Herd mentality

Of all animals living on land these are the creatures you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a cloven hoof, divided into two parts, and that is a ruminant. (Lev. 11:3-8)

Why only artiodactyl ruminants? Why it's ruminants is more-or-less clear; we've already discussed the B12 problem with monogastric herbivores. But why artiodactyla? I have an idea why; surprisingly, I've never seen it discussed. Almost all of even-toed ruminants are herd animals. Lev. 11 and Deut. 24 are the permission to consume those ruminants that live in herds.

"Herd mentality" usually designates conformity, but this is not the most striking feature of a herd. The herd has everything to do with being edible, something we've also discussed elsewhere. Animals that live in herds, schools, swarms, and flocks typically give up on their individual defenses because they pursue another survival strategy. If you are a member of a herd, you do not need to run faster than your predator; you only need to run faster than the slowest member of your herd. The individual defense IS forming the herd where the weak are daily sacrificed to earn the others one more day of untroubled life, until it is their turn. It is creepy to watch video footage of lion hunting the antelopes: after a brief chase, the herd is standing still and staring at their member being eaten alive, chewing their cud. That's what herd is about.

...The question of why animals group together is one of the most fundamental in sociobiology and behavioural ecology. For grazing animals, such as ungulates, it is generally believed that the most important protective factor is risk dilution - even if a predator attacks the herd, the risk for any individual that it will be the victim is greatly reduced. (Wiki)

Wilson ("Sociobiology: the new synthesis") uptly calls this behavior "selfish herd" strategy. Another type of behavior typical of herds is, quoting Wilson, "utilization of marginal individuals of the group as a shield." Since the predator tends to seize the first individual it encounters, the safety is in the middle of the group, hence the "herd instinct" of centripetal collapse into aggregation. Another feature is synchronization of birth, to dilute risk to newborn calfs. In short, living in a herd is about making a simple cold calculation of buying yourself some time through slaughtering of the others. The herd helps the predator to pick the sickest, weakest animals diverting the danger to the others; the heard is fully complicit in this slaughter and, actually, indirectly profits from it, because the herd is purged of unfit animals.

Had I allowed my rational beings eating other living creatures, I'd also pick precisely this type of animals, if only for moral instruction.

Would you?

Why is cooked meat so tasty?

First, a confession: I do not like boiled meat. I know VERY few people liking boiled meat -- and I know no one who would prefer boiled to roasted meat. Maybe there are millions of such individuals hiding around, but I've never met one.

There is a theory claiming that all food tastes (in particular, our taste for meat) are culturally acquired and conditioned. The preference for grilled meat suggests that there is more to it, because babies, when fed their first meals containing meat, are invariably given boiled meat on the theory that it is "healthy, digestible, and nutritious." This notion is the stubborn remnant of the 18th century medical theories of restorative powers of food (hence our "restaurants"), but the practice is sound because boiling is a very efficient way of killing pathogens potentially present in meat, which is the first concern with feeding the little ones. The important observation is that the preference for grilled over boiled meat is not taught or instilled, it is natural. It is important to understand this preference because not all cooked meat tastes good. This aspect was not well explained in books on culinary chemistry that I've seen, but it goes to the heart of the matter.

Lean meat is a composite material of muscle and connective networks made of two very unlike types of protein: muscle proteins (such as actin and myosin) and collagen. When you heat a protein, it denatures (uncoils), and this is frequently said to be the reason why we cook meat: denatured protein is easier to digest. This is incorrect. The problem is that apart from denaturing, protein chains also undergo thermally activated coagulation and cross linking reactions that turns the uncoiled protein into longer, less digestible fibrils. The two groups of protein in meat both denature but they display the opposite tendencies in their reaction to heat: muscle proteins coagulate and cross link becoming LESS soluble whereas collagen breaks down becoming more soluble. It is this latter process that makes cooked meat more digestible, as the muscle protein is enveloped by connective protein shielding it; breaking down poorly digestible collagen makes meat protein fibers more accessible to our proteases. Myosin is a motor protein operating in water: the mucle cells contain 75% water. By contrast, the collagen binds very little water. At about 50 C, heat drives the water out and water-loving myosin partially uncoils and coagulates. At 60 C this coagulant shrinks, and at 70 C it gels. The fibrils are still rigid and dry in this gel, but at least these become chaotic, and this is the best one can do with meat. Overcooking transforms this gel into a 3D network of stiff fibers. Cooking is all about protein folding and self-organization. The best temperature range for cooking meat is 50-70 C. Boiling water is well above this temperature.

Fish, by virtue of living in water, do not need collagen sheathing (though they have some connective tissue), and their flesh needs very little cooking. With land animals this is not the case: the muscle is shaped against the force of gravity and it needs to be firmly attached to the bone, hence the collagene network. As for the digestibility of the "meaty" part of meat, cooking only makes things worse, as the stiff fibriles of coagulated protein are more difficult to digest. The benefit, therefore, is in making these fibrils more accessible by decomposing collagen.

Boiling meat makes poor bargain, because soluble protein fragments are transferred into the liquid solution, leaving the least digestible, insoluble fraction. As small molecules (that activate our taste receptors) are also removed, what is left are tasteless fibrils that nobody likes. On the positive side, the collagen network is nearly destroyed, so these unappetizing fibrils are very accessible. On the negative side, it has little taste left in it (it all goes into broth) and the fibrils themselves are not too digestible. The main advantage of this way of cooking is producing aromatic, nutritious broth and killing the pathogens in meat.

It is immediately seen why grilled meat is so much better. Roasting or searing removes water on the outside and creates a tough shell of cross-linked meat protein that prevents the juices from escape. The temperature inside is not too high, so this cross-linking is not extensive and one can hit the sweet spot of maximum digestibility around 50-60-70 C. The soluble protein is retained inside meat. The collagen network does not collapse as extensively as in boiled meat, so it helps keeping the juices (protein solution) inside the incompletely collapsed muscle fibrils. In other words, grilling provides much better quality, more digestible muscle protein meal for the price of decreasing the access to this meal by less complete destruction of the collagen network. Another disadvantage is less thorough killing of the pathogens. If the pathogen load is low, grilling is, by and large, a much better deal, and we go for it, little kids included. Our bodies do not lie to us: grilled meat IS objectively better, and our preference is entirely rational and natural.

This explains our preferences; what about taste? Boiled meat is more or less tastless, hence seasoning and condiments - and we still do not like it. Raw meat isn't better: though there are various small molecules there, most of these do not activate our taste receptors. We are not specialized meat eaters and few of us get excited by smelling blood. The taste originates mainly from browning of meat, via pyrolysis of protein, sugars, lipids and the reactions between them, such as Maillard reaction (though it is not very prominent in meat because of low carbohydrate content). One of the meaty smells, for example, is octanal. There are various hydoroxo and mercapto derivatives of 3-pentanone from thiamin, onion-y smelling alliins, there is Strecker degradation of protein and amino acids by oxidative loss of amino and carboxylic groups that leads to aldehydes. A lot of these molecules derive from cysteine. Pyrazines and pyrrolines form when proteins react with lipids, etc. There are whole books written on these aroma molecules.

What we like is not meat per se but the smells and taste of these volatile aldehydes, alcohols, acids, and various small molecules that are - surprise, surprise - very similar to those produced by plants. Inside every human carnivore there is still a vegetarian craving for the familiar clues of high-quality plant meal. Ironically, roasted meat supplies these clues in the most concentrated form (there are several hundred of such small aroma molecules in roasted meat), hence it tastes and smells so darn good:

...The important families of aroma compounds produced in the Maillard reaction (which occurs between amino acids and sugars at a lower temperature than caramelisation) include pyrroles, thiophenes, thiazoles, pyridines and pyrazines. Several of these contribute a nutty flavour, some a 'roasted' impresion, even with hints of chocolate. And several contribute floral odours, or are reminiscent of green leaves and vegetables: flavours our ancestors would have encountered long before they had 'discovered' fire. For example, 2-methyl thiazole, which is reminiscent of green vegetables, is found in cooked beef. Fruits provided our evolutionary ancestors with refreshing sensory interludes in an otherwise bland and dull diet...perhaps cooking with fire was valued in part because it transformed blandness into fruitlike richness. Our ancestors have been encountering molecules characteristic of the meat roast for probably hundreds of millions of years before roasting meat. https://homepages.westminster.org.uk/hooke/issue10/chemcook.htm

We crave animal protein but we want it in a fruity package, as otherwise it does not taste good. Roasted, fried, broiled, braised, stewed meat is primate dream come true, the song of songs for our smell and taste receptors, the fire of our stomachs. The rabbis teach that before the flood all humans were vegetarians; they were allowed to eat meat only to make accomodation to their weaknesses after they demonstrated the depth of their wickedness. Well, maybe they are getting it wrong, as we won on technicality: we were allowed to eat meat because in our craftiness we found a way of turning animal into vegetable...

Why does cooked meat taste so good?

Why do we eat animals? 3. The law of unintended consequences.

1. http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/202989.html
2. http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/203375.html

Various well-wishers of vegetarian/dietarian bent frequently tell us that meat-eating is (literally) killing us. This is not entirely baseless: meat eating has its dangers. What is missing in this thinking is evolutionary perspective:

What happens when X in their diet is "killing" animals? According to evolutionary theory, the animals adapt to X through differential survival, so that X is not killing these animals anymore. Importantly, this adaptation may provide indirect benefit going beyond the neutralization of X. Meat-eating has been "killing us" for well over 1 Myr and this logic suggests that we would probably adapt to meat-rich diet by now. Furthermore, in the process of adaptation we might reap benefit that is not directly related to X. Finch's yet unpublished PNAS paper develops the thesis from his 2007 book, http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/achieving-immortality
which is suggesting precisely that:

...In spite of their genetic similarity to humans, chimpanzees and great apes have maximum lifespans that rarely exceed 50 years. Humans evolved genes that enabled us to better adjust to levels of infection and inflammation and to the high cholesterol levels of their meat rich diets. Over time, ingestion of red meat, particularly raw meat infected with parasites in the era before cooking, stimulates chronic inflammation that leads to some of the common diseases of aging. In addition to differences in diets between species of primates, humans evolved unique variants in a cholesterol transporting gene, apolipoprotein E (APOE), which also regulates inflammation and many aspects of aging in the brain and arteries. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091202153802.htm

The idea, as far as I can see from the press release, is that red meat WAS indeed killing our hominid ancestors, as it was the source of chronic inflammation of the gut that closely resembled the type of inflammations also involved in normal aging. By developing mechanisms for combatting the first type of inflammations, via natural selection operating on the meat eaters, the latter have gained indirect advantage of reducing the second kind of inflammations and, as a result, they began to live LONGER. Since living past 50 would unlikely increase one's fitness, increasing the longevity can only be an indirect effect. Finch's idea is that it was, specifically, the indirect effect of adaptation to inflammation caused by subsistence on raw meat.

(Contrary to folk wisdom, hunters/gatherers live long lives; the average longevity was indeed very short due to the colossal infant and child mortality, but those who made it to their late teens lived almost as long as we do - another testimony to the power of natural selection).

Eating meat: what was supposed to be "killing" us made us into Methuselahs. Quite a thought, isn't it?

Why do we eat animals?

Ungulates striking back

to this http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/212831.html

Several species of deer (the most basal of the cervids, such as Muntjac) have canine fangs; e.g., Chinese water deer have 3" long fangs. Because of their exotic looks these deer were imported to Europe and the US, subsequently escaped and became feral. In 2009, several British newspapers reported attacks of these deer on pet dogs.
http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/bed-news/39Only-a-matter-of-time.5737888.jp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5092744/Escaped-deer-savages-dogs.html
The photos speak for themselves. I mean, this is a small deer; it is not a boar.

Muntjac deer hapens to be a poster species for Todd's karyotypic fission/fusion theory of evolution
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/18/9821.full
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/17/9493.full
as closely related species can have anything between 6 and 46 chromosomes. It is one of the popular non-gradualistic evolutionary theories (explosive speciation due to malfunctioning kinetochore-centromere mechanism). In some deer, it resulted into the extreme chromosome number reduction, about one chromosome being lost in a million years. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/9/1326.pdf
This may not be the most dramatic example of such a loss (there were claims of 50% reduction in just 500 years, in island mice). The cause is unknown.

...The molecular mechanism whereby the muntjac telomere and centromere repetitive sequences induce frequent tandem fusions is unknown. The stickiness of the muntjac chromosome ends might have caused chromosome fusion at a higher rate than that of other mammals. We can imagine that while the karyotypic lability continuously creates variations, some of the new karyotypes can be fixed in the small breeding populations by virtue of either successive accumulations of slightly deleterious fusions or coexistence of similar fusions. Each of
the surviving karyotypes would represent a new Muntiacus species.

The fanged deer are not only the oldest deer still around; their genome is increasingly unstable due to the breakdown of the mechanism controlling the movement of chromosomes during cellular division. Due to human experiments with conservation and breeding, their range has dramatically expanded; this should provide another welcome boost.

I believe these fanged deer have wonderful future ahead of them. A dog-size deer that can readily maul a dog has little to be afraid of in our forests. Given the sorry state of its chromosomes, it may be forced into resuming omnivory and then...

We might be witnessing the first steps towards the reinvention of a hoofed predator.



PS: A cow hunting and eating chicken
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7186

A little city

This is a large piece of fluorite. Water eroded the cubic crystal and then hundreds of new crystals began to grow, making the buildings, the temples and the streets. I remember asking why do we live in rectangular buildings put on rectangular grid. Perhaps the inspiration could've come from the minerals.

United Plates of America

Only part of what we habitually call the continental US is the continent proper, that is a landmass sitting on Laurentian craton which formed around 1 Gya, see the map on
http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/text/4_1_3_1.html
the rest being bits and pieces of ocean floor that stuck to the craton as a result of tumultous plate tectonics. Looking around, you'd never guess this division because the bedrock is covered by sedimentary rocks.

...A craton is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere. Having often survived cycles of merging and rifting of continents, they are characteristically composed of ancient crystalline basement rock, which may be covered by younger sedimentary rock. They have a thick crust and deep lithospheric roots that extend as much as a few hundred kilometers into the Earth's mantle. The term craton is used to distinguish the stable portion of the continental crust from regions that are more geologically active and unstable. (Wiki)

The surprising fact is that Americans living on Laurentian craton tend to vote Republican whereas those not living on it tend to vote Democrat.

???

Leon's idea on e- trapping & DEA in polar stratospheric clouds beaten to the pulp
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000103000022228501000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes&type=ALERT
I was not convinced either as low-T ice traps the electrons very poorly. But what a display of indignant emotion...

Hava Nashira, Shir Halleluia

For obscure reasons, Hava Nashira is a great hit with children choirs in Chicago. After listening to it for the twentieth time (my son sings in a choir) it suddenly downed upon me that this hymn does not sound like a Hebrew song, its lyrics disregarding. It turns out that it was one of the first commercial jingles. The canon was written by Johannes Ockeghem (1425-1497)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Ockeghem
After Ockeghem's death, this canon had been used to promote the virtues of what later (in 1510) became Bénédictine liquor; the lyrics consisted of nothing more than "Benediktiner Munklikör". Little is known about Jan's life, and almost none of his music has survived, though he was considered to be the best composer of his age. For example, his is the first surviving Requiem Mass set to music. It is said this promo-chant eventually became a popular drinking song for those abusing the Benedictiner Munkliqueur.

This drinking song is one of the very few pieces of secular music Ockeghem ever composed, and it is the only piece that is still widely performed -- ironically, as scared Hebrew music. The liquor itself suffered the similar reversal of fate, its secret being lost during the ravages of the French Revolution. It is said to be rediscovered in 1863, but there are no means of checking the claim of authenticity. Hava Nashira is the product of German Reformist Jews who somehow rediscovered this forgotten canon turned jingle turned drinking song and turned it into a hymn as it sounded so... canonical.

Esse homo: for sixty years the greatest composer of his time had been composing inspiring, sophisticated masses and motets in impeccable counterpoint, all of which are presently forgotten, whereas the only drinking song that he wrote has been turned into the ever popular spiritual hymn. Played backwards, this hymn was immortalized in pop music:

Liverpool, England: New technological advances have brought light into an old debate: whether the original Beatles' recordings, played backwards on a record player, yield satanic language... What followed was an amazing reversal of expectations. According to Logan, "First, the jumbled words of the original 'backwards recording' digitally state with clarity, Hava nashira, shir alleluia, which is Hebrew for 'Let us sing, sing alleluia'. Another song clearly yields Shalom chaverim, lehitarot shalom which translates 'Peace until we meet again, friends'." We're working on the other songs, but the backwards language is certainly not satanic. It's just ... Hebrew." http://www.ironiccatholic.com/2007/01/beatles-songs-played-backwards-its.html

Perhaps this is not the last transformation of this 550 year old canon...

Our culture is an unbelievable mess.

Why are animals edible?

If G-d had not intended for us to eat animals, How can He made them out of meat? (Sarah Palin)

from http://aptsvet.livejournal.com/550693.html?thread=7952165#t7952165

Given the predation, why are animals edible? One would think that the best defense strategy would be making oneself inedible, e.g., by poisoning one's tissues - or putting more sinew into muscle, or the bone spikes, etc. This strategy (poisoning) is widely used in various orders of life, but exremely rarely in higher animals. Actually, we (the chordates) had evolved from sedentary urochordates (tunicates); we are an upgraded version of their juvenile, bentic form. The chief defensive adaptation of these tunicates is poisoning their tissues with vanadium extracted from sea water. So the use of this strategy has everything to do with us being around today.

The likely answer is that the evolutionary swings from herbivory to carnivory and back had occurred too often to make it advantageous, and the carnivores do not need being inedible to avoid predation. It is the same answer that explains why higher animals, even the commited herbivores, keep highly acidic stomachs they do not really need. The hoofed animals we consume have not began as herbivores. The earliest ungulates were omnivores, and there were such omnivorous and carnivorous ungulates for millions of years (in fact, the whales are traced to one of these lines, the mesonychids). In the Paleocene, it was not set in stone: chosing either one of the possible life styles was a safety valve required for the longevity of the lineages. There were hoofed predators the size of a wolf
http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/predators.htm
and even larger. Actually, the largest mammalian predator that ever existed on land was hoofed, this one, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrewsarchus

The chief reason the ungulates are so appetizingly delicious is that plant eating is a temporary thing with them, for the lack of a better opportunity. Another twist of evolution and the hoofed predators will be back; however, for the time being, the niches are filled with cats and dogs. Maybe it is better to keep it this way... Just look at this beast below. Its skull was 80 cm long, and the animal weighed a ton. Eating ungulates may not be such a bad idea, given their evolutionary potential.

Why are animals edible?

Traveling in a futile groove

for D.

I was digitizing my old tapes and came across a street tune I recorded on Easter day of 1991 in Paris; the tape was reused and I forgot about it. As I listened to L'Internationale, the memory flashed back and I remembered it all, including the reason I recorded it. It was a scene straight from ee cummings: at the head of the street a gasping organ waving moth-eaten tunes. The association was not accidental, as I brought his poems with me: I fancied reading Cumming's love poems where those were written. Back then I was obsessed with Cummings; I was young, too.

The Frenchman was toothless and old. When the eery melody finished playing, his unsteady hands distributed pamphlets with a large red star on the front cover. More ee cummings came to memory

kumrads die because they're told)
kumrads die before they're old
(kumrads aren't afraid to die
kumrads don't
and kumrads won't
believe in life)and death knows whie

(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance

every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love

The ex-version of a Parisian kumrad was standing before me. He did not look like a man who was unafraid of dying, more like a man who was afraid of living. The altruistic smell, had there been any in the past, was masked by material odors. The Moscow pipes just stopped playing, and there was no music to dance except for that produced by his machine. The melody began to play again, and I left. I do not know what kind of unmitigated hate this man had in his youth but his years in limbo were brutal. Imagine listening to L'Internationale on a pipe organ, 8/7, year after year.

As I was leaving I swore to myself that I'd never end like a human appendix to a machine mechanically reproducing the same tune, even if that tune have stirred the millions. I am fond of theorizing no less than the next person, but there is a line I am not tempted to cross. I am not willing to dream and theorize about bettering the lives of other people. It is much more gratifying simply doing it to the best of one's ability, and I believe people are fully capable of bettering their lives without the benefit of my or anyone else's theories. If the goal is to understand what is before one's eyes, I am all for it. If the goal is pretending that political theorizing of the right kind is going to lead to the universal happiness, count me out. The universal happiness surrounded this man, blended with the fine spring day, and he could've sensed it too would he shut up his bloody contraption and look around.

A forgotten pioneer of renewable energy

...Franco repeatedly placed his faith in hare-brained schemes which he believed would save Spain. On one occasion, a Czech engineer and con-man managed to convince the general that with the waters of the River Jarama, certain herbs and secret powders, Spain could get all the petroleum it needed. On another, he was convinced of a plan to solve the country’s hunger of the 1940s by feeding the population with dolphin sandwiches. (La Memoria Insumisa, Nicolás Sartorius y Javier Alfaya, 1999).
http://iberianature.com/spain_culture/culture-and-history-of-spain-a/autarky

Two dialogues concerning rights and privileges

http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/211609.html?thread=1347737#t1347737 (edited)

S. I admit that I do not know why political theory is one of the last remaining strongholds of "mathematical" line of thought. Perhaps it deeply accords with our intuitions about what a political theory is supposed to be.

D. а вам не кажется, что там существует спектр возможностей - от полной интуитивности и субьективности при отсутствии всякой стабильной рациональной основы - до полной догматичности абсолютной теории, которая не обращает внимания на реальность?

S. As a possibility, yes. In practice, no. On their own force, the theories would march to their respective extremes.

D. т.е. вы считаете, что в самих теориях содержится нечто, что с необходимостью толкает их к догматизму. Что же именно? И почему консервативные теории не стремятся к противоположному, столь же опасному волюнтаризму?

S. The internal logic of these theories. The conservative theories are self-defeating. Let me be more precise. There is poetry and there is theory of poetry. Does excellent knowledge of the theory of poetry make one a great poet? It does not. A better poet? Doubtful. Any kind of poet? Perhaps, but only by coincidence. Yet it cannot be denied that poetry can be theorized about and such theories can be useful if only to understand and appreciate poetry. Theory of poetry does not aim at producing better poetry, it seeks understanding what poetry is. Burkean conservatism is of this kind. It does not aim at forcing the civil society into a particular shape. It aims at preserving it so it can shape itself. Conservative thinking is about the means of such preservation. This thinking arrives at many of the tools of classical liberalism (that preceded this thinking, culminating the entire Enlightenment) but from a different perspective, without idolizing these tools. Again, think of a conservative politician, like Churchill. He operated not on any particular political theory but on his love of British civil society, the very civility and freedoms of it, and the desire to preserve it. He did not search for his ideal up in the sky; his ideal was right there, it was palpable. He felt it as strongly in peace time as in war time. He did not worry whether he was a statist or a libertarian. He was worrying about preserving England in the state when someone may occupy oneself with such concerns. This is inherently the matter of judgment which no theory can replace or guide, like theory of poetry cannot guide writing great poetry. If it does, I do not want such a theory and the kind of poetry that results from it.

D. Вы предпочитаете поэзию теории поэзии. Я тут с вами. Я вообще ненавижу теорию поэзии, поскольку несколько лет ею занимался. И вы определяете консерватизм как любовь к поэзии, а либерализм, как теорию поэзии. Однако когда дело касается, к примеру, физической реальности, любовь к ней заменить теории не может. Действия, практика - в случае физической реальности опираются на теорию, а не на любовь. И иногда теория довольно далеко отходит от непосредственного любовного контакта - и часто ему противоречит. Вопрос в том, на что больше похожа общественная жизнь, общество - на поэзию или на физическую реальность.

Вообще же в этом вопросе лучше всего работать на примерах, на конкретных примерах - привести какую-то проблемную ситуацию, показать, как на нее реагируют консерваторы, как либералы. А вы, мне кажется, теоретизируете, возводите ваше деление к математическому мышлению, выстраиваете ригидную классификацию - т.е. грешите именно тем, против чего предостерегаете.

S. Excellent point and well deserved criticism - except that we already had such a discussion:
http://dennett.livejournal.com/233214.html?thread=7657726#t7657726 (edited for brevity)



D. следует ли здравоохранение причислить к упомянутым в Декларации независимости правам - на жизнь, свободу и стремление к счастью - и усматаривать за правительством необходимую функцию обеспечения этого права? Или же здравохранение нужно считать привилегией - и получение его зависящим от материального благополучия, места рождения итд. Вопрос о праве-привилегии в своей абстрактной форме от технических деталей не зависит - а зависти от того, насколько самоочевидными являются некоторые истины.

A. Правом. Для цивилизованного общества так же унизительно отказывать людям в медицинской помощи, как и в еде или крове. Представим себе, что мы живем в цивилизованной и благополучной стране. Если мы узнаем, что в соседнем квартале человек умер от голода, мы не можем не почувствовать себя неловко - он мог быть спасен с минимальным материальным ущербом для всех нас. Но если он умер от инсульта, мы почему-то не чувствуем себя виноватыми, тогда как он мог быть спасен, если бы регулярно принимал недорогие лекарства, что ненамного дороже пищи. Парадоксальным образом, после инсульта его везут в больницу и пытаются спасти гораздо более дорогостоящими, но уже бесполезными средствами, потому что в эту минуту наш позор наиболее нагляден.

D. позор и право - это все же разные вещи. я могу назвать то, как мой сосед воспитывает своих детей позором, но отобрать у него этих детей я не могу. Он теряет право на них не из-за позора, а из-за перехода через некую запретную черту.

S. There is no paradox. This comes straight from the Mosaic Law. If a person is in mortal peril, the law of compassion commands us to help this person. Everything shall be done to save the life of this person without regard to property rights. You cannot protest this action, stop it, or demand compensation afterwards. But if this person's life is not in the immediate, mortal peril, one still has the moral obligation to assist this person, but only through one's own charity. One cannot dispense of the others' property without their explicit consent and retribution of the owner's whose property was used is due. This is the crucial difference between the two situations.

Translating this into the language of natural rights (as it is understood in classical liberalism - S>), the only unalienable natural right is to the immediate medical assistance in a critical situation. Regular medical assistance is a privilege in this sense, as otherwise it would impinge on the unalienable natural right to property. People have absolute moral obligation to help the sick - A. is absolutely correct. But the sick have no natural right to be assisted through unconsented use of someone else's property until they are in a life-or-death situation. This truth is "self-evident" in the same sense that other natural rights are self-evident: these are the evident conclusions from the application of the doctrine of natural rights to the Mosaic Law. Locke explicitly held that one's rights of self-control are limited by our obligation to provide aid to others when the aid is necessary for their basic survival (that's in his Second Treatise of Government; the Lockean Proviso).

D. существует ли что-нибудь, кроме жизни-смерти, что может пересилить право собственности? Большинство участвующих в дискуссии говорят, что есть. Судя по всему, отношение к собственности сильно изменилось со времен Моисея.

S. Had it? You introduce your question in a very weak, dilute form, when people will answer in the expected way (it is implicitly assumed that providing health benefits to everyone would be no more than inconvenience). But unalienable natural rights mentioned above are absolute. The Mosaic law also assumes its form on the assumption of the absoluteness of its commandments. The question, then, is different: suppose someone is sick and has unalienable natural right to medical assistance. Does it mean that anyone, if necessary, can command all of your property without compensation to assist this sick person if this person's life is not immediate peril? Would you ask your question in this form, you would be treated to rather different arguments and reasoning from the one you've heard so far. The same people that asserted that such a right necessarily exists would insert all kinds of restricitions and provisions to reassert their endangered property rights. You will find that the only incontrovertible situation would be the life-and-death situation. So this right is viewed not as a natural right, contrary to their claims, but as Burkean convention: the norms of civil society deciding what part of one's property can be commandeered to provide assistance to the others in certain situations.

D. не думаю, что понятие права надо подвергать такому тесту. этого теста не выдержит даже право на свободу. большинство не отдаст (и не отдает) всю свою собственность за свободу корейского народа - и при этом право людей на свободу принимается без возражений. Если право на свободу сомнительно, возьмем само право на собственность - оно, согласно вашим же аргументам, является абсолютным, самоочевидным и естественным - и при этом за это право корейцев большинство ничем пожертвовать не готово.

S. <"We the people..." is not inclusive of the Koreans. Protecting natural rights of other nations is not the scope of the US Declaration of Independence.> The argument I gave above was liberal argument. Now, let's examine the conservative argument.

In denying... false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock... (Burke)

Burke dispenses with Lockean notion of "self-evident" natural rights. These are self-evident in only one respect: What benefits a man in a civil society is his right, period. From this standpoint, medical assistance is everyone's right and nobody can deny that; there is no subject of discussion here. However, this right does not translate into the obligation of dividing such assistance equally. The realization of this right is left to the individual, to the same degree the realization of property rights is individual. The state protects the rights to what has been (sic!) gained. The universal health coverage cannot be demanded as one's right. However, if it is introduced by consensus, then demanding such coverage is everyone's right that must be guaranteed by the state. If there is no such binding consensus, there is no such "natural right".

A. Burke's argument about convention sounds reasonable except where it breaks down: slavery was one obvious instance. One can always tweak the definition of civil society.

S. Slavery is indeed the case in point: proclaiming something unalienable natural right provides no guarantee to equal access to this right unless there exists consensus that such an access should be equal. I think that framing the problem as the dilemma of rights vs. privileges is only confusing the issue, which is precisely building such consensus.

D. Тут надо разобраться с самим понятием права. Для этого надо точно определить ситуацию, в которой это понятие необходимо. Это ситуация КОНФЛИКТА ИНТЕРЕСОВ. Понятие права возникает и используется для разрешения конфликтов интересов. Если имеет место конфликт, но у одного из участников есть право, то второй участник уступает. Именно поэтому право одного необходимым образом связано с обязанностями всех других. Бурк же в качестве типовой ситуации рассматривает БЕСКОНФЛИКТНУЮ ситуацию. Это очень хорошо видно из следующей его фразы
Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself. Необходимость понятия права изнчально нужна для того, чтобы оградить участников от необходимости защищаться против силы. Без этого понятия система компромиссов между сильными и слабыми не работает - а эта система есть основа общественной жизни.

S. Burke argued that the French did not have "natural right" to depose their king, whereas the Americans had the right to rebel against the Crown. These are not conflict-less situations. What Burke tells is that everything inherently beneficial is a natural right. However, providing on this right is a matter of convention. A US citizen has the right to liberty. This does not mean that the US has obligation to start an all-out war with another country detaining one of its citizens. The adequate response is determined by convention rather than having the right. What makes certain rights special is not that these are "natural" (though these are, as these are beneficial by nature, see above) but that there is consensus in the civil society that such rights have to be met absolutely. If there is no such consensus, the right does not have this special status. In other words, the self-evident truth means this wide consensus + natural beneficience. Burke gave good and honest answer.

D. что такое trespassing? что тут имеет в виду Бурк? зачем он вводит это условие?

S. The emphasis is on "separately" rather than "trespassing". Whatever you do alone, you have the right to do it for yourself. It may look weird (because you think of the Jeffersonian formula that the rights do not go further than when these impinge on other's liberties), but Burke was preoccupied with different matters:

Do people have liberty to worship whatever they wish or they are obligated to follow state religion? Since worship is something one can do separately, freedom of worship is one's indisputable and unrestrained right. If you can have your property separately from the others, it is your unquestionable right. For anything else "the remote and efficient cause is the consent of the people, either actual or implied, and this consent is absolutely essential." There are things people cannot be asked to consent to and laws cannot regulate that sphere without being unjust. This sphere is what one can do separately from the others. It is important qualification, because Burke grounds natural rights in beneficience. But what if someone decides that your worship is maleficient? Burke says that nobody can decide that. In matters concerning the individual alone, this beneficience is decided by the individual. Burke is not Jefferson, Priestley, or Paine; his view was that unalienable natural rights do exist, but the government is not founded from these natural rights. My point was that to anyone subscribing to this view of natural rights, your question is rather meaningless. Yes, it is natural right. No, the government is not obliged to provide equity in this right if there is no consensus in the civil society that it shall.

D. Мне кажется, тут вы очевидно неправы. Вообразим, что все кроме меня люди на земле умерли. Я один остался. Вместе с этим событием потеряли смысл все права. Для отдельного одинокого человека это понятие теряет смысл. Пример с собственностью - и это общее место всей правовой литературы - мое право владения чем-либо одновременно есть обязанности всех остальных людей не нарушать, не отбирать, признавать. Даже если кто-то хочет и очень хочет, даже если он жить без моей машины или картины не может, он обязан соблюдать мою собственноть. Если у меня есть право это означает, что окружающие должны соблюдать его. Их долженствование и мое право не есть даже причинно-обусловленные вещи - это одно и тоже.

S. For Burke, the unity of rights and obligations is split: metaphysical rights derive from nature, the actual rights and obligations derive through convention. What you talk about is the liberal concept of natural rights. Burke's concept is conservative. His "natural rights" are the benefits of peaceful living excluding the rights of political power. He does not consider an isolated person; rather, he considers isolated acts of individual beneficience. Can I possess something in isolation? Then, possessing things is my right; I know what benefits me. Such rights cannot be changed in a legitimate way. Then he considers what other rights cannot be changed. The liberal view of natural rights is law emerging in the state of primordial, anarchic nature. Burke's "state of nature" is the retrogressive stage of a civil society in its decline. There is no other "nature" in the context of the actual rights. Natural rights are viewed accordingly. You view your question as something that, if resolved, must lead to practical consequences. From the position of the classical conservatism, this is not the case. From the position of the classical liberal theory of natural rights, this is indeed the case, but in that theory universal medical care provided by the government through taxation it is not a natural right but a privilege.

SW: Could you comment more on D's arguments?

S: I believe that rights of self-ownership are limited by an obligation to provide aid when it is necessary for basic survival. This is the common ground between Burke and Locke. If the state taxes me to support emergency care, I do not see this as infringement of my rights. If it taxes me to provide nonemergency care, they need my full and explicit consent. This division comes from the Mosaic Law that establishes the limits of coercion for assisting the others. It is all-important question of my faith: can people be forced to do good by force? Naturally, when people reject the Mosaic law as the foundation of their civil life, this line can be drawn anywhere and any answer can be given to the latter question. If people relapse to the primeval belief that good will emerge from using force rather than charity, I can only regret that 3500 years of ethical teaching and reasoning went down the tube.

I consider the demands of universal medical care from the government insincere and even hypocritical. If you believe that it is everyone's moral duty to provide health care for all, what is stopping you to do it today, now? Why should the government be involved in what is supposed to be one's moral obligation? Organize the charity aiming at such coverage and/or make charitable donations to the existing charities and provide this coverage to the needy. Persuade the others that not making donations to this charitable fund is socially inacceptable. If you cannot help everyone, help 1/2, if you cannot help 1/2, help 1/3. But do not require that the government delivers by coercion what you yourself are unwilling to provide through your own charity. Using the state as a coercive force to win the argument that cannot be won otherwise is not acceptable. One's moral obligations are not met by extorting money from the others using the repressive machinery of the modern state.

SW: For me, a historical question remains: what the authors of the Declaration of Independence had in mind? It seems that if taken in isolation, it admits D's interpretation. On the other hand, this interpretation seems to contradict the 10th Amendment.

S. I do not view the past as the moment of revelation to be treasured and endlessly revisited. This is what left-leaning people think conservatism is about. It is not. The lesson of the past is different: that nothing changes. The same battle has been fought again and again. The strength of the conservatism is in realization of this very fact and learning from it. The weakness of radicalism is in denying it. The radicals believe that this time it will be different and so they invent a new way of getting back to the square one. The Declaration would not fight your battle for you.

Figuring out what the Founding Fathers had in mind 200+ years ago is the approach leading nowhere, as it assumes the uniform and coherent view where there was none. They had different things in mind; they were like us. Madison and Jefferson differed on more issues than you and D. The divisions that divide America today already divided the Founding Fathers. It goes all the way back. What I get from the historical perspective is that this very battle has been fought in every generation and it goes back to the Reformation and before.

returning back

S. Let's look at this discussion again. It was your thinking that was "mathematical". You wanted only to know whether X is a privilege or a right because if X is a right then it is the duty of the government to protect this right. Whether the civil society agrees or disagrees on X was considered irrelevant; once something is declared to be one's natural right; this right was thought of in the absolute terms. Public opinion, the actual ability of the to deliver, etc. did not matter. It was I who told that the actual realization of this right can only be implemented through seeking consensus rather than labeling something "right" or "privilege." You reduced the situation to the one in which a theoretical structure authomatically leads X to become the norm. Tellingly, the only counter-argument your libertarian opponents were able to furnish was that X is a privilege: their thinking relied on exactly the same logical structure. If this is not "mathematical" reasoning, I do not know what is. The very dilemma makes sense only if you have this kind of reasoning. From my perspective, both positions are attempts to bypass the civil society in order to further one's agenda. Instead of persuation, arguments, analysis and thoughtful observation the problem is reduced to abstractions, with both sides claiming that their reduction of X is correct and the shared conviction that once this reduction is made the opposing view can be ignored. The real life with its pains and everyday concerns is reduced to an abstract proposition. That discussion was the exact replay of Burke's famous essay, and his considerations on precisely this question (rights or privileges?) was the point of departure for conservative thinking.

Politics is not people deciding "yes" or "no" and inserting their decision into a slot of the perfect machine working with mathematical precision and showering liberties and cosmic serenity from the rear end. There is no such a machine, there are only people.

D. Мне кажется, тут вы совсем неправы. Вы даже проблему видите неправильно.
Вообразите подход к политике совершенно лишенный рациональности, не основанный ни на каких теориях и ни на какой логике - вообразите людей, пораженных полным отсутствием логики и абстрактного мышления в политике - и вы увидите, что это гораздо хуже, чем все, что основано на использовании математического подхода. Вот к примеру - фашизм...

Мне кажется, хорошая, правильная политика только выигрывает от НАЛИЧИЯ В ЕЕ РАСПОРЯЖЕНИИ до конца продуманных теорий - и совершенно в этом отношении непохожа на поэзию. Еще раз - устройте мысленный эксперимент - уберите все поэтические теории - и поэзия станет от этого только лучше. Уберите же все политические, философские и этические теории - и политика опустится до дикарского состояния, не в силах легимитизировать свои основные принципы и опираясь на инстинкт и волюнтаризм. В политике конечно существует момент неправильного, догматического применения теорий - как существует он в любом деле, имеющем отношение к реальности - однако настаивать, как это делаете вы, на вредности самих теорий, на ненужности их продумывать до конца, на ненужности рациональности - это довольно примитивная ошибка, в которую вас завлек, мне кажется, критический порыв и увлечение консервативной традицией.

И еще одно - мне кажется, в своем изложении наших бесед, вы поторопились - не выяснив мою позицию, вы изложили ее с искажениями, использовав как жупел для демонстрации заранее существущих выводов и обрезав ненужный вам хвостик беседы. Я - прагматик, но с идеей корректных ориентиров - тогда как вы представили (или представляете) меня догматиком. мне гораздо больше пользы принесла защита взглядов собеседника - и уж точно - полное уяснения оных, с подтверждением от него, что я понимаю его правильно - нежели настойчивое продалбливание своих собственных взглядов.

(I apologize to D. for any possible distortion of his views; the full discussion can be found by following the threads. I was strongly tempted indeed as the topic and discussion exactly paralleled the arguments in "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm)

Ideology

...Where there is no Property, there is no Injustice, is a Proposition as certain as any Demonstration in Euclid: For the Idea of Property, being a right to any thing; and the Idea to which the Name Injustice is given, being the Invasion or Violation of that right; it is evident, that I can as certainly know this Proposition to be true, as that a Triangle has three Angles equal to two right ones. (Locke)

As much as I love mathematics, the connection between mathematics and ideology is direct and explicit. Ideology originated through the once revolutionary notion that philosophical discourse should follow the structure of Euclid's Elements. Later on, it became fashionable for one's philosophy to be "scientific," but in the 17th century they wanted it to be "mathematical." Ideology is a vestige of these happy times. That seemingly plausible theories about real world can be generated in this fashion was a major discovery; no one expected that. Newton demonstrated this approach for natural philosophy. Spinoza demonstrated it for moral philosophy. Locke demonstrated it for political philosophy. The shared conviction was that this approach makes theories infallible. Hence the statements like those given above.

It all works very well until one observes unpropertied people engaged in most heinous injustices. Then, if one insists on geometric certainty of one's propositions, the only recourse is telling that these injustices are the highest form of justice or telling that that these people are not properly unpropertied. The gap between Locke's demonstrations and the observed reality was not lost upon Locke. To reconcile such abject contradictions one needs certain theory of knowledge, and Locke, being no fool, had it.

The linchpin of Locke's theory was that propositions need to follow from self-evident truths in a manner of geometric proofs. Self-evident truths are considered as the most certain (intuitive) knowledge that is grasped fully and immediately; demonstrative knowledge (proofs) is less certain but it is still acceptable. This is a departure from Aristotle who considered only certain knowledge of necessary truths to be acceptable. Such knowledge is certain because Aristotle's humans are, by design, perceive the essences of substances directly, by reason. Self-evident truths is what they discern. Locke says that, unfortunately, this is not true. It would be wonderful to have all truths certain, but this is technically impossible due to imperfection of human mind. Some of our knowledge must be demonstrative; its legitimacy depends on the certainty of deductions from self-evident truths and this certainty depends on how closely such demonstrations emulate geometric reasoning. If such deductions are correct, then such demonstrated truths acquire nearly the same status as self-evident truths.

In itself, this is not terribly original, but applying this scheme to political philosophy was exciting. Locke chose a set of "self-evident truths" (those that his own mind grasped fully and instantly) and worked out various consequences, claiming mathematical precision at every step. These self-evident truths were based on his highly unorthodox and controversial reading of the Bible, but this point is not important for what follows. The end of Lockean way of knowing is the ideal that is composed entirely from simple ideas. This ideal is fully equivalent to certain truth, and rational mind desires certain truth. Thus rational mind desires the Lockean ideal; this is its objective want. Satisfying this want to the fullest degree is happiness of a rational being. The background to ideology has been laid. Ideology has started as a science of Lockean ideas.

...The word ideology was coined by de Tracy in 1796 assembling the parts idea (near to the Lockean sense) and -logy. de Tracy used it to refer to one aspect of his "science of ideas". He separated three aspects, namely: ideology, general grammar and logic, considering respectively the subject, the means and the reason of this science... Taine describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy by the Socratic method, but without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. (Wiki)

Taine had it right: ideology appeals to recognition of truths by intuitive grasp without the recourse to observation. The conceit of the ideologue is the ability to grasp such truths without demonstrative proofs. Such proofs can be furnished in principle, but these are not required because this truth is self-evident and therefore certain. It is as certain as self-evident truths from which the proof would start, which renders deductions redundant, as the agreement between self-evident truths is the property of grasping mind and of this mind alone. The ability to grasp the idea fully and instantly is already proof of its truth. This makes ideology ideally suited for propaganda.

One is tempted to consider ideology as a perversion of Lockean views, but ideology follows from these views very naturally. If the highest certainty of knowledge is in the ability to grasp the concept fully by intuition then any such concept is as good as the basic self-evident truths from which proofs are developed. Developing such proofs is a technical problem unrelated to true knowledge.

What if demonstrations from self-evident truths do not agree with one's observations? Since Lockean approach can only produce certain truths or truths as certain as certain truths, the answer is self-obvious: these are effects of false beliefs. By correction of these false beliefs, the reality should be changed to accord with demonstrations of pure reason. Ideology is a means of such correction: it provides the correct answer without reference to observation, because what is to be observed is about to be changed and the truth cannot be gleaned from observations that do not immediately result in certain truths. The observations can only lead to simple ideas and nothing more, what laymen regard as "observations" are, in fact, fantasms of false belief. The meaning of observation is revealed through demonstrative proofs starting from certain truths; only in this narrow sense theory needs to be based on observation. The very logic underlying liberalism forces it to use ideology as a means of justifying its own truth. This is not a minor defect of this school of thought: it is the consequence of having its philosophy based on proofs applied to self-evident propositions.

All political reasoning traced to Locke shares this feature. The approach has been thoroughly discredited in natural and moral philosophy, but it flourishes in political philosophy. Understanding of political reality is replaced with changing this reality so that it agrees with a deduced ideal and the confronting evidence is rejected as the effects of false belief.

This aspect of ideology is seldom appreciated. Ideology is more commonly viewed as a utopian way of thinking: fixation upon a declared ideal and gauging everything with respect to this ideal (e.g., "progress" = approaching the ideal). In fact, ideology is not that; it is a defensive strategy of a mind failing to find agreement between what it observes and its own deductions from self-evident truths. The observations should be ignored and the reality should be changed so that there is no disagreement. The justification for this approach is that true knowledge cannot be gained from observations that do not result in fully and intuitively graspable truths.

I was blamed by one of the commenters to the previous post for painting all shades of liberalism with the same brush. It is not my fault that it has been constructed in this way by its architect. It is not my fault that in order to work as a coherent political philosophy it must be based on such arcane and antiquated epistemology.

How many people would explicitly subscribe to Locke's theory of knowledge? Yet without this theory the "mathematical" approach to political theory makes absolutely no sense. Locke understood this very well, this is why he developed this theory in the first place. His many followers want his political theory without quite committing to his epistemology that alone makes his approach to theory plausible. Centuries have passed, but liberal political thinking, in all of its shades and implementations, remains recognizably Lockean: it is based on various sets of self-evident truths, it proclaims consistency of its deductions, it recognizes the imperative of changing reality to fit it to demonstrative truths thereby negating the effect of false belief, and it uses ideology to exert such a change (that is, it appeals to how things "should be" rather than the actual state of affairs and considers intuitive grasp of its deductions unsupported by observation as the sufficient criterion for certainty of its truths).

If there is intellectual merit to this mode of thinking, it is lost upon me.

The death of a conservative

I've read Tanenhaus' "The Death of Conservatism" in a bookstore today. It is his expanded (and largely misunderstood) essay in "The New Republic." His thesis is that classical conservatism of Burke and Disraeli (and Chambers and Buckley) is dead, being eclipsed by ideology-based movements that are conservative in their name only. The idea of civil society as the foundation of actual rights and Burkean rejection of ideology in favor of naturally evolving institutions and tradition are marginalized. Instead, various utopian visions of perfection are pursued.

...What passes for conservatism today would have been incomprehensible to Burke, who, in the late 18th century, set forth the principles by which governments might nurture the "organic" unity that bound a people together even in times of revolutionary upheaval. Burke's conservatism was based not on a particular set of ideological principles but rather on distrust of all ideologies. In his most celebrated writings, his denunciation of the French Revolution and its English champions, Burke did not seek to justify the ancien regime and its many inequities. Nor did he propose a counter-ideology. Instead he warned against the destabilizing perils of revolutionary politics, beginning with its totalizing nostrums. Robespierre and Danton, the movement ideologues of their day, were inflamed with the Enlightenment vision of the ideal civilization and sacrificed to its abstractions the established traditions and institutions of what Burke called "civil society." They placed an idea of the perfect society over and above the need to improve society as it really existed. "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation," Burke warned. The task of the statesman was to maintain equilibrium between "the two principles of conservation and correction." Governance was a perpetual act of compromise --"sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil."
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/conservatism-dead

I must be a dying breed, and it does feel this way. I am not interested in the visions of the ideal projected into hazy future or building the perfect edifice from the set of rigid principles. I do not expect world to be perfect according to my view or anyone else's view; and I do not want it to be forced to fit someone's preconceptions of perfection. I believe this approach to be doomed from the start and find no evidence that it is working or had ever worked. This whole liberal idea of civil life built upon majestic visions and infallible principles is a terrible mistake, an aberration of rationality overestimating its own reach, the appeal of logic unhumbled by the reality check. Yet this view that looks so obviously unidimensional to me, contradicting every grain of my own personal experience, is winning on all sides. Perhaps there is indeed no place for people like me in the future. It is going to be a polarized world of ideologues fighting their pitched battles for the perfect society carved to fit their principles and not willing to accept that the imperfect and the chaotic world we live in is already the work of the greatest perfection.

Too late to act

THE ARCTIC OCEAN IS WARMING UP, ICEBERGS ARE GROWING SCARCER AND IN SOME PLACES THE SEALS ARE FINDING THE WATER TOO HOT. REPORTS ALL POINT TO A RADICAL CHANGE IN CLIMATE CONDITIONS AND HITHERTO UNHEARD-OF TEMPERATURES IN THE ARCTIC ZONE. EXPEDITIONS REPORT THAT SCARCELY ANY ICE HAS BEEN MET WITH AS FAR NORTH AS 81 DEGREES 29 MINUTES. GREAT MASSES OF ICE HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY MORAINES OF EARTH AND STONES, WHILE AT MANY POINTS WELL KNOWN GLACIERS HAVE ENTIRELY DISAPPEARED.

US WEATHER BUREAU, 1922

I've heard of the 1920s scare before, but I never imagined how similar was the language to the one that is used today.

WP article: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/changing-artic_monthly_wx_review.png
Commerce Department Report of 1922: http://cei.org/gencon/003,06235.cfm

from http://www.globalwarming.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/lindzen-talk-pdf.pdf
video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmGiiNQ0yHQ

The great puzzle of incorruptible South

from http://scholar-vit.livejournal.com/212163.html (condensed)
Shvartz: Не прокомментируете гигантский разрыв между разными регионами в одобрении Обамы. Разброс между северо-востоком и югом просто поражает.

scholar_vit: тут не только одобрение Обамы - в конце концов, его можно попытаться объяснить расовыми моментами... Ещё более удивителен тот факт, что "южная идеология" часто противоречит материальным интересам самих южан: скажем, они выступают против роли федерального государства в экономике. Между тем именно южные штаты получают огромные субсидии от федерального правительства (поддержка фермеров и т.д.). Именно прибрежные урбанизированные штаты кормят сельскую Америку. Люди в дотационных регионах громче всего кричат о необходимости уменьшить дотации. Доходит даже до смешного...

gomberg: региональный раздел имеет смысл попробовать рассматривать как культурно-этнический, именно что формирующий предпочтениия. То, как сейчас голосует васпский сельский Вермонт ничуть не менее удивительно, чем как голосует сельская белая Алабама... проще всего объяснить это усиливающимся восприятием республиканцев как южной партии, партии, представляющей интересы "чужих": это, вобщем, довольно зеркально с югом. Американская двухпартийность, порожденная избирательной системой, маскирует это: стабильных региональных партий нет. Но вот не покидает меня ощущение, что добрые янки сейчас стали голосовать за демократов потому что за республиканцев голосуют южане.

PS: A lot of things get clearer if one sees DP for what it is: a party that 140+ years ago hit on the strategy of buying loyal vote of the poor using someone else's money. The ideology was sought and fit to this electorial strategy rather than the other way around. Morality of this arrangement aside, there are problems inherent in this deal. First, one needs more and more money to buy vote of more and more people that want more and more. Second, instead of canine fidelity and adoration, bought people often demonstrate puzzling ingratitude. Third, even the densest of farm hands sooner or later understands that once his loyal vote is secured, the largess is diverted towards those more obstinate, and it will be his turn to get milked. Corrupting people is not as easy as it seems.

The power of metaphor

...Charles Darwin acknowledged his intellectual debt to Malthus. By Darwin's day, Malthus's theory had entered the mainstream of British thought. Never a full-throated Malthusian in his political attitudes, Darwin nevertheless adapted Malthus's idea to his science. He recognized that he was using the term "struggle for existence in a large and metaphorical sense" to encompass a variety of natural relations. For British evolutionists, this appealed to common sense. Living on a crowded island with a capitalist economy and highly individualist culture, struggle for existence did not seem a metaphor at all, but, rather, a simple and eloquent description of nature and society.

...Russians, however, lived in a very different land. Their own cultural values and experiences would lead them to reject Darwin's Malthusian metaphor. This in turn affected a wide range of research — from studies of the mutual aid among migrating fish to a Nobel prizewinning theory of inflammation and immunity. This Russian response provides a striking example of the way in which metaphors — and the experiences and cultural traditions that they capture — shape scientific thought.

...The experiences of leading Russian naturalists were in many ways opposite to those of Darwin's field experiences in densely populated tropical environments. The contest between organisms seemed obvious there. Most Russian naturalists, by contrast, investigated a vast under-populated continental plain. For them, nature was a largely empty expanse in which overpopulation was rare and only the struggle of organisms against a harsh environment was dramatic. Capitalism was only weakly developed and political supporters of the two most important classes, landlords and peasants, spoke the language of communalism — stressing not individual initiative and struggle, but the importance of cooperation within social groups and the virtues of social harmony. Russian political commentators of the left, right and centre reviled Malthus as an apologist for predatory capitalism and soulless individualism. Small wonder, then, that few Russians shared Darwin and Wallace's respect for Malthus, and that many saw the struggle for existence as an infusion of the British enthusiasm for individualistic competition into natural science.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7269/full/462036a.html

A Shvere Togedike Nakht

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

...Стругацкие на долгие годы закрыли для интеллектуалов два пути естествоиспытания... Выбегалло, осмеянный и ошельмованный, ... строит весьма убедительные социальные модели потребления как энтропии. Именно модель человека всем удовлетворенного, идеальный потребитель, сворачивает пространство и время... Мысль философски безупречная - дубль, подражатель (фанат, лемминг, как угодно) демонстративного потребления доводит мир до катастрофы перепотребления. Со старикашкой Эдельвейсом...это точнейшее семиотическое описание любого процесса диалога. Любое понимание любой информации устроено именно тем же самым способом. Рецепиент получает импульс и обрабатывает его своим же собственным мыслительным аппаратом, своим языковым контуром. Результат именно этой обработки, зависимой от этого контура, и выдается на гора в качестве материальной реакции на импульс. http://egmg.livejournal.com/1327470.html

The uses of bigotry

-- Like the origin of science, for example:

...Imagine: A Catholic bishop in a university town goes on CNN to condemn a long list of fashionable scientific and philosophical views. Full details of all 219 heresies — and anybody caught spouting even one of them faces excommunication — are published on his website. In March 1277 in Paris, this, more or less, happened. Today, such an act of clerical censorship seems a textbook example of bigotry blocking intellectual progress. But two eminent historians of science have claimed that Bishop Etienne Tempier’s condemnations of 1277 were a crucial stepping-stone on the way to modern science.

...One of Pope John XXI’s problems was that Arab thinkers were belatedly helping Christendom rediscover ancient Greek science and philosophy. The works of Averroes were especially irksome. He argued, basing his views on Aristotle, that both the creation of the world by G-d and personal immortality were alike impossible. If something has been established as contrary to nature, or physically impossible, then not even G-d can bring it about. It reflected two basic Greek ideas: that human reason could deduce immutable laws of nature, and that the gods were as bound by these as anyone else. Though Aristotle himself often emphasised that his conclusions about the physical world were merely provisional, his medieval followers believed he had established many physical laws, so that it was possible to say definitively what G-d could do, and what not.

...In fact, much of Aristotle’s physics was wildly wrong. In condemning it, Tempier was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. By insisting that G-d had absolute power to do anything He chose — to create many worlds, for example — Tempier and his like prompted Christian philosophers and scientists to explore all sorts of possibilities that dogmatic Aristotelians had ruled out. Plainly, if G-d could make the world any way He fancied, it would be foolish to rely on the armchair ratiocinations of ancient Greeks to find out what that was. Bit by bit over the next few centuries, savants began to piece together a new physics that dispensed with Aristotelian principles and relied on looking instead.
http://www.economist.com/diversions/millennium/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=346780

Good old times. Imagine the invigorating effect on, say, humanities had their 220 most popular theories been declared heretical and prohibited on the peril of losing tenure... They would need to come up with something absolutely new!

Can freedom block intellectual progress? - There is nothing obvious, per se, that people would freely chose the right thing, necessity being the mother of invention and conformity being the norm. I am thinking of myself. Many a time was I forced to change the field of study by circumstance beyond my control. Would not that happen, I wouldn't be where I am. People freely choose to explore the familiar dead end to looking in a new way. Without Tempier’s shock therapy we would probably still study a slightly updated version of Aristotle's physics today.