May 2010

In my last post, I promised a separate discussion on the tu quoque response; that is, the claim that confirmation bias, closed-mindedness and deliberate promotion of ignorance are universal phenomena, just as bad on the left as on the right.

More over the fold on this, but here are some links that have come up since I posted

Slacktivist gives some striking info on the “P&G in league with the devil” rumors. Key points.
*The rumors were apparently started by distributors for Amway, but went viral (compare AGW delusions and Exxon).
* (Many of) those propagating the rumors, even excluding those with a monetary axe to grind, were not innocent dupes, but were well aware that they were peddling lies.

David Frum reduces Jonah Goldberg to a stammering wreck on the question “Is Obama really a Marxist/Socialist”.

A second example of a rightwing critique of agnotology. Note: In the original version of this post, I incorrectly linked to an example of agnotology instead of a refutation, then corrected it (as I thought) but failed. I think it’s right this time. Even inadvertent error can be hard to correct! -JQ

Scott McLemee reviews the book of the concept.

A striking example of the asymmetry of agnotology. The right has made big play of alleged weaknesses in the “hockey stick” paper of Mann et al. But the critique they primarily rely on, by Wegman et al, is a pile of plagiarised nonsense.

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Here for 6 more days. Ernie, apparently, was an obsessive archivist, who then left everything in a box in his garage. Delightful.

Here’s the “singing in the rain” sketch they refer to after 30 minutes or so to cheer you up:

Further thoughts on “Ship of Fools” by Fintan O’Toole …

In so far as these things matter, I totes claim bragging rights over calling the end of the bubble in Ireland, in writing in October 2006 and my only regret is that I changed jobs and started doing something else before I had time to milk it[1]. My basic point at the time was that the rental yield on Irish property at the time was estimated at 3.25% (Daft.ie had begun to calculate a rental yield index, tragically too late – I believe unless someone knows different that at the time I was in possession of the only even acceptably accurate time series of data on Irish rental yields), and that with the most recent ECB rate rise to 3.75%, the logic of the myopic-expectations buy-or-rent model[2] was about to start working in reverse. As it did. I’ve mentioned on a number of occasions that in actual fact, this was a policy-caused bubble, and that’s true in Ireland as well. But of course, the actual mechanisms by which a bubble is inflated, since they are based on a combination of the winner’s curse and limited liability, tend to involve the sorts of tales of sharp elbows, social capital and low risk aversion which can be made to look absolutely awful with the benefit of hindsight and/or in a court of law. So let the games begin …
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My “review”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com//features/2010/1005.farrell.html of “Ship of Fools,” Fintan O’Toole’s book on the wreck of the Irish economy, is up at the _Washington Monthly._ Opening paragraph:

bq. When I first came to the United States from Ireland in the early 1990s, Americans thought of my home country as a land of green fields, bibulous peasants, and perhaps the occasional leprechaun. Once, on a bus from Ann Arbor to Detroit, a fellow passenger heard my accent and asked if she could touch me for good luck. But something changed over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, as Ireland started to enjoy remarkable levels of economic growth. Blather about Guinness and the Little People made way for a new story line: the success of the Celtic Tiger economy. Between 1995 and 2007, Irish GDP grew at an average rate of 6 percent every year. Housing prices rose by 270 percent between 1996 and 2006. A country that had long been notorious for its high emigration rates started to import people instead. Gort—a tiny town in Galway—acquired a large population of South American immigrants, while Dublin supported no less than three Polish-language newspapers.

All up to dsquared now.

I spent part of yesterday at the local May Fair where, in addition to the stalls selling plants, vegetables, antiques, books, etc, there were representatives of all three of the main political parties and the Greens. I was struck by my own emotional reaction to the various politicos: loathing towards the Tories and indifference towards the Greens and Lib Dems. I felt at home talking to the Labour people even when telling them that their candidate’s main pledge (not to support an increase in student fees) made no sense at a time when my university is shedding jobs, unless they were also planning an increase in funding from general taxation – which they aren’t. So I felt they were my people, still, after years of NuLab, Mandelson, Iraq, and so on. Then there’s Gordon Brown. Plainly a disaster as a politician: either stiff and technocratic or, when he tries the human touch, an embarrassment. I’m still glad he was PM when the banking crisis struck, though, and not George Osborne David Cameron.

But here’s the decisive thing for me. We all know that the next few years in the UK are going to be tough and that the volume of cuts that each party would make are about the same. Where there is a difference is in the distribution of the pain. If the Tories are in power it will fall on the very poorest and most vulnerable. The Lib Dems will be better than that, but they too will appease their middle-class base. A Labour government will still hurt the most vulnerable but less so. Labour aren’t going to win, but it would be very very bad if they came third. Their base, again, composed disproportionately of the worst-off, would become still more marginalized. So share of the vote counts too, even in a first-past-the-post system. I’m voting Labour.

I’m expressing the views above on the general election in a purely personal capacity, of course.

Chris Brooke is on a roll again. Responding to fears that Cameron will demand the PMship if there is a hung parliament in which the Tories have the largest number of seats, and force Brown’s, or the Queen’s, hand:

People are making analogies with the presidential election in the United States in 2000 — but what was striking then was far more the spinelessness of the Dems rather than the unscrupulousness of the Repugs. The bottom line is that politics is about power, and if the Tories are the only ones willing to play hardball, then – bluntly – good for them. If the Queen discredits herself along the way by being pressured into being openly partisan, then that’s a good thing, as it’ll work to hasten the end of this stupid monarchy. And if voters disapprove of what the Tories are doing, then they’ll punish them when they get the chance. That’s democracy.

This reminded me, for no particular reason, of what happened immediately after Labour’s unexpected victory of 1945. Morrison (appalling grandfather of the magnificent Mandelson) tried to involve Bevin in staging a coup against Attlee. Bevin forewarned Attlee (to whom he was intensely loyal) and in the end Attlee just sat through Morrison’s demands to be given a shot at becoming PM. Bevin was stunned by Attlee’s relaxed attitude. When Morrison was done, Attlee just said something to the effect of “Well, I’m driving to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen will invite me to form a government” (not exactly — he didn’t drive, his wife did — she was, apparently, a crazed driver, and his colleagues would occasionally try to stop him allowing her to drive him — while he did the crossword).

I doubt that whoever goes to the palace on Friday will be driven by a wife, or will be doing a crossword puzzle.

Anyway, read the whole thing.

I’ve read all John Lawton’s novels, and have never discussed them with anyone. I remember formulating a post in my head several years ago asking why on earth publishers give novels different names in the US and the UK, after enthusiastically buying Bluffing Mr. Churchill only to discover that it was Riptide (and, no, I am not going to buy the claim that “Churchill” was added to make the book more familiar to Americans, any more than I buy the claim that Brits know better than Americans what a philosopher’s stone is — the number of Britons who buy a book because it is named after an Al Bowlly hit is vanishingly small). The animating device in each book is that Frederick Troy of the Metropolitan Police, son of a very wealthy Russian emgire, and brother of a future Labour MP, is confronted by some mystery that is connected to some major historical event or character (WWII, Suez, fictionalized versions of Profumo and the Kray twins). This presents lots of opportunity for rich and seemingly authentic historical detail, which is the real attraction of the books (the mock-Profumo case is done especially well). Real people, major and minor, appear here and there, always well drawn and just about plausible. They’re tautly written and literate. But I’ve never felt able to recommend one without reservation — they’re very, very well done, but the central drawback is the amorality and, frankly, the unlikeability, of Troy himself, who seems, at best, to have some sort of a screw loose. I confess that I found the last one (Flesh Wounds or Blue Rondo, depending on your preference) sufficiently unpleasant that I almost gave up (to see why it was so unpleasant you have to read the others first, unfortunately).

I’m glad that I came back. Second Violin is by some distance the best of the books. Set earlier than the others, in the mid-thirties (but hinting that an even earlier book might be on its way) it focuses almost exclusively on Troy’s brother Rod, a journalist friend of Hugh Greene’s, and still a future MP, and the efforts of a young and rather mysterious Jewish tailor called Joe to escape Austria after the Anschluss to Britain, escaping death several times only, eventually, to be sent to one of the Isle of Man internment camps, along with Rod. The mystery Troy, who is not the second violin of the title but might as well be, investigates seems to be a bit an afterthought for most of the book. The journeys from Vienna — Joe’s, Rod’s, and Sigmund Freud’s — dominate the book. In the other books the mysteries and the portraits of the age vie for attention — in this one the portrait dominates. Several slightly unlikely coincidences drive the plot forward, but Lawton cleverly distracts the reader by embedding them in quite realistic accounts of real and traumatic events — outrageous as the internment of a significant number of people who were only in Britain because they opposed, or had reason to fear, the Nazis, has always seemed to me, Lawton’s harrowing account of the train journey north really brings home how cruel and destructive it was. The mystery is successful and satisfying, not least because, for once, Lawton doesn’t let Troy get in the way at all.

Very curious what others who have read these (if anyone has — I’ve never met anyone!) think.

I don’t want to take this Mario Kart socialism complaint too seriously, but it does seem worth mentioning that the feature of the kart peloton the author objects to as socialistic is also a feature of any peleton in the actually existing physical universe: namely, it can be smart to let some other sucker take the lead.

But it is gross injustice for the universe to burden natural leaders with higher rates of physical taxation, as it were. Abolish the draft! (No wonder the damn Europeans love cycling so much.)

One problem with the recent discussion of epistemic closure or, in my preferred terminology, agnotology, ( that is, the manufacture and maintenance of ignorance) on the US[1] political right is that a lot of it has been discussed in fairly abstract terms. However, there is a fair bit of agreement that climate change is both a key example, and that the rightwing construction of a counternarrative to mainstream science on this issue marks both an important example, and a major step in the journey towards a completely closed parallel universe of discourse.

Climate change as a whole is too big and complicated to be useful in understanding what is going on, so it is useful to focus on one particular example, which does not require any special knowledge of climate science or statistics. The Oregon Petition, commonly quoted as showing that “31000 scientists reject global warming” not only fits the bill perfectly but was raised by Jim Manzi in his critique of Mark Levin.

So, it provides a useful test case for understanding the agnotology of the right.

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Every six months or so I pose an amateur copyright puzzle, so here goes. Is there settled law, or substantial precedent, for dealing with the fact that copyright terms differ in different jurisdictions, as a result of which many works are in copyright in the US but public domain elsewhere, and vice versa? Project Gutenberg, for example, passes the legal burden onto its users. Many of its offerings bear notices to the effect: “Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook.” I take it this works, otherwise they would have been sued into the ground. But what if you want to publish a new paper edition of – oh, say, Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy. It’s in the public domain in the US, so if you are a US publisher, go to. But Russell was a tough old bird and only passed on in 1970, so it will be decades before it’s in the clear in the UK – or Singapore (which has UK-style copyright). But if you sell your book on Amazon, someone might order it from the UK, or Singapore. And even if you only sell your book in the US – hell, it might be printed in Singapore. What about selling ebooks, as opposed to giving them away, Gutenberg-style? Is there any case of a non-US rights holder bringing successful suit against a US publisher for overstepping the geographical bounds of the US public domain (or, vice versa, for a US rights holder)? It seems as though, in this webbed-together world, there would have to be a settled way of dealing with such cases. But maybe there isn’t.

One of the benefits of living just west of the date line is that we in Oz get first crack at celebrating anniversaries and holidays of all kinds. Here’s a May Day post from my blog, with a bit of Oz content, but hopefully of broader interest. As with most of my posts recently, it’s not a well-worked exposition of firm conclusions, but a set of ideas that I think need to be explored.

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