergence can badly strain a marriage. Be on the lookout for hints that your intended is a “liberal” at heart, that is, all for the “general good” of mankind but not big on personal responsibility, accomplishment, and liberty. (See #4.)

4. Like mother (or father), like daughter. Not necessarily in looks, but very likely in personality. Get to know the parents, if you can, and take stock of their traits. If one parent (or both) exhibits a trait or traits that you will find it hard or impossible to live with, be wary of wedding the daughter. (See #1.) The list of traits that might be unbearable is too long to recite here, but these are a few that I would watch for: nagging, controlling, crabby, self-centered, spiteful, resentful of the success of others, and unforgiving.

Keeping Up with the News

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

Do you remember when a daily or weekly newspaper — whether local, regional, or national in scope — was delivered to almost every home? I do.

The prevalence of newspapers — in number and market saturation — probably peaked in the 1950s. Though radio had been around for a while, radio news complemented papers rather than supplanting them. It took the rise of television, with its combination of images and immediacy, to reverse the prevalence of newspapers.

The effect that TV had on the newspaper business was intensified and supplanted by rise of the internet as a source of “information”. The rise of the internet has also pushed TV news to the edge of irrelevancy, but iit has managed to survive by become more sensationalized and politically extreme.

TV and the internet, with their mass audiences, are better suited than newspapers to the ultra-urbanization and homogenization of America, which still had far to go in the middle of the 20th century. The effects of ultra-urbanization and homogenization — the devastation of small-town America and the rise of “bowling alone” — are reflected in the elimination or drastic reduction of the kind of fare that was common to local and even regional papers: reports of illnesses, hospitalizations, visits (to and from the home town), scholastic achievements and awards (from kindergarten on up), graduations from college, engagements, weddings, births, and divorces. Only “obituaries” seem to thrive, but almost all of them aren’t the news stories of yore but, rather, paid death announcements placed through funeral homes.

The death-spiral of the newspaper business — less content, fewer readers, fewer advertisers, less content, etc. — is now several decades old. Regional papers have gone out of business or consolidated. Local papers have gone out of business or been absorbed (though ineffectively) by regional papers. The content of the remaining papers consists largely of syndicated material that is bought by the yard. There’s still a market for stories about local events of general interest (e.g., sports, local government, crime, highway construction) that aren’t covered (or are covered superficially) on TV or the internet.

As for myself, I long ago quit watching TV ~~news~~ bias (except when there is a weather person who gives detailed and informative reports), just as I quit reading print ~~news~~ bias (except for local news that might affect me). The obvious reason is that I have for almost 60 years (unfortunately) lived where what passes for news is really leftist propaganda: “big government good”, “believe almost all women (accusers of Democrats excepted)”, etc., etc., etc. I am immune to such propaganda and have no wish to encourage or subsidize its transmission.

Because of my blogging I’m usually tracking down information — facts, numbers, cogent analyses — rather than absorbing media memes and narratives. I pick and choose from dozens of online sources of information, preferring those that deliver documented facts to those that are freighted with opinion. I eschew right-wing and left-wing propaganda outlets with equal distaste.

Yes, I read the headlines to keep more or less au courant with significant happenings. But the story behind the headlines often emerges slowly and in bits and pieces. The Trump-Russia-collusion narrative, for example, is just now becoming known as what it was all along: Obamagate. It’s the deeper story that interests me, and it takes a lot of surfing to ferret it out.

Most of my offline reading time is devoted to books and articles about science, philosophy, and history. I read a lot of book-length literary fiction, too, with an occasional foray into the detective-mystery-thriller genre.

Time was when I read the print edition of the The Washington Post daily, and at length; ditto the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Now, I give a few minutes of my day to some of come strips carried online by the Post, though the roster of strips worth reading dwindles with every passing year. Similarly, the Times is good for the crossword and a couple of word games. It’s all in the name of saving trees, of course.

Ain’t It the Truth?

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

I’m reading Charles Murray’s Human Diversity, which I mention here. (It’s a book that leftists will hate, even though they won’t read it, just as they hated The Bell Curve without having read it.)

The following passage is consistent with my up-close and personal observations of women, which span more than six decades:

In the psychological literature, rumination refers to thoughts, typically autobiographical, that a person mentally rehearses over and over, usually not productively. When they are negative thoughts, rumination amounts to brooding. Taken to an extreme, rumination can become depression. In the 1990s, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema led several studies establishing that women were more likely than men to ruminate, particularly in response to negative events. In the early 2000s, two studies using brain imaging established a biological basis for those findings…. The finding in both studies was that males quickly became habituated to a stimulus—the response in the amygdala decreased rapidly after the first few exposures—whereas it persisted among women. In 2013, researchers at the Harvard Medical School (Joseph Andreano was the first author) tested whether this pattern replicated for both positive and negative stimuli. It did not. As in previous studies, men showed higher amygdala activity for novel stimuli than women no matter whether the stimulus was negative, neutral, or positive. For familiar positive stimuli, men again had a higher response than women. But when it came to negative stimuli, men quickly habituated while women continued to show substantial amygdala activity even after repeated exposure. The difference was large enough that it reached statistical significance despite the small sample size.

Now recall the table in chapter 2 that showed the prevalence of personality disorders by sex. Men had higher incidence rates on the autism spectrum, conduct disorders, ADHD, and schizophrenia, among others. Women had higher prevalence on another set, including three that involve rumination: major depression, generalized anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The findings I have just summarized point to a sex difference both in the intensity of initial reaction to negative stimuli and in the persistence of that reaction, which in turn point to a difference in rumination.

Amen. The world-class worriers-brooders-haters whom I have known were (and are) women.

Insidious Algorithms

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

Michael Anton inveighs against Big Tech and pseudo-libertarian collaborators in “Dear Avengers of the Free Market” (Law & Liberty, October 5, 2018):

Beyond the snarky attacks on me personally and insinuations of my “racism”—cut-and-paste obligatory for the “Right” these days—the responses by James Pethokoukis and (especially) John Tamny to my Liberty Forum essay on Silicon Valley are the usual sorts of press releases that are written to butter up the industry and its leaders in hopes of . . . what?…

… I am accused of having “a fundamental problem with capitalism itself.” Guilty, if by that is meant the reservations about mammon-worship first voiced by Plato and Aristotle and reinforced by the godfather of capitalism, Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (the book that Smith himself indicates is the indispensable foundation for his praise of capitalism in the Wealth of Nations). Wealth is equipment, a means to higher ends. In the middle of the last century, the Right rightly focused on unjust impediments to the creation and acquisition of wealth. But conservatism, lacking a deeper understanding of the virtues and of human nature—of what wealth is for—eventually ossified into a defense of wealth as an end in itself. Many, including apparently Pethokoukis and Tamny, remain stuck in that rut to this day and mistake it for conservatism.

Both critics were especially appalled by my daring to criticize modern tech’s latest innovations. Who am I to judge what people want to sell or buy? From a libertarian standpoint, of course, no one may pass judgment. Under this view, commerce has no moral content…. To homo economicus any choice that does not inflict direct harm is ipso facto not subject to moral scrutiny, yet morality is defined as the efficient, non-coercive, undistorted operation of the market.

Naturally, then, Pethokoukis and Tamny scoff at my claim that Silicon Valley has not produced anything truly good or useful in a long time, but has instead turned to creating and selling things that are actively harmful to society and the soul. Not that they deny the claim, exactly. They simply rule it irrelevant. Capitalism has nothing to do with the soul (assuming the latter even exists). To which I again say: When you elevate a means into an end, that end—in not being the thing it ought to be—corrupts its intended beneficiaries.

There are morally neutral economic goods, like guns, which can be used for self-defense or murder. But there are economic goods that undermine morality (e.g., abortion, “entertainment” that glamorizes casual sex) and fray the bonds of mutual trust and respect that are necessary to civil society. (How does one trust a person who treats life and marriage as if they were unworthy of respect?)

There’s a particular aspect of Anton’s piece that I want to emphasize here: Big Tech’s alliance with the left in its skewing of information.

Continuing with Anton:

The modern tech information monopoly is a threat to self-government in at least three ways. First its … consolidation of monopoly power, which the techies are using to guarantee the outcome they want and to suppress dissent. It’s working….

Second, and related, is the way that social media digitizes pitchforked mobs. Aristocrats used to have to fear the masses; now they enable, weaponize, and deploy them…. The grandees of Professorville and Sand Hill Road and Outer Broadway can and routinely do use social justice warriors to their advantage. Come to that, hundreds of thousands of whom, like modern Red Guards, don’t have to be mobilized or even paid. They seek to stifle dissent and destroy lives and careers for the sheer joy of it.

Third and most important, tech-as-time-sucking-frivolity is infantilizing and enstupefying society—corroding the reason-based public discourse without which no republic can exist….

But all the dynamism and innovation Tamny and Pethokoukis praise only emerge from a bedrock of republican virtue. This is the core truth that libertarians seem unable to appreciate. Silicon Valley is undermining that virtue—with its products, with its tightening grip on power, and with its attempt to reengineer society, the economy, and human life.

I am especially concerned here with the practice of tinkering with AI algorithms to perpetuate bias in the name of eliminating it (e.g., here). The bias to be perpetuated, in this case, is blank-slate bias: the mistaken belief that there are no inborn differences between blacks and whites or men and women. It is that belief which underpins affirmative action in employment, which penalizes the innocent and reduces the quality of products and services, and incurs heavy enforcement costs; “head start” programs, which waste taxpayers’ money; and “diversity” programs at universities, which penalize the innocent and set blacks up for failure. Those programs and many more of their ilk are generally responsible for heightening social discord rather than reducing it.

In the upside-down world of “social justice” an algorithm is considered biased if it is unbiased; that is, if it reflects the real correlations between race, sex, and ability in certain kinds of endeavors. Charles Murray’s Human Diversity demolishes the blank-slate theory with reams and reams of facts. Social-justice warriors will hate it, just as they hated The Bell Curve, even though they won’t read the later book, just as they didn’t read the earlier one.

Further Introspection: Libertarian Conservatism and Other-Worldliness

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

Regarding the emotional distance that I put between myself and a long-time friend, there may have been more to it than our political differences. The distancing happened at about the time that I was in general retreat from the noisy world around me. I had by that time no other friends, having spent my last few years of full-time work in the relative isolation afforded by my fixation on a major project and having cut myself off from colleagues with whom I had previously enjoyed cordial relations.

As I have said: No man is an island. But I am a gated peninsula.

The less I am in the world, the happier I am.

My politics — libertarian conservative — must be driven by my personality.

See these related pages and posts:

“About”
“My Moral Profile”
“Political Ideologies”

“Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness”
“Solitude for the Masses” and the items linked to therein
“Friendship and Personality”
“‘Libertarianism’, the Autism Spectrum, and Ayn Rand“

An Introspection

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

A long-time friend died of cancer this morning after fighting it for five years. By “long-time friend” I mean that he was a friend — a close friend — for many years, but not in later years.

I admit that I began to think of him as something less than a friend when our political differences emerged in the 1990s. I was then becoming overtly conservative, whereas he remained as “liberal” as ever.

It isn’t to my credit that my feelings of friendship toward him dwindled because of our political differences, whereas he seemed not to let them affect his friendship for me. (It’s not just “liberals” who let political differences affect their feelings toward others, though many of them do — as I’ve seen first-hand.)

Our friendship began in 1970, when we worked together on project: he as a civil servant, me as an outside analyst. From that beginning grew a friendship that included our wives. My wife became as much a friend to him as I had ever been, and their friendship was unaffected by political differences because they had none.

We frequently saw each other as couples until the early 2000s, when they moved to Colorado and we moved to Texas. After that we visited each other every year or two. But even after we moved to different parts of the country, my wife communicated regularly with him and his wife. I didn’t.

As he withered physically he reached out more frequently to my wife, mainly through text messages. This went on until he came to the end-stage of his illness a few weeks ago. And then silence ensued.

I was (and am) grateful that my wife remained close to him. Their continued friendship surely helped him to endure his last years and months more happily than would have been the case if she had shut him out.

Here, I will give myself some credit because I had never told her about my changed feelings toward him, nor the reason for the change. And I never will. He will always be our beloved friend of 50 years.

Fifty-Two Weeks on the Learning Curve

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

I first learned of the learning curve when I was a newly hired analyst at a defense think-tank. A learning curve

is a graphical representation of how an increase in learning (measured on the vertical axis) comes from greater experience (the horizontal axis); or how the more someone (or something) performs a task, the better they [sic] get at it.

In my line of work, the learning curve figured importantly in the estimation of aircraft procurement costs. There was a robust statistical relationship between the cost of making a particular model of aircraft and the cumulative number of such aircraft produced. Armed with the learning-curve equation and the initial production cost of an aircraft, it was easy to estimate of the cost of producing any number of the same aircraft.

The learning curve figures prominently in tests that purport to measure intelligence. Two factors that may explain the Flynn effect — a secular rise in average IQ scores — are aspects of learning: schooling and test familiarity and a generally more stimulating environment in which one learns more. The Flynn effect doesn’t measure changes in intelligence, it measures changes in IQ scores resulting from learning. There is an essential difference between ignorance and stupidity. The Flynn effect is about the former, not the latter.

Here’s a personal example of the Flynn effect in action. I’ve been doing The New York Times crossword puzzle online since February 18, 2019. I have completed all 365 puzzles published by TNYT from that date through the puzzle for February 17, 2020, with generally increasing ease:

The fitted curve is a decaying exponential, which means that progress continues but at an increasingly slower rate, which is typical of a learning curve.

The difficulty of the puzzle varies from day to day, with Monday puzzles being the easiest and Sunday puzzles being the hardest (as measured by time to complete):

For each day of the week, my best time is more recent than my worst time, and the trend of time to complete is downward for every day of the week (as reflected in the first graph above). In fact:

My worst times were all recorded in March through June of last year.

Today I tied my best time for a Monday puzzle.

I set or tied my best time for the Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday puzzles in the last three weeks.

In the same three weeks, my times for the Tuesday puzzle have twice been only a minute higher than my best.

I know that that I haven’t become more intelligent in the last 52 weeks. And being several decades past the peak of my intelligence, I am certain that it diminishes steadily, though in tiny increments (I hope). I have simply become more practiced at doing the crossword puzzle because I have learned a lot about it. For example, certain clues recur with some frequency, and they always have the same answers. Clues often have double meanings, which are hard to decipher at first, but which become easier to decipher with practice. There are other subtleties, all of which reflect the advantages of learning.

In a nutshell, I am no smarter than I was 52 weeks ago, but my ignorance of TNYT crossword puzzle has diminished significantly.

(See also “More about Intelligence“, “Selected Writings about Intelligence“, and especially “Intelligence“, in which I quote experts about the Flynn Effect.)

Psychiatry Is a Disorder

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

I happened upon “Schizoid personality disorder” (SPD) at Wikipedia, and wondered why it is a disorder, that is, a “bad thing”. A footnote in the article leads to a summary of SPD. Here are some excerpts:

A person with schizoid personality disorder often:

Appears distant and detached

Avoids social activities that involve emotional closeness with other people

Does not want or enjoy close relationships, even with family members….

People with schizoid personality disorder often do well in relationships that don’t focus on emotional closeness. They tend to be better at handling relationships that focus on:

Work

Intellectual activities

Expectations

In other words, persons who “suffer” from SPD may in fact be highly productive in pursuits that demand (and reward) prowess in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — a.k.a. STEM. But because they don’t conform strictly to a psychiatric definition of normality they are said to have a disorder.

What is the psychiatric definition of a normal personality? This is from a page at the website of the American Psychiatric Association (APA):

Personality is the way of thinking, feeling and behaving that makes a person different from other people. An individual’s personality is influenced by experiences, environment (surroundings, life situations) and inherited characteristics. A person’s personality typically stays the same over time. A personality disorder is a way of thinking, feeling and behaving that deviates from the expectations of the culture, causes distress or problems functioning, and lasts over time.

There are 10 specific types of personality disorders. Personality disorders are long-term patterns of behavior and inner experiences that differs significantly from what is expected. The pattern of experience and behavior begins by late adolescence or early adulthood and causes distress or problems in functioning. Without treatment, personality disorders can be long-lasting. Personality disorders affect at least two of these areas:

Way of thinking about oneself and others

Way of responding emotionally

Way of relating to other people

Way of controlling one’s behavior

Types of Personality Disorders

Antisocial personality disorder: a pattern of disregarding or violating the rights of others. A person with antisocial personality disorder may not conform to social norms, may repeatedly lie or deceive others, or may act impulsively.

Avoidant personality disorder: a pattern of extreme shyness, feelings of inadequacy and extreme sensitivity to criticism. People with avoidant personality disorder may be unwilling to get involved with people unless they are certain of being liked, be preoccupied with being criticized or rejected, or may view themselves as not being good enough or socially inept.

Borderline personality disorder: a pattern of instability in personal relationships, intense emotions, poor self-image and impulsivity. A person with borderline personality disorder may go to great lengths to avoid being abandoned, have repeated suicide attempts, display inappropriate intense anger or have ongoing feelings of emptiness.

Dependent personality disorder: a pattern of needing to be taken care of and submissive and clingy behavior. People with dependent personality disorder may have difficulty making daily decisions without reassurance from others or may feel uncomfortable or helpless when alone because of fear of inability to take care of themselves.

Histrionic personality disorder: a pattern of excessive emotion and attention seeking. People with histrionic personality disorder may be uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention, may use physical appearance to draw attention to themselves or have rapidly shifting or exaggerated emotions.

Narcissistic personality disorder: a pattern of need for admiration and lack of empathy for others. A person with narcissistic personality disorder may have a grandiose sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, take advantage of others or lack empathy.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: a pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfection and control. A person with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder may be overly focused on details or schedules, may work excessively not allowing time for leisure or friends, or may be inflexible in their morality and values. (This is NOT the same as obsessive compulsive disorder.)

Paranoid personality disorder: a pattern of being suspicious of others and seeing them as mean or spiteful. People with paranoid personality disorder often assume people will harm or deceive them and don’t confide in others or become close to them.

Schizoid personality disorder: being detached from social relationships and expressing little emotion. A person with schizoid personality disorder typically does not seek close relationships, chooses to be alone and seems to not care about praise or criticism from others.

Schizotypal personality disorder: a pattern of being very uncomfortable in close relationships, having distorted thinking and eccentric behavior. A person with schizotypal personality disorder may have odd beliefs or odd or peculiar behavior or speech or may have excessive social anxiety.

Holy mackerel, Andy, there’s hardly a “normal” person alive. And certainly none of them is a psychiatrist. The very compilation of a list of personality traits that one considers “abnormal” is a manifestation of narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, at the very least.

Other than an actual disease of the brain, there is only one kind of mental “disorder” that requires treatment — criminal behavior. And the proper treatment for it is the application of criminal justice, sans psychiatric intervention. (See the articles by Thomas Szasz at FEE.)

Intuition vs. Rationality

Posted on February 8, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

To quote myself:

[I]ntuition [is] a manifestation of intelligence, not a cause of it. To put it another way, intuition is not an emotion; it is the opposite of emotion.

Intuition is reasoning at high speed. For example, a skilled athlete knows where and when to make a move (e.g., whether and where to swing at a pitched ball) because he subconsciously makes the necessary calculations, which he could not make consciously in the split-second that is available to him once the pitcher releases the ball.

Intuition is an aspect of reasoning (rationality) that is missing from “reason” — the cornerstone of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment’s proponents and defenders are always going on about the power of logic applied to facts, and how that power brought mankind (or mankind in the West, at least) out of the benighted Middle Ages (via the Renaissance) and into the light of Modernity.

But “reason” of the kind associated with the Enlightenment is of the plodding variety, whereby “truth” is revealed at the conclusion of deliberate, conscious processes (e.g., the scientific method). But those processes, as I point out in the preceding paragraph, are susceptible of error because they rest on errors and assumptions that are hidden from view — often wittingly, as in the case of “climate change“.

Science, for all of its value to mankind, requires abstraction from reality. That is to say, it is reductionist. A good example is the arbitrary division of continuous social and scientific processes into discrete eras (the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, etc.). This ought to be a warning that mere abstractions are often, and mistakenly, taken as “facts”.

Reductionism makes it possible to “prove” almost anything by hiding errors and assumptions (wittingly or not) behind labels. Thus: x + y = z only when x and y are strictly defined and commensurate. Otherwise, x and y cannot be summed, or their summation can result in many correct values other than z. Further, as in the notable case of “climate change”, it is easy to assume (from bias or error) that z is determined only by x and y, when there are good reasons to believe that it is also determined by other factors: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.

Such things happen because human beings are ineluctably emotional and biased creatures, and usually unaware of their emotions and biases. The Enlightenment’s proponents and defenders are no more immune from emotion and bias than the “lesser” beings whom they presume to lecture about rationality.

The plodding search for “answers” is, furthermore, inherently circumscribed because it dismisses or minimizes the vital role played by unconscious deliberation — to coin a phrase. How many times have you found the answer to a question, a problem, or a puzzle by putting aside your deliberate, conscious search for the answer, only to have it come to you in a “Eureka!” moment sometime later (perhaps after a nap or good night’s sleep). That’s your brain at work in ways that aren’t well understood.

This process (to put too fine a word on it) is known as combinatorial play. Its importance has been acknowledged by many creative persons. Combinatorial play can be thought of as slow-motion intuition, where the brain takes some time to assemble (unconsciously) existing knowledge into an answer to a question, a problem, or a puzzle.

There is also fast-motion intuition, an example of which I invoked in the quotation at the top of this post: the ability of a batter to calculate in a split-second where a pitch will be when it reaches him. Other examples abound, including such vital ones as the ability of drivers to maneuver lethal objects in infinitely varied and often treacherous conditions. Much is made of the number of fatal highway accidents; too little is made of their relative infrequency given the billions of daily opportunities for their occurrence. Imagine the carnage if drivers relied on plodding “reason” instead of fast-motion intuition.

The plodding version of “reason” that has been celebrated since the Enlightenment is therefore just one leg of a triad: thinking quickly and unconsciously, thinking somewhat less quickly and unconsciously, and thinking slowly and consciously.

Wasn’t it ever thus? Of course it was. Which means that the Enlightenment and its sequel unto the present day have merely fetishized one mode of dealing with the world and its myriad uncertainties. I would have said arriving at the truth, but it is well known (except by ignorant science-idolaters) that scientific “knowledge” is provisional and ever-changing. (Just think of the many things that were supposed to be bad for you but are now supposed to be good for you, and conversely.)

I am not a science-denier by any means. But scientific “knowledge” must be taken with copious quantities of salt because it is usually inadequate in the face of messy reality. A theoretical bridge, for example, may hold up under theoretical conditions, but it is likely to collapse when built in the real world, where there is much uncertainty about present and future conditions (e.g., the integrity of materials, adherence to best construction practices, soil conditions, the cumulative effects of traffic). An over-built bridge — the best kind — is one that allows wide margins of error for such uncertainties. The same is true of planes, trains, automobiles, buildings, and much else that our lives depend on. All such things fail less frequently than in the past not only because of the advance of knowledge but also because greater material affluence enables the use of designs and materials that afford wider margins of error.

In any event, too little credit is given to the other legs of reason’s triad: fast-motion and slow-motion intuition. Any good athlete, musician, or warrior will attest the the value former. I leave it to Albert Einstein to attest to the value of the latter,

combinatory [sic] play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others….

[F]ull consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness.

Related page and category:

Modeling and Science
Science and Understanding

Economics Explained — Part II: Economic Principles in Perspective

Posted on December 29, 2019 by Loquitur Veritatem

This is the second installment of a long post. I may revise it as I post later parts. The whole will be published as a page, for ease of reference. If you haven’t read “Part I: What Is Economics About?“, you may benefit from doing so before you embark on this part.

What Drives Us

Humans are driven by the survival instinct and a host of psychological urges, which vary from person to person. Those urges include but are far from limited to the self-aggrandizement (ego), the need for love and friendship, and the need to be in control (which includes the needs to possess things and to control others, both in widely varying degrees). Economic activity, as I have said, excludes matters of love and friendship (though not calculated relationships that may seem like friendship), but aside from those things — which influence personal economic activity (e.g., the need to provide for loved ones) — there are more motivations for economic activity than can be dreamt of by economists. Those motivations are shaped genes and culture, which are so varied and malleable (in the case of culture) that specific knowledge about them is useful only to the purveyors of particular goods.

Therefore, economists long ago (and wisely) eschewed models of economic behavior that impute particular motivations to economic activity. Instead they said that individuals seek to maximize utility (something like happiness or satisfaction), whatever that might be for particular individuals. Similarly, they said that firms seek to maximize profits, which is easier to quantify because profit is measured in monetary units (dollars in America).

Irrational Rationality

Further, economists used to say that individuals act rationally when they strive to maximize utility. Behavioral economists (e.g., Richard Thaler) have challenged the rationality hypothesis by showing that personal choices are often irrational (in the judgment of the behavioral economist). The case of “saving too little” for retirement is often invoked in support of interventions (including interventions by the state) to “nudge” individuals toward making the “right” choices (in the judgment of the behavioral economist). The behavioral economist would thus impose his own definition of rational behavior (e.g., wealth-maximization) on individuals. This is arrogance in the extreme. All that the early economists meant by rationality was that individuals strive to make choices that advance their particular preferences.

Wealth-maximization is one such preference, but far from the only one. A young worker, for example, may prefer buying a car (that enables him to get to work faster than he could by riding a bus) to saving for his retirement. There are many other objections to the imposition of behavioral economists’ views. The links at the end of “No Tears for Cass Sunstein” (Thaler’s co-conspirator) will lead you to some of them. That post and the posts linked to at the end of it also provide insights into the authoritarian motivations of Thaler, Sunstein, and their ilk.

The Rise of Corporate Irresponsibility

Turning to firms — the providers of goods that satisfy wants — I have to say that the profit-maximization motive has been eroded by the rise of huge firms that are led and managed by bureaucrats rather than inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. The ownership of large firms is, in most cases, widely distributed and indirect (i.e., huge blocks of stock are held in diversified mutual-fund portfolios). This makes it possible for top managers (enabled by compliant boards of directors) to adopt policies that harm shareholders’ financial interests for the sake of presenting a “socially responsible” (“woke”) image of the firm to … whom?

The firm’s existing customers aren’t the general public, they are specific segments of the general public, and some of those segments don’t take kindly to public-relations ploys that flout the values that they (the specific segments) hold dearly. (Gillette and Dick’s Sporting Goods are recent cases in point.) The “whom” might therefore consist of segments of the public that the firms’ managers hope will buy the firm’s products because of the firm’s pandering. and — more likely — influential figures in business, politics, the arts, the media, etc., whom the managers are eager to impress.

“Social responsibility” fiascos are only part of the picture. Huge, bureaucratic firms are no more efficient in their use of resources to satisfy consumers’ wants than are huge, bureaucratic governments that (at best) provide essential services (defense and justice) but in fact provide services that politicians and bureaucrats are “needed” in order to buy votes and make work for themselves.

The bottom line here is that the satisfaction of consumers’ wants has been compromised badly. And the combination of government interventions and corporate misfeasance has made the economy far less productive than it could be.

The Flip Side of Economics: Failure to Produce

Economics, therefore, is about the satisfaction of human wants through the production and exchange of goods, given available resources. It is also about the failure to maximize the satisfaction of wants, given available resources, because of government interventions and corporate misfeasance.

The gross underperformance of America’s economy illustrates an important but usually neglected principle of economics: Every decision has an opportunity cost. When you choose to buy a car, for example, you forgo the opportunity to buy something else for the same amount of money. That something else, presumably, would afford you less satisfaction (utility) than the car. Or so the theory goes. But whether it would or wouldn’t isn’t for a behavioral economist to say.

Individuals (and firms) often make choices that they later regret. It’s called learning from experience. But “nudging”, government interventions, and corporate sluggishness reduce the opportunity to learn from experience. (Government interventions and corporate sluggishness also prevent, as I have said, behaviors that are essential to economic vitality: invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship.)

Government interventions also incentivize economically and personally destructive behavior. There are many estimates of the costs of government interventions (e.g., this one and those documented quarterly in Regulation magazine) and a multitude of examples of the personally destructive behavior engendered by government interventions. It is impossible to say which intervention has been the most harmful to the citizenry, but if pressed I would choose the thing broadly called “welfare”, which disincentivizes work and is an important cause of the dissolution of black (welfare-dependent) families, with attendant (and dire) results (educational, occupational, criminal) that bleeding hearts prefer to attribute to “racism”. If not in second place, but high up on my list, is the counterproductive response (by government at the prodding of bleeding hearts) to homelessness.

Thus we have yet another principle: the “law” of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences are the things that aren’t meant to happen — but which do happen — when an actor (be it governmental, corporate, or individual) doesn’t think about (or chooses to minimize or ignore) when it or he focuses on a particular problem or desire to the exclusion of other problems or desires. Individuals can learn from unintended consequences; governments and, increasingly, corporations are too rule-bound and infested by special interests to do so.

None of what I have said about corporations should be taken as an endorsement of governmental interventions to make them somehow more efficient and responsible. (The law of unintended consequences applies in spades when it comes to government.) The only justification for state action with respect to firms is to keep them from doing things that are inimical to liberty and can’t be rectified by private action. In an extreme case, a business that specializes in murder for hire is (or should be) a target for closure and prosecution. A business that sells a potentially harmful product (e.g., guns, cigarettes) isn’t a valid target of state action because the harmful use of the product is the responsibility of the buyer, product-liability law to the contrary notwithstanding.

What about a business that collaborates (perhaps tacitly) with other businesses or special interests to prevent the expression of views that are otherwise protected by the First Amendment but which are opposed by the managers of the business and their political allies? There are good arguments for a hand-off approach, in that markets — if they are allowed to operate freely — will provide alternatives that allow the expression (and wide circulation) of “objectionable” views. If anti-trust actions against purveyors of oil and steel (two take two examples from the past) are inadvisable (as I have argued), aren’t anti-trust actions against purveyors of information and ideas equally inadvisable? There is a qualitative difference between economic rapacity and what amounts to a war that is being waged by one segment of the nation against other segments of the nation. (See for example, “The Subtle Authoritarianism of the ‘Liberal Order’“.) Government action to defend the besieged segments is therefore fitting and proper. (See “Preemptive (Cold) Civil War“.)

Economics and Liberty

This brings me to the gravest economic threat to liberty, which is state socialism and its variants: communism, fascism, and social democracy. All of them vest control of the economy in the state, when not through outright state ownership of the means of production, then through laws and regulations that dictate allowable types of economic output, the means and methods of its production, and its beneficiaries. The United States has long been burdened with what has been called a “mixed” economic system, which is in fact a social democracy — an economy that has many of the trappings of free-market capitalism but is in fact heavily managed by governments (federal, State, and local) in the service of “social justice” and various trendy causes.

The most recent of these is the puritanical, often hypocritical, and anti-scientific effort to rescue the planet from “climate change”. The opportunity cost of this futile undertaking, were it conducted according to the dictates of its most strident supporters, would be a vast share of the economic output of the the Western world (inasmuch as Russia, China, India, and even Japan are disinclined to participate), thus demoting America and Western Europe to Third-World status and rendering them vulnerable to economic and military blackmail by Russia and China. (Old grudges die hard.) You can be sure, however, that even in their vastly diminished state, the Western “democracies” would find the resources with which to cosset the ruling class of politicians and their favorites.

Proponents of state action often defend it by adverting to the paradox of collective action, which is that individuals and firms, acting in what they perceive to be their own interests, can bring about a disaster that engulfs them. “Climate change” is the latest such so-called disaster. What the proponents of state action always omit to consider (or mention) is that state action itself can bring about a disaster that engulfs all of us. The attempt to control “climate change” is just such an action, and it is of the more dangerous kind because government programs, once started, are harder to turn around than the relatively modest and inexpensive projects of individuals and firms.

You may think that I have strayed a long way from the principles of economics. But I haven’t, if you’ve been following closely. What I have done — or tried to do — is put economic activity in perspective. Which is to say that I’ve tried to show that economic activity may be important and even crucial to our lives, but it is not the only important and crucial thing in our lives. Economic activity is shaped by government and culture. If the battle to contain government is successful, and if the battle to preserve a culture of personal responsibility and respect for traditional norms is successful, economic activity will thrive and be worth the striving.

Economics Explained – Part I: What Is Economics About?

Posted on December 14, 2019 by Loquitur Veritatem

This is the first installment of a long entry. I may revise it as I post later entries. The whole will be published as a page, for ease of reference.

Economics, as a discipline, often seems counterintuitive, when it is not downright paradoxical. Perhaps the most counterintuitive principle of economics is that unregulated markets are the best mechanism for meeting human wants, given limited resources. Despite that principle, most economists emulate politicians and rabble-rousers in their penchant for second-guessing market outcomes and devising ways of manipulating those outcomes. This penchant does not negate the principle; it merely underscores the unwarranted vanity of the “intellectual” class.

Economics is mysterious to laymen because its practitioners have embellished it with unduly complex mathematical theorizing. In other words, when economics is not counterintuitive it is simply incomprehensible.

There is no need for economics to be counterintuitive or mysterious. Many writers have essayed simple — and correct — expositions of the principles of economics. The most notable effort, perhaps, is Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. Another good source is The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics at The Library of Economics and Liberty (a web site). (Good places to start there are “Basic Concepts” and “Ten Key Ideas“.)

Unfortunately, Hazlitt’s short book is more than 200 pages long. And the entries at The Library of Economics and Liberty are disjointed. What the world needs is a truly concise but coherent and comprehensive statement of the principles of economics. Thus this post, in which I use not a single equation or graph. Why? Because equations and graphs can be off-putting to readers who are not habituated to them. Moreover, equations and graphs imply a degree of precision that is not found in the real world; verbal explanations, hedged with qualifications, give a more accurate picture of reality (albeit one that necessarily remains incomplete).

I begin with the basic question: What is economics about? The answer to that question leads to observations about the principles of economics, which are shaped by politics and culture. From there, I illustrate the principles by working through an example that eventually takes them all into account.

What Is Economics About?

Economics is about the satisfaction of human wants through the production and exchange of goods (a term that encompasses information, services, and tangible products). That simple definition raises several issues, which are the fundamental subjects of economic inquiry:

What are human wants, and how do they arise?
Are all human wants (e.g., love) the proper domain of economics?
By what mechanisms are resources transformed into goods and then matched (or not) to human wants?
What determines the rate of output of all goods, that is, the aggregate degree of satisfaction of human wants?
What is the proper role of government in the satisfaction of human wants?

The brief answers to these questions, upon which I elaborate below, are as follows:

1. Human wants arise from basic human requirements and impulses (e.g., the need for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and status). Another way to say it is that human wants are both biological and emotional. Particular human wants, therefore, arise from a combination of biological impulses and cultural influences. Some wants clearly are essential to life (e.g., food); some wants clearly are nonessential but nevertheless fill emotional needs (e.g., yachts and mansions). But, like mountains and molehills, the extremes are distinguishable but they are connected by many indistinguishable intermediate stages; that is, there is no telling when wants transition from essential, to beneficial, to frivolous. Moreover — and this is an essential point to which I will return — the striving to fulfill what might seem to be frivolous wants can lead (by steps to be discussed later) to the creation of jobs that yield income from which the job-holders are able to fulfill essential wants (and others, as well).

2. Some human wants arise from impulses that economists should be wary of trying to analyze and measure. The most obvious of these is the kind of love that leads to marriage, sex, and children. Yes, there are sexual arrangements outside marriage that are purely economic transactions. But love of the kind that leads to marriage, sex, and children (and thence to love of parents for their children) is beyond the ken of economics. So, too, are other relationships that are non-transactional, such as friendship and membership in various voluntary organizations (churches, clubs, etc.).

3. Economics is therefore about arms-length transactions — transactions that aren’t bound up in non-contractual relationships like marriage, family, friendship, church, and club. Voluntary exchange and prices are the default mechanisms for matching goods with wants in arms-length transactions. The simplest example is barter: Andy makes bread and wants butter to put on it; Babette makes butter and wants bread for it: Andy and Babette strike a bargain that yields a rate of exchange between bread and butter (i.e., a price for bread in terms of butter and vice versa); the exchange makes both Andy and Babette better off (i.e., there are mutual gains from trade). The prices established by Andy and Babette also serve as signals (provide information) to others who seek to exchange bread and butter; for example, Chuck (a potential producer of butter) might be willing to make butter and trade with Andy on more favorable terms than those offered by Babette.

4. There is no such thing as an aggregate measure of the output of goods — though aggregation is implicit in macroeconomic constructs (e.g., gross domestic product). Thinking only of the United States, for example, how is it possible to aggregate the value of myriad goods that are produced and bought by dozens of millions of businesses and individuals? Hint: Because statistical sampling is arbitrary and uncertain, the answer cannot be found in the common denominator of money. It is nevertheless possible for an economy to move generally in the direction of growth or decline, with exceptions around the trend. It is obvious, for example, that most Americans use goods that are superior in number and quality to the goods that most Americans enjoyed 50 years ago. It is also obvious that during the episode known at the Great Depression, most Americans were materially worse off than they had been before the depression began, and that relatively few became better off. How such things happen, and how economic growth can be sustained and economic declines can be reversed, are valid subjects of economic analysis.

5. Voluntary exchange, unalloyed, can leave some persons “behind” (e.g., those who are incapable of producing bread in exchange for butter, those whose output is worth less to buyers than it used to be). But there is another human impulse (call it “altruism” for now) that leads to the voluntary redistribution of wealth and income, thus enabling the beneficiaries of the redistribution to buy more goods than they can afford on their own. Government action taken in the name of altruism displaces and discourages private altruistic action. More generally, government action throttles economic vitality, causes and exacerbates economic disruptions, and interferes with the constructive resolution of those disruptions. The proper role of government is to provide a framework of defense and justice within which economic actors can operate voluntarily and with little fear that their efforts to improve their lot (and the lot of others less fortunate) will be stymied by force or fraud. Government intervenes legitimately only when it prevents or discourages force and fraud (e.g., defending foreign sources of oil, detecting and preventing terrorism on U.S. soil, prosecuting thieves and murderers, prosecuting “boiler room” operators).

Politics and Prosperity

“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”

Category Archives: Intelligence – Personality – Psychology

Theodore Dalrymple Speaks for Me

Where It All Went Wrong

Centrism: The Path to Dystopia

“We Believe”

Thinking about Thinking — and Other Things: Desiderata As Beliefs

Reflections on Aging and Social Disengagement

Release Your Inner Introvert

A Word to the Unwise

Keeping Up with the News

Ain’t It the Truth?

Insidious Algorithms

Further Introspection: Libertarian Conservatism and Other-Worldliness

An Introspection

Fifty-Two Weeks on the Learning Curve

Psychiatry Is a Disorder

Intuition vs. Rationality

Economics Explained — Part II: Economic Principles in Perspective

What Drives Us

Irrational Rationality

The Rise of Corporate Irresponsibility

The Flip Side of Economics: Failure to Produce

Economics and Liberty

Economics Explained – Part I: What Is Economics About?

What Is Economics About?

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What Drives Us

Irrational Rationality

The Rise of Corporate Irresponsibility

The Flip Side of Economics: Failure to Produce

Economics and Liberty

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What Is Economics About?

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