A Road of Grass- Migrations Along the Asian Steppe

Genomics data confirms that the Avars were of East Asian origin before taking over the Carpathian basin.

Historians have gradually accorded increasing respect to the various Central Asian groups that swept in and terrorized Europe for a millenium, including in turn the Scythians, Huns, Avars, Mongols, and Turks. The Mongols particularly created a golden age of commerce across the Silk Road, which Marco Polo traveled to such great adventure. This history is both extremely dynamic, and poorly documented, as these nomadic cultures left little behind, especially writing. Their roots range from Iran and the Indo-Europeans to the Mongolian and Tungusic regions. A putative "Altaic" language group extends from Hungary all the way to Korea and Japan, though it is a disparate group arising more from interchange and borrowing than from a single origin- testament to the frequent traffic along the steppes.

To settled cultures, both in Europe and in China, these nomads were terrors, living on their horses, infinitely mobile, and possessing powerful weapons like their composite bows. The continual succession of these cultures (unlike, say, the long stability of ancient Egypt) also indicates that they fought constantly among themselves, in true Darwinian fashion. Success revolved around not only technical innovation and a martial culture, but also social abilities to forge groups large and cohesive enough to control vast regions, despite the tendency of warriors to fight ... with each other.

The Avars were one of this succession, historically known as invaders of the Carpathian Basin who set up a brief empire (~570 to 790 CE) after defeating Goths who had in turn succeded the Huns, who had replaced the Romans of Pannonia. At their height, the Avars ruled from Turkey to Austria, but were within two hundred years defeated by the Franks, who were soon followed by the Magyars, who finally stayed to found what is now Hungary. One can see that the Balkans, which lie in this region and towards the Adriatic, have had a tumultuous history. The Avars had reputedly come from the far East, after the nascent Turks defeated the Hunnic / Rouran center, of which the Avars were supposedly a successor, offshoot, or client group. Historians have been divided, though, since there is little evidence of far Eastern influences in the Carpathian archeology, and competing accounts put their origin more Westerly, around the Urals or Caspian basin. 

"The Rourans were defeated by the Turks, who had been their subjects, in 552–555. Their empire fell apart and, according to the contemporary Chinese sources, the core Rouran population was brutally massacred. Some of the Rourans fled to China and soon disappeared from sources. Another group of the Rourans is commonly thought to have migrated westwards and become the Avars of European history"

But a recent paper (largely authored by Hungarians) has settled the matter. They sequenced DNA from numerous burials dated through the Avar era, and compared them to a variety of samples from across the steppes. They find that indeed, the earliest and richest graves of the Avar era have almost exclusively far East Asian DNA markers, from what is now roughly Mongolia, while later remains show increasing admixture with the local Western Europeans. 

"All of the early-Avar-period individuals (DTI_early_elite), except for an infant and a burial with typical characteristics of the Transtisza group, form a tight cluster with a high level of ANA (ancient North East Asian) ancestry. They are located between present-day Mongolic- (e.g., Buryats and Khamnigans) and Tungusic/Nivkh-speaking populations (e.g., Negidals, Nanai, Ulchi, and Nivkhs) together with the only available ancient genome from the Rouran-period Mongolia."

"The remaining 9 late-Avar-period individuals show minor (<40%) to almost negligible (<5%) admixture with ANA-related sources, while the major ancestry component can be approximated by one of the preceding local groups for most of the individuals"

In discussions of these eras, hundreds of years can go by rather quickly. Still, the mobility and dynamism of these peoples is astonishing. Rome had already experienced the knock-on effects of tribes such as the Scythians driving other peoples westward before them. And the Indo-European invasions were something similar, farther back in the mists of time. Such migrations and conquests kept on happening, thanks to the love these people had for their horses, the endless flatness of the landscape, and the rich pickings available among settled cultures around their periphery.

The Steppe region marked in brown. Sites of burial remains that were sequenced are marked, extending clear across Asia, allowing the authors to classify particularly early and high-status burials in the Carpathian basin (left-most) as most related to a far eastern origin.

Today, Russia (whose lengthy period under Mongol rule strongly shaped its culture) has resumed the mortal competition for empire among the flatlands of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. While we can marvel at the relentless valor of Huns and Avars, seeing such ruthlessness up close in our own time isn't abstract history, it is thoroughly appalling.

• The sleeze just keeps getting worse.
• The Webb telescope is working great.
• Making ebikes easy.
• Is the Bible age-appropriate reading material?
• Another reason for inflation.
• Six minutes hate ... and lies.

Love Beauty Truth

Book review of "Finding your Feet after Fundamentalism", By Darrell Lackey. With apologies to the other book.

An old friend has published a book. We had an epistolary relationship, fretting about creationism, intelligent design, and related topics back when those were livelier issues than today (and it directly inspired the birth of this blog). He was on his way out of Christian fundamentalism, and into something more liberal, even post-modern. His new book is a somewhat autobiographical account of the problems of fundamentalism, and of leaving fundamentalism as one's tradition. Naturally, evangelism dies hard, and takes this new form of broadcasting the good news of a more moderate and decent Christianity.

The book hits hardest on the issue of Donald Trump. No scandal has so thoroughly demonstrated the ultimate hypocrisy of fundamentalism than its allegiance to Trump. The transaction has given religious conservatives control of the Supreme Court, (though perhaps that owed more to Mitch McConnell), but in return, they showed their support for the most morally vile and incompetent person ever to hold the job. Lackey relates how he was fully in the FOX news orbit in the 90's, happily imbibing its bile. But then something snapped, and by the time of the Trump election, he had fully left fundamentalism and its communities behind. Living in California might have something to do with it, since liberalism, at least of a lip-service sort, is the dominant way of life here. Something that Republicans have learned the hard way. 

Yet the interesting part is how strenuously Lackey hews to Christianity, proclaiming that liberal versions are not gateway drugs to atheism. Quite the contrary- close attention to the actual New Testament provides ample justification for things like supporting marginalized communities, helping the poor, afflicting the rich, and viewing one's enemies as possibly reasonable human beings, if not friends in the making. He mentions how false it is for evangelicals to be so eager to spread the good word, but at the same time so deaf to the words of others that actual relationship is impossible- an evangelism of a closed-off community. 

For what are the fundamental values? Lackey cites love and beauty. Love is clear enough, (and damning enough regarding the FOX- driven culture of conservative Christianity), but the role of beauty needs a little more explaining. Religious thinkers have spared no effort in extolling the beauty of the world, but in the current world, serious artists are rarely Christian, let alone make Christian art. Why is that? Perhaps it is just intellectual fashion, but perhaps there is a deeper problem, that art, at least in our epoch, is adventurous and probing, seeking to interrogate narratives and power structures rather than celebrate them. Perhaps it is a problem of overpopulation, or of democracy, or of living in late imperial times, or of modernism. But whatever the framework, contemporary Christian communities have become the opposite of all this- anti-intellectual, tone-deaf, and art-hostile (not to mention power-mad). It must be exasperating to someone with even the least appreciation for finer things and for art that is "interesting".

Jean-Michel Basquiat- too messy for insensitive temperaments.

Beauty has deep Christian connotations. The world is god-made, good, and thus beautiful, as indeed we all feel it to be. But life is also messy, competitive, and dark. Death and suffering are part of it as well. If we refuse to own those aspects of the world, and of ourselves, we become blinded to the true nature of things, and expose ourselves to unintended and invisible expressions of the dark side, as we see in the deep hypocrisy on the subject of Trump, on sexual morals, and countless other areas within fundamentalism / evangelicalism. Lackey ticks off a lengthy list of subjects where conservative Christians have become blind to the obvious teachings of Jesus while fixated on relatively minor cultural flashpoints and red meat- symptoms of a general moral blindness borne of, arguably, flaccid aesthetic and intellectual habits.

So I would like to offer another value, which is truth. As a scientist, it is a natural place for me to start, but I think it is both illuminating of, and interrelated with, the other virtues above. What modern artists seek is to express truths about the human condition, not just ring out positive affirmations and hallelujas. Truths about suffering as well as truths about beauty. What scientists seek to do is to find how this world we find ourselves in works, from the cosmos down to the gluon. And they do so because they find it beautiful, and, like addicts, would like to unlock more of that beauty. Beauty inspires love, and love ... can only survive on truth, not lies. So I think these values live in a reinforcing cycle.

All that implies that there is another step to take for someone who has left fundamentalism. That is, to re-evaluate Christianity as a whole. While the achievement of decency (and better taste) by the renunciation of FOX and its religious satellite communities is an enormous step, indeed a momentous one for the preservation of our country's sanity, grappling seriously with the value of truth would suggest an extra leg to the trip. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christianity as a whole is a questionable proposition, philosophically. As a narrative and moral system, it clearly has positive as well as negative potentials. But as a "truth"- with its miracles, resurrections, triune deity, and salvation at the end of the line, (whether for the elect, the saved, the good, or for all)- well, it is impossible to take seriously without heavy doses of tradition and indoctrination.

For his part, Lackey has headed in another direction, into the Eastern Orthodox church, finding a place that richly satisfies the fundamentalist urge to return to one of the most traditional and historically continuous churches in existence, and also one that does not tie itself into intellectual knots about literal truth, living biblically, and the like. Orthodoxy accepts mystery, and cherishes its ancient rites and structures as sufficient theology. It is not modernist, or goaded by the enlightenment to make a rational system of something that so obviously resists reason. 

For there is a fine line between lies, illusions, and truths. As anyone who is married will understand (or a citizen of a country, or part of a corporation, or part of any social structure), truth is not the only or necessarily best virtue. A bit of illusion and constructive understanding can make a world of difference. Narrative, ideology, framing, etc. are essential social glues, and even glues of internal psychology. So, given that illusions are integral, the work to identity them, bring them into consciousness, and make positive choices about them is what matters, especially when it comes to social leadership. Do we choose narratives that are reasonably honest, and look forward with hope and love, or ones that go down the easy road of demonization and projection? And what role should the most traditional narratives in existence- those of the ancient religions- have in guiding us?

• Beautiful? You be the judge.
• Kasparov on freedom and evil.
• Kids should be able to navigate neighborhoods.
• Lies and disinformation are a public health crisis.
• More variants are always coming along.
• We are not doing enough against climate heating.

E. O. Wilson, Atheist

Notes on the controversies of E. O. Wilson.

E. O. Wilson was one of our leading biologists and intellectuals, combining a scholarly career of love for the natural world (particularly ants) with a cultural voice of concern about what we as a species are doing to it. He was also a dedicated atheist, perched in his ivory tower at Harvard and tilting at various professional and cultural windmills. I feature below a long quote from one of his several magnum opuses, Sociobiology (1975). This was putatively a textbook by which he wanted to establish a new field within biology- the study of social structures and evolution. This was a time when molecular biology was ascendent, in his department and in biology broadly, and he wanted to push back and assert that truly important and relevant science was waiting to be done at higher levels of biology, indeed the highest level- that of whole societies. It is a vast tome, where he attempted to synthesize everything known in the field. But it met with significant resistance across the board, even though most of its propositions are now taken as a matter of course ... that our social instincts and structures are heavily biological, and have evolved just as our physical features have.

(No) Sympathy for the Devil

Blaming ourselves for Russia's attack on Ukraine.

Here we are, in a time warp back almost a century. A European country has elected an authoritarian leader, on the support of a doddering president. That leader went on to resolve the economic and politicial crisis of the country, mostly by taking complete control himself and forming an increasingly repressive fascist state. Nationalist propaganda and lies were ceaselessly conveyed through the state media, paving the way for attacks on other countries, generally portrayed as critical to protect fellow countrymen being oppressed there. The aggression and the lying escalated until here we are, in a full scale international war, with distinct chances of becoming a world war. 

In the US, there are strange convergences of support for the Russian side of this conflict. Those on the fringe left can not tear themselves away from respect for the Russia that was the Soviet union and vanguard of world communism. Nor can they resist bashing the US. The far right is infatuated with the new Russia, with its super-Trump leadership, free-wheeling criminality, and clever propaganda, as many Americans were of Hitler back in the day. But a third stream comes from the foreign policy establishment- the realists, who think spheres of influence are the most normal, god-given organizing principles of international affairs. Thus China should be given its suzerainty over South East Asia, including Taiwan, and Russia over its near abroad, whatever the people actually living there may think. We are to blame for pushing NATO to Russia's borders, we are to blame for injuring Russia's sensitivities and pride, and we have caused their invasion of Ukraine, by luring Ukraine to the West with our sweet blandishments.

Well, each of those views is out of touch in its own way, but the last is especially curious. For what was the post-World War 2 order about, if not about civilized behavior among nations, letting each seek prosperity and freedom, in peace? The realist view would plunge us back into medieval power relations, or perhaps the three-sphere world of George Orwell's 1984. It consigns small countries to the depredations of bullies like Russia, who can not make friends in a civilized manner, but, in Ukraine, has strained every nerve to corrupt its political system, destroy its internet, and obliterate its sovereignty and economy.

It is obvious to all, including Russia, that NATO was and remains a defensive alliance, of countries intent above all else to rebuild after World War 2 without further aggressive encroachment by Russia. And once the Soviet Union fell apart, the Eastern Bloc countries fled as fast as they could to the West, not because they wanted to attack Russia in a new World War 3, but quite the opposite- they wanted to pursue the promise of freedom and prosperity in peace, without bullying from Russia. Russia's much vaunted "sensitivities" are nothing more than toxic, domineering nostalgia for their former oppressive empires, of both Czarist and Soviet times. As the largest country in the world, one would think they have enough room, but no, their sense of greatness, unmatched by commensurate cultural, economic, or moral accomplishment, demands bullying of its neighbors. More to the point, their current system of government- autocracy / fascism by ceaseless lying and propaganda, would be impaired by having their close neighbors have more open, civilized systems. 

All this has a religious aspect that is interesting to note as well. Ukraine recently extricated itself from domination by the Moscow orthodox church, becoming autocephalic, in the term of art. The process shows that even in this supposedly supernatural sphere of pure timeless principle, tribalism and politics are the order of the day. Not to mention propaganda, and fanciful philosophy and history. The narratives that Russia as spun about Ukraine and its invasion are particularly virulent, unhinged, and insulting, insuring that Ukraine would never, in any sane world, want to have anything to do with their neighbor. It is one more aspect of the Russian aggression that spares us from needing to sympathize overly with its "sensitivities".

So, what to do? It is not clear that Ukraine can withstand Russian attacks forever. They have stopped Russia in its tracks, thanks to a lot of Western assistance. They have millions of men under arms, compared to a much smaller invasion force. They have motivation and they have the land. But they need heavier weapons and they need to preserve their air power. With those two things, they could turn the tide and drive Russia out. Without them, they will probably only manage a stalemate. Western sanctions have imposed highly justifiable pain on Russia itself, but historically, such sanctions tend to have as much countervailing effect, consolidating pro-government attitudes, as the opposite. So barring a dramatic turn of events at the top of the Russian system, which is highly unpredictable and rather unlikely, we are facing a very drawn out and destructive war in Ukraine.

In a larger sense, we are facing something far more momentous- the rise and assertion of autocracy (not to say fascism 2.0) as a competing world order. Russia's pattern has been clear enough (and historically eerie)- escalate their aggression and ambition as far as they can get away with. And China is watching carefully. The ability of the West to punish Russia for its completely immoral and cruel attack on Ukraine, and deter future repetitions, will shape the next century. Russia has decisively broken the borders and tranquility of the post-World War 2 order, and that has caused many, especially in Europe, to wake up and realize that coasting along on US coat tails is not enough- they have to actively participate in sanctioning Russia, in resolving their dependence on Russian fossil fuels (as if that had not been patently obvious before), and strengthening the collective defence, as expressed in NATO. Western leaders should make it clear that Putin and his key lieutenants will never be allowed to personally enter the West without being shipped off the Hague for trial. And we should give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself.

Finally, what of our own culpability? Not so much in mistreating Russia, which we have done only to a slight degree, but in committing war crimes of our own, in attacks of our own, based on lies of our own, on innocent countries far distant. I am speaking of Iraq (which ranks first among several other cases). While our justification for that war was far better than Russia's in Ukraine, it was still poor, still caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, was grievously misconceived and mismanaged, and has left a political ruin, not to mention a geopolitical mess. This alone should make George W Bush rank among the worst of US presidents- significantly lower than Trump, who for all his destructiveness, did not destroy whole countries. We should be willing to put Bush and others who made those decisions to an historical and international account for their actions, in a spirit of historical rectitude.

• In praise of Washington's teaming minions.
• New thoughts on an old book.
• A song for Ukraine.

Toxic Nostalgia

Making Russia great again.

What is it about the past? Even though we are condemned to live in the future, we can't stop fantasizing and fetishizing the past, and wanting to go back. On the gentle side, Proust wrote nothing but loving remembrances of his (sometimes mortifying) past, trying to evoke its moods, textures, smells, and feelings. But why does nostalgia so often curdle into bloodlust and terror? For that is where the Russian autocrat is going with his nostalgia for the Soviet era when Stalin ruled even more autocratically over a well-cowed populace extending from Hungary to the Pacific. Ah, those were the days!

It isn't just our current crisis- far from. The Trumpists want to make America great... again. The Muslim jihadists are bent on reproducing the pre-eminent dominance of Islam of 1300 years ago. The Serbs hearken back to their own grand empire of 700 years ago. Shia muslims fetishize their losses and in a theology of repair and redemption. Jews have both bemoaned their losses of their great kingdoms two millennia ago, and militantly sought their promised land back. And fundamentalists of all stripes yearn to get back to the basic tenets of their faith- the pure origins of incendiary belief and miracles.

It all seems a little over-determined, as though the operative emotion isn't nostalgia exactly, but powerlust, seizing on whatever materials come to hand to say that we as some tribe or culture are better and deserve better than we've got. While the future remains ever shrouded, the past is at least accessible, if also rather protean in the hands of dedicated propagandists. In Russia's case, not only did Stalin help start World War 2 by co-invading Poland, but the prior holocaust/famine in Ukraine, followed by the transplacement of millions of Russians into Ukraine.. well, that all makes this current bout of nostalgia far from sympathetic, however well-twisted it has been for internal consumption. Of course the propaganda and the emotion is mostly instrumental, in a desperate bid to fend off the appearance of happy, secure, and prosperous democracies on Russia's borders, which is the real danger at hand, to Putin and his system.

In remembrance of Russia's great patriotic war, which it helped start.

Yet, such nostalgia is strongly culturally binding, for better or worse. Rising states may have short histories and short memories, resented as the nouveau-rich on the world stage. They are not "as good" in some essential way as those whose greatness has passed into the realm of nostalgia. Worth is thus not in the doing but in some ineffible essentialist (read nationalist/tribal) way that is incredibly resistant to both reason and empathy. It is analogous to "nobility" in the class structure within most societies. In the US, we seem on the cusp (or past it) of our time atop the world stage. Do we then face hundreds of years of regret, comforting ourselves with tales of greatness and seething resentment?

With echos of a deeper past.

• Could the West have been smarter; more generous?
• Apparently, we are all going to die.
• Tires are bad.

Origins in the Other: Moses the Egyptian

Stray notes on what Judaism owes to Egypt.

It is a bitter historical irony that Jesus was a Jew, (as were all the founding Christians), yet his religion was taken up by non-Jewish communities who turned its stories against its originators, casting Jews as the betrayers, stubborn heretics, and generally the other, with disastrous consequences. Well, something similar may have happened at the origin of Judaism, as there is a fascinating thread of historical scholarship and speculation that suggests that Moses was Egyptian, and that much of the religion of Judaism was generated as a mixture of inheritances from, or inversions of, the religion and cults of Egypt.

While the Bible is full of Moses stories, no other historical, let alone archeological, attestation exists. Thus the many authors who have striven to unearth the truth of what happened have had to be creative. The whole thing may be an out and out myth, or unrecognizably reworked. Freud wrote "Moses and Monotheism" as an exercise in retro-psychoanalysis, cutting his totemic father figure down in an imagined Oedipal paroxysm of murder, followed by remorse. Jan Assmann more recently, in "Moses the Egyptian", wrote an eliptical tale of cultural hints and suppressed memories and trauma continually expressed and re-interpreted over time in the "othering", adoption, and inversion of cultural patterns. Manetho, a third century BCE Egyptian priest, wrote a history that puts Moses, originally an Egyptian priest named Osarseph, at the head of a renegade (and leper, for good measure) army which terrorized Egypt sometime in the 1300-1500 BCE period, ending in their expulsion and exile. 

The Hyksos, a semitic people, had a distinctive look, in Egypt of ~1900 BC.

Ever since the reign of Akhenaten was unearthed in the late 1800's, it has been tempting to tie his monotheistic revolution (1353-1336 BCE) to that of Judaism, which was putatively founded in the same general time period, when Egypt was at its height of power and regional influence. In both cases, monotheism was a tough sell, and created antagonism that characterized both episodes. The Amarna period ended with complete reversal- Akhanaten being erased from his monuments and records, and Egypt returning to its traditional ways. Judaism, according to its own documents, and despite Moses's teaching, endured a lengthy period of conflict and consolidation before the monotheistic faction gained ascendence in the post-Babylonian exile period. It also generated the enduring enmity of neighboring polytheists, ultimately resulting in the military defeat and dispersal of the Jewish nation.

So what is the evidence? Moses is an Egyptian name. Like Tutmosis, Ahmose, Ramses, and many others, it means "is born", or "is child of". While there are both Hebrew and Egyptian etymologies possible, Moses is also described as practiced in all the arts of Egypt, including various forms of magic and the secret symbols, i.e. hieroglyphs. Egyptians practiced circumcision, which Judaism obviously adopted with gusto. Egyptians worshipped the ram (representing the leading god, Amun) and the bull (Osiris), which the Jews turned around and sacrificed in their rituals. Cooking meat in milk was an Egyptian practice, which may have been the source of the contrary interdiction in Kosher law. Judaism was anti-iconic, completely contrary to the abundant icons of, frankly, all the other polytheistic religions, though new icons have been snuck in, in the form of the ark of the covenant, the Torah scrolls, wailing wall, etc. The Thummim is a judicial badge and device for divination, taken from the Egyptians. It is indeed likely that originators of Judaism were assimilated Egyptians who left, whether by choice or not. The historian Tacitus noted the inverted character of Judaism vs the Egyptian religion. And Maimonides argued that the laws were a form of treatment for withdrawal from idol-addiction, in his case against the "Sabians", which in reality were the Egyptians, if they were any actual culture at all. But it served other purposes as well, such as cultural glue, which continues to be functional even when all other reasons have become irrelevant and many of the less convenient laws have been cast aside.

Whichever pharoh was the one described in Exodus, its Egyptological details, though accurate, come from a substantially later time, the 600's BC, when it was written, not from the time of the events. And Assmann argues that Manetho, for one, conflated several historical episodes to come up with his account. One was a Hyksos colony of semitic peoples that occupied northern (lower) Egypt through the second intermediate period (~1800 BC) to their defeat, about 1540 BC, by Kamose and his successor Ahmose, who were based in the south. There may have, however, been other incursions of semitic peoples from time to time, especially as records through the less organized periods of Egyptian history are sparse. A second episode was the Amarna period, which was officially suppressed, but which Assmann argues remained vivid as a traumatic memory of religious and existential revolution, informing an Egyptian official's view of "pollution" of the Egyptian culture by outsiders. 

Similarly, one can imagine that the idea of monotheism, so suddenly sprung upon the Egyptians, is something that was knocking around for longer periods of time, both before and since. Assmann goes through a long argument by Ralph Cudworth (who wrote long before the hieroglyphs were deciphered) about a possible "esoteric" theology of the Egyptians, which was monotheistic, while the cult for public consumption was polytheistic. That makes little sense, as all royal tombs and decorations hew (religiously!) to the standard story, and so clearly embody a full cast of characters, and their belief in the Osiris story and hope of continued life in the land of the un-dead. Nevertheless, even without such an esoteric/demotic split, it is natural to wonder about origins, such as where this family of gods arose from, which in turn would send thoughts in the direction of possible monotheism. Perhaps the incredible conservatism of Egyptian culture caused such thoughts to be ruthlessly stamped out, but also prone to occasional eruption in incovenient forms. We in our own time are experiencing the thrill of normative inversion, when a subculture decides that black is white, that all norms should be trampled, and a new god worshipped. 

Even if the Amarna period did not directly foster Moses and the Jewish form of monotheism, the latter owes a great deal to Egyptian culture, likely including some glimmer of the monotheistic idea. Within Judaism, it took a second (and certainly real) exile, in Babylon, to bring the monotheistic idea to fuller fruition, as the last set of prophets called for purification and repentance, the Torah was written down, and the second temple built.

• The sartorial Olympics.
• The supremes throw lower courts under the bus.
• Some dog breeds are just too inbred and messed-up.
• When it comes to swallowing lies, believers have a lot of practice.

Some Theological Aspects of Modern Economics

Economics remains in a difficult intersection between science and humanities, with distinctly political and ideological conflicts.

We seem to be in a passion play about inflation right now. It is skyrocketing, or zooming, etc. It is a huge crisis. But, since it is measured year-over-year, maybe it is just a simple bounce from the depths of the pandemic when demand and prices, especially for gasoline, were negligible, and some businesses shut down. Now demand is back, but some sectors of the economy are having a hard time meeting demand, especially for workers, so prices are going up, by modest amounts. Some stories say that "inflation is never temporary". Others say the structural dislocations will pass and things will get back to normal. One can tell the ideology quite clearly from the story line. Conservatives have double motives to paint it a crisis, to disparage the current president (tax cuts had nothing whatsoever to do with this!), to support the preservation of capital and capitalists, and to generally box in policy makers from spending money on truly momentous objectives, like addressing climate change.

Why is this such a drama? Why isn't economics more of a science? In real sciences, you do not see competing schools of thought, such as the Chicago and the Keynesian schools of economics, the New Keynsians and the Modern Monetary Theorists, which last for decades and never seem to resolve their warfare. Maybe that is because real sciences don't study anything important. But more likely, real sciences have methods to efficiently describe and resolve their differences- with reference to reality- that economists do not seem to have. For in the macroeconomics realm, there is not a lot of experimentation that one can do. It is a field more like history, from which scholars and observers tend to draw the lessons they want to draw, not the ones that would serve them best. Or theology, whose subject is wholly illusory, such that its practitioners are not really in the business of studying anything observable at all, (or even discernible!), but in social management- how to build ideologies and propagandize with effective rhetoric, how to build churches, how to sermonize, whom to target in their weaker moments, what and whom to value, which social hierarchy to support, and how to do so.

Economics is far from illusory, and plenty of economists do the truly scientific work of describing the economy as it is, giving us the grist of statistics from which the theorists can spin their opinions. It is at the policy and macro level where things get theological, where moral and ideological commitments outweigh technocratic sense. For economics at the policy level is fundamentally Darwinian- how one wants to split the pie depends on who you think is worthy- morally and operationally. Economics is not intrisically democratic- far from. There are some who are worth more to the system, depending on one's standpoint. The Ricardians (with the Chicago school carrying on its supply-side banner) deemed production and producers the only important parts of the mechanism. Demand would take care of itself as long as producers were given maximum latitude to conduct business and trade as they wished. As the ideological cycle turned, entrepreneurs were once again the vanguard and watchword in the eighties and nineties. 

When it comes to inflation, similarly vast ideological forces are at work. The progressive Kenyesian policy environment of the 1960's was eroded, then eviscerated by Milton Friedman's and the Chicago school's general neo-Ricardian attacks during the 1970's, in our period of stagflation. It was genuinely destructive to experience inflation at relatively high levels, and the solution ended up being deep recessions ultimately authored by Jimmy Carter via his appointment of Paul Volker. The power of workers to bid for higher pay and inflation-protected pay was destroyed by de-unionization, outsourcing and off-shoring. Those forces largely remain today, suggesting that the current inflation blip will be transitory. 

Inflation is measured in consumer prices, so it largely reflects low-end wages that are spent most readily, rather than the stock market or other places where the rich invest. As long as wages are kept down, then inflation will be kept down as well. The big question is how the economy splits the pie- between wages at the low and middle levels, versus returns on capital / wealth and executive pay. This balance has been heavily out of kilter over the last few decades. This may have been great for keeping inflation down, but has obviously had highly corrosive effects on much else, from the opioid epidemic, to our great dependence on China for goods and supply chains, and our political breakdowns. So economics is not just about the economy, but about a great deal more- who we value and what vision we have for the future.

Keynes in his magnum opus had some wry comments on this phenomenon, in 1936:

"The completeness of the Ricardian victory is something of a curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of suitabilities in the doctrine to the environment into which it was projected. That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, lent it virtue. That it was adapted to carry a vast and consistent logical superstructure, gave it beauty. That it could explain much social injustice and apparent cruelty as an inevitable incident to the scheme of progress, and the attempt to change such things as likely on the whole to do more harm than good, commanded it to authority. That it afforded a measure of justification to the free activities of the individual capitalist attracted to it the support of the dominant social force behind authority."- John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

• Resisting the lies is harder than you think.
• Sustainability is the big issue, and our politics are too small to address it.
• Democracy is hanging by a thread.
• And each side seems to think it is saving democracy, apparently. Though only one side does so undemocratically.
• Of course.. Republicans dedicated to state destruction will support crypto.

Eugenics is All the Rage

Animal breeders have no qualms directing intensive systems of artificial selection.

Eugenics is defined with reference to humans, as any consideration or implementation of artificial selection. There is little doubt that it would be effective, but there is some disagreement about what an "improvement" would represent. We are not cattle to be bred to specification, but organisms with dignity and freedom- specifically freedom from meddling by others in our reproduction. Wild animals have this freedom as well, by default. But domestic animals- that is a different story. For all our "humane" societies and pampering of some, our treatment of others is distinctly undignified. And that includes their breeding. 

Across the domestic animals, from racing horses and show dogs to dairy cows and chickens, breeding these days is carried on at unprecedented intensity, with the most advanced scientific and statistical techniques. For farm animals, this has led to inbreeding and alarming malformations, such as chickens that can't walk, and cows with chronic udder infections. For dogs, the creation of fundamentally malformed breeds also leads to chronic suffering, (short snouts, short legs), as does lack of care in breeding for temperamental health.

These animals have serious problems, of a genetic nature.

Animal breeding has progressed through three major stages. First is the traditional approach, using hunches and personal judgements- using the best animals, and perhaps cross-breeding with animals from other farms to retain diversity, if any directed breeding is done at all. With a relaxed approach, this led to generally good results, establishing the great dog breeds and other livestock, where hardiness and health were always prominent values. But in pigeon, cat, dog, and other casual breeding since Victorian times, amateur breeding like this can also go rather astray. 

In modern livestock breeding, this was superseded by the use of Estimated Breeding Value, or EBV, which is a systematized way to account for the genetic, rather than phenotypic trait quality in animals, by accounting for their relatives, as far as they have been measured, and also by accounting for uncertainties around heritability and systematic and environmental effects on the trait of interest. This concept puts breeding on a far more scientific basis, with quantification of traits, and of pedigrees. One result is that the breeding value can be estimated for animals who do not even have the trait, such as male dairy cattle. Another has been that animal breeding has been even more relentlessly driven to meet commercial and consumer objectives, even ones that shift over time as tastes change.

Naturally, the EBV method has now been supplemented by DNA-based evaluations in more recent times. The ability to "see" into the genome by sequencing some or all of it, thereby establishing a landmark map based on variants distributed throughout, allows the traits (if linked to such landmarks) to be tracked in all individuals, regardless of phenotype, and even in individual gametes and fetuses. This dramatically reduces the lottery that otherwise is genetics. However, its value is significantly bounded by the fact that most interesting and desirable traits are usually not genetically simple (like, say, eye color), but are complex, influenced in very small amounts by many different loci / genes. 

This is a frontier for animal rights and humane policy development, that animals not only should be treated well, but bred well. In livestock breeding, European countries have some relatively aspirational standards and laws, the US lacks even that. The "standards" used by such organizations are the American Kennel Club are worse than nothing, as they drive breeding for looks alone, and welcome the most obscure and unhealthy breeds, regardless of grave malformations, temperamental disasters, and inbreeding. While health of the animal needs to be paramount, other issues such as the ability of animals to live without special care and infrastructure, and genetic diversity, also need to be addressed, if we are going to be serious stewards of animals in our care.

• Our inert politics.
• The sleaze never let up.

Group Selection

Every new form of biological organization becomes a new unit of natural selection

Group selection has been a controversial topic in evolutionary studies. Indeed, the whole matter of where selection operates has been a confusing mess. Richard Dawkins battled his way to fame by arguing that genes were the target of selection, and that we as animal bodies were merely automata driven to unwittingly propagate them by various unconscious means. When considering the unit of selection, one could go even to the individual nucleotide, which is ultimately what is extinguished or propagated by the action of mutation and selection, plying its tiny oar towards the survival of its gene, its genome, its cell, its organism, its society, ... its blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!

Traditionally, the individual organism has been viewed as the main unit of selection. But can groups, when they form societies like bee hives or human tribes, be objects of selection as well? A paper reviewing the mathematics of evolution and selection makes the crucial distinction between the mechanism underlying heritability of traits, which might be a gene or nucleotide, and the unit of selection, which is the level of biological organization that exhibits traits upon which natural selection acts. The color of our eyes may be a cellular and organ-level trait, based on genes and nucleotides, but the unit of selection remains the individual, since that is where selection- via mate choice, disease, and whatever other ramifications eye color may have- acts directly to promote or inhibit reproduction. Likewise, social traits such as altruism, cooperation, detection and policing of cheaters, etc. may be in large degree be relevant and selected at the individual level, but at least some of their power and selectivity comes in the competition between groups, i.e. group selection.

It should be clear that selection happens at all sorts of levels, indeed at every level where a new form of biological organization emerges. The "unit of selection" is not singular, but manifold, and is defined, not absolutely, but by the level and properties of the trait being considered. We who inhabit multicellular bodies have pretty definitively ended competition / natural selection among the cells that compose us- those cells are not individual units of selection, since they do not persist after we are gone (even in the case of cancer where their replication has gone haywire). The closest might be competition among male sperm cells, which evidently do compete in their final voyage, though not to the extent of taking up arms against each other. Thus generally, our genes are only indirectly targets of selection, in that they generate traits that manifest on the cellular, individual, and indeed group level, with consequent selection at those levels and differential reproduction that change gene frequencies in the future.

This is called multi-level selection. The socio-biologists got into hot water back in the 1970's by asserting that group traits are at least in part biologically based, as are individual psychological traits, and thus that groups must act as units of selection. This did not sit well with the politically correct of the day, who wanted as a matter of principle to believe that humans (and especially subgroups such as ethnicities and races) are all created equal, and that any talk of heritability of traits such as intelligence, aggressiveness, altruism, etc. was, if not wrong, at least socially devisive and certainly damaging to a proper communist / constructivist view of the malleability of the human condition. While constructivist views of our social psychology, relations and conflicts certainly have significant truth, they can be taken too far, such as the arch-feminist idea that male-ness is purely a social construction, and that some counter-programming is all it would take to make a utopian, de-gendered world.

I'll scratch your back ...

But that is all in the past, and not only are social and group traits increasingly recognized as biological and to some degree heritable, but our evolutionary history is unthinkable without a lot of specific socially relevant traits being encoded, evolved, and put to the test in group-group competition, whether via direct competition or just relative success of independent groups without direct interaction. A set of papers made a review of this field and developed a general mathematical treatment of multi-level selection (MLS), postulating that any biological entity or level of organization can be a unit of selection- when traits can be defined pertaining to that level. This is especially relevant to emergent traits that can not be defined at lower levels of organization. 

Alcoholism, for instance, is hard to define at the cellular or single gene level, but can be easily defined at the organismal level. So it is selected at the level, where individuals suffer and die due to its effects and impair the lives of others along the way. While it necessarily has genetic components and heritability, and those genes can be thought of as being selected for or against, they often drag along many other genes, and have complex relations with other genes in the trait's expression, leaving the definition of the trait and its interaction with natural selection at the individual level. The unit of selection is a separate concept from the genetic and developmental processes that generate the trait. In alcoholism, the adult is the unit of selection, consituting a collection of characteristics that develop out of genes and other sources, whose frequencies may change based on that selection. 

"The genetical theory of MLS ... describes the action of group selection in terms of change in a genetical character. As discussed in the previous section, a genetical score may be assigned to any biological entity that contains genes – such as an entire population – and change in this genetical score can be computed, irrespective of how that population is subdivided into groups and individuals, or the biological level of organization at which the corresponding phenotype actually manifests. ... the theory of natural selection is ‘genetical’: this adjective pertains to the medium by which characters are inherited, rather than to the unit of selection itself."

 

It may be that all this is just a matter of convenience and book-keeping, as traits are defined (by us) on a macro basis. A gene's-eye view of the situation would focus on its own gains and losses in the rough and tumble of life. But in that case, we could not speak of alcoholism as a trait, but would have to speak of the gene's eye view of all the pressures it finds itself under, which would range widely over molecular, cellular territories and beyond, and violate our basic conceptions of a trait that is under natural selection. That is why a trait is defined at a particular level of organization where that characteristic becomes manifest, rather than at at gene level. There is no gene for alcoholism, though the trait is composed of / developed out of many heritable elements.

Imagine, in contrast, that alcoholism had no genetic component at all, but was purely random in genetic terms, not even affected by, say, genetic susceptibility to advertising blandishments. Such a trait would be subject to natural selection (i.e. death and other forms debility). But all that selection on the trait would have no effect on the next and future generations, due to its lack of heritability. It would have no genetic implications, by definition. So the unit of selection and trait being selected are separate issues from the genetic elements that might underpin it, particularly the degree or lack thereof of its genetic basis. 

While we are discussing this particular trait, it might be worth noting that in group terms, affinity to alcohol might be considered a positive trait, contributing to group bonding through the ages. Thus alcoholism might be a matter of stabilizing selection, trading off between its individual harms and its group benefits, particularly in the prehistoric setting where alcohol concentrations tended to be low, social controls strong, and alcoholism proper quite hard to develop.

This discussion, based on the paper series, is all based on the Price equation, which apparently underlies the field and is an extremely general statement / definition of natural selection. It contains basically two terms, which provide for a separation between the aspects of biological change derived from natural selection, and all the rest of the sources of change- drift, environmental change, etc. The selection portion it expresses as co-variation between traits in two populations (such as in successive generations) and the success of individuals (or other units of selection) carrying that trait. The whole equation rests on four key terms, none of which are explicitly genetic:

• The unit of selection- the biological organization that exhibits the trait, whether an individual, group, etc.
• The arena of selection- the population of units within which selection and evolution take place.
• The character under selection- the trait at issue, at whatever appropriate level of organization.
• The target of selection- the quantity (fitness) by which the character / trait is either good or bad, thus being selected.

As far as the unit of selection and the trait that pertains to that unit, any level will do, as long as it corresponds with a unit, or trait, that is definable to us and selectable in nature. 

"Between-group selection is directly analogous to standard, individual-level natural selection, but with the group taking on the role of the unit of selection, the group's phenotype acting as the character under selection and group fitness being the target of selection."    

"... by framing selection in its full generality from the outset, Price's equation reveals that kin and group selection are components of natural selection, and we obtain their dynamics by drawing them out of—rather than adding them into—the basic form of Price's equation. Moreover, by showing how the kin selection and group selection viewpoints both emerge from the mathematics of natural selection, Price's equation shows that these are not competing hypotheses for the evolution of social behaviour but simply different ways of conceptualizing the very same evolutionary process—and that a fierce, decades-long debate had been largely over nothing."

"For group selection to overcome selection within groups, less than one successfully reproducing migrant may be exchanged per two populations per population lifetime. ... Indeed, if groups are long lived, successful migrants must be very rare, and within-group inbreeding intense, for group selection to prevail over equally intense within-group selection."

Each level of selection can operate on many different traits, however, some of which may not directly conflict. So leaving aside the direct competition between individual and group interests, there is a rich field of action for group selection. This observation of the great sensistivity of group benefits to the rate of migration, especially for traits that conflict between individual and group benefits, gives us a clue about the origins of tribalism, which makes a practice of accentuating infinitesimal differences (or entirely imaginary ones) and using them to justify xenophobia, war, and genocide. It is a key legacy of evolution, particularly group evolution, and one that we struggle to overcome.

So group selection is perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory, (though some rather testy controversies remain). Does that mean that racism is OK? Do group differences justify tribalism and oppression? Well, our instinct for tribalism is certainly testament to a long evolutionary history of group selection, with its tireless focus on tiny, or even nonexistent, differences. The fact is that among humans, group differences are always swamped by within-group variation. We also do not generally discriminate so harshly against the differently abled and neuro-diverse *within tribes as we do against those we perceive outside them. So the practical and moral basis of discrimination and oppression is very poorly founded. True group selection is also virtually powerless against high migration rates, which we have throughout the modern world in any case. Thus the tribal instinct, which is now so flexibly deployed for nebulous groupings as nation states or sports teams, is totally out of its natural element, were we even inclined to mount some new eugenic project of any nature, whether individual or group.

• What it's like.

Myth and Science

Stories we tell about how things work.

I am reading an ancient book about ancient myths, covering some of what was known of the ancient world's stories circa the mid-20th century (that is, the "developed" ancient world of Egypt, the Near East, China, India, etc.). The authors occasionally seem exasperated that their colleagues- the ancient authors of these stories and myths- do not always take their stories as seriously as scholars themselves do, after having so painstakingly learned the relevant languages, unearthed the precious tablets, papyri, inscriptions, and other sources, compared different versions, and interpreted them in light of the historical setting. No, ancient myths can be playful affairs, evolving in dramatic complexity, freely mutating to serve the needs of the moment in their mutable oral traditions. This is especially true the farther back you go into ethnographic history, such as into the stories of the Inuit and other First Peoples of North America. It is evident that ancient societies varied widely in their theological and mythological sophistication, and particularly how closely entwined these were with the centers of power.

Inuit mythologies and their custodian, the shaman.

The scholarly apparatus around myth studies has a very earnest and modernist cast, which derives from two sources. First is Christianity, which as an extreme political and social elaboration of ancient religions has progressively reified and codified its myths. Inheriting a grab-bag of disparate ancient myths and stories, Christianity shored up its social position and theological bona fides by insisting that it was all true. The more sclerotic and far-reaching its bureaucratic structure, the more tightly it held to the absolute truth of its dogmas. A second aspect was the enlightenment and the rise of scientific modernity. That world view was not interested in playful myths of psychodrama, but in hard truths of how the world really works, stripped of the colorful trappings. Competition with this world view helped to further push religious dogmas in an absolutist direction, to that point where today, both Christian Evangelicals and fundamentalist Islamists insist that their scriptures are literally true, handed down from an all-powerful god who really exists and is not fictive construct meant as a playful expression of our scientific ignorance on one hand, and our love of social drama on the other. Anthropologists took their cues from all this, assuming that the precious myths they were studying had to be expressions of a society's absolute truths, organizing principles, and deepest motivations. But perhaps they were originally ways to pass the time and enchant a few youngsters.

Science is telling stories, too. Are they really so different? On the one hand, our need to orient ourselves in the world remains unchanged from ancient times, so the core purpose of explaining reality and society through complicated tales of causes and effects remains. And to a lay person, the explanations of quantum mechanics or cosmic inflation are no less impenetrable than myths about gods and dragons. Thus the scientists who are the custodians of these stories find themselves in the ironic position of a new priesthood, cultivating the cultural narrative around origins, natural phenomena, biology, and the like, while extending these stories in systematic ways that the priests (and alchemists, and shamans, and druids) of yore could only dream about, if they could even conceive of such reliable beliefs untethered from social drama and social control. But today's scientists can't and won't inject ancillary drama into these stories, so they will remain split off from their traditional roles and uses.

So the telling of dramatic stories and the consequent management of society through the narratives of origins, myths, and meaning- if ancient myths really did fulfill these functions, which is perhaps an anachronistic construction on our part, or at least varied widely with the nature of ancient societies- are skills having nothing, really, to do with the scientific enterprise of today, and thus nothing to do with this new priesthood. Who takes these roles?

Theology would seem the natural place for the living and socially relevant myth. But theology has split definitively from science, from history, and indeed from reality, nurturing narratives that are absurd while claiming they are true, and which in their antiquity and provincialism are impossibly remote from our current concerns, morals, and social ability to relate even allegorically. Theology has thus become lost in a sterile wilderness, doomed to be cut off from its mythical and social power. Even the more liberal and elastic precincts, if they do not insist on absolute literal truth, adhere to the crusty old stories of the Bible, which while occasionally artistic, are mostly a maddening hodgpodge and, frankly, boring. What was riveting in antiquity about lengthy ancestor lists, angry gods, virgin births, and ascending into the clouds is ridiculous today. 

The story-telling mantle has obviously been taken over by Hollywood- by the Marvel series, Star Treks, Star Wars, Potter series, and similar epics of modern fantasy. They bend reality in classically mythical ways, make up their own theology as they go along, (and throw it away as casually with the next installment), and communicate constantly updated social mores. The graphics are otherworldly, the stories and morals are updated, but the fundamental sophistication of these stories can't really be said to have advanced much. They are speaking to human nature, after all- a conversation between our inborn archetypes and the social and technological conditions we find ourselves in.

The key point is that Hollywood myths are taken as intended- as fertile and mind-expanding fantasies with social and moral lessons that are (hopefully) beneficial and relevant for our times. They are not trying to claim their myths as true- that would be absurd. Thus they do not collide with either scientific or theological claims, and use myth as it was originally and truly intended- as the dreamlike realm of symbolic human drama, full of lessons, yes, but not scientific ones, or even pseudoscientific ones.

• An outstanding dissection of just how bad US policy and behavior was in Afghanistan.
• Facebook / Fecebook is a cesspool, by design.
• Dead ender racism.
• A mutagenic drug to save us all.
• How about those great vaccines?
• Some nice piano.

All Facts are Theories, But Not All Theories are Facts

Are theories and facts different in kind, or are they related and transform into each other?

During the interminable debates about "Intelligent Design" and evolution, there was much hand-wringing about fact vs theory. Evolution was, to some, "just" a theory, to others a well-attested theory, and to others, a fact, whether in the observation of life's change through time (vs the straight creationists), or in the causal mechanism of natural selection (vs the so-called intelligent design proponents). Are theories just speculations, or are they, once accepted by their relevant community, the rock-like edifice of science? And are facts even plain as such, or are they infected by theory? Our late descent into unhinged right-wingery poses related, though far more complex, questions about the nature of facts and who or what can warrant them. But here, I will stick to the classic question as posed in philosophy and science- what is the distinction and or relation between facts and theories? This follows, but disagrees with, a recent discussion in Free Inquiry.

The official scientific organs (NCSE) have generally taken the position that theories are different from facts, making a pedagogically bright line distinction where things like tectonic plate theory and evolution are theories, while rock compositions and biochemistry are facts. In this way, science is made up, at a high level, of theories, which constantly evolve and broaden in their scope, while the facts they are built on arrive on a conveyor belt of normal scientific progress, via lab experiments, field work, etc. Facts help to support or refute theories, which are such abstract, dynamic, and wide-ranging bags of concepts that they can not rightly be regarded as facts.

All very pat, but what are facts? It turns out that nothing we observe and call a fact escapes some amount of interpretation, or the need to be based on theories of how the world works. We grow up with certain axiomatic and built-in conditions, like gravity, vision, and physical cause and effect. Thus we think that anything we "observe" directly is a fact. But all such observations are built on a history of learning about how things work, which is in essence starting with a bunch of theories, some instinctively inborn, which are gradually satisfied by evidence as we grow up ... to the extent that we take many things for granted as fact, like being able to count on gravity as we are walking, that the sun comes up every day, etc. Facts are not automatic or self-attested, but rather are themselves essentially theories, however simple, that have been put to the test and found reliable.

And therein lies a clue to how we, and especially scientists, evaluate information and use the categories of fact and theory in a practical and dynamic way. Lawyers often talk of coming up with a theory of the case, which is to say, a story that is going to convince a jury, which has the job of finding the facts of the case. When the jury finds the theory convincing, and vote for the lawyer's side, the facts are found insofar and the law is concerned. Their determination may come far short of philosophic rigor, but the movement is typical- the movement from theory to fact. 

On the other hand, what is a theory? I think it can be described as a proposed fact. No one would propose a theory if they didn't think it was true and explanatory of reality. Whether broad or narrow, it is a set of interpretations that seek to make sense of the world in a way that we limited humans can categorize, into our store of knowledge. For instance, Freudian theories of repression, Oedipal complexes, castration fears, etc. would have been, if borne out, facts about our mental lives. Being rather vague, they may have needed a great deal of refinement before getting there, but all the same, they were proposed facts regarding what we feel and do, and the psychic mechanisms that lead to those feelings. 

In science, it is the experiment and its communication that is the key event in the alchemy of transforming theories into facts. Science is unusual in its explicit and purposeful interaction with theories that are unproven. Tectonic theory was once a mere theory, and a crackpot one at that. But as observations came in, which were proposed on the basis of that theory, or retroactively appreciated as support for it, such as the lengthy hunt for mid-ocean ridges where tectonic plates separate, and other faults where they converge, that theory gained "fact-ness". Now it is simply a fact, and the science of geology has gone other to other frontiers of theory, working to transform them into fact, or back off and try some others.

The mid-Atlantic ridge, straining to be understood by observers equipped with the theory of plate tectonics. Also, a video of the longer term.

Another example is the humble molecular biology experiment, such as cloning a gene responsible for some disease. The theory can be so simple as to be hardly enunciated- that disease X is in part genetic, and the responsible mutation must occur in some gene, and thus if we find it, we can establish a new fact about that disease as well as about that gene. Then the hunt goes on, the family lineages are traced, the genetic mapping happens, and the sequencing is done, and the gene is found. What was once a theory, if an unsurprising one, has now been transformed into a fact, one perhaps with practical, medical applications.

But the magic of experiments is usually only discernable to the few people who are sufficiently knowledgeable or interested to appreciate the transformation that just happened. The boundary between theory and fact depends on the expertise of the witnesses, and can be sociologically hazy. Does homeopathy cure disease? Well, hemeopathic practitioners regard that as fact, and have gone on to an elaborate practice and pharmacopeia of dilute solutions to effect various cures. Others disagree and regard the whole thing as not only a theory, but a stunningly wrong-headed one at that- as far as can be imagined from having gained fact-hood. Real science revolves around experiments done to what is essentially a standard of philosophical proof. Techniques are reported and consistently applied, controls are done to isolate variables of interest, materials are described and made publicly available, and the logic of the demonstration is clarified so that readers knowledgble in the arts of the field can be confident that the conclusions follow from the premises. And the practitioners themselves are culturally vetted through lengthy apprenticeships of training and critique. 

The practice of peer review is a natural part of this series of events, putting the experiment through a critique by the (hopefully) most knowledgeable practitioners in the field, who can stand in for the intended audience for whom the experiment is supposed to perform this alchemical transformation of theory. The scientific literature is full of the most varied and imaginative efforts to "factify" hypotheses, hunches, and theories. Very few of these will ever be appreciated by the lay public, but they lay the ever-advancing frontier of facts from which new hypotheses are made, new theories tested, and occasionally, some of their resulting facts are discovered to be useful, such as the advent of gene therapy via the Crisper/Cas9 gene editing system, liposomes, and associated technologies. 

Another aspect of the public nature of science and peer critique is that if a knowledgeable observer disagrees with the theory-fact transition purported by some experiment, they are duty-bound and encouraged to replicate those experiments themselves, or do other experiments to demonstrate their counter-vailing ideas. On a cheaper level, they are welcome and encouraged to ask uncomfortable questions during seminars and write tart letters to the editors of journals, since pointing out the errors of others is one of the most enjoyable activities humans pursue, and doubles as a core of the integrity that characterizes the culture of science. In this way, facts sometimes reverse course and travel back into the realm of theory, to sweat it out in the hands of some disgruntled grad student and her overbearing supervisor, destined to never again see the light of day.

Experiments crystallize most clearly the transition from theory to fact. They create, though careful construction, a situation that banishes incidental distractions, focuses attention on a particular phenomenon, and establishes a logic of causation that forms (hopefully) convincing evidence for a theory, transforming it into fact, for knowledgeable observers. They create controlled and monitored conditions where knowlegeable people can "see" the truth of a theory being put to a decisive test. Just as we can now see the truth of the heliocentric theory directly with the use of spaceships sent out across the solar system, the observation of a fact is a matter of the prepared mind meeting with a set of observations, either tailored specifically in the form of an experiment to test a theory, or else taken freely from nature to illuminate a theory's interpretation of reality. Nothing is intrisically obvious, but needs an educated observer to discern truth. Nothing is completely theory-free. Nevertheless, facts can be established.

• Lies are power.
• On social contagion.
• Code red.
• The electricity interconnect of the Eastern US slowly grapples with reality.
• How many has Covid killed?
• In Afghanistan, the US has spent decades building a political and military paper tiger.

American Occupations and Preoccupations

Douglass North on the role of institutions in our society, part 2. "Understanding the process of economic change". Also, "Violence and Social Orders". American occupations of Germany, Japan, and Afghanistan and Iraq are case studies of institutions at work. 

In part 1, I discussed the role of ideology and thought patterns in the context of institutional economics, which is the topic of North's book. This post will look at the implications for developmental economics. In this modern age, especially with the internet, information has never been more free. All countries have access to advanced technological information as well as the vast corpus of economics literature on how to harness it for economic development and the good of their societies. Yet everywhere we look, developing economies are in chains. What is the problem? Another way to put it that we have always had competition among relatively free and intelligent people, but have not always had civilization, and have had the modern civilization we know today, characterized by democracy and relatively free economic diversity, for only a couple of centuries, in a minority of countries. This is not the normal state of affairs, despite being a very good state of affairs.

The problem is clearly not that of knowledge, per se, but of its diffusion (human capital), and far more critically, the social institutions that put it to work. The social sciences, including economics, are evidently still in their infancy when it comes to understanding the deep structure of societies and how to make them work better. North poses the basic problem of the transition between primitive ("natural") economies, which are personal and small-scale, to advanced economies that grew first in the West after the Renaissance, and are characterized by impersonal, rule-based exchange, with a flourishing of independent organizations. Humans naturally operate on the first level, and it requires the production of a "new man" to suit him and her to the impersonal system of modern political economies. 

This model of human takes refuge in the state as the guarantor of property, contracts, money, security, law, political fairness, and many other institutions foundational to the security and prosperity of life as we know it. This model of human is comfortable interacting with complete strangers for all sorts of transactions from mundane products using the price system to complex and personal products like loans and health care using other institutions, all regulated by norms of behavior as well as by the state, where needed. This model of human develops intense specialization after a long education in very narrow productive skills, in order to live in a society of astonishing diversity of work. There is an organized and rule-based competition to develop such skills to the most detailed and extensive manner. This model of human relies on other social institutions such as the legal system, consumer review services, and standards of practice in each field to ensure that the vast asymmetry of information between the specialized sellers of other goods and services that she needs is not used against her, in fraud and other breaches of implicit faith. 

All this is rather unlike the original model, who took refuge in his or her clan, relying on the social and physical power of that group to access economic power. That is, one has to know someone to use land or get a job, to deal with other groups, to make successful trades, and for basic security. North characterizes this society as "limited access", since it is run by and for coalitions of the powerful, like the lords and nobility of medieval Europe or the warlords of Afghanistan today. For such non-modern states, the overwhelming problem is not that of economic efficiency, but of avoiding disintegration and civil war. They are made up of elite coalitions that limit violence by allocating economic rewards according to political / military power. If done accurately on that basis, each lord gets a stable share, and has little incentive to start a civil war, since his (or her) power is already reflected in his or her economic share, and a war would necessarily reduce the whole economic pie, and additionally risks reducing the lord to nothing at all. This is a highly personalized, and dynamic system, where the central state's job is mostly to make sure that each of the coalition members is getting their proper share, with changes reflecting power shifts through time.

Norman castles locations in Britain. The powers distributed through the country were a coalition that required constant maintenance and care from the center to keep privileges and benefits balanced and shared out according to the power of each local lord.

For example, the Norman invasion of Britain installed a new set of landlords, who cared nothing for the English peasants, but carried on an elite society full of jealousies and warfare amongst themselves to grab more of the wealth of the country. Most of the time, however, there was a stable balance of power, thus of land allotments, and thus of economic shares, making for a reasonably peaceful realm. All power flowed through the state, (the land allotments were all ultimately granted by the king, and in the early days were routinely taken away again if the king was displeased by the lord's loyalty or status), which is to say through this coalition of the nobles, and they had little thought for economic efficiency, innovation, legal niceties, or perpetual non-political institutions to support trade, scholarship, and innovation. (With the exception of the church, which was an intimate partner of the state.)

Notice that in the US and other modern political systems, the political system is almost slavishly devoted to "the economy", whereas in non-modern societies, the economy is a slave to the political system, which cavalierly assigns shares to the powerful and nothing to anyone else, infeudating them to the lords of the coalition. The economy is assumed to be static in its productivity and role, thus a sheer source of plunder and social power, rather than a subject of nurture and growth. And the state is composed of the elite whose political power translates immediately into shares of a static economic pie. No notion of democracy here!

This all comes to mind when considering the rather disparate fates of US military occupations that have occurred over the last century, where we have come directly up against societies that we briefly controlled and tried to steer in economically as well as socially positive directions. The occupations of Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, and Iraq came to dramatically different ends, principally due to the differing levels of ingrained beliefs and institutional development of each culture (one could add a quasi-occupation of Vietnam here as well). While Germany and Japan were each devastated by World War 2, and took decades to recover, their people had long been educated into an advanced instutional framework of economic and civic activity. Some of the devastation was indeed political and social, since the Nazis (as well as the imperial Japanese system) had set up an almost medieval (i.e. fascist) system of economic control, putting the state in charge of directing production in a cabal with leading industrialists. Yet despite all that, the elements were still in place for both nations to put their economies back together and in short order rejoin the fully developed world, in political and economic terms. How much of that was due to the individual human capital of each nation, (i.e. education in both technical and civic aspects), and how much was due to the residual organizational and institutional structures, such as impersonal legal and trade expectations, and how much due to the instructive activities of the occupying administration?

One would have to conclude that very little was due to the latter, for try as we might in Iraq and Afghanistan, their culture was not ready for full-blown modernity (elections, democracy, capitalism, rule of law, etc.) in the political-economic sense. Many of their people were ready, and the models abroad were and remain ready for application. Vast amounts of information and good will is at their disposal to build a modern state. But, alas, their real power structures were not receptive. Indeed, in Afghanistan, each warlord continued to maintain his own army, and civil war was a constant danger, until today, when a civil war is in full swing, conducted by the Taliban against a withering central state. The Taliban has historically been the only group with the wide-spread cultural support (at least in rural areas), and the ruthlessness to bring order to (most of) Afghanistan. Its coalition with the other elites is based partly on doctrinaire Islam (which all parties across the spectrum pay lip service to) and brutal / effective authoritarianism. When the US invaded, we took advantage of the few portions outside the existing power coalition, (in the north), arming them to defeat the Taliban. That was an instance of working with the existing power structures.

But replacing or reforming them was an entirely different project. The fact is that the development of modern economies took Western countries centuries, and takes even the most avid students (Taiwan, South Korea, China to a partial degree) several decades of work to retrace. North emphasizes that development from primitive to modern political-economic systems is not a given, and progress is as likely to go backward as forward, depending at each moment on the incentives of those in power. To progress, they need to see more benefit in stability and durable institutions, as opposed to their own freedom of action to threaten the other members of the coalition, keep armies, extort economic rents, etc. Only as chaos recedes, stability starts being taken for granted, and the cost of keeping armies exceeds their utility, does the calculus gradually shift. That process is fundamentally psychological- it reflects the observations and beliefs of the actors, and takes a long time, especially in a country such as Afghanistan with such a durable tradition of militarized independence and plunder.

So what should we have done, instead of dreaming that we could build, out of the existing culture and distribution of power, a women-friendly capitalist modern democracy in Afghanistan? First, we should have seen clearly at the outset that we had only two choices. First was to take over the culture root and branch, with a million soldiers. The other was to work within the culture on a practical program of reform, whose goal would have been to take them a few steps down the road from a "fragile" limited access state- where civil war is a constant threat- to a "basic" limited access state, where the elites are starting to accept some rules, and the state is stable, but still exists mostly to share out the economic pie to current power holders. Indeed the "basic" state is the only substantial social organization- all other organizations have to be created by it or affiliated with it, because any privilege worth having is jealously guarded by the state, in very personal terms.

Incidentally, the next step in North's taxonomy of states would be the mature limited access order, where laws begin to be made in a non-personal way, non-state organizations are allowed to exist more broadly, like commercial guilds, but the concepts of complete equality before the law and free access to standardized organization types has not yet been achieved. That latter would be an "open access order", which modern states occupy. There, the military is entirely under the democratic and lawful control of a central state, and the power centers that are left in the society have become more diffuse, and all willing to compete within an open, egalitarian legal framework in economic as well as political matters. It was this overall bargain that was being tested with the last administration's flirtation with an armed coup at the Capital earlier this year.

In the case of Afghanistan, there is a wild card in the form of the Taliban, which is not really a localized warlord kind of power, which can be fairly dealt out a share of the local and national economic pie. They are an amalgam of local powers from many parts of the country, plus an ideological movement, plus a pawn of Pakistan, the Gulf states, and the many other funders of fundamentalist Islam. Whatever they are, they are a power the central government has to reckon with, both via recognition and acceptance, as well as competition and strategies to blunt their power.

Above all, peace and security has always been the main goal. It is peace that moderates the need for every warlord to maintain his own army, and which nudges all the actors toward a more rule-based, regular way to harvest economic rents from the rest of the economy, and helps that economy grow. The lack of security is also the biggest calling card for the Taliban, as an organization that terrorizes the countryside and foments insecurity as its principal policy (an odd theology, one might think!). How did we do on that front? Well, not very well at all. The presence of the US and allies was in the first place an irritant. Second, our profusion of policies of reform, from poppy eradication, to women's education, to showpiece elections, to relentless, and often aimless, bombing, took our eyes off the ball, and generated ill will virtually across the spectrum. One gets the sense that Hamid Karzai was trying very hard to keep it all together in the classic pattern of a fragile state, by dealing out favors to each of the big powers across the country in a reasonably effective way, and calling out the US occasionally for its excesses. But from a modern perspective, that all looks like hopeless corruption, and we installed the next government under Ashraf Ghani which tried to step up modernist reforms without the necessary conditions of even having progressed from a fragile to a basic state, let alone to a mature state or any hint of the "doorstep conditions" of modernity that North emphasizes. This is not even to mention that we seem to have set up the central state military on an unsustainable basis, dependent on modern (foreign) hardware, expertise, and funding that were always destined to dry up eventually.

So, nation-building? Yes, absolutely. But smarter nation-building that doesn't ask too much of the society being put through the wringer. Nation-building happens in gradual steps, not all at once, not by fiat, and certainly not by imposition by outsiders (Unless we have a couple of centuries to spare, as the Normans did). Our experience with the post-world war 2 reconstructions was deeply misleading if we came away with the idea that those countries did nothing but learn at the American's knee and copy the American template, and were not themselves abundantly prepared for institutional and economic reconstruction.

• Tax evasion: our solemn duty and right.
• Defending our precious bodily fluids.
• Signs of isolation and loneliness.