Winter’s Haven

Thad Guy discusses objective morality, in his usual brilliantly succinct fashion.

I think that pretty much sums up the issue.

I found this comic via Hemant.


That hypothetical situation sure showed what an intellectually dishonest fellow that fictional atheist was! I have no idea whether this comic is trying to make some sort of point, or what that point might be.

The only reason I’m posting this is because I’ve long dreamed of launching an array of satellites able to act as a huge billboard in the sky. On the first night, I’d arrange for them to read “I am God and I am real”. As for subsequent nights, well, the possibilities are limitless. (”God says: Thou shalt honor the sabbath day by breakdancing to minimalist music in a kiddie pool full of borscht.”)

Please leave suggestions as to what God should say in the comments. The best ideas will appear in the night sky just as soon as my satellites are up and running.

Actually, there is a broader point to this post: if you see some extraordinary phenomenon, don’t just assume that it’s beyond your mortal comprehension. Take a closer look. Investigate. Make an attempt to understand what’s going on. Be curious about the world.

This evening I encountered a creationist while working on math in a cafe. This particular creationist thought that stars burn out on a timescale much shorter than billions of years, and hence the Earth could not possibly be that old. The creationist, who happened to be an engineering student, couldn’t give any particular reason as to why he thought the entire astrophysics community was so egregiously wrong. However, what I found most appalling was that he had not the slightest interest in figuring out just why accepted models make such terribly wrong predictions about stellar lifetimes. He didn’t care at all about how stars work.

Ask an angry atheist why they dislike religion, and you’ll most likely hear about how religion encourages humankind’s worst impulses: sexism, out-group hostility, violence, etc. There’s plenty of reason to be angry at the Osama bin Ladens of the world, but right now I’m just as furious at religion for what it did to the kid I met in the cafe as I am for what it did to the World Trade Center. That kid, that engineer, was not a stupid person. Yet he was told — by some non-violent, moderate, downright friendly pastor — that all of The Answers can be found in the collected mystic ramblings of a bunch of desert nomads. Those theists took a smart, talented kid and utterly crushed his sense of curiosity about the world. I’m mad at Christianity for destroying what was best and most noble in that kid, and so many others like him.

Jerry Taylor of Cato explains why it’s so difficult for governments to fix the prices of goods:

Congress can no more guarantee that fuel prices will go down from now until the end of time than it can guarantee a robust sex life for fat, balding, middle-aged men.

Supply and demand, baby. Suppy and demand.

• All too often, people talk about market competition as if it were opposed to cooperation — as if capitalists were only a step away from resorting to napalm and land mines. The Economist’s Free Exchange blog douses that burning pile of stupid with some cool, clear analytic philosophy:
  

  The competition at the heart of capitalism is a competition to cooperate on ever better terms — a competition to offer consumers more for less.

• Via Cosmic Variance, I’ve learned today that Alan Alda is not only a great actor, but it a huge fan and supporter of science! I always suspected that he and Professor Saeta were long-lost siblings; now there can be no doubt.
• Libertarian bloggers everywhere have been denouncing racism and the recently revealed Ron Paul newsletters. One of the best pieces comes from Will Wilkinson, who explains why racism is not merely distasteful, but fundamentally opposed to libertarian ideals.
• The Temple Whore on prayer:
  

  The truth is that Christians know better than to pray for a REAL miracle [e.g. healing amputees], because “God’s answer would be ‘no’”. Which is to say, the fact that god is either incompetent or imaginary would become quite obvious.

The French government prohibits booksellers by law from selling their wares at less than 95% of list price. Allow me to state the obvious: it’s a stupid law that protects established booksellers from upstart rivals who might otherwise attempt to gain market share by offering lower prices; it raises the prices of books, and generally screws over consumers to the benefit of politically connected corporations.

Public choice theory tells us that such a law can exist because its costs are widely dispersed over the entire book-buying public, while its benefits are concentrated on a much smaller group of companies. The harm to each individual book buyer is so small that it isn’t worth any individual’s effort to attempt to overturn the law (or even pay it much attention); meanwhile, the small group of beneficiaries has strong incentives to protect the law.

That explanation is good, so far as it goes. But how did the French Booksellers’ Union, in particular, mangage to land such a cushy deal? Why haven’t the Redheaded League and the Fraternity of Poodle Owners secured similar benefits for themselves? The International Herald Tribune tells us that

The 1981 Lang law was passed at a time when booksellers were losing sales to supermarkets and other new competitors. It was meant to assure that the French public had equal access to a wide variety of books, both high-brow and low-brow, not just heavily marked-down publications.

I trust my readers will, after a moment’s thought, see the absurdity of that attempt to justify the law. But most people aren’t really in the habit of thinking about things, and I can see how such a justification might appear plausible to people who view free markets with general antipathy — as the French (in)famously do. Weak as that justification may be, it still sounds more plausible than any I can think of for showering Redheads or Poodles with taxpayer money. That, I think, is an important reason the Bookseller’s Union succeeded where other potential rent-seekers did not.

A dreadfully ironic corollary follows from this analysis. The more strongly voter sentiment disfavors free-market capitalism, the more the likely they are to swallow the sort of bullshit explanation seen above and let their pockets be picked by rent-seeking corporations. Kinda sad, really.

Huge kudos to Amazon.com for standing up to this madness. (The French are by no means the only people in the world dumb enough to buy such BS, but news on the lawsuit against Amazon earned them my scorn today.)

I quote:

We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue.

There is (poetic) justice in the universe after all!

Hat tip to the Bad Astronomer for finding this.

Commenting on the scandalous Ron Paul newsletters brought to light by The New Republic today, David Bernstein provides some very informative background on the political and cultural forces which produced this situation. I quote:

[T]here are really two disparate groups to whom the limited-government message appeals: philosophical libertarians (which consists of a tiny percentage of Americans, but something like 10% are at least inclined toward a general libertarian perspective), and those who hold a deep grudge against the federal government based on a range of nutty conspiracy theories, ranging from old chestnuts like a freemason conspiracy, a Council on Foreign Relations/Bildeberger conspiracy, or a conspiracy to strip the U.S. of its sovereignty in favor of world government; to variations on old anti-Semitic themes (ranging from domination by Zionist conspirators to domination by Jewish bankers led by the Rothchilds to domination by Jews in Hollywood); to newer racist theories; to novel conspiracy theories about 9/11, the pharmaceutical industry, etc.

Mainstream libertarian groups like Cato and Reason have nothing to do with the latter types, but other self-proclaimed libertarian groups, like the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, play footsie with them. (I recently turned down an invitation to do a book review for an academic journal published by LVMI because I don’t want my name associated with the Institute.) Paul himself seems to have made a career of straddling the line between respectable libertarian sentiment and conspiracy-mongering nuttiness, receiving support and accolades from both sides.

Given Paul’s lame and none-too-reassuring reaction to the scandal, it appears that all of us who wanted a philosophical libertarian to vote for finally are being forced to the realization that Paul is the other type of “libertarian”.

There is one small point of optimism in all this. Paul’s campaign has stirred up a lot of excitement, and the vast majority of it is from mainstream libertarians — people who simply want less war, greater personal freedom, and smaller government. The Satan’s-army-wears-blue-helmets people will remain an ugly but tiny fringe group. Yet the Paul phenomenon has shown that there are more than a few people wishing for a respectable libertarian to vote for.

My last post argued that voters ought to ignore issues which are chiefly ideological (such as evolution/creationism) and instead evaluate candidates on their policies. I feel that I should pass along this article by Megan McArdle which contends that Paul’s proposed policies would do remarkably little good (from a libertarian perspective, that is).

She’s probably right; I briefly thought I might find a substantive response in the comments, but no. Let’s be honest here: the libertarian movement attracts more than its fair share of cranks. And it’s becoming pretty clear that the sane and intellectual libertarians are a lot less enthusiastic about Paul than the cranks are. But a lot of libertarians are nonetheless drawn to Paul in our desperation to find a candidate we can truly support.

In my opinion, rest of the GOP slate is a truly awful group of authoritarians and theocrats. On the democratic side, I don’t like either Obama or Clinton. Edwards is terrible. I think Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson are pretty decent, but they have even less chance of winning a party nomination than Paul does. In all likelyhood, I’ll just stay home in November, unless I’m really, really bored, in which case I might venture to the polls to cast a protest vote for whatever rabid goat is running on the Libertarian Party ticket.

Politics sucks.

The Bad Astronomer condemns Ron Paul for reasons which are… politically misguided. Namely, Paul is a creationist.

I think I speak for a lot of atheists libertarians when I say that, yes, Ron Paul’s views on evolution/creationism are awful, but in spite of that I’d still be fairly overjoyed to see him in the Oval Office. Why?

I don’t completely agree with the views of any of the presidential candidates. In choosing between the imperfect options available to me, I think the relevant question to ask is not “Who has the least terrible ideas?” but rather, “Who’s bad ideas are least likely to produce bad policies?”

The president’s power to push America towards a theocratic pre-Enlightenment society is quite limited. The Constitution has proven quite effective at protecting us from all the previous creationist presidents; I don’t see any reason to believe that Paul could succeed in bringing creationism into public schools where Bush and others have failed.

The president has much more influence over (for example) health care policy, and far more ability to do us all damage by instituting bad health care policy. Which is why, given a choice between a creationist and a democrat who favors even more state intervention in health care, I’ll hold my nose and vote for the creationist.

Ron Paul may be an idiot in a lot of ways, but the other presidential candidates are much bigger idiots in ways that will actually affect us.

My mobile phone has been having problems — I couldn’t call out or access voicemail. I now have a different service, and a new phone number. Email me for the new phone number; I’m not going to post it online.