Double delusion

Some people with a gambling problem tell themselves that if they play long enough they'll eventually win big. For most those people it's a delusion; unless you have an enormous amount of money to use on placing bets, gambling has negative expected returns. I wonder if those people actually create two layers of delusion for themselves: Unconsciously, they enjoy gambling as consumption, for its own sake, but their conscious mind tells them they are doing it for instrumental reasons, to earn money, and on top of that they delude themselves into thinking that they actually can earn money that way?

Where does the something that everything must come from, come from?

In his new book "The Grand Design," Stephen Hawking writes:

Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. (...) It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Naturally, the statement caused quite an uproar and a lot of polemics from apologetics. It may just be my bad luck, but quite honestly I have not read one single response to Hawking's claims that would be in any way insightful, or even intelligent for that matter. Every single defender of religion that I've read argued against Hawking using some version of the famous First Cause Argument: Whatever begins to exist has a cause, therefore the Universe has a cause, the "First Cause" of everything there is. Apologetics identify the First Cause with God.

Newsflash: The First Cause argument is logically flawed. As in: it's wrong. It commits the fallacy of "begging the question" or, in much less fancy terms, simply assuming what it's trying to prove. Suppose everything that exists must indeed have a cause. Then it does follow that the Universe must have a cause. But what caused the First Cause? You just assumed that everything must have a cause, so the First Cause must have one too. What is it? The Mother of All Causes? And who's her mother? In other words, if everything that exists must have a creator, then who created the creator? Note that you're not allowed to say that God exists without having to be created because "that's His nature." That's not an argument; it's a hand-wave. We might just as well assume that the Universe created itself out of nothing because "that's its nature."

But some response pieces are even more confused that just relying on the First Cause Argument, and I'll write about one of those. It's an essay by Pawel Lisicki, editor-in-chief of one of the largest daily papers in Poland, "Rzeczpospolita." Referring directly to Hawking's above quote, Lisicki writes

Both creation and spontaneity (...) are concepts that are well-defined only in the realm of personal metaphysics and religion. Only a person, an agent (...) who has free will and ability to reason, can be spontaneous.

Strike one for monumental ignorance. Spontaneous appearance of things uncaused by an intelligent agent is directly observable. Certain particles have been observed to appear spontaneously, out of absolutely nothing. The price mechanism causes millions of unconnected individual decisions to coordinate into one huge resource-allocating machine which does not have a conscious designer. Further, Lisicki writes

In Christian thought, being able to create something is an attribute of God (...) only through analogy and metaphor can we also talk of human creation. Impersonal, spontaneous creation as a cause that the world exists is a self-contradictory concept.

Strike two for ignorance coupled with pretentiousness. Lisicki says that impersonal spontaneous creation is a self-contradictory concept, and that's because... it's inconsistent with the definition of creation that he is using! In other words, he clearly has no idea what "self-contradictory" even means; he's just pretentiously throwing the term around because it makes him sound all smart and everything. To top things off, the definition he's using makes his reasoning perfectly circular. Effectively, Lisicki's entire argument is this:

I've just assumed that everything that exists has been created. I've also defined "creation" as something only God can do. Therefore, the Universe has been created by God.

That's all of it, really. How completely uncritical of your own beliefs do you have to be to think this is actually a sound argument?

Non sequitur of the month: One of the most bizarre attempts at argument I've seen

It's due to Magda Figurska, a Polish blogger I've written about once before. She commented on a blog post whose author quoted a statistic which says that in the second quarter of 2010, annualized GDP growth in Poland was 3.4%. Figurska wrote: "What you're writing is just like communist propaganda. You write about GDP growth of 3.5% in the second quarter but forget to mention that, in the same quarter, inflation was 3%." So far so bad. Figurska is unaware that the 3.4% annualized GDP growth statistic is already adjusted for inflation (in fact, published GDP statistics always are). That's stunning ignorance, but it isn't a non sequitur just yet. Inevitably, another commenter pointed her mistake out to her, to which she replied: "Really? Then look here. Inflation in Germany 0.00%." (The link she gave was simply a table with a bunch of economic statistics for the second quarter of 2010 for a bunch of countries.)

In other words, the fact that Germany experienced no inflation in April, May and June of 2010 somehow proves that GDP growth statistics are not adjusted for inflation. Other commenters in that thread asked Figurska to elaborate on this rather peculiar inference but she ignored them. So what we're left with is a truly stunning non sequitur.

Have some distance to yourself

A distance of 114 million miles, to be exact.

(The image shows the Earth and the Moon as seen from the MESSENGER spacecraft. The source is NASA.)

A whole different language

I'm constantly amazed at how powerful music is in inducing emotions, and also at the complexity of those emotions. Verbal language, on the other hand, is very inefficient at describing emotional states, which I think prevents us from appreciating what music is capable of--because most of the time we simply can't describe it. Read, for example, a verbal description of a mood of any Chopin piece; it's striking how incredibly shallow it is when compared to the mood you feel when you actually listen to it. You'll read words like "melancholy" or "longing" or whatever--all of which are true but way too general and therefore grossly incomplete. Sure it's melancholy and longing, but of a very specific kind, and for some reason we don't have analytic categories to communicate specific shades of general emotional states. Perhaps there are too many of those shades. Or perhaps communicating them efficiently is for some reason completely unimportant for the functioning of society. Or maybe the "shades" are too subjective--when I see Alice blue, someone else sees carmine pink or something.

Added: The ability to elicit extremely complex and varied emotions is I think a property of music as a language and is independent of its quality. Kitschy music can make me feel things way too complex for words just as readily as truly great music.

Two types of jerks

I wrote once about kindness being more scarce in poorer societies. There's also a difference between richer and poorer societies in terms of how unkindness manifests itself most often.

In general, people who are profoundly selfish (a.k.a. assholes) fall into two categories that I call "brutes" and "brats." Both brutes and brats have no regards for other people's values or feelings and act on self-interest only; where they differ is in how they view their actions. Brutes have no problem bending people to their will in situations where they have the power to do so. They will take advantage of others at every opportunity. They more or less know that doing so is wrong, but they don't care. They figure the world is a tough place and it's either kill or be killed, so they kill if they have to. They do not feel the need to rationalize their assholery; even though they know the difference between right and wrong, they don't have a conscience. Brats, on the other hand, hate to think of themselves as assholes. They mostly recruit from people who at some point in their lives were profoundly spoiled, and because for a long time all their social interactions were based on other people catering to their whims, they concluded that the way of the world is such that they rightfully deserve more than others. They have no conscience either; but, as opposed to brutes, they are completely amoral. They believe deeply that other people are there to serve them and interpret any disagreement as terrible injustice.

My stylized and completely subjective observation is that poorer assholes are mostly brutes whereas richer ones are mostly brats (this seems to hold both within- and cross-country). There's also an orthogonal gender divide. Holding income constant, selfish men come in both flavors (though brats are usually outnumbered) whereas almost all selfish women are of the brat variety.

(In case you're wondering: If I'm an asshole, then I'm definitely a brat. Note the conditional nature of the statement though.)

If you can't build 'em, grow 'em

Bill Easterly reminds a classic anecdote (due to David Friedman) illustrating the point that, looking at their effects on the economy, trade and technological progress are the same thing:

There are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa.

How does one manufacture cars in Detroit? I don't know; ask an engineer or whoever it is that knows about stuff like that. How does one grow cars in Iowa? Like this:

First you plant seeds, which are the raw material from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships, and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them.

Death metal shows and moral intuition

It's probably a good bet that you've never heard of a Polish death metal band called Behemoth. Until recently, I haven't either (even though they are apparently world-famous in their niche). The reason I've heard of them is because one of their shows in Poland made the news nationwide. During that show, its front man Adam Darski went on a long rant about the evils of Christianity, and concluded it by tearing up the Bible. Publicly offending religious sensibilities is criminalized in Poland, and charges were filed against Darski. I don't know if he was convicted or not, and it isn't really relevant here; the point is that the incident spurred a discussion about how the law should be dealing with, well, situations of this sort.

I remember a TV talk show in which a bunch of Polish celebrities were arguing over Darski's case. One of the participants pointed out that the incident happened during a death metal concert, which meant that it was very unlikely for the audience to contain anyone who would be offended by this sort of thing, and at any rate those who are offended by this sort of thing have a simple choice of avoiding Mr. Darski's live shows. To this, an entertainer and Catholic publicist Wojciech Cejrowski replied that it doesn't matter because "just knowing that someone in my country is disrespecting the Bible like this is enough for me to feel offended."

What should happen in those situations? I feel very strongly that Darski's right to tear up the Bible is much more important than Cejrowski's right to know that no one is tearing up the Bible "in his country." But, to be honest, I am not entirely sure why I think that. I'm big on the efficiency criterion and cost-benefit analysis; but if you assume that the right to publicly tear up the bible is worth $50 to Darski, while the comfort of knowing that tearing up the Bible is prohibited by law is worth $100 to Cejrowski, then cost-benefit analysis says we should ban tearing up the Bible. I'm unwilling to accept this conclusion, though don't have much in way of a rational argument why. The only thing I can think of is that in situations when we're weighing banning things versus allowing things, and in which both alternatives hurt someone, we should err on the side of allowing things. Much of progress is achieved through trial and error, so it seems to me that banning things can have an externality in that many potentially beneficial things will not be tried. But then again, many potentially harmful things will not, either. So this is really just a moral intuition that I have, which makes me feel uncomfortable because moral intuitions are not a good guide of ethical choices. Moral intuitions are often wrong. In fact, some people's moral intuitions are downright repugnant to me.

How your beliefs shape your perceptions: If a tree falls down in Smolensk, how thick is it?

Quick: how thick is the tree in the picture? What I mean is, what is its diameter at the point where it broke? Take a guess and make a mental note of it before you read on. You can click on the picture to enlarge it. Don't overthink it though; just pick a number that seems reasonable to you and move on.

Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to think that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya. This correlation doesn't make any sense to me, and to a whole lot of others. People become Democrats or Republicans because of their values or policy preferences; Obama's faith and place of birth are not a matter of values or preferences. They are a matter of fact. There is no a priori reason why people with different values should have different judgments in factual matters. It really doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The only reason why it doesn't baffle people as it should is because it's something that happens all the time, so we just get used to it and forget how utterly insane it really is.

Someone might object here that it's perfectly reasonable for people with different perceptions of facts to have different values, so the observed correlation may not be so strange after all. If you think Obama is a foreigner and a Muslim, perhaps you're more likely to become a Republican. To this I would object that, in the real world, causality seems to run the other way much more often. Most of the people who have strong beliefs about Obama's spirituality and birthplace chose to be Republicans or Democrats long before they even heard of Barack Obama. It really is very striking: instead of choosing policies that match the facts as they see them, people choose to believe the facts that back up their values-driven policies.

What does all this have to do with a picture of a broken tree? A lot, actually, because it's not just any old tree. This tree has tremendous political importance. According to the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee, which is investigating the recent crash of the Polish presidential airplane near Smolensk, Russia, the tree in the picture is broken because, in the final seconds of its flight, the presidential aircraft has hit it with its left wing. It's hypothesized that the impact caused part of the left wing to snap off, which in turn caused asymmetry of lift, forcing the aircraft into a complete roll to the left, after which it hit the ground inverted, killing everyone on board.

OK, but again, what does all this have to do with facts and values and Obama being born in Kenya? Well, lots of Poles, and some Polish media are convinced that the Smolensk crash was in fact an assassination organized by Russian special ops forces. The "accident vs. assassination" divide cuts deep and seems to be driven mostly by values and preferences just like political ideology cleavages are. At any rate, if you believe in a deliberate act of destruction, you must think that the official story of the airplane losing part of its wing on a tree, rolling to the left and hitting the ground upside down cannot be correct. Most assassination-believers claim that it's impossible for the aircraft to have lost a wing on this particular tree because it isn't thick enough.

Which brings me to my point. As I read discussions between accident- and assassination-believers that go on in Polish blogosphere about whether it is or is not likely that this tree has indeed destroyed the airplane's wing, it's very hard to believe that all those people are talking about the same damn tree. Most assassination-believers claim that the trunk is "at most 40 centimeters [about 16 inches--p] in diameter" where it broke. (I've seen claims going as far as 5.5 inches.) Most accident-believers claim that the diameter is "at least 50 centimeters" [about 20 inches]. All of them are basing their opinions on the same pictures.

So there you have it: values shaping perceptions, and very basic perceptions at that. Here's an idea for a fun experiment. Show the picture above to a large group of people who have never heard of the Smolensk crash, and ask them what they think its diameter is. Then show the same picture to a large group of people half of which are accident-believers and half of which are assassination believers, and ask them the same question. How would the answers differ? I don't know if the mean of the guesses in both groups would be different, quite possibly not. But I think the distributions would be nothing alike. The guesses of the first group would be distributed normally, whereas in the second group they would follow some sort of a bimodal distribution. However, one simple additional twist in the experimental design would make that difference disappear. Go to Smolensk and measure the actual diameter of the tree. (It can be done; the tree is still there.) Once you've obtained the correct answer, gather your two experimental groups and ask them to guess the diameter, but this time tell them that everyone who gets within an inch of the correct answer will be paid $500. You will see bimodality in the second group's guesses disappear as if by magic. You will see both distributions assume a normal shape with roughly the same mean, which will be roughly equal to the true value. Such is the difference between situations in which people form their perceptions of facts in order to signal their preferences, and situations in which people form their perceptions of facts in order to find out what those facts actually are.

To sum things up, and in case you were wondering, my own guess is 50 centimeters, plus or minus 10 centimeters (which is about 20 inches, plus or minus 4 inches). My wife's guess was "a foot an a half," or about 47 centimeters. (She has heard of the Smolensk crash, but didn't know what tree she was looking at.)

Nerdy joke

Via Ed Brayton:

Jesus and his disciples were walking around one day, when Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9." The disciples looked very puzzled, and finally asked Peter, "What on earth does Jesus mean: 'the Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9?'" Peter said, "Don't worry. It's just another one of his parabolas."

In case you're wondering, it's a simple joke. You don't need to get to its roots in order to understand it.