I wonder if it ever crosses the mind of any refugee that the countries of western Europe are free and prosperous not as a temporary co-incidence and a convenient solution to their woes, but because the inhabitants of those countries fought over many centuries at an incalculable cost to life for the freedom they enjoy today? It is a matter of not inconsiderable astonishment to me that of the many millions of us who care for justice and an end to human misery, few if any are calling attention to the conditions that prevail in theocratic tyrannies, or demanding, in the first place, absolute rejection by western governments of theocratic tyranny, wherever it may prevail (even in nominally “friendly” nations), and, concomitantly, resistance and rejection by citizens of theocratic (and secular) countries to the tyrannies that exist either in their name or the absence of their implacable resistance. No commentator that I have yet heard has ever held the citizens of theocracies accountable for the “governments” they live under, There has been much hand wringing at the absence of effective action now available to the Western powers to bring peace to Middle Eastern tyrannies, but no suggestion that citizens are complicit in the establishment of fascist regimes that always and inevitably morph into tyranny.
I am aware that by their endless chicanery, opportunism and hypocrisy, western powers have signally contributed towards the destabilisation of many countries of the world, certainly including many in the Middle East, and they therefore have a lot to answer for, but even so, this does not in itself exculpate the residents, the sometime voters, the fellow travellers, and – sorry it must be said – the co-religionists of tyranny, who looked the other way when bad things were done in their name, or who indeed conspired in the doing of such bad things.
It will be argued by the professional philanthropic classes of the West that the conditions prevailing in the many tyrannies of the Middle East or Africa or Asia are altogether too hostile, cruel and implacable to admit of resistance. They conveniently forget the iron grip that monarchism and the Roman Catholic Church had on Europe, but which was successfully prised open by freedom loving people, to say nothing of the unendurable socio-economic conditions that ordinary people had to fight so hard and so long against to overcome. It is the heroism and the courage of such ordinary people that we all have to thank for the blessed conditions of freedom that prevail in Western Europe, it is not a consequence of good luck or privilege.
It is difficult to know to what extent people who live in theocracies can have or should have responsibility for the waking nightmare of the society in which they live or be blamed for not doing more to change it. For example, to what extent should I, or any other Samizdata commentator, take responsibility for some of the cretinous, statist, zero-sum economic views that are embedded in the governance of the countries in which we live? We can do what we can to change the climate of opinion, but this is hard and the beneficial effects of any struggles take decades or more to bear fruit.
It may not be fashionable for me to say this, but I believe there is a human biodiversity component to this. They were, quite literally, born that way, born and endowed with certain characteristics endemic to their ethnic heritage. So too for me, you, and most other human beings on the planet.
Obedience or its flip-side, defiance, can be bred into peoples. Long generations of culture, history, and geography has left its indelible mark on populations all over the world. All over the world, scientists are slowly but surely discovering genes that have different distribution across ethnicities with interesting consequences. For example, they have found genes that correspond to empathy, and it has different distributions across ethnicities.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150507135919.htm
As pointed out on Chateau Heartiste,
No wonder you white people are crazy.
As for these migrants… I sympathise with them, but I will not offer them refuge, safe for the best and brightest, and even then under the strictest of conditions (one strike and you’re out!). I owe too much to my ancestors, and to my future descendants, to risk destroying their legacy and inheritance.
Better to give them a gun, point them to Syria, and airdrop them some ammo when they reach there.
‘Interesting consequences’ is another way of saying actually no one has any idea what the consequences are. The more I read about genetics and its effect on behaviour, the more I am reminded of Global Warming and oh so many other examples of scientific bloviation… yet another sparse framework upon which people hang their prejudices and sectional interests.
More mockery is required. The belief systems prevalent in the Middle East today are quite some ridiculous.
Best for everyone if we pointed it out. Repeatedly.
Well, great for you then. I’d wait for the chinese and BGI to complete their genetic intelligence research and bring your carefully crafted anti-scientific rationalism (what a contradiction!) down in flames.
Majority of the people there might not get the mockery, or react badly to it.
Best to keep them out, isn’t it?
Us HDB realists and the climate warmists have one key similarity – we both want the state to craft policy based on certain beliefs (proven or not to varying degrees).
The HDB realists want more restrictive immigration laws.
The warmists want more restrictive measures on greenhouse emissions.
The warmists, however, have yet to have any of their predictions pan out nicely.
Us realists? Well, take a good long look at Europe and UK now. Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ is on the way, never you fear!
Actually the prosperity of the West is based on the relative security of PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS.
Especially in LAND – where feudal land “holding” proved a lot more secure than the supposedly full private ownership of the Roman Empire.
Contrary to the myth of the advanced nature of Islamic (and other) civilisations – the West was already vastly ahead, both technologically and economically, well before the Reformation.
I am certainly not a defender of the policy of using force in matters of religion of the Roman Catholic Church – indeed I believe the Church made a terrible error when it accepted the theology of Augustine (M.J. Oakeshott’s casual defence of Augustine is as wrong headed as his defence of Thomas Hobbes) – both on using force (persecution) in religious matters, and on predestination – the denial of individual moral responsibility and the belief that salvation was based on the arbitrary WILL of a Oriental Despot view of God.
However, both Martin Luther and John Calvin were fare WORSE on such matters as predestination (the denial of individual moral responsibility and the position that salvation was a matter of the arbitrary WILL of God – see as an Oriental Despot) than the Roman Catholic Church ever was.
Freedom of religion may (in the end) have the result of the conflicts that the Reformation sparked off – but freedom was certainly not the intention of people such as Martin Luther – who was worse (on just about everything – including his attitude towards Jews) than most of his German Catholic foes.
I repeat the West was ahead (massively ahead) of Islamic and other civilisations BEFORE the Reformation – i.e. when “Catholic theocratic tyranny” was still in place.
Yes the BBC view of history is wrong.
I oppose theocratic tyranny – but seeing the rise of the West as due to its fall is historically mistaken.
Although (to give the full picture) a technological and economic edge does develop among the Protestant powers over the Catholic powers.
This can be seen by comparing the England of Elizabeth to the Spain of Philip II – in England state officials were rare (compared to Spain) and cannons on ships fired much faster (they were much less difficult to reload) than cannons on Spanish ships.
And in the 30 years war of the 17th century – the relatively plainly dressed Swedish army, used more flexible tactics and was more technologically advanced (for example in ARTILLERY than the wonderfully dressed Hapsburg forces.
Contrary to what it is now – Sweden in the 17th century (like England) was relatively more economic free than the major Catholic powers.
Just as Protestant Holland was relatively more economically free than Catholic Spain (hence the failure of Spain to crush the Netherlands – in spite of over around one hundred years of war).
However, the connection between this relatively greater economic freedom and theology is hard to see.
Nor was, for example, Sweden religiously tolerant – non Protestants could be executed in Sweden.
It may even be that the cause and effect is the other way round – that the areas where economic freedom (private property rights, no serfdom and so on) tended to become Protestant – rather than the areas that were Protestant became more economically free.
I just do not know.
However, the idea that freedom of religion was the key to economic and scientific success is nonsense.
The key to economic (and technological) success was economic freedom – secure property rights, a lack of serfdom and so on.
It should be noted that those Protestant powers that had serfdom and an interventionist state remained backward.
For example eastern Prussia (especially beyond the river Elbe).
Contrary to the myth (spread from the 1700s – right to our own day, N. Ferguson and so on), the Prussia of Frederick the Great was economically BACKWARD.
The religious tolerance of Frederick (and previous Prussian rulers – for he did NOT invent the policy) was a jolly good thing. But it was NOT the key to Prussia becoming a major economic power.
Because Prussia was NOT a major economic power – it did not become one till the early 19th century (when serfdom and state interventionism) was ended.
I repeat – far from being a time of stagnation, the Middle Ages (the medieval world) was the time when the West went ahead of other civilisations.
Economically and technologically.
The idea that the “theocratic tyranny” of the Roman Catholic Church led to economic or technological stagnation in the Middle Ages is historical nonsense.
But this does not mean that religious persecution is a good thing.
Just that the line that “if you practice religious persecution you will stagnate – technologically and economically” is false.
Not sure if this is true or not, but in this article, the Daily Mail asserts,
Looks like you’re going to have a civil war (hah!) somewhere down the line, or concentration camps. Who’s going to be running them, you or the Islamists?
Maybe you can sing kumbya with them and everything will be hunky dory.
The Wobbly Guy.
According to the education system and the media, Islam is a wonderful “religion of peace” – and indeed our scientific knowledge comes from the Muslims.
Cambridge scholars will, and do, explain this matter in great detail (before going off to have a ride on their unicorns and dragons).
So all is well – there will be no war.
Of course if there is war – it will be the fault of the West, due to our persecution of Islam. Our religious intolerance.
Islam will be blameless – and Islam has most certainly not been attacking Europe for over a thousand years.
Such vicious “Islamophobes” as Gladstone and Winston Churchill would be rightly sent to prison in these more enlightened times.
Perry is bang-on the money. Yes, there are certain extreme and specific mental conditions for which there is probably a strong genetic link but a concept such as “empathy” is so vague that hanging it on one gene variant is absurd and dangerous. I have a jupitron (a benign tumour of sorts) on my left hand. This is indicative of Viking ancestory which fits with my general appearance and what I know of the family history. Fine. That makes sense but that is obvious, discrete and demonstrable just by looking. My mother also had one – it was surgically removed but they’ll only do that if it starts causing problems because they are loath to carry-out hand surgery for obvious reasons. My point is that complexity is a thing in itself and we are quite frankly just at the stage of creeping towards having the capacity to use the tools we need to understand it. A rough analogy would be the situation astronomy was in around the time of Kepler, perhaps*. So my jupitron is dead-simple genetics. Human behaviour isn’t and that is leaving aside the role of things like society and individual experience.
Ignoring the genes Freud fell into the trap of “physics envy”. You can write Maxwell’s Equations. He wanted to be a “Newton of the Mind” and if you read his stuff he does try (he is very trying;-)) but it doesn’t work. It is ultimately quixotic drivel because physics is simple (not the same thing as easy) and psychology is complex (not the same thing as hard). What I mean is you can take Maxwell’s equations and get the speed of light out of them on a sheet of A5. OK it involves using stuff like vector calculus which most folk wouldn’t recognize from a hen-scratch in a farmyard but it is definite and therefore simple. Understanding how to sell something is difficult for a completely different reason. Yeah, to one extent or another we all do it even if it is just our labour and of course some are better than others and some are great at selling x and useless at selling y and vice-versa and all stations between. The difference is sales (and that is just one of myriad possible examples) is fiendishly complex. Unlike mathematics with it’s laser-precision use of very limited high-end skills sales requires a huge collection of low-end skills all working together.
I promise this is the last analogy. Maths is a bit like doing the pole-vault and the “soft” stuff is more like running. Most healthy people can run, very few would even know where to start with the pole-vault. Does that mean Sergei Bubka was a finer athlete than Seb Coe? No. It means Bubka’s skill was different (a learning curve with more discontinuities) than Coe’s smoother curve. Of course getting to the top of either is a Hell of a thing but they are different forms of skill.
Basically I’m saying that reductionism doesn’t meaningfully apply to almost the entire human condition. This is why since before writing our species has told stories and created myths. I don’t believe in God but I reckon a competent and engaged priest/rabbi/imam/whatever probably has a better insight into what it is to being human than a geneticist because they are using a better lens for the task. Just because reductionism and abstraction works like a charm in particle physics doesn’t mean the same tools are the ones to use to get a second date. And yes, hand on heart even the most determinist neuroscientist would admit that over the coffee. Charm, empathy, emotional response cannot be quantified.
*Although maybe complicated stuff is just complicated. I have a Leatherman multi-tool. Now here’s a rhetorical question, “Can I take it apart with itself?”. Can we humans deconstruct ourselves into mechanistic units the same way we can a VW diesel engine? Or to put it another way can we reverse-engineer something as complicated as ourselves from within? Of course there is another way to create other human consciousnesses and one which requires no technology and is generally considered highly pleasurable…
Paul,
So would Ataturk…
“Islam, this absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a rotting corpse which poisons our lives.”
I really liked my holiday in (Western) Turkey. I really hope they can kick Erdogan out the door before he effs the gaff up completely.
“Genetics” WG?
No.
For example most of the population of Malta are from Islamic North Africa.
Malta does not have an Islamic or North African culture.
It is the ideas (the beliefs, principles) that someone holds that matter – not their “race”.
It is true that the Spanish Inquisition (de facto) believed in “blood guilt”.
But this was formally condemned (repeatedly) by the Roman Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition (although manned by Dominicans) was an arm of the Spanish STATE.
The plundering of people (money for the state) was its real aim.
The idea that it was a theological group is rather undermined by such arrests as that of the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid.
These people (the Spanish Inquisition) did not really care if someone was a Catholic (in their opinions) or not.
Do you have stuff they can steal for the state?
And are you a unpopular for some reason (say your ancestry)?
These were the questions that interested them.
Nick – shall I get you a cake for when you are sent to prison?
Although as I may be in prison as well – I may find that difficult.
The Wobbly Guy is simply inventing the notion that some racial groups are more imbued with a sort of pro-freedom propensity than others’. Desperate stuff, indeed. I mean, North and South Korea are composed of people from exactly the same makeup genetically, and I’m looking forward to Wobbly trying to pin that one on race.
The UK has lumbered towards socialism over the past 100 years, and the process began long before immigration to the country by non-Caucasian groups. There is no simple cause-effect one can establish. It is pure horseshit, Wobbly, and you know it, and you should be ashamed of clinging to this sort of nonsense.
Shorter version of quote: A people get the government they deserve.
I agree!
JP,
Darn it! I should have thought to say that. I knew it. It is the absolute counter-punch. Both Koreas have fairly sizable populations so it is very difficult to dismiss as a “fluke”. Both are very ethnically homogenous and that applies across the DMZ. The RoK has worked an economic stormer since 1953 whereas the (at the time) more industrially developed DPRK has er… not. The Korean Peninsula is absolutely the petri dish for testing “racial realism” or whatever and on it’s shores such theories founder very badly.
Paul,
I’ll file that idea away 😉
And yes, Malta (I have been there) is, well, European despite being closer to Africa. As to the ethnic mix… Well, given the history of the place I daresay it’s a bit of a mixture. It seems odd to me the nigh-on obsession some on the left have with “geographical determinism”. Arguments like the Falklands are so much closer to Argentina so…
As to religious persecution for venal rather than “spiritual” reasons. Oh, yeah. Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries springs to mind as does a lot of what ISIS are up to. A lot of the antiquities aren’t so much being wrecked as plundered and sold on the black market. The stuff they cann’t shift they wreck which of course put’s up the price of what is saleable. There is method in their madness.
Martin Luthr is on record as having said very rude things about Copernicus. Copernicus was of course a Catholic priest in his day job. A lot of astronomers had day jobs 🙂 Still do. It is one of the rare fields of science left in which an amateur can make discoveries – comets and such mainly these days. Of course the other great myth of the Catholic Church wrt science around that time was the attempt to create a secular martyr out of Galileo. The truth is murkier. He was basically a very difficult man to get on with and rubbed a lot of folks up the wrong way. He was arrogant and irascible and on one occasion got drunk at a dinner party and insulted the Pope in no uncertain terms. His card was marked not so much by his heterorthodoxy on Cosmoloical matters but by politics. Not as good a story for the Dawkinistas though is it?
This is a good post. The following comments are just minor and custructive (I hope) criticism.
It’s the truth and nothing but the truth that the vicitims of tyranny often do much to allow it. This applies to us in the UK, who allowed our free speech rights to be very casualy removed in favour of hate speech laws little over a decade ago. It applies much more to the refugees, who will bring even more of their culture’s crime and cruelty to us if we let them.
It is not always the whole truth: luck plays a part. It was not inevitable that Hitler made it to chancellor. Russia never voted for the communists, who in their early years faced numerous peasant rebellions at the same time as white Russian armies; their enemies just never all got their act together, so the communists won because “ten men acting together can make a hudren thousand tremble apart”.
One other thought: when the quote says that “It is the heroism and the courage of such ordinary people …”, remember the oldest political text in the world – Herodotus’ description of the tyrant cutting down all the taller stalks in a field, making all the stalks equally “ordinary”. Resistance usually needs leaders with some name recognition, with some experience of command, with some ability to survive the early, not-yet-alarmed petty pressures oif the state, whether it’s handling the threat of a hate-speech prosecution here or something more sinister in a third world country. It is when Stalin, Mao or Kim “Wrong’un” tower over a field of nameless ordinary people, that things are at their worst. Some very ordinary people will do the actual work of resisting absurdity, just as some other ordinary people will vote for it far past the point of political sanity, but never forget the importance of living in a society where taller stalks can grow.
In relation to that, I’d agree with commenter Paul Marks that European history does not teach any simple lesson about the relationship between religion and politics. Religiously-inspired resistance to tyranny is a very important part of Dutch history, and has its role elsewhere. (Of course, a religion whose name means ‘submit’ would obviously have a harder time playing that role.)
The libertarian view of course, is that individuals have no responsibility to fight for liberty and good government in the particular geographic area where they originate from.
So what? We might find the customs of the (insert disliked ethnic group du jour) distasteful but segregation is not a problem in itself. The fact that a community has been transported from one part of the world to another only matters to the extent that it has an impact on other communities it exists alongside. I’m not saying that this has not happened (Rochdale…), nor that this should not influence our views on immigration, but it is a separate problem from segregation as such. If for example, all Canadians in the UK just kept to themselves to the extent that they had a choice, I doubt we would notice.
The starting quote I actually sorta disagree with:
“I wonder if it ever crosses the mind of any refugee that the countries of western Europe are free and prosperous not as a temporary co-incidence and a convenient solution to their woes, but because the inhabitants of those countries fought over many centuries at an incalculable cost to life for the freedom they enjoy today?”
Because I can’t really blame the “refugees” for being ignorant of that. How are they supposed to know better? Their madrassas sure aren’t teaching them. It’s the Europeans who should know better than to treat it as some sort of historical inevitability, that now that’s it’s been achieved will stay around forever.
One problem is that diplomacy and international relations are still conducted mostly according to Westphalian sovereignty. There seems to be a gradually dawning realization that this isn’t good enough but, even where it’s being challenged, it’s being challenged with proposals that are even more top down and statist. It’s tempting to think that it might be an improvement if more of the scum that runs some of these countries could be prosecuted in an international criminal court. But making such courts more “effective” would most likely result mainly in leaders of less-bad regimes being brought before the court on trumped-up charges to serve the purposes of someone who’s more in favour with the court.
I don’t have a better idea, I’m just sniping from the cheap seats. As a citizen of one of the less bad countries (in my opinion), I want my country to retain the ability to tell the UN (or whomever) to piss off. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize with the predicament of people who live in countries that are presently being run by tyrants and could benefit from having those tyrants forcibly removed from power.
The degree to which the citizens of a tyranny are responsible for the conditions under which they live is an interesting one, and one which has largely been neglected by historians and contemporary commentators. One of the things that dawned on me, unprompted by any author, was that the second wave of Stalin’s Great Terror killed a lot of those who had (literally or figuratively) pulled the trigger on the victims of the first wave. And the third wave took care of a lot of those responsible for the second wave. For the Great Terror to work, it required millions – not just thousands – of ordinary people (albeit uneducated, most of them) to actively take part in mass murder: driving the trucks, distributing the ammunition, digging the graves, pulling the triggers, denouncing the neighbours, etc. True, many of these people might have “only been following orders” and faced execution or punishment if they refused to cooperate. But why was there not more of the types of actions such as that which I read about recently: somebody reluctantly forced to make ammunition for German guns deliberately screwed up the tolerances as much as he could get away with so they wouldn’t fit the barrels. There are plenty of opportunities to sabotage something from within: I work in a large corporation, and if you decide you’re not going to do your job very well, you can certainly slow a process down. If there are a few of you, you can really gum up the works without doing much at all.
So how did the Soviet Union manage to find so many people willing to engage in mass-murder? Exposure to horrific acts of brutality is the normal route to desensitising people to the point they’ll commit such acts themselves, but then I saw the excellent The Lives of Others, a film about a Stasi operative in East Germany, that said the Stasi were actually few in number but kept control via a network of tens of thousands of informers on whom they relied. So it is difficult to conclude that, put crudely, any random selection of East Germans contained enough fucking cunts to enslave the rest of them: you can get shot for refusing to drive a train full of prisoners to their deaths, but you cannot get shot for not reporting that you heard a suspicious conversation at work.
So this got me thinking whether this phenomenon is universal across cultures. Certainly, us Brits make a big deal about how few of our POWs joined the Waffen SS despite many efforts by the Germans to recruit them, but we were never really tested because we weren’t occupied: looking at the language employed by the Left these days, I am confident I can readily identify those who would gleefully be rounding up their fellow Brits into cattle wagons under the supervision of an SS Colonel. Just open the Guardian, for a start. Interestingly, I find there is far less of a “snitch” culture in France than Britain – neighbours complain, but nobody goes running to the council because somebody’s hedge is too high or their car isn’t taxed – and this is probably because France remembers what men in authority are capable of. “Where did that nice Jewish family go? All I did was tell the local authorities that they didn’t eat sausage…”
Assuming this is universal, then the conclusion would be that human beings by nature are willing to cooperate with tyranny and suppress their fellow men in such numbers that tyranny is all too possible. I am certain that it takes considerable cooperation for a tyranny to be successful, and therefore the citizens of any country which suffers under it *in the main* deserve it, to a point. I certainly felt that way when, having bleated for decades that they were being oppressed by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqis started bravely attacking soft American targets one Saddam had gone. Where the fuck were these “brave resistance fighters”, or ISIS for that matter, when Saddam was around? Helping him out, most likely. Too many of them.
Niall,
Yes, obviously you need leaders, nucleation points. Martin Luther King is a very obvious example. Very bright, very well-dressed and a stunning;y good orator. Yes, he was needed for the Civil Rights movement but he also led a “Million Man March” and the overwhelming majority of them by definition were ordinary folk. So of course was Rosa Parks and her most famous act was something which in other circumstances would be utterly mundane. The same can be said of the kids who braved all sorts of evil to go to the desegregated schools. No matter how tactically brilliant a general is he still needs the PBI.
As to “luck and Hitler”… Well, perhaps the most poignant thing is that people didn’t exactly take him entirely at face value or thought they could meaningfully negotiate with him. Chamberlain thought the later. Of course Churchill never did and was thought at best histrionic and silly and at worst a blood-thirsty war-monger. Well, we all know who was right now don’t we? People like Otto Frank who dallied over fleeing Europe. He (and he was far from alone) kinda thought as a “well integrated” Jew who had fought with distinction for the Kaiser that they like really didn’t mean him. Slippery slopes can start out very gently and rapidly you’re on the Cresta Run to annihilation. Otto Frank was by no means stupid. But… How do you believe the unbelievable when it happens so quickly and you don’t want to believe it? I know a place just down the road where I can buy incandescent light bulbs. It’s like buying cocaine these days – except less available than cocaine. Who, twenty years ago, would believe that it would be illegal to have a ciggie-wiggie in a pub? And that this would be met with zero opposition? A few years back I saw a tragic sight at Ft Lauderdale airport. It was a father taking the jacket and trainers off his toddler son to be X-rayed. It was his care and patience and, yes, submission to insane laws that was tragic. If I’m honest I was as pliant because the TSA had the power and I had none. I was a visitor to the USA – a tourist – on honeymoon actually – with no aim but to spend quite a lot of money on goods and services in that fine country. God help me but the contrast between Americans in the TSA and the average waitress or taxi driver or just folk in the street is remarkable. I’d been to the USA a couple of times before (before 9/11) and the contrast… At Philly Airport an American fellow passenger apologized to me on behalf of the USA. I said, “No worries, you got it too and it is almost as bad in the UK”. If bin Laden scored a victory on 9/11 it wasn’t 3,000 dead and massive destruction of property but to enable the ratchet to be cranked further. Little by little… In my country they have just banned smoking in cars with under 18s inside. They no longer even pretend this is to protect the kiddies. They are now openly saying this is a move in achieving a “smoke-free” Britain. So, you don’t smoke? Well, that is a lot for the Exchequer to get somehow. So what next when all tobacco is black market? Of course that will mean they have done their job on smokers just like the war on drugs or prohibition have been such unqualified successes. It is enough to make Santa Claus himself vomit with inchoate rage.
No, I am not comparing the Holocaust to smoking-bans and crap light bulbs but the mechanism is similar. Maybe I should have concentrated on the “Right not to be offended”. Well, fuck that “right”!
Just around the start of summer I had a nigh on hour flying lesson in a DH (Perry would be proud) Tiger Moth. I handled the craft with aplomb. I’d like to say I got the “flying bug” but I’ve always had it. The front (pupil) cockpit (surprisingly comfy and I’m nearly 6′ but interesting to get into) but it had a “No Smoking” sticker DYMOed onto the console. Directly above me and slightly forward in the upper-wing centre was a tank of high octane gasoline. Apart from the practicalities of having a fag in an open cockpit at 80kts IAS what sort of numpty did they think they had.
I want a T-38 Talon. The USAF has a fair few it needs to replace. I just want to be able (of my own bat) to satisfy my own lonely impulses of delight and not only don’t want to stop others from things I dislike but just don’t care. Now try explaining that that is a good thing to a lot of people. Try explaining indifference as a positive. It’s hard. That is the task for libertarians.
Well the Peshmerga were definitely ‘a thing’ that Saddam spent a lot of time and effort trying to crush, but that does not negate your general point.
If we are looking at the subject of learning rather than training, then the processes of teaching and learning that Caplin refers to (which I have followed at Econlib)are more in the nature of
de-schooling; where there are not aggregations of “students.”
Where public “schooling” has become a part of the socialization process, there is some loss of the “freedom” of selectivity of association (which is largely reserved to parents or proxies at the earlier stages of minority ages).
Associational influences on learning patterns have been observed and analyzed. Parental authority and responsibility for associations at minority ages are still widely recognized and accepted – particularly for effects on group conduct. In “system teaching” the intrusion into the adult-minor age association selection by parents is notable; probably a major element in much system dysfunction.
In the public “teaching system” that parental authority and responsibility is also impaired (sometimes negated) with respect to the inter-age (or student) groupings that are essential to the “public” process.
Thus, de-schooling can also be retention of responsibility for associations and the impacts of associations on learning and on the character of the individuals..
I don’t think it’s going too far to assert that the great majority of those now fleeing to the West from places like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and the other various indistinct nation/state/warlorderies in that region were, or would have been, enthusiastic supporters of the last fascist, theocratic or thug-based tyranny that ruled wherever they came from – but not the current one. IOW, they’re all for fascist tyranny, as long as their particular tribe or grouping is the one doing the tyranny. Howe else could the entire region have spawned such a continuous succession of fascist tyrannies, many of them so diametrically-opposed to one another?
The civil war in Syria is nothing more than three or four slightly-different warlords fighting over who gets to oppress the people next. Despite the flow of refugees, there’s a lot of people staying there to fight – they’re betting that their tyrant will win and they get to share the spoils. A civil war could never be sustained for this long and this hard unless the various factions have very-significant support from significant parts of the population.
Just-about everyone fleeing that region – certainly, the males – all support fascist tyranny, and see it as the natural order of things. They’re only fleeing because their tyrant is losing. ‘Strong horse’ and all that. Why would we suppose that their world view will be magically altered the minute they enter the EU?
In the words of another, this is going to end with cattle cars, in one direction or another. These ‘refugees’ are unlike any other ‘refugees’ we have ever seen – not so much fleeing oppression to a place of safety, as an invading horde intent on imposing oppression on anywhere and anyone they can. They are not fleeing oppression as a concept because they are peace-loving and harmless folks just looking for a better life, they are fleeing one form of oppression (not their own) solely in order to find somewhere where they can impose their own from of oppression. Having failed to impose their particular brand of fascist tyranny in their own lands, they are now looking around to find a place where they will succeed. Germany looks good.
No rules, no laws, no restrictions. They act as a thugocracy. Fight, kill, cheat, lie, steal, intimidate, overwhelm, whatever it takes to get to where they want to go. This is what Europe is taking in in vast numbers. It cannot end well.
llater,
llamas
However, both Martin Luther and John Calvin were fare WORSE on such matters as predestination…
I think this is the key – the relationship between the individual’s idea of freewill and the reaction of the wider society.
How can people hold themselves or others responsible for anything if there is no freewill?
Men are creatures of body and soul, the physical and the spiritual, the physical and mental, hence human principles, like the idea of freewill, have two aspects to them – the existential and the intellectual.
Calvin and others may be steadfastly opposed to freewill on scriptural grounds, intellectually, but if he endorses private conscience and private thought it hardly matters – he has merely contradicted himself – and the existential benefits of private thought and private conscience far outweigh the deeper philosophical error of intellectually denying the legitimacy of thought.
The Chinese haven’t evolved new genes or altered their fundamental philosophy – all they have done is permit people to think with regard to certain aspects of their lives, and the existential consequences have been dramatic.
It remains to be seen whether the freedom to think in China will lead to an Age of Reason – it did for us but our history is unusual.
The citizens of the islamic world are leery of freedom, the rule of law, and regardless of any external intervention to raise them, always tend to reset to the tyranny of the strongest, most brutal, leader.
But each man is the tyrant of his own family- his wives and sisters, his children, are his slaves. Under his absolute control- he may kill them as and when he thinks fit. The tyrant in the presidential palace permits this, it is the consolation prize of every man. It is a mistake to assume that he will prize freedom and personal sovereignty for them, over power for himself.
“No rules, no laws, no restrictions. They act as a thugocracy. Fight, kill, cheat, lie, steal, intimidate, overwhelm, whatever it takes to get to where they want to go. This is what Europe is taking in in vast numbers. It cannot end well.”
Well it doesn’t help that the culture seems to be marrying your first cousins en masse and via the magic of genetics producing lots of disabled kids and depressing the overall IQ of that group sequentially….
Contrary to Niall, i am inclined to think that the discussion is at least as thought provoking as the OP; though credit must be given to Colin Bower for saying things that can get CAIR declare one unqualified to be POTUS.
Right now i just wanted to comment on “the iron grip that monarchism and the Roman Catholic Church had on Europe, but which was successfully prised open by freedom loving people”.
Our freedom loving forefathers were much smarter than that: they did not mount a frontal attack on Church and State. Instead, they played them against each other. I suppose you have all heard of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and the Struggle for the Investitures. (This is related to the 1st comment by Paul Marks, of course.)
Re. Genetics: you can’t separate Nature and Nurture.
Metaphorically, DNA is the computer ‘hard-drive’. It is not alive. Without its metabolic context, it can do nothing; it has no agency.
The DNA’s metaphorical ‘software/operating-system’ is epigenetic (outside the nucleus). It switches nuclear genes on and off, amplifies and diminishes their effects and thus orchestrates the life-form’s development. The environment in which development takes place includes the ‘seeding’ and subsequent genetic influence of the commensal micro-organisms that will accompany the host throughout life. Every life-form has a micro-biome, without which it cannot digest its food or protect itself from invading pathogens. The microbiome is an extension of the immune system.
Neither the molecular ‘hardware’ nor the ‘software’ is of any use without the other. (For the evidence, see the latest Epigenetics research.)
Re. Socio-politics, the difference between North and South Korea is language. S. Korea has integrated some words (and concepts) from the global inter-lingua: English. N. Korea has not. it’s language has been influenced by some Russian communist words (and concepts). For example, the word for ‘friend”, in S. Korea, an individualist concept, has morphed into ‘comrade’, a collectivist concept, in N. Korea.
The Koran is read from right to left in a language without separate vowels. The vowels are indicated by diacritical marks attached to the consonants. The Koran has to be learnt by heart before it can be read. The word, Koran (Quran) means, literally, ‘the recitation’.
For volitional humans, rational language is the link between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’. Before Man developed his tool of thought, he was an animal dependent on automatic, stereotyped instinct. Rational language is more energetically efficient. That’s why it displaced the ‘fight or flight’ reaction.
Christine
WRT the genetic factor, i must say that i was not impressed by what little i have seen of hbd blogs; though there are some serious scholars, eg Greg Cochran.
Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, about the role of genetic factors in the success of the West. I believe that evidence of absence can only come if and when hbd can be discussed without prejudice.
It is clear, however, as others have pointed out, that genetics is not the only factor determining politics. That should be obvious a priori, because if there are genetic differences, these differences must have come from different selective pressures, and these pressures must have come from the physical, cultural, or political environments, which therefore are the ultimate determinants of politics.
WRT free will, i beg to disagree with Paul Marks. I seem to remember reading that people who do not believe in free will, have less willpower. Calvinists do not tend to be slobs, however.
In my arrogant opinion, the problem is the confusion between commonsense free will and metaphysical free will. Most people who believe in free will, believe only in commonsense free will; most people who don’t believe in free will, don’t believe only in metaphysical free will. Most people actually hold the same beliefs, except that they frame them differently.
To echo a recent thread here, this is markets and incentives at work. When the only way to get ahead is by stepping on others, there will always be sufficient number of people who will do just that.
Snorri, a very interesting point about Free Will. I shall have to run it through a few of my onboard software routines and see what results I get, as I am a “physicalist” (dear lord!) who simply thinks that we tend to misunderstand the nature of “free will.”
Paul,
An interesting idea, added to the queue for internal-software processing. Are you sure you’re allowed to question the Official Interpretations (including those of various philosophical subgroups) that way?
Have you ever considered the moth is not the caterpillar? Structure is mathematics. It is self-assembled complexity. The maths is beautiful. You know what happens if you blend a jellyfish and then stick the pulp in saline?
“The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.”
“I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it.”
All quotes from Ayn Rand.
NickM wrote,
“…but a concept such as “empathy” is so vague that hanging it on one gene variant is absurd and dangerous.”
I think most people really mean compassion when they write or say empathy. Empathy is for someone to “feel your pain” or otherwise intellectually share, (i.e. vicariously experience) your feelings, which every sadist and psychopath loves to do. (Remember, sympathy is to feel the same. Empathy is to experience or be aware of, their feelings. To have sympathy for someone hurting is to hurt also. To have empathy for someone hurting is to experience THEM hurting, not you.)
Yes the two Koreas is a good point.
So are South Korean opinions compared to those of the Japanese.
According the latest polls most Japanese are rather hostile to a free market economy – most South Koreans in favour of it.
I doubt this is a genetic difference.
More likely it is due to the fact that Japanese schools are unionised (by a socialist union) and Korean schools are non union.
Sadly conditioning (brain washing) works – at least to some extent.
Tell children, over and over again, that the government must spend and spend – and many will grow up believing it.
Why do people think that the Democrats are so in love with “public education” in the United States? It is not just bribes from the teacher unions – it is the idea that the children subjected to such propaganda will grow up to be more likely to vote Democrat.
The failure of endless deficit spending in Japan (over decades) has not undermined faith in it – as the faith is not based on practical experience (let alone logically reasoning), it is literally “faith” – spread by the education system and media.
A Keynesian religion – just as silly (and much more harmful) than believing that humans were created, out of dust, in 4004 BC.
As for the tide of Islamic “migrants”.
Supporters of all mighty state. With people reduced to the level of serfs.
Deniers of personal moral responsibility (free will) and the universal nature of moral law – that can be found by reason. Supporting the arbitrary WILL of God (and secular rulers) instead.
And opponents of resistance to tyranny – even resistance to the Ottoman Empire (I hear the new Sultan has built himself a palace with more than a thousand rooms).
And savage and sadistic hatred of Jews.
They sound very much like Martin Luther.
Why ask the refugee? Does it cross the minds of any of the westerners who blame the west for all the world’s problems, how fragile the freedoms we enjoy are? Ask the SJW how we can prevent every city resembling Tower Hamlets?
…or Marx.
Paul:
Like Julie, i find this thesis interesting, not least because i had a similar thought myself. I don’t think this applies to Lutheranism, though. Zwinglianism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism prospered in countries with republican government and/or an economy based on trade. By contrast, Lutheranism was generally adopted to bring the church under the control of the state, thereby speeding up (what i see as) the degeneration of feudalism into absolute monarchy. (Apologies to any Lutheran who might be reading this.)
The exception to the rule that republics with a mercantile economy trended Calvinist, is Northern Italy. I think that it is easy to find a plausible reason for that, by looking at a map.
Thought precedes wealth not vice versa – Prots just allow more thinking.
St. Thomas Aquinas? School of Salamanca?
Correct.
This is a very old idea – one that has been well understood in centuries past. The reason many people these days do not understand it is because they do not know the full meaning of the phrase “the people get the government they deserve”. There are many layers to this truth and a very shallow layer – one of the first! – is that those subjected to tyranny tend to, well, deserve it.
There are a few ideas interwoven into this statement and every single one of them is absolutely, 100% correct.
I’d just add that the results of actions and the intentions of actions tend to diverge more often than is commonly imagined.
I seem to remember reading that people who do not believe in free will, have less willpower. Calvinists do not tend to be slobs, however.
Writes Snorri Godhi. Hmm, I remember reading an account of the culture of hardline Muslim societies and of how it is common to see examples of fatalistic behaviour that undercuts a sense of adventure and responsibility. Every sentence people speak is presaged with “God willing”. Like predestination, other doctrines that undercut free will can, on balance, diminish a sense of responsibility and this can change a society. To the extent that people remain innovators and create new things and test ideas, often powerful ones, they are seen as rebels, often at odds with their society, sometimes violently so.
Unlike those have-your-cake-and-eat-it folk who call themselves compatibalists over the free will/determinism issue, I don’t think one can take responsibility for one’s actions if you think you have no real choices to make, no alternative courses of possible action. I am not a determinist, of either the physical or religious sort. This is moving into deep philosophic territory but I contend that determinism, of whatever variety, destroys any coherent sense that people, and even certain animals, can be agents in any way at all. I recommend a recent book by Helen Steward for those inclined. This book review contains also a very solid defence of volition.
to go back to the original posting, it is perhaps worth pointing out that most of the people fleeing war and tyranny have had to uproot family life and friendship connections, and such a wrenching change shows a lot of guts.
Determinism is language stealing.
[See my comments.]
Johnathan:
Determinism has been pretty much destroyed by quantum mechanics…or has it? i think the jury is still out, but anyway, quantum mechanics is proof of concept that one can have a nondeterministic system without free will. That is why i think that people are barking up the wrong tree, when they rail against determinism.
The concept of “real choice” is, strictly speaking, nonsense. How can one make imaginary choices? ALL choices are real choices. The choices a computer chess program makes, are real choices (a case of compatibilism). That is, if you take the commonsense view of free will. If you take the metaphysical view, then there are no choices. So, if you want to believe in making choices, you better stick to commonsense.
Incidentally, suppose that you are offered a reward for snitching on a friend. Do you think you have a real choice? if you are a man of integrity, no, you don’t. OK, you still have a commonsense free choice, but not a metaphysically free choice: your conscience prevents you from snitching.
I don’t know why people talk so much about “taking responsibility” either. I certainly feel responsible for my actions, and anyway i am very much aware that, responsible or not, i’ll have to suffer the consequences anyway. As for holding other people responsible, eg in a court of law, that has nothing to do with free will as far as i am concerned: it’s for deterrence.
Maybe i’ll write an essay about this, and if so i’ll have to take a look at Steward’s book, but until then i am satisfied that the matter is settled.
Some comments:
The only outright theocracy in the Middle East is Iran – which for some reason is not a major source of migrants, economic or political. Saudi Arabia is hyper-religious, but there are no economic emigrants; those who go live in the West seem to be those who prefer Western society and don’t want to import Islamic customs.
The problem migrants seem to be economic migrants and refugees from disorder.
HBD has some interesting ideas in this field. There is a well-known marker line across Europe. East and south of the line, cousin marriages are far more accepted. It’s been suggested that this practice selects for stronger kin favoritism in social interaction, subtly undermining impartial rule of law.
As to the complicity of the people in tyranny: it can certainly happen. But a successful tyranny enmeshes its subjects in multiple systems of control and monitoring, and promotes mutual distrust and fear of the state. Mass rebellion can overthrow the tyranny, but it can’t happen until a preference cascade reveals that most people want then gone. A clever tyranny also practices “divide and rule”: rewarding groups that serve them best, and thereby making them targets for the rest. They become dependent on the regime for survival. That can make rebellion harder to ignite: everyone knows the regime has a bloc of die-hard loyalists.
Really? How do you define a theocracy? Whether or not Saudi Arabia technically is a theocracy is perhaps debatable but, regardless, I think a credible argument could be made that the government of Saudi Arabia governs as one would in a theocracy as it is understood in the vernacular. No?
Yes I think it is a bit of a stretch to say Saudi Arabia not a theocracy, at least by any reasonable functional measure.
Of course as is well known, nobody from Saudi Arabia has ever come to the U.S. (at least) in order to commit mayhem here, nor to fund madrassas that preach Islamic supremacism (so it is said — I’ve never attended madrassa myself), nor to fund, at prestigious U.S. universities, departments of Islamic Studies that consist of apologies of Islam and the value of instituting Shari’ah here, since (a) the Const. mandates “freedom of religion” and (b) it’s proper to institute Shari’ah as the Law of the Land irregardlessly [sic].
. . .
As to the nationalities of Islamics running the (alleged: never attended one myself) terrorist-training camps here, I do not know. I do note that there seems to be a fairly vocal contingent of Muslims from wherever who are shrieking that the U.S. needs Shari’ah, and “We shall overcome,” not to swipe a trope, as it is Allah’s will. Are these the voices of poor Muslims oppressed in their own countries who have only come here desiring prosperity and freedom?
@Julie
Yep. Would Protestantism have survived without Aquinas? I would say yes, but it would have taken a lot longer. However, Aquinas proves my point – it does not matter if Papists deny it – if Prots claim him as their heir – he is!!
@Schlomo
What does the word “deterrence” mean if events are determined? How can anyone deter a determined outcome? This is what Ayn Rand described as “concept stealing” – using a word while denying the logically necessary foundations that give meaning to the word.
1. When I bought this board, I took my steel-tape to the lumberyard myself, and I determined that it is 12′ long.
2. Therefore, I determined that it would work well for my shelf, and I bought it and 5 more boards, all determined to be 12′ long.
3. However, it turned out that the walls were not 100% plumb, so they converged slightly with height. This deterred me from using those boards as they were.
4. In point of fact, I was deterred by the physical circumstances (of the slightly slanting walls) from using 12′ boards in the first place; I just didn’t know I would be so deterred till I actually tried them. Their unsuitability, of course, was determined long before I even dreamed up the project.
In other words, if the laws of physics, or of physics, chemistry, and biology (as they apply in a specific circumstance of time, place, and conditions) necessarily prevent X from occurring in that circumstance, then by definition they have deterred X from happening, and furthermore the deterrence was determined by the physical factors in the first place.
In other words, the lack of deterrence from a given outcome Y, is one of the factors that determines outcome X instead; and this is true regardless of whether any humans are involved in the process or not. The process leading to the outcome is what it is, and may well include factors prohibiting other, different outcomes — that is, deterring them.
One part of scientific experimentation is aimed at finding out just what deterrences exist in the process by which outcome X is determined by starting conditions S.
Huh?
FWIW I’m a compatibilist. It’s not something that can be explained thoroughly and easily, but basically: I that that man is endowed with free will and that man operates within an overarching destiny that is preordained. I concur with Joseph de Maistre’s more elegant phrasing of this same idea:
What deterrence or Ayn Rand has to do with this, I don’t understand. And I read plenty of Ayn Rand in my ignorant youth.
JohnW appears to have been addressing me, not Shlomo.
Julie has already said pretty much what i would have said, though surely
the lack of deterrence from a given outcome Y, is one of the factors that determines outcome X instead
should have been:
deterrence from a given outcome Y, is one of the factors that determines outcome X instead
To strengthen the case, i rephrase JohnW’s rhetorical questions.
What does the word “collision” mean if events are determined? How can anything interfere with a determined trajectory?
What does the word “gravitation” mean if events are determined? How can anything interfere with a determined orbit?
What does “turning the power off” mean if events are determined? How can anyone stop a deterministic computer?
What does “turning off the tap” mean if events are determined? How can anyone interfere with a deterministic plumbing system?
What does the word “experiment” mean if events are determined? how can anyone alter the initial conditions in a deterministic system?
(And btw, once again: modern physics is not deterministic.)
It seems to me that this sort of mental confusion is the whole “problem” of free will:
What does the word “conscience” mean if events are determined? how can anything interfere with the operation of a deterministic brain?
Snorri, I see I needn’t have worried that no one would get it. :>)
As far as your restatement is concerned, I think you’re correct.
I think part (not all) of the difficulty is that “to determine” has several meanings [see online Webster’s combined 1913], related but not the same, and when we use the word sometimes we mean some combination of these different meanings. Also I think we tend to speak from a particular vantage point, one in which we do not know what the outcome will be until we see what it is; but we know what the outcome usually is, so we rather imagine the outcome as “sure to be X,” that is, as determined (for instance by forces of nature), and if instead it turns out to be Y we think this can only mean that the outcome was NOT determined.
(In this sort of case, “determined” means “fixed.”)
Anyway, thanks for getting it, and for your other examples of the same principle.
@Schlomo My mistake – I meant to address my comment to Snorri.
I’ll just note that vitalism has not been proven to be an “obsolete” doctrine. It is, in fact, true.
I don’t know why people talk so much about “taking responsibility” either. I certainly feel responsible for my actions, and anyway i am very much aware that, responsible or not, i’ll have to suffer the consequences anyway. As for holding other people responsible, eg in a court of law, that has nothing to do with free will as far as i am concerned: it’s for deterrence.
I know why they do so: it is because of praise and blame. Ask any civil or criminal lawyer. You may “feel” responsible but as we know, there are plenty of folk out there arguing that we are all victims of circumstance and and argue that we need to be nudged, prodded, taxed, incentivised and god-knows-what-else into acting in approved ways. So this is not an abstruse academic point. #
The concept of negligence or its opposite has no meaning if you don’t think that you had any alternative course of action and had to do what you did because of living in a deterministic world. Indetermiminism does’t help either, because if all our actions are random, in what sense are they choices? A choice implies the possibility of taking an alternative course of action.
Strongly recommend reading the Steward book.
That is exactly why i claim that all this talk of “responsibility” is pernicious nonsense. Shift the focus to deterrence, and this problem disappears.
This is a non sequitur. Just because your opponents engage in logical fallacies, it doesn’t mean that you ought to take them seriously.
By the same logic, the concept of disk crash has no meaning if you don’t think that your computer has any alternative course of action and has to do what it does because it is a deterministic machine.
There is a reason why Hume is much more famous than Steward. Before tackling the original, you would do well to begin with this essay.
For the multitude herein assembled, two questions, and a third.
1. Do you believe that we live in a rational world?
2. Do you believe that we live in a cause-and-effect world?
3. Do your answers lead you to conclude that we live in a “deterministic” world?
Follow-up, not for extra credit but because your exam grade is “I” for Incomplete if this goes unanswered:
Regardless of your answers to the above, what do you yourself personally understand by “a deterministic world,” as in your answer to (3)?
Deterrence is fine, Snorri (sticks and carrots are needed in any society), but there also has to be a coherent sense that the law is just, not simply effective as a signalling device. That is why responsibility matters. What happens in those cases where a person has sought to act well, but there is a problem, and then the argument is made about whether he/she had any choice in the matter and could and should have acted more wisely, etc? Courts wrestle with such issues all the time – to suggest that the issue can be reduced to deterrence is a grave mistake.
By the same logic, the concept of disk crash has no meaning if you don’t think that your computer has any alternative course of action and has to do what it does because it is a deterministic machine.
A computer and a human being are not the same. Basic error: a computer does not have volition in terms of being able to, say, imagine alternatives, weigh them up, think about probabilities and risk/rewards, etc. The most basic difference is that volition is about the choice focus awareness on X rather than Y. We know from introspection that when trying to think about a hard problem, such as a mathematics puzzle, or a business plan, this involves actual effort. This isn’t the case with a computer, where the actions are automatic.
I also don’t think we live in a deterministic world, precisely because the fact of human and indeed some forms of animal agency suggest that we are not just meat puppets. To think that humans can cause things to happen is not the same as determinism.
Considers this line from some academics writing about this topic, pushing against the idea that our feeling of taking choices is some sort of illusion, as some modern determinists such as Sam Harris claim:
Check out this paper.
And consider this point by the writer Eyal Moses about causality and of how determinists get it wrong:
Well, i was not sure anybody would ever read my last comment, but am happy to continue the debate.
On this i agree. For me there is a simple solution: moral intuitionism. If i feel that the law is just in every particular concrete instance that i know of, then i tis just.
But i told you already: people do make choices when they have alternatives. They are not metaphysically free choices, because those are logically impossible. (Unless you accept that random choices are metaphysically free, which apparently you don’t.) People’s choices are determined by their moral character and the incentives they face. The objective of deterrence is to skew the incentives.
Actually i feel that the more courts wrestle with these issues, the farther they depart from commonsense about justice.
I assume that you are not a computer scientist (neither am i, by paper qualifications) otherwise you would know that everything in that sentence is false. Computer chess programs do imagine alternatives and weigh them up on the basis of expected rewards. I don’t suppose they take risks, but other AI programs do “think” about probabilities and risks.
I assume that you neglected “to” between “choice” and “focus”. Computers can be programmed to focus on some inputs and neglect others. They don’t choose to focus, you say? they do, only it’s not a metaphysically free choice. Neither is ours.
Once again: our feeling of taking choices is NOT AN ILLUSION: we make choices, according to the commonsense view of free choice. If YOU raise the bar, and adopt the metaphysical view of free choice, then we could not possibly make free choice.
Johnathan: wrt your quotes:
In the 1st quote, this snippet, in context, disqualifies the entire paper in my view:
The 2nd quote ends with this:
I agree, though i don’t see how you could possibly agree.
What makes me agree is that i can substitute “human agents” with “computer chess programs” and the sentence remains true.
What i don’t understand is why Eyal Moses felt the need for a more careful definition of causality before reaching this conclusion.
Julie:
I’d say that we live in a world with rational beings in it, but the world itself is not rational.
No: it is sometimes useful to talk about causes and effects, but as far as i can see, they play no role in fundamental physics. See Bertrand Russell’s essay on causality.
A world can be deterministic without causes and effects: it is only necessary that the state of the entire universe at one point in time, uniquely determines the state of the universe at a later point in time.
That also answers the followup question.
Snorri,
Thanks for your reply.
I was writing in shortspeak, and I knew I was taking a risk. In common parlance, “a rational universe” means a universe that (for some reason) acts in a way that is accessible to human reason, or, as we might say, is comprehensible — always bearing in mind that any logical system must rest on postulates, and the rules for reasoning about which must always comply with the axioms of logic.
It is within grammatical understanding to speak of a universe which is capable of exercising reason. That is certainly not what I meant! *g*
If you reject (2) but still find the world “deterministic” in the sense you give the word in your answer to (3), then I’m afraid I don’t understand, since to me your definition of “deterministic” is virtually the same as the definition of “cause-and-effect,” with the latter being universally operative (which is not intended to imply anything about whether the “laws of physics” “are the same” in all places in the universe, and at all times).
Julie: very briefly before going to bed.
1: Your shortspeak is quite reasonable. I believe in a universe which is predictable enough by human reason, to make it worthwhile for human reason to arise by random mutation + natural selection. That does not mean that human reason can grasp the “essence” of the universe: i am agnostic about that.
2 and 3: I appeal to Newton’s 3rd Law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That implies symmetry; speaking loosely: every cause is also an effect, and every effect is also a cause; in which case it makes no sense to distinguish between cause and effect.
I have been thinking about this issue in my spare time, and i believe that it is useful to speak of causes and effects only in 2 fields: engineering and biology; with the understanding that biology includes psychology and the social sciences.
It’s been a long time since i read Russell’s essay, and i don’t even remember whether i read it through. Judeah Pearl has written about causality more recently but i haven’t yet got around to read his work.
I’m not sure why this is. Law is not always just and I see no reason why it “has to” be.
Snorri,
Point 1: Thanks. :>)
But:
2 and 3: I appeal to Newton’s 3rd Law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That implies symmetry; speaking loosely: every cause is also an effect, and every effect is also a cause; in which case it makes no sense to distinguish between cause and effect.
First, Newton’s Third applies in physics. There’s no reason to assume that that means it applies (in the same sense) in other fields, such as for example the field of human affairs (or various of its subfields). For one thing, discussions of human affairs are notoriously prone to miscommunication and misunderstanding (not to mention muddiness of thought) for the simple reason that words often do not convey precisely the same meaning to one man as to another. So to claim that an “action” (or thought, or emotion, or belief, or …) by human X, or group G of humans, will provoke an “Equal and opposite reaction” requires one to specify exactly what that reaction will be, just who will be the reacting body (in either sense), and furthermore why said reaction qualifies as “equal” and “opposite.”
But there is another problem. You say that
…[E]very cause is also an effect, and every effect is also a cause; in which case it makes no sense to distinguish between cause and effect.
But of course, the counter is that any thing (including events and phenomena) can certainly have more than one quality or characteristic or attribute, as long as possession of none of them contradicts that of the others — as we humans perceive them and interpret them according to valid reasoning, of course. (If one’s knowledge is insufficient or false, the reasoning may be logically consistent but give an invalid result — one which does not match the facts. This is a big difficulty for living and philosophizing, but there it is.)
As an example, every human who ever became a parent was both a cause and an effect — just “not in the same sense,” since every human is the effect of insemination, i.e. is a child, and every (human) parent is a cause. So the child, an effect, causes (is an indispensable part of the cause of) a child.
The same thing (human offspring-cum-parent) has two attributes in this: he or she is both an effect and a cause. And as an aside, although that of which the parent is an effect and that of which he or she is a cause are not the same thing, they are quite similar in their basic nature, character, attributes.
And with that, I will wish you Good Night. :>)
And I don’t see any reason not to figure out ways to disobey unjust laws and perhaps defenestrate the promulgators of such. Not always possible but when it is, it should be done. I see evading unjust laws as not just an excellent use of my time but also a moral imperative.
Perry, you are just the sort of person who would sell bread and TP on the Black Market in the U.S.S.R.! (Or Venezuela.)
However, do not take that as negative criticism. I have been aching to rant about this and now I can. For in the second season of the excellent 1990, one episode deals with the Criminals who run the Black Market in benighted Britain, where full-on rationing is the system, for those who are citizens of high enough status to have ration cards permitting them food (and TP).
Both the good guys — our hero and his pal — and the bad guys (the Home Secretary and her PCD department KNOW that the Black Market is evil and the criminals running it are worse than lice. And when I saw the hero say so, and then heard the H.S.’s Mandatory Broadcast to the country also saying so, all I could think was, “Evil??? I thought they were doing a public service!”
In totalitarian countries, people starve if they can’t get food on the black market, or cheat in other, worse ways.
(H.S.’s point, she went on to say, was that because of the B.M., men were selling their ration cards and using the proceeds to buy cigarettes and liquor on the B.M. instead of meat and other food for their children. Unfortunately, that’s probably true — of some men, and women.)
Related: Miss R. (in A.S., I think) talked about an old man, a drunk. He had never been wealthy, but he was able to some extent to indulge his love of music, and was an avid collector of records.
Then the Bolsheviks came, and took most of what little money he had, and threw him out of work or assigned him to a lower-paying job or some such, so he could no longer afford to collect his records.
So he took to the bottle instead.
She said, “When men are not permitted to engage in healthy activities, they will turn to the most rotten things they can manage,” or words to that effect.
So when men are told that their sustenance depends on ration cards and that the Authorities will tell them what they can buy, they will spend what what they can on vices, that is on things that are not good for them or their N & D, as Bertie would say.
Now we are edging into a new topic upon which I have a fondness for expatiating, but perhaps Samizdatistas would rather hit the sack. :>)
I can pretty easily think of many reasons not to disobey unjust laws. Granted, figuring out ways to disobey unjust laws and disobeying unjust laws are different things.