The Mugwumpery

One of the defining characteristics of the universe is that it is not parsimonious.

Consider that fish produce many thousands of offspring to replace themselves once – all but two don’t make it to reproduction.

Consider evolution.

Consider the proportion of the Earth’s mass that participates in the biosphere. Of the solar system’s mass. Of the galaxy’s mass.

Consider the number of planets in the universe, and the number that have people on them (~ one).

Consider the proportion of the universe’s mass that is even matter. And the proportion of matter that has an atomic number greater than two.

Now consider the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The universe is not parsimonious.

[This is not to disparage Occam’s Razor. Parsimony in explanation is indispensable. But the thing being explained need not itself be parsimonious.]

It’s the sunburn.  It’ll go away in a few days.  Probably.

Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:15:21 -0500
To: letters [at] economist.com
From: Dave <dave [at] mugwumpery.com>
Subject: Democracy’s decline – Crying for freedom (16 January)

Dear Sir –

About democracy (16 January) – you are quite wrong.  The one and only merit of democracy is that it allows the people to replace malign governments without bloodshed.  But this is no minor advantage – it offers the only long-term protection of personal freedom mankind has yet discovered.

The challenge is to preserve democracy while avoiding rent-seeking and pandering to organized groups seeking to benefit their own members at the public’s expense – necessary preconditions to winning electoral office.

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek identified the core flaw of parliamentary democracy in the confusion between law in the traditional sense (rules governing interactions between people) and the running of government (budgets, taxation, etc.) and proposed separation of these powers.  (In his Law, Legislation and Liberty, particularly Volume 3, “The Political Order of a Free People”– University of Chicago Press, 1979.) Those who wish to promote and improve democracy would do well to start with Hayek’s work.

I love when seemingly disparate things synchronize in unexpected ways.

According to The Legal Underground,  Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) “was exceedingly fond of t-shirts, especially those portraying images of Mick Jagger…”

Surprising enough; doesn’t fit our image of Hayek.

But it gets better.  Sir Mick is a fan of Hayek (see 3:35 in the clip below):

Before quitting to start the Rolling Stones, Jagger attended the London School of Economics, where Hayek had taught.

Supposedly, Jagger’s adviser at the LSE “said that Mick Jagger did a careful net present value analysis of the value in attending LSE as compared to the foregone revenue from playing rock and roll. When the dollars came out higher for music, Mick came by and apologized to the adviser, but said he couldn’t afford to continue in school; LSE was just costing him too much money.”

Did I mention that Jagger also owns an Enigma machine?  The rare 4-rotor type.

Now if I could just work Salma in there somehow, it would be perfect.

Here’s another letter to The Economist, this one from 2006-11-27.  I didn’t expect them to publish it, and they didn’t.  But I had to get it off my chest (hey, that’s why I post here, too).

SIR –

Tongue-in-cheek, David Crawley suggests a defence against alien invasion [Letters, 18 November].  If it were possible to evaluate and counter the capabilities of aliens, such a plan might be wise.  Unfortunately, any hostile aliens able to bring a force to our planet are likely to be so advanced as to make any defence we might offer entirely ineffectual.  (We have no way to estimate the likelihood of such an attack, as we have no information about the distribution of intelligence in the universe. ) Yet the absence of radio signals from other stars is, if anything, ominous, as we have known since Copernicus that Earth’s situation is in no way special or unique – if our neighbor’s transmissions have been suppressed, perhaps ours will be as well.

That said, a defence against global warming [the real subject of Mr. Crawley’s letter] is not in the same category – there are remedies such as increasing the Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) – a requirement that future roads and rooftops be painted white would be an inexpensive start, or reducing the sun’s heating of the Earth, for example by placing large inflatable sunshades at the Lagrange point between the Earth and Sun.  Others will have better suggestions.  We do not need to freeze in the dark.

This guy Crawley sent a sarcastic letter criticizing governmental action on “the risk of something really catastrophic” resulting from global warming, because “only a minority of scientists perceive this as a threat and the costs of such a defence are enormous”, then comparing it to the results of an alien invasion.

I thought it was a lousy analogy, and said so above. I should have avoided getting side-tracked with a discussion of Berserkers (scary and interesting as that may be, The Economist is not ready for it).