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In this period, the European Union has stopped functioning as it did five years ago and has yet to see its new form defined. China has moved into a difficult social and economic phase, with the global recession severely affecting its export-oriented economy and its products increasingly uncompetitive due to inflation. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has created opportunities for an Iranian assertion of power that could change the balance of power in the region. The simultaneous shifts in Europe, China and the Middle East open the door to a new international framework replacing the one created in 1989-1991.
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The Technium: Undetectable Technology - 0 views
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Karl Schroeder, science fiction author of the novel Permanence, writes about the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox says that if there is an infinite universe there must be an infinite number of civilizations at advance stages that would emit evidence of their presence, but as far as we see in any direction, there are none. The skies should be full of aliens, but are not. Why not?
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Annual Forecast 2012 - 0 views
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Our forecast for 2012 is framed by the idea that we are in the midst of what we might call a generational shift in the way the world works.
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the driving force behind developments in Europe in 2012 will be political, not economic.
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Normally, we would predict failure for such an effort: Sacrificing budgetary authority to an outside power would be the most dramatic sacrifice of state sovereignty yet in the European experiment -- a sacrifice that most European governments would strongly resist. However, the Germans have six key advantages in 2012.
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First, there are very few scheduled electoral contests, so the general populace of most European states will not be consulted on the exercise.
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Second, Germany only needs the approval of the 17 eurozone states -- rather than the 27 members of the full European Union -- to forward its plan with credibility.
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Third, the process of approving a treaty such as this will take significant time, and some aspects of the reform process can be pushed back.
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Fourth, the Germans are willing to apply significant pressure.
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Fifth, the Europeans are scared, which makes them willing to do things they would not normally do -- such as implementing austerity and ratifying treaties they dislike.
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The real political crisis will not come until the sacrifice of sovereignty moves from the realm of theory to application, but that will not occur in 2012.
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The economic deferment of that pain is the sixth German advantage. Here, the primary player is the ECB. The financial crisis has two aspects: Over-indebted European governments are lurching toward defaults that would collapse the European system, and European banks (the largest purchasers of European government debt) are broadly insolvent -- their collapse would similarly break apart the European system.
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In 2012, the Kremlin will face numerous challenges: social unrest, restructuring Russia's political makeup (both inside and outside of the Kremlin) and major economic shifts due to the crisis in Europe.
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Russia will continue building its influence in its former Soviet periphery in 2012, particularly by institutionalizing its relationships with many former Soviet states. Russia will build upon its Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan as it evolves into the Common Economic Space (CES).
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This larger institution will allow the scope of Russia's influence over Minsk and Astana, as well as new member countries such as Kyrgyzstan and possibly Tajikistan, to expand from the economic sphere into politics and security as Moscow lays the groundwork for the eventual formation of the Eurasian Union, which it is hoping to start around 2015.
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In the Baltic countries -- which, unlike other former Soviet states, are committed members of NATO and the European Union -- Russia's ultimate goal is to neutralize the countries' pro-Western and anti-Russian policies
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Russia will continue managing various crises with the West -- mainly the United States and NATO -- while shaping its relationships in Europe.
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Russia will attempt to push these crises with the United States to the brink without actually rupturing relations -- a difficult balance.
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Numerous factors will undermine Central Asia's stability in 2012, but they will not lead to a major breaking point in the region this year.
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Iran's efforts to expand its influence will be the primary issue for the Middle East in 2012.
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In 2012, Saudi Arabia will lead efforts to shore up and consolidate the defenses of Gulf Cooperation Council members to try to ward off the threat posed by Iran, but such efforts will not be a sufficient replacement for the United States and the role it plays as a security guarantor.
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Iran's goal is for Syria to maintain a regime -- regardless of who leads it -- that will remain favorable to Iranian interests, but Iran's ability to influence the situation is limited, and finding a replacement to hold the regime together will be difficult.
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Despite its rhetoric, Turkey will not undertake significant overt military action in Syria unless the United States leads the intervention -- a scenario Stratfor regards as improbable -- though it will continue efforts to mold an opposition in Syria and counterbalance Iranian influence in Iraq.
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Hamas will take advantage of the slowly growing political clout of Islamists throughout the region in hopes of presenting itself to neighboring Arab governments and the West as a pragmatic and reconcilable political alternative to Fatah.
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Three things will shape events in East Asia: China's response to the economic crisis and possible social turmoil amid a leadership transition; the European Union's debt crisis and economic slowdown sapping demand for East Asia's exports; and regional interaction with the U.S. re-engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.
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While Beijing knows that rolling out another massive fiscal stimulus and bank loans as it did in 2008-2009 is unsustainable and would put the economy at risk, it sees few other short-term options and thus will use government-led investment to sustain growth in 2012.
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As it learned from the Tiananmen Square incident, CPC factional infighting exploited at a sensitive time is a serious risk, and we expect to see measures to ensure ideological and cultural control throughout the Party and down through the rest of society.
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The United States will continue to consider a political accommodation with the Taliban, but such accommodation is unlikely to be reached this year.
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The most important development in South Asia is Pakistan's ongoing political evolution.
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Regardless of any change in party, Mexico's underlying challenges will remain. The country's drug war rages on, with Los Zetas having consolidated control over most of Mexico's eastern coastal transportation corridor and the Sinaloa cartel having done the same in the west.
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Brazil will spend 2012 focused on mitigating shocks to trade and capital flows from the crisis in Europe. However, with only 10 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product dependent on exports, Brazil is much less vulnerable than many other developing countries.
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"There are periods when the international system undergoes radical shifts in a short time. The last such period was 1989-1991. During that time, the Soviet empire collapsed. The Japanese economic miracle ended. The Maastricht Treaty creating contemporary Europe was signed. Tiananmen Square defined China as a market economy dominated by an unchallenged Communist Party, and so on. Fundamental components of the international system shifted radically, changing the rules for the next 20 years. We are in a similar cycle, one that began in 2008 and is still playing out."
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How Mitochondrial Eve connected all humanity and rewrote human evolution - 0 views
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So how did Mitochondrial Eve manage to rewrite the entire story of human evolution? For that matter, what exactly is Mitochondrial Eve? Unlike her biblical namesake, she wasn't the only woman on Earth. In a sense, she's just a quirk of statistics. But if that's the case, then she's easily the most important quirk of statistics who ever lived.
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In order to find a common ancestor whose genetics have passed on, we need to look for things that are passed down from generation to generation with little or no alteration. Both genders pass along one thing that is unchanged during sexual reproduction. For women, this is the mitochondrial DNA, which is a distinct subset of genetic material found not in the cell nucleus but rather in the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell.
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By tracing the subtle mutations to mitochondrial DNA that have accumulated over the millennia, we can figure out which groups are most closely related, and ultimately fix the existence of Mitochondrial Eve to a fairly specific time in the past, which is currently estimated at about 200,000 years ago. That pretty much rules out the idea of multiple origins for humanity — otherwise Mitochondrial Eve would have to date back a couple million years, and mitochondrial analysis shows that that simply isn't the case.
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While we don't really have 500 billion different ancestors, we can still look at the reverse of that idea: is there a single common ancestor that every person on Earth shares? As we know with Mitochondrial Eve, that answer is a resounding "yes" - but let's now take a look at the Most Recent Common Ancestor, or MRCA. The name says it all, really - this is simply the most recent person who, through any and all genetic lines, can be connected to every single person alive today.
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This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve, the common ancestor of every human alive today. Here's everything you need to know about why the mother of humanity is so important.
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Charles Murray on the New American Divide - 0 views
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When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace.
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Like during, say, the postwar high period. It's that horrid time that Republicans idealize and which Democrats appear to want. Among other things, the high taxes, strong safety net, and unparalleled economic position that seems pretty unlikely.
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a new upper class with advanced educations
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a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions
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And the isolation is only going to get worse. Increasingly, the people who run the country were born into that world. Unlike the typical member of the elite in 1960, they have never known anything but the new upper-class culture. We are now seeing more and more third-generation members of the elite. Not even their grandparents have been able to give them a window into life in the rest of America.
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Meanwhile, the formation of the new upper class has been driven by forces that are nobody's fault and resist manipulation. The economic value of brains in the marketplace will continue to increase no matter what, and the most successful of each generation will tend to marry each other no matter what.
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The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations.
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There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold. The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending "nonjudgmentalism."
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People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.
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Two incontrovertible things: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Real, and the Wall Street ... - 0 views
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That second list of scientists, much longer than the first, is attached to a letter about the shoddy and ignorant ways in which science is being treated by the press and by climate change denialists. That letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal but rejected. The letter was later published in Science.
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The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.
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Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal - 0 views
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the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down.
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The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 "scientists."
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Polarization and Sustained Violence in Mexico's Cartel War - 0 views
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In this annual report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of 2011 and provide updated profiles of the country's powerful criminal cartels as well as a forecast for 2012. The report is a product of the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and other analyses we produce throughout the year.
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Hang The Pirates - But Start With The Movie Moguls And Record Execs - 0 views
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The first list is the membership of Edison's MPPC cross-licensing trust group: Biograph, American Vitagraph Company, Selig Polyscope Company, Lubin, American Star Films, American Pathe Pictures, Essanay Studios, and Kalem Company. Those companies ruled the motion picture world 100 years ago. How many of them exist now? How many of their names even ring a bell except in some antique, ghostly corner of our brains? Now here's a list of the "pirate" film companies that were formed by the "outlaws" who fled to California to escape the legal constraints of Thomas Edison back in the eastern U.S.: 20th Century-Fox, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Studios (successor company to Laemmle's IMP) and Warner Bros.
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5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party - 0 views
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"China Is Communist in Name Only." Wrong. If Vladimir Lenin were reincarnated in 21st-century Beijing and managed to avert his eyes from the city's glittering skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption, he would instantly recognize in the ruling Chinese Communist Party a replica of the system he designed nearly a century ago for the victors of the Bolshevik Revolution. One need only look at the party's structure to see how communist -- and Leninist -- China's political system remains.
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As in the Soviet Union, the party controls the media through its Propaganda Department, which issues daily directives, both formally on paper and in emails and text messages, and informally over the phone, to the media. The directives set out, often in detail, how news considered sensitive by the party -- such as the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo -- should be handled or whether it should be run at all.
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Perhaps most importantly, the party dictates all senior personnel appointments in ministries and companies, universities and the media, through a shadowy and little-known body called the Organization Department. Through the department, the party oversees just about every significant position in every field in the country. Clearly, the Chinese remember Stalin's dictate that the cadres decide everything.
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"The Party Controls All Aspects of Life in China." Not anymore. No question, China was a totalitarian state under Mao Zedong's rule from 1949 until his death in 1976. In those bad old days, ordinary workers had to ask their supervisors' permission not only to get married, but to move in with their spouses. Even the precise timing for starting a family relied on a nod from on high.
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"The Internet Will Topple the Party." Nope. Bill Clinton famously remarked a decade ago that the efforts of Chinese leaders to control the Internet were doomed, akin to "nailing Jell-O to a wall." It turns out the former president was right, but not in the way he thought. Far from being a conveyor belt for Western democratic values, the Internet in China has largely done the opposite. The "Great Firewall" works well in keeping out or at least filtering Western ideas. Behind the firewall, however, hypernationalist netizens have a much freer hand.
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"Other Countries Want to Follow the China Model." Good Luck. Of course, many developing countries are envious of China's rise. Which poor country wouldn't want three decades of 10 percent annual growth? And which despot wouldn't want 10 percent growth and an assurance that he or she would meanwhile stay in power for the long haul? China undoubtedly has important lessons to teach other countries about how to manage development, from fine-tuning reforms by testing them in different parts of the country to managing urbanization so that large cities are not overrun by slums and shantytowns.
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"The Party Can't Rule Forever." Yes it can. Or at least for the foreseeable future. Unlike in Taiwan and South Korea, China's middle class has not emerged with any clear demand for Western-style democracy. There are some obvious reasons why. All three of China's close Asian neighbors, including Japan, became democracies at different times and in different circumstances. But all were effectively U.S. protectorates, and Washington was crucial in forcing through democratic change or institutionalizing it.
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"5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party" - an interesting look at some assumptions that Westerners tend to make, and how they are classically wrong (like so many things we take a magnifying glass to).
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What happened before the Big Bang? - 0 views
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Standard Answer: Nothing. So please don't ask.
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In the normal general relativity picture of things, the moment of creation produced not only space, but time; the two are incredibly intermixed, after all. To Einstein, talking about what happened before the Big Bang is just as nonsensical as asking what happens if you travel north of the North Pole. There just isn't just a place, or consequently such a time.
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Our knowledge of physics in the first 10^-44 seconds after the beginning (which, admittedly, is a pretty damn short time) is virtually non-existent. This instant is known as the Planck Time, and since we don't know what happened before the Planck time with anything even remotely resembling certainty, we absolutely don't know what happened before the Big Bang. Regardless, logic dictates that we're left with one of two possibilities: The universe had some sort of beginning, in which case we're left with the very unsettling problem of what caused the universe in the first place. The universe has been around forever, in which case there's literally an infinite amount of history, both before and after us.
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Model #1: The Universe out of Nothing
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You know what we call something with no size? Nothing.
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It's troubling to think that the physics existed before the universe did, or, for that matter, before time did.
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Model #2: The Universe gave birth to itself
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Gott and Li showed that it was possible to solve Einstein's equations of general relativity in such a way that a universe started off going around and around in a continuous loop, and that that loop could serve as the "trunk" of a tree that sprouted, giving rise to our own universe.
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Model #3: This Is Not the First Universe
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The problem with this (besides the fact that there is too little stuff in our universe to make it collapse again) is one of disorder. As we've discussed previously, the universe loves disorder.
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Looking back, our universe was very smooth, and in a very high state of order. This wouldn't solve the problem at all.
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And there are even more models, some including extra dimensions, some include concepts like "loop quantum gravity," some infinite in time, and some with a definite duration. At the end of the day, the Big Bang theory has the same basic problem as evolutionary theory. Both do a nearly perfect job in explaining how the universe (or life) changed when it first came about, but neither can explain how things really got started in the first place.
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We spend a lot of time thinking about futurism, but the past is pretty interesting, too. In this week's "Ask a Physicist" we get extra speculative and think about what things may have been like before the beginning of time. What was there before the Big Bang? Did anything exist before our current universe? Here's what we know.
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The Next Transitions in the Technium - 0 views
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"What kinds of developmental thresholds would any planet of sentient beings pass through? The creation of writing would be a huge one. The unleashing of cheap non-biological energy is another. The invention of the scientific method is a giant leap. And the fine control of energy (as in electricity) for long-distant communications is significant as well, enabling all kinds of other achievements. Our civilization has passed through all these stages; what are some future transitions we can expect -- no matter the fashions and fads of the day? What are the emergent thresholds of information and energy organization that our civilization can look forward to? Most of these thresholds are gradual, so we can't assign dates, but each of these structures seem to be a natural transition that any civilization must reach sooner or later."
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Russia and the United States: Pushing Tensions to the Limit? - 0 views
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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States got involved in the region intending to create a cordon around Russia to prevent it from ever becoming a global threat again.
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Russia wants to limit the influence of external powers in the former Soviet Union and be recognized as the dominant player there.
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Russia is not looking to control Central Europe, but it does not want the region to be a base of U.S. power in Eurasia.
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Tensions between Moscow and Washington can be attributed to one primary issue: ballistic missile defense (BMD).
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The United States claimed that the systems are intended to counter the rising threat from Iran. In response to this claim, Russia offered to integrate its BMD system with NATO's system. According to Moscow, such integration would strengthen Western defenses across Eurasia -- indeed, all the way to East Asia. However, Washington rejected the offer, thereby confirming Moscow's suspicions that the BMD system is more about Russia than the Iranian threat.
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In December, Russia gained a new and much more effective card to use against the United States in the BMD debate when a U.S. helicopter strike on the Afghan-Pakistani border caused the U.S.-Pakistani relationship to deteriorate.
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Cutting the NDN would lead to an official break in relations between Russia and the United States because it would put at risk more than 130,000 U.S. and allied troops. Whereas Russia's previous threats against the United States went unheeded, Washington may not be able to ignore this new threat.
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At the end of 2011, it seemed that Russia was going to threaten to cut off the NDN to compel United States to change its position on BMD. But then something occurred that could give the United States more leverage against the Kremlin: Russian protests.
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The stress of a shift in Kremlin policy, the rise of anti-Kremlin groups and personal feuds have also led to the utter breakdown of the Kremlin clan system Putin emplaced a decade ago to manage Russia.
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Such instability is not new to Russia under Putin, but the present situation differs from previous ones in that several crises occurred at once.
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should the various protest groups suddenly receive cash and organizational help, Putin could have a much harder time maintaining his usual level of control.
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Washington has hinted that it is willing to back the protesters if prompted. Following Russia's parliamentary elections in December, reports circulated that the election watchdog accusing the Russian government of election fraud had U.S. funding.
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newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul arrived in Russia in January. On just his second day at his post, McFaul spent several hours meeting with representatives of various protest groups at the U.S. Embassy.
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After the election, Putin will have more time and resources to devote to other large issues facing Russia, such as its standoff with the United States. Another important event is on the horizon in May: the first NATO-Russia summit since 2008, to be held in Chicago.
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Russia has said that if Moscow and Washington do not reach an agreement on BMD by May, then Russia will not attend the summit.
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Moscow might want to make the Europeans uncomfortable during the U.S.-Russian standoff, but it does not want to create a backlash and prompt the Europeans to unify with the United States over regional security.
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Moreover, Russia does not want Afghanistan to spin out of control, since unrest in the country most likely would spill over into Central Asia. Russia also cannot compete with the United States when it comes to a military buildup.
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As Russia and the United States prepare for their respective presidential elections, tensions between the countries are growing. The central point of contention is U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans. Russia has several levers, including its ability to cut off supply lines to the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, to use in the standoff over BMD, but the United States could retaliate by supporting the current protests in Russia. Moscow is willing to escalate tensions with Washington but will not push the crisis to the point where relations could formally break.
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The Word - American History X'd - The Colbert Report - 0 views
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The Tennessee Tea Party demands that textbooks remove references to the Founding Fathers' slave ownership and violence against Native Americans. 2012-31-01 - Video Clip | Comedy Central
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Rick Santorum and the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition - 0 views
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The happy truth, of course, is that this is all complete nonsense. Nothing like this is happening in the Netherlands. No such bracelets exist. Santorum’s nightmare is entirely false — it’s a fabricated delusion based on a fantasy apparently invented out of whole cloth by the Louisiana Right to Life Federation.
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That’s the difference between you and Sen. Santorum. You both agree that the scenario he described would be a Very Bad Thing. But for you that means you don’t want it to be true while for him that’s reason to wish it were. He believed this story and promoted this story because he wanted to believe it was true. He needed to believe it was true.
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1. It’s exciting to believe in imaginary monsters.Santorum wants to imagine himself doing battle with Dutch death panels for the same reason that I spent hours as a teenager fighting dragons, trolls, goblins and orcs. It’s exciting to pretend that you’re a brave hero struggling against the forces of evil.
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2. A fiendish foil for self-righteousness.Being good is hard. If I compare myself to Jesus or Harriet Tubman or St. Francis or Dorothy Day then I can’t help but see a vast amount of room for improvement on my part. But if, instead, I compare myself to Hannibal Lecter, then I come out looking pretty good.
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If I compare myself to Hannibal Lecter, then I can tell myself that I am a saint and a hero and not just someone largely indistinct from everyone else, stumbling along in a self-absorbed routine of quiet desperation.
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3. If the monsters don’t exist, the theory isn’t true.The Big Theory presents an if-then equation to explain how society works. The theory offers a defense of something — “traditional morality,” sectarian privilege, patriarchy, ethnic superiority, cultural exceptionalism, nationalism, etc. — and says that if that something is not defended, then monstrous consequences will ensue.
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4. Imaginary monsters give our fears a face.We’re afraid. We’re afraid of difference, of financial insecurity, of forces beyond our control, of death. Our fears are amorphous, unsettling and overwhelming. We can’t get a handle on them. So we give them a name and a face and thus can pretend that we’re up against something we can fight.
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"...the central concern of the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition is not a defense of kittens, but an accusation against most other people. They are not driven by their opposition to kitten-burning, but by their opposition to a make-believe faction of other people whom they imagine favor kitten-burning. That this vast bloc of pro kitten-burning people cannot be found and does not exist does nothing to dampen their enthusiastic campaign against these supposed monstrously cruel others. It is a delusion, but the AKBC enjoys this delusion." Thanks to Allen Cook for the pointer.
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Gut Microbes May Drive Evolution - 0 views
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A 2010 experiment led by Eugene Rosenberg of Tel Aviv University found that raising Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies on different diets altered their mate selection: the flies would mate only with other flies on the same diet. A dose of antibiotics abolished these preferences—the flies went back to mating without regard to diet—suggesting that it was changes in gut microbes brought about by diet, and not diet alone, that drove the change.
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These studies are part of a growing consensus among evolutionary biologists that one can no longer separate an organism's genes from those of its symbiotic bacteria. They are all part of a single "hologenome."
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Researchers believe that the microbiome is essential to human evolution as well. "Given the importance of the microbiome in human adaptations such as digestion, smell and the immune system, it would appear very likely that the human microbiome has had an effect on speciation," Bordenstein says. "Arguably, the microbiota are as important as genes."
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"The human body harbors at least 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. Collectively known as the microbiome, this community may play a role in regulating one's risk of obesity, asthma and allergies. Now some researchers are wondering if the microbiome may have a part in an even more crucial process: mate selection and, ultimately, evolution."
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Rand & Human Nature 20 - 0 views
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Empirical studies have shown, however, that human beings do not "follow" reason, but rather tend to use their reasoning skills to justify whatever conclusions they reach via emotion, desire, sentiment, and/or intuition.
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To a certain extent, Rand was aware of this: it is a theme of much exasperation in her writings. But rather than assuming that the non-rational was a built-in feature (or bug) of human nature, Rand hunted for an explanation for why so many human beings refused to "follow" reason.
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She found her answer in a contrived and implausible theory of history, where she placed the failure of human rationality squarely on the shoulders of modern philosophers, particularly Kant.
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It was by framing the issue is such extravagently anti-empirical terms that Rand was able to avoid the more obvious conclusion: namely, that human beings don't follow reason because, as Hume explained, reason as at best a method, not an aim or desire; and, morever, that attempt to reason from "is" premises to an "ought" conclusion is invalid.
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In other words, it turns out that truth is, in many circumstances, a "collective" endeavor: it is a product of individual minds within group dynamics. This is especially the case whenever truth is in the least controversial. Individuals can find truth on their own when that truth is mundane and doesn't violate special agendas or trample upon rooted convictions. But whenever we are confronted with a truth-claim that is controversial, then an individual's judgment is not enough. Open debate involving empirical testing becomes necessary. Where this is impossible truth becomes difficult and consensus impossible.
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That reasoning power may be effective when attacking rival truth claims, but it does not perform well in establishing it's own claims concerning matters of fact.
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Although she strongly urged others to "check" their "premises," this was not advice that she herself ever followed.
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On the contrary, she often responded with intense hostility to criticism. Typical in this respect was her response to Sidney Hook's review of To the New Intellectual. Instead of responding to Hook's criticisms point by point, Rand insisted that Hook should be publicly condemned. Because Leonard Peikoff and Barabara Branden were students of Hook, they were were given a pass; but everyone else, including even Rand's friend John Hospers, were expected to take part in the public condemnation.
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she had very little conception of the manners and morals of professional academicians: they can get along well and even be friends, while disagreeing strongly with one another on rather fundamental issues.
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But for Ayn this was a betrayal. It almost cost us our friendship. In the end she attributed my attitude to the misfortune of having been brainwashed by the academic establishment, at least with regard to their code of etiquette.
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What Rand failed to appreciate is that the "code of ettiquette" that Hospers writes about is the glue which holds together communities of truth-seeking intellectuals. If everyone began publicly condemning those they disagreed with, that community would break down and all that remain would be a loose assemblages of ideological factions crying anathema against each other.
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Rand and her disciples can wax eloquent about "reason" all they like, but at the end of the day they know very little about truth seeking within the limits of human nature. There is a price for denying human nature, and not understanding how truth emerges as the property of a social system is one of them.
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Rand regarded "reason" as the supreme virtue: "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism," she wrote; "and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."
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Ayn Rand & Human Nature 19 - 0 views
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In the first place, it is logically fallacious to reason from two is premises to an ought conclusion, something Rand appears not to have understood. Secondly, it is psychologically impossible to derive the an end from reason. Reason is a method, a means for attaining an end. But an end must be wished for it's own sake, because it satisfies some sentiment or desire.
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And finally, there exists an immense body of research demonstrating that reason is not used to make moral decisions; on the contrary, where reason comes in is after the decision has been made. The role of reason is not to make moral choices, but to defend them after the fact.
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If reasoning played a central role in moral judgments, we would expect better reasoners to arrive at different conclusions from inferior reasoners. But this is not what the research finds. Smarter, more educated people don't reach different conclusions, they just provide more reasons to support their side of the issue. When people reason about issues of morality, they are blinded by confirmation bias.
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Reason, as Nietzsche warned us, is a whore. She will sleep with any premises you throw at her, no matter how anti-empirical or absurd.
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"skilled arguers ... are not after the truth butafter arguments supporting their views." This explains why the confirmation biasis so powerful, and so ineradicable. How hard could it be to teach students toalways look on the other side, to always look for evidence against their favoredviews? Yet, in fact, it's really hard, and nobody has yet found a way to do it.It's hard because the confirmation bias is a built-in feature..., not a bug thatcan be removed...
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Rand places enormous stress on individual conscious reasoning. "Reason" is her chief moral virtue and is considered a necessity to man's survival. Not surprising, Rand regarded "reason" as particularly important in ethics. Rand regarded any attempt to derive ethical behavior from intuition or gut feelings or emotion as mere "whim worship," which she denounced in fierce, vigorous language.
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The State of the World: Germany's Strategy - 0 views
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In writing about German strategy, I am raising the possibility that the basic structure of Western Europe since World War II and of Europe as a whole since 1991 is coming to a close.
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Before 1871, when Germany was fragmented into a large number of small states, it did not pose a challenge to Europe. Rather, it served as a buffer between France on one side and Russia and Austria on the other.
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However, in the event that there was no alliance between France and Russia, Germany was always tempted to solve the problem in a more controlled and secure way, by defeating France and ending the threat of an alliance. This is the strategy Germany has chosen for most of its existence.
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Rather than split France and Russia, the threat of a united Germany drew them together. It was clear to France and Russia that without an alliance, Germany would pick them off individually.
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The idea that economics rule the decisions of nations is insufficient for explaining their behavior.
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Germany was confronted with a strategic problem. By the early 20th century the Triple Entente, signed in 1907, had allied Russia, France and the United Kingdom. If they attacked simultaneously at a time of their choosing, these countries could destroy Germany. Therefore, Germany's only defense was to launch a war at a time of its choosing, defeat one of these countries and deal with the others at its leisure.
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During both World War I and World War II, Germany first struck at France and then turned to deal with Russia while keeping the United Kingdom at bay. In both wars, the strategy failed.
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The issue was to prevent Germany from returning to the pursuit of an autonomous national strategy, both because it could not resist the Soviet forces to the east by itself and, more important, because the West could not tolerate the re-emergence of divisive and dangerous power politics in Europe.
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The key was binding Germany to the rest of Europe militarily and economically.
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After World War II, West Germany's strategy was threefold.
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First, it had to defend itself against the Soviet Union in concert with an alliance that would effectively command its military through NATO.
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Second, it would align its economy with that of the rest of Europe, pursuing prosperity without undermining the prosperity of other countries.
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Third, it would exercise internal political sovereignty, reclaiming its rights as a nation without posing a geopolitical threat to Western Europe.
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Russia, or what was left after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was relatively secure so long as Germany remained part of European structures. The historical strategic problem Germany had faced appeared solved.
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The situation became more complex after 2008. Germany's formal relationship with NATO remained intact, but without the common threat of the Soviet Union, the alliance was fracturing over the divergent national interests of its members.
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Germany is the second-largest exporter in the world. It exports to many countries, but Europe is a critical customer. The free-trade zone that was the foundation of the European Union was also one of the foundations of the German economy.
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However, the European Union no longer functions as it once did.
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There were two possible solutions in the broadest sense.
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One was that the countries in crisis impose austerity in order to find the resources to solve their problem.
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The other was that the prosperous part of Europe underwrites the debts, sparing these countries the burden of austerity.
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the German price for underwriting part of the debt is that European bureaucrats, heavily oriented toward German policies, be effectively put in charge of the finances of countries receiving aid against default.
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If you accept the German view, which is that the debt crisis was the result of reckless spending, then Germany's proposal is reasonable. If you accept the view of southern Europe, which is that the crisis was the result of the European Union's design, then what Germany is proposing is the imposition of German power via economics.
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It is difficult to imagine a vast surrender of sovereignty to a German-dominated EU bureaucracy, whatever the economic cost. It is also difficult to imagine Germany underwriting the debt without some controls beyond promises
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In short, there is substantial synergy between the Russian and German economies. Add to this that the Germans feel under heavy pressure from the United States to engage in actions the Germans want to be left out of, while the Russians see the Americans as a threat to their interests, and there are politico-military interests that Germany and Russia have in common.
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NATO is badly frayed. The European Union is under tremendous pressure and national interests are now dominating European interests.
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However, Germany's strategic interest is not necessarily a relationship with France but a relationship with either France or Russia to avoid being surrounded by hostile powers. For Germany, a relationship with Russia does as well as one with France.
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An ideal situation for Germany would be a Franco-German-Russian entente. Such an alliance has been tried in the past, but its weakness is that it would provide too much security to Germany, allowing it to be more assertive.
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Normally, France and Russia have opposed Germany, but in this case, it is certainly possible to have a continuation of the Franco-German alliance or a Russo-French alliance. Indeed, a three-way alliance might be possible as well.
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If Germany faces an impossible situation with the European Union, the second strategic option would be a three-way alliance, with a modified European Union or perhaps outside of the EU structure.
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Germany's strategy, therefore, is still locked in the EU paradigm. However, if the EU paradigm becomes unsupportable, then other strategies will have to be found.
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The idea of Germany having an independent national strategy runs counter to everything that Germany has wanted to be since World War II and everything the world has wanted from Germany. In a way, the entire structure of modern Europe was created to take advantage of Germany's economic dynamism while avoiding the threat of German domination.
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1848: History's Shadow Over the Middle East - 0 views
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ethnic interests in Europe soon trumped universalist longings.
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While ethnic Germans and Hungarians cheered the weakening of Habsburg rule in massive street protests that inspired liberal intelligentsia throughout the Western world, there were Slavs and Romanians who feared the very freedom for which the Germans and Hungarians cried out. Rather than cheer on democracy per se, Slavs and Romanians feared the tyranny of majority rule.
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There are fundamental differences between 1848 in Europe and 2011-2012 in the Middle East.
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his polyglot Habsburg system, lying at the geographical center of Europe, constituted a morality in and of itself, necessary as it was for peace among the ethnic nations. This is why Metternich's system survived, even as he himself was replaced in 1848.
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While there is no equivalent in the Middle East of the Habsburg system, not every dictatorial regime in the Arab world is expendable for some of the same reasons that Habsburg Austria's was not.
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That is the burdensome reality of the Middle East today: If conservative -- even reactionary -- orders are necessary for inter-communal peace, then they may survive in one form or another, or at least resurface in places such as Egypt and Iraq.
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Iraq in 2006 and 2007 proved that chaos is in some respects worse than tyranny. Thus, a system is simply not moral if it cannot preserve domestic peace.
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nobody is saying that conservative-reactionary orders will lead to social betterment. Nonetheless, because order is necessary before progress can take hold, reactionary regimes could be the beneficiary of chaos in some Middle Eastern states, in a similar way that the Habsburgs were after 1848. For it is conservative regimes of one type or another that are more likely to be called upon to restore order.
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To wit, if the military is seen to be necessary for communal peace between Muslims and Copts in Egypt, that will give the generals yet another reason to share power with Islamists, rather than retreat entirely from politics. The overthrow of Mubarak will therefore signify not a revolution but a coup.
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Indeed, democratic uprisings in 1848 did not secure democracy, they merely served notice that society had become too restive and too complex for the existent monarchical regimes to insure both order and progress.
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So one should not confuse the formation of new regimes in the Middle East with their actual consolidation.
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If new bureaucratic institutions do not emerge in a more socially complex Middle East, the Arab Spring will be a false one, and it will be remembered like 1848.
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Syria is at this very moment a bellwether. It is afflicted by ethnic and sectarian splits -- Sunnis versus Shia-trending Alawites versus Druze and Kurds. But Syria also can claim historical coherence as an age-old cluster of cosmopolitanism at the crossroads of the desert and the Mediterranean, a place littered with the ruins of Byzantine and medieval Arab civilizations. The Western intelligentsia now equate a moral outcome in Syria with the toppling of the present dictator, who requires those sectarian splits to survive.
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But soon enough, following the expected end of al Assad's regime, a moral outcome will be associated with the re-establishment of domestic order and the building of institutions -- coercive or not. Because only with that can progress be initiated.
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1848 had tragic repercussions: While democracy in Europe flowered briefly following World War I, it was snuffed out by fascism and then communism. Thus, 1848 had to wait until 1989 to truly renew itself.
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Because of technology's quickened advance, political change is faster in the Middle East. But for 2011 to truly be remembered as the year of democracy in the Arab world, new forms of non-oppressive order will first have to be established. And with the likely exception of Tunisia -- a country close to Europe with no ethnic or sectarian splits -- that appears for the moment to be problematic.
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1848 in Europe was the year that wasn't. In the spring and summer of that year, bourgeois intellectuals and working-class radicals staged upheavals from France to the Balkans, shaking ancient regimes and vowing to create new liberal democratic orders. The Arab Spring has periodically been compared to the stirrings of 1848. But with the exception of the toppling of the Orleans monarchy in France, the 1848 revolutions ultimately failed. Dynastic governments reasserted themselves. They did so for a reason that has troubling implications for the Middle East: Conservative regimes in mid-19th century Europe had not only the institutional advantage over their liberal and socialist adversaries but also the moral advantage.
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