by John Q on May 31, 2004
Following up my three-way classification of paradoxes,[1] I want to argue that paradoxes involving infinity are always of type-3, that is, the result of ill-posed problems or inappropriate ways of taking limits. (Much the same position is defended in the comments thread by Bill Carone). In fact, I’d argue for the following general principle, applicable to all models relevant to human decisionmakers.
Whenever a result, true for all finite n, is strictly[2] reversed for the infinite case, the problem in question has been posed incorrectly
To defend this, I rely on the premise that we are finite creatures in a finite universe. If a mathematical representation of a decision problem involves an infinite set, such as the integers or the real line, it is only because this is more convenient than employing finite, but very large bounds, such as those derived from the number of particles in the universe. Any property that depends inherently on infinite sets and limits, such as the continuity of a function, can never be verified or falsified by empirical data. Since we are finite, any result that is true for all finite n is true for us.
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by John Q on May 30, 2004
Tim Lambert has more details on yet another Astroturf operation, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, recently in the news for attacking open source software and also a shill for the tobacco industry.
A point of interest for me is that I don’t think you really need detailed evidence in cases like this (though of course, its handy to have the kind of chapter and verse Tim provides). Unless it’s devoted to the life and works of de Tocqueville, an outfit with a name like the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is bound to be bogus.
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by John Q on May 28, 2004
Now that the inevitable peace deal between the American forces and Sadr’s Mahdi army appears to have been reached, amounting to restoration of the status quo ante , can anybody provide a coherent rationale for Bremer’s decision to drive Sadr into revolt in the first place, by closing his newspaper and arresting his supporters? The assault on Fallujah was bound to be a disaster, but it’s not surprising that the Americans felt impelled to take some drastic action in response to the killing and mutilation of US contractors there. But the attack on Sadr seemed gratuitiously stupid, even more so than the disbanding of the army and the banning of the Baath party.
Tacitus, still taking the view that “failure is not an option in Iraq”, is naturally furious about the deal . But any realistic analysis of the planned election must recognise that Sadr has enough support to make him a powerful force. He may not be a particularly attractive character, but he’s no worse than dozens of other world leaders with whom we deal for want of any better alternative. The notion that a military option with a June 30 deadline could take him and his movement out of the picture was never more than a delusion.
Whether you think, like Tacitus, that the attack on Sadr should been pushed through to its bloody conclusion, or like me that it should never have started, this is another appalling stuffup on Bremer’s part. Even at this late stage he ought to take responsibility and resign or, failing that, be sacked.
by John Q on May 27, 2004
Below the fold is a draft review of Gil Merom’s How Democracies Lose Small Wars. Comments and criticism much appreciated.
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by John Q on May 26, 2004
Suppose you have encountered Zeno’s Achilles paradoxfor the first time. Zeno offers a rigorous (looking) proof that, having once given the tortoise a head start, Achilles can never overtake it. Would you regard this as[1]
# A startling new discovery in athletics;
# A demonstration of the transcendent capacity of the human spirit – although the laws of logic forbid it, Achilles does in fact catch and overtake the tortoise; or
# A warning about how not to take limits?
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by John Q on May 25, 2004
When you want the most succinct statement possible statement of the power politics view of the world, VI Lenin is your only man[1]. A lot of free-market advocates of revealed preference theory, and supporters of exit over voice, would be surprised to learn who they are quoting when they refer to people voting with their feet.
In relation to the proposed “handover” of power in Iraq on June 30, the only question that really matters is the one posed by Lenin “Kto kogo ?”, that is, “Who can do what to whom?”.
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by John Q on May 25, 2004
From an NYT story on “ghost” prisoners in Abu Ghraib
The memorandum criticizing the practice of keeping prisoners off the roster was signed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and a James Bond, who is identified as “SOS, Agent in Charge.” Military and intelligence officials said that they did not know of a Mr. Bond who had been assigned to Abu Ghraib, and that it was possible that the name was an alias.
by John Q on May 25, 2004
by Chris Bertram on May 21, 2004
The Scotsman has a cluster of reports on Darfur, “starting here”:http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=578622004 , which also contains many links to other reports including the one from “Human Rights Watch”:http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/ .
bq. “The aim is to kill as many people as possible and drive the remainder from their lands, destroying the fabric of rural society,” reports the specialist journal Africa Confidential. “Proxy militias torch villages and exterminate villagers, slaughtering livestock and poisoning wells with corpses to prevent residents returning. Gang rape of women (often branded afterwards) and children reinforces the terror and helps to produce an ‘Arab’ next generation. Abduction is widespread in Darfur, with groups of women flown away by helicopter.”
by Chris Bertram on May 21, 2004
Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia is facing a court martial for refusing to go back to Iraq. His case is described in “Bob Herbert’s column in the NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/21HERB.html?hp . His testimony about the morally corrosive circumstances in which soldiers find themselves in wars of this kind is eloquent. The situation is underdescribed, but it sounds as if his friend was legally justified in shooting the child he shot. That doesn’t seem to have made things any easier.
bq. “Imagine being in the infantry in Ramadi, like we were,” he said, “where you get shot at every day and you get mortared where you live, [and attacked] with R.P.G.’s [rocket-propelled grenades], and people are dying and getting wounded and maimed every day. A lot of horrible things become acceptable.”
bq. He spoke about a friend of his, a sniper, who he said had shot a child about 10 years old who was carrying an automatic weapon. “He realized it was a kid,” said Sergeant Mejia. “The kid tried to get up. He shot him again.”
bq. The child died.
bq. All you really want to do in such an environment, said Sergeant Mejia, is “get out of there alive.” So soldiers will do things under that kind of extreme stress that they wouldn’t do otherwise.
bq. “You just sort of try to block out the fact that they’re human beings and see them as enemies,” he said. “You call them hajis, you know? You do all the things that make it easier to deal with killing them and mistreating them.”
bq. When there is time later to reflect on what has happened, said Sergeant Mejia, “you come face to face with your emotions and your feelings and you try to tell yourself that you did it for a good reason. And if you don’t find it, if you don’t believe you did it for a good reason, then, you know, it becomes pretty tough to accept it — to willingly be a part of the war.”
by Chris Bertram on May 20, 2004
In today’s Financial Times William Shawcross and Emma Bonino have “a worthwhile piece”:http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1084907689070&p=1012571727085 on the murders, rapes and village-burnings being committed in Darfur by the Sudanese government.
by Chris Bertram on May 20, 2004
I’ve just finished reading the “Haaretz coverage of yesterday’s incident in Gaza”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/429687.html , when the Israeli army fired tank shells into a demonstration. Nor is this an unprecedented event, as some of the commentary elsewhere in Haaretz recalling the Qana massacre reminds us. It is a common trope in the “blogosphere” to write of symptomatic silences, to accuse people of indifference or lack of balance for failing to mention some event or incident. I’ve read endless outrage in the blogosphere condemning the BBC or whoever for putting the work “terrorist” in inverted commas. Stupid comments by Jenny Tonge or whoever excusing suicide bombers generate thousands of words of commentary. (And lest there be any doubt, I have always and will always condemn actions such as suicide bombing which target civilians.) I’ve looked at a lot of blogs this morning — the usual suspects, the leftie warbloggers, the boy-wonder journalists, the distinguished lawyers, economists and political scientists, and so on. Of events in Rafa, not a mention.
[Update: not total silence. “Jonathan Edelstein”:http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/archives/025206.html , as so often, is worth reading on this.]
by Daniel on May 19, 2004
I don’t really want to make this look like a Hitchens pile-on, but one cannot allow things like this to pass without comment. Via Roger Ailes, we have Christopher Hitchens making the following claim:
I think my quarrel with the media would be different from yours. I think what isn‘t conveyed enough is the sheer evil and ruthlessness and indeed brilliant organization of the enemy. The media cliche about the war is that it‘s like Vietnam. The Vietnamese were a very civilized foe and if they had had weapons of mass destruction, for example, wouldn‘t have used them and didn‘t target civilians, did use women as fighters and organizers, were not torturers and mass murderers and so forth.
Shall we say that this is quite radically at odds with most mainstream histories of Vietnam? Hitchens may here being confusing the North Vietnames Army and the Communist Party of Viet Nam with some other force which fought a purely heroic war of liberation in a gentlemanly manner and had no links to totalitarianism. Perhaps he was thinking of the Hobbits, or somebody. It makes you wonder why several hundred thousand boat people decided to take their chances on the open seas rather than live under such a “civilised” regime.
Meanwhile, if it’s comparisons with Vietnam you’re after, this historic document (Col. Robert Heinl’s Armed Forces Journal article on the collapse of morale) is pretty good on the long-term consequences of being stuck with no hope of exit in a war nobody really wants to fight. It is profoundly to be hoped that things won’t be allowed to get this bad again; it took years to rebuild the US Army as an organisation.
by John Q on May 17, 2004
It’s striking to observe that the Daily Mirror has more stringent standards of personal responsibility than the Blair government (or, for that matter, any government in the Coalition of the Willing).
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by John Q on May 15, 2004
I was thinking idly about Erdos numbers, and it suddenly struck me that I could easily prove the necessity of a couple of ‘stylised facts'[1] about the associated networks. It’s well-known that the collaboration network for mathematicians contains one big component, traditionally derived by starting with Pal Erdos. The same is true of the network generated by sexual relationships. Although there is no generally agreed starting point here, it is a sobering thought that a relatively short chain would almost certainly connect most of us with both George Bush and Saddam Hussein.
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