Monthly Archives: June 2017

Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, apropos of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: I say, gentlemen, hadnt we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will! Notes From the Underground, Dostoevsky

The logarithms Dostoevsky was talking about there would be the mathematical representation of all possible human action according to the laws of nature used to plan and build utopia.Rationalia, Neil deGrasse Tyson would have called it, but Dostoevsky chose the Crystal Palace after aglass exhibition hallbuilt in Hyde Park, which lives on in the name of an oft-relegated football club.

In this Crystal Palace, which is most assuredly LEED-certified, everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world. Then this is all what you say new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided.

The Underground Man rejects all this calculation of his best interest, applauding the reactionary gentleman and his stupid followers, and insists: Ones own free unfettered choice, ones own caprice, however wild it may be, ones own fancy worked up at times to frenzyis that very most advantageous advantage which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms.

The Underground Man, you could say, is a Trumpkin. Dont let the leaders ironical countenance throw you off the resemblance; another more literal translation renders that a retrograde and jeering physiognomy.

This is the essence of President Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Here comes this jeering, ignoble brute kicking over the whole show, when President Obama and the rest of the worlds greatest minds had just finished solving it for us. Certainly, the question of what to do about global warming vanished after models provided every possible answer, didnt it?

Of course, the models continue to spit out every possible answer as in a broad range of possibilities, not a single truth one either accepts or denies and thats for the questions the models are meant to answer. Heres how NASA summarizes the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on the unknowable questions: An increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will probably boost temperatures over most land surfaces, though the exact change will vary regionally. More uncertain but possible outcomes of an increase in global temperatures include increased risk of drought and increased intensity of storms, including tropical cyclones with higher wind speeds, a wetter Asian monsoon, and, possibly, more intense mid-latitude storms. So disasters, possibly. Or possibly not. But its certain that there will be either more disasters or not as many.

Yet leftists and journalists take dubious claims (it is possible to know the future! and we do!) and turn them into policy demands of supposedly incontrovertible merit. The question itself vanishes, ours not to reason why.

But doesnt the Paris agreement, surely, represent the global collective effort we need to save the planet? Well, to save it from an increase of 0.2 C degrees, yes. Thats what researchers at MIT figured would be the collective effect of the non-binding agreement. And thats if everybody else lived up to a plan that would cost us trillions $3 trillion over two decades, according to industry estimates that Trump cited.

Power plants would take a hit of $366 billion over 15 years under Obamas Clean Power Plan, according to industry estimates, but federal rulemaking reaches down into nooks and crannies few of us consider. The hit to the residential dehumidifier industry, which I didnt even know existed, from just one recent green rule is $220 million.

Instead of telling the truth, reporters obscure it. USA Today writes about how were missing out on a chance to develop our green energy industry, as if businesses are too stupid to make money without government telling them how. Business Insider promises devastating long-term economic consequences for the US. The reliably useless CNN Money reports that American businesses dont believe Obamas energy regulations were job killers.

My favorite was an AP news story headlinedLeaving Paris climate agreement unlikely to add U.S. jobs, economists say. The reporter then quoted exactly zero economists agreeing with that headline.

Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is hardly going to create jobs in the U.S., read the money quote from one Cary Coglianese, a professor of law. While specific environmental regulations can sometimes lead to job losses, they also can and do lead to job gains with the result being roughly a wash.

Thats also his position on regulations in general theyre roughly a wash.

A new study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute puts the annual cost of federal regulations at $1.9 trillion. My point isnt simply that the professor is wrong (though I think he is). Its not that there are no economists who would agree with that headline (there are; the far-left Economic Policy Institute, among others, imagines that regulation leads to harmony and efficiency).

There will always be geniuses with detailed plans for how to build the Crystal Palace. I mistrust them all.

Consider the gap between $1.9 trillion and zero. Consider the similarity between the economy and the climate both impossibly vast systems, with a googolplex of moving parts, few of them susceptible to study in isolation. We can identify some general principles and forces by observation certain incentives and physical effects but what do we know for sure? We can model a few things, but what are we leaving out that might matter more?

I think of the depth of research and the quality of data involved in economics, and theres still no consensus on the blueprint for a Crystal Palace. Yet the planners expect us to be impressed with the observations of climatologists. Ah, so clouds are shiny, and it gets hot when you do that one thing. So clearly, the snow in upper Canada and Norway is going to melt and drown us all.

Crystal Palace South transept & south tower from Water Temple, 1854 (Wikimedia Commons)

See the rest here:

Sophisticated Man Is Stupid - American Spectator

Pakistan started off as a promised land, and after some struggle, started creating promising national and international narratives. The nation succeeded doing that because the society was focused, and created excellence in the given resources of the day. Those who have lived through the Pakistani society in any of the decades from 1950s, to mid-1980s find it hard to believe that they live in the same country that once had more of promise and less of pessimism. The latter did not topple the former by accident. There were political, social and interpretive-religious processes of failures that gave birth to a muddled thinking one finds rampant in a confused population giving way to even more confused youth.

Those who left for greener pastures should try and become loyal citizens of their chosen lands, and leave Pakistan to those who either could not find an opportunity to leave or deliberately chose to stay back

Heres how it happened. The political nexus of civil-military bureaucracy was already undercutting the reason and rationalism in our society since 1956, but the sudden political shifts between 1965 and 1977 bedazzled the collective Pakistani memory. Then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began in 1979, and this pushed us into a spiral of conflicts that has further confused the already-confused. This strange war brought death and destruction to our people and their hopes in strange ways. People started losing hopes for a stable, prosperous and peaceful Pakistan for them and their generations. Those who could afford or cheat to migrate, migrated. And while doing so, thousands of pucca Muslims did not even hesitate to obtain fake certificates of declaring themselves Ahamdis, Hindus, Sikhs or Christians when it came to tricking the immigration officers of the foreign governments.

Confused state narratives create confused social narratives, and vice versa. Hence, leaving Pakistan, particularly since 1977s martial law of Gen Ziaul Haq, has been a discussion that probably every lower-to-middle class household in Pakistan has had. The elderly implicitly or explicitly but commonly encouraged the younger to leave. Interestingly, this very stratum of the society comprises of the super-patriots, and the self-proclaimed guardians of the ideological narratives of Pakistan; yet, the discussions! War, any kind of war precisely does that to a people and their socio-political psychology. From sanity, it pushes people towards quick and mindless reactions reactions that create more noise and less of sound. Resultantly, a nation breaks down into groups, and groups devolve into individuals where each living person tries to do just one thing: survive either by fighting or fleeing away.

Fight and flight, both, have been in abundance since the General Zias military dictatorship failed to contain the negatives of Afghan war on the Pakistani society. Crisis of the Pakistani State and society aggravated as a sectarian-political revolution in our neighborhood tried spreading its wings in our courtyard, but the Arab-brethren wanted Pakistanis to rather grow Arbi and not the Ajmi wings. The melting pot of the geo-strategic and sectarian conflicts created an environment that culled the middle class creativity and their ownership of the society. Alongside, the state formally promoted a certain version of Islam and tried making people good Muslims, instead of responsible citizens. Consequently, neither good Muslims nor responsible citizens, a scaring majority of Pakistanis chose becoming habitual pessimists criticising the state and society with half-baked ideas and knowledge.

Look around, and you shall find a predominant number of people pressing their thoughts as information and knowledge. This mixture gets exponentially interesting if you get to interact with the expatriate community, particularly the ones living in established Western democracies. Themselves enjoying rights and freedom that the Western democracies ensure, many among these hyper patriots want quick and ruthless change, military rule, Islamic caliphate, or revolution. People who took the flight, should rather become loyal citizens of their chosen lands, and leave Pakistan to the competence or incompetence of their compatriots who either could not flight, or deliberately chose to stay back and fight whatever the menaces and opportunities their land offered.

Probably for the first time in four decades since 1977, political elite as well as the deep state in Pakistan are talking about recreating a representative national narrative for varied audiences, locally and internationally. Whether it creates more muddles is yet to be seen, as Pakistanis have seen that happen before many times already. But heres a hope that the mess does not get messier, and a clear thinking process unfolds. Havent we had enough of muddled thinking already?

The writer is a social entrepreneur and a student of Pakistans social and political challenges. Twitter: @mkw72

Original post:

Pakistani thought process - Daily Times

In his final year of theatre studies, exhibition curator Geoffrey Curley went on exchange in London and lived on Chiltern Street.

"It's literally the street right over from Baker Street," which is the famous home of Sherlock Holmes. Was this by design?

"No, it was a complete coincidence," Mr Curley, a former theatre designer, said.

But, of course, as Sherlock Holmes himself might have replied, there are no such things as coincidences.

"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent ...If we could [see] the strange coincidences ... the wonderful chains of events leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction [seem] most stale," said the great detective in A Case of Identity.

It is this world of fantastic reality that Sydneysiders can explore at the Powerhouse Museum's new offering, which opened on Saturday: The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes.

Mr Curley, an American, has taken this exhibition around the world Sydney is the seventh stop.He said he had unprecedented co-operation from the Conan Doyle Estate.

"Usually the family doesn't participate," he said. But as you step into the world of Arthur Conan Doyle after passing through some London fog (dry ice), you are welcomed by the author's great nephew, Richard Conan Doyle.

The exhibition is a triumph of Victorian rationalism, neogothic chic and steampunkattitude. Central to the exhibitionis solving a crime, a murder no less.

You must deduce from simple facts how the police got their theories so wrong using the latest techniques of 19th century science: optics, botany, cosmetics, photography, ballistics andtelegraphy.

Perhaps the only thing missing is an injecting room: Holmes' indulgences of heroin and cocaine are not obvious in this representation.

Mr Curley used his contacts in the theatre world to involve Tony Award-winning Broadway designers to build Holmes' Baker Street study. Holmesian author Daniel Stashower developed the narrative of the murder which you must solve.

And to solve this crime you must interact with the exhibits like a sleuth.

Or, as Sherlock Holmes said inThe Sign of Four: "Eliminateall other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

The exhibition marries literature, culture, history and science.

While a fictitious character, Sherlock Holmes inspired some of the early founders of modern forensic science.

Professor Claude Roux is the director of the University of TechnologySydneycentre for forensic science.

"The pioneers in forensic science at the end of the 19th century included Austrian Hans Grossand Frenchman Edmond Locard," Professor Roux told Fairfax Media.

Locard was known as the "Sherlock Holmes of Lyon" and was reportedly an avid reader of ConanDoyle.

"The Locardprincipledeclares that 'every contact leaves a trace'," he said.

Professor Roux said: "Whatforensicscience does is look at the traces of crimes themselves and this is exactly what Sherlock Holmes does."

"Observation, reasoning and the ability to infer the right questions leading to hypothesis and tests it's the ultimate scientific method."

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

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Powerhouse Museum Sherlock Holmes exhibition unites science ... - The Sydney Morning Herald