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.

Nature and the Corporation

Douglass North on the role of institutions in our society, part 1. "Understanding the process of economic change"

Institutions, in the thinking of this book and its general field of institutional economics, are the rules of the game of life, while people and their organizations are the players. The practice of going to workplaces and being forced to work there for eight hours, and then going home.. that is an institution of modern societies, based partly on unwritten traditions, and partly on explicit rules written in laws, regulations, organizational guidelines, etc.  The fabric of our lives, and particularly the efficiency and success of our economies, depend on the details and quality of institutions, which set the parameters and incentives throughout the system, which the actors then grapple with, trying to either to satisfy them in competition against other actors, or to evade them, or to alter them through legal, polical, or social means. 

For example, North cites other writers who have concluded that one of the fundamental defects of the Muslim world, as it fell behind the Northern Europeans in economic and cultural terms through the Middle Ages, was the complete lack of the cultural institution of the corporation. Muslim commercial law centers around partnerships, typically very small partnerships between an investor and a merchant, which form anew for each trade mission. But until modern times and reforms inspired by the West, there was no legal form for corporations, which are so fundamental to the Western economic model, providing durable legally and financially independent homes for entrepreneurial teamwork and innovation. Corporations obviously tap into natural human tribalism, offering the familiar setting of small group cohesion and competition, and helpfully cross-cutting against other cultural organizations and power centers such as actual clans, tribes, nations, and religious groupings.

This is a very powerful view of how culture and economics interact. Are corporations all good? Obviously not. They are given rules by the culture at large, though traditional practices and by legal structures when those unwritten rules prove insufficient. Child labor, fraud, tax evasion, family-destroying work schedules... the ways corporations have to make money in socially destructive ways, and thus the ways in which they need to be regulated, are endless. And it is our collective view of these harms and our capacity through social and legal structures / sanctions to address them that manifest in the strength and quality of our institutions.

And here is where one looks back in horror at what has happened to our institutional structures over the last few decades. Donald Trump was merely the apotheosis of lawlessness and institutional destruction that has been the program of the Right for decades. It was enunciated most charmingly by Ronald Reagan, (earning him high grades from historians), but he was only repeating the thoughts of intellectuals like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman who made such persuasive cases for the "freedom" part of free enterprise. I recall especially the spellbinding nature of Friedman's narratives, which contrasted the sclerosis of communist economies with the vibrancy of free markets. Friedman was a hedgehog, advocating one big idea and bulldozing through any nuance or complication. And I regard him as the most influential cultural figure responsible for the general inequality and institutional weakness we find ourselves facing today.

A typical nostrum from Milton Friedman. As though "freedom" was self-explanatory and absolute. Rich people take it to mean something quite different from how others take it, and therein lies the destructive magic of this ideology. 

For he was spinning fairy tales, quite simply. The free market was always good, the government was always bad in his telling. Ham fisted regulation and intrusive economic policy were only one target of attack. Money and inflation was another, and one of the most damaging wedges of this argument. The government is necessarily in charge of the money, by printing it and managing its value through the interest rate, banking regulation, and other mechanisms. But the private sector and general economic conditions are obviously enormous factors as well, creating a complex system of feedbacks and unanticipated events. But Friedman gleefully pinned all the blame for inflation on the government, pronounced a false simplicity in his monetarist program, and used it to further bludgeon the state to get out of the regulatory business. If the government couldn't even get something as simple as the money supply right, how could it possibly have the intellectual wherewithal to regulate the internet, or corporate mergers and concentration, or industrial policy vs other countries? This was the kind of thinking that led to people buying gold, and eventually to the thought that we should get back on the gold standard, one of the greatest lunacies of right-wing politics. (Which Friedman would never have subscribed to, incidentally.)

This intellectual and rhetorical attack, so richly supported and cheered by business interests and the rich, led to the following decades of revolt by the Right against all forms of regulation and enfetterment by the government, to the point now that Republicans speak blithely of defunding the IRS, as if defunding the government and enabling vast tax avoidance consitutes the most natural and virtuous motivation that anyone could imagine. And the gross over-simplifications that Friedman engaged in, his rhetorical excesses, are reflected in more general anti-intellectual trends like the denialism and warfare waged by the right against climate change, among many other topics of urgent and common interest. He, Nobel Prize winner that he was, disastrously debased our intellectual debates on politics and economics. His narrative framing (and that of the whole Chicago school) shaped a generation and more, misleading us into false certainties and terrible policies.

Now, our institutions are in tatters, given that half of our political system is in open warfare against the very idea of productive regulation of economic affairs and a positive role for the state in managing elementary unfairnesses and corruptions that are mounting across our political and economic systems. No wonder that on the world stage, our system is no longer in the vanguard, but is faced with a fundamental challenge coming from states (principally China) whose political systems remain in the driver's seat in managing social institutions, including economic institutions of all kinds, even while harnessing markets in extremely successful ways. 

The question is not whether the government is good or bad, or whether corporations are good or bad. Both institutions have critical and positive roles to play in our prosperity. Both are tools, not ends in themselves. Both need rules to operate effectively- government to be refreshed (via elections, education, research, and new talent) by ever-expanding public perspectives on how society can be improved, and business by an active set of institutions and rules set down by the government to channel all that greed to productive directions instead of the socially destructive directions it inevitably takes when rules are absent. (See Haiti, post-war Iraq, and Afghanistan for examples.) Indeed, it is not going out on a limb to state that business people who spend their time railing against regulations, legal strictures and other institutions designed to make economic markets fair, socially responsible, and productive are not really interested in business at all, but in plunder.

"Because there is a widespread prejudice among many neo-classical economists that simply an absence of government intervention is a sufficient condition for good economic performance in a particular market, it is important to stress that the performance characteristics of any market are a function of the set of constraints imposed by institutions (formal rules- including those by government- informal norms, and the enforcement characteristics) that determine the incentive structure in that market. As noted in the discussion of institutional change in chapter 5, if the incentives reward piracy then that will be the outcome. Any economist who doubts the importance of this observation has only to examine the characteristics of various factor and product markets in Russia in the 1990s to be convinced that it is the incentive structure derived from the institutional framework that is decisive. The rash of entrepreneurial malfeasance in large U.S. corporations in 2001-2 has reflected the evolution of the institutional framework that has altered relative prices to provide incentives for such anti-social behavior."  p.77

 

• Notes on China's economic trajectory. Institutions will be the main determinant.
• Vaccines? Schmaxines!
• Democrats- and the planet- have a problem in coal country.
• What is it with Republicans and basic health & decency?

Who Can be a Shaman? Who Must be a Shaman?

Pasaquan and the modern Shamanism of St. EOM, Eddie Owens Martin.

While not religious, I am fascinated by religion. This mode of thought and experience is obviously instinctive, patently irrational, and strenuously defended and rationalized via theology, apologetics, and other formerly respectable modes of thought, not to mention jihad and other sorts of brute power. We are (mostly) in a much better position today than in the old days when every political system had its state religion, and woe betide anyone caught thinking crosswise. Yet in the even earlier days of our species, religion was much more free-form, and while the instinct of religion is/was shared universally, its expression varied widely among far-flung, isolated peoples. We may generally call it shamanism. The first ingredient was an acceptance that some people care a lot more about spiritual matters than others do. Typically this is because they are misfits, maybe mentally disturbed, and have a heightened appreciation of the unreality of this reality that we think inhabit. Mind-altering drugs provide a glimpse of this widened perspective, and naturally comprise a central part of many shamanistic sacraments.

It is striking how the shared appreciation of an alternate reality, whether though official scripture, traditional dogma, or via ecstatic worship practices or mind-altering drugs, contributes to social bonding and personal psychological healing- which are the ultimate positive impacts of religion. Maybe the starkest naturalistic reality, now that we have evolved to appreciate its full horror, is incompatible with psychic health. Maybe an alternate, colorful, humane, and supportive reality is essential, and is particularly binding and healing if everyone shares it, almost regardless of its particular nature or irrationality. But on the other hand, even religions of intolerance, war, human sacrifice and cannibalism have sustained long-lived cultures, so the binding may take precedence over the humane-ness.

Ideologies and value systems are in play as well. Societies run on particular views of what is right, who counts, what is meaningful, etc. While these touch on empirical reality in some respects, their values and social apparatus are relatively untethered, free to valorize some, deprecate others, and place values on obscure things and odd activities. A misfit will be, by definition, more likely to suffer under the ambient ideology and prone to seek an alternative. Whether the shaman supports the current culture or seeks to subvert it, her work is critical in framing a social ideology that most other members of society hardly even know exists, and are not generally capable of shaping or grappling with consciously.

At its best, shamanism provides more than a narrative or theory about the unseen forces that run the world. It also centers the society with a purposeful narrative of its existence and the essential part each member plays in its continuance. It can heal individuals via the power of this social cohesion- as even medical science is beginning to recognize- since even without any objective medicine whatsoever, the rituals of care, support, and confidence are themselves powerful expressions of our social nature and aids to healing.

But what about today? We are heading into a post-religious world, where neither shamanism nor mainline theology rings true, capitalist ideology reigns, and social atomization is in part the result. It was jarring and intriguing to run across an odd TV program about an autodidactic shaman in Georgia, Eddie Owens Martin, who died in 1986. As a gay man in rural Georgia of the early 1900's, he fled to New York and led an underground life, which led to a career in fortune telling. Eventually he inherited a property in Georgia, and moved back on his own terms, using the proceeds from his fortune telling to build a spiritual retreat / theme park, with ornate decoration throughout.

St. EOM painting from Pasaquan

The connection between fortune telling and other facets of free-form shamanism are obvious. Martin, who renamed himself St. EOM, was obviously a charismatic person, and attracted helpers who attended ceremonies and helped with the painting. There was a hair theme, where Martin thought that he received messages from the gods through hair that had to be pointed upward. After he went bald, he resorted to pointing the ends of his extensive beard to the sky in order to maintain this connection. And what about all the symbology? It seems to consist of benevolent faces and highly colorful geometric designs, as are common in other spiritual and ceremonial settings. It looks like an effort to capture positive and healing material from the archetypes, which are partly eternal, and partly influenced by the culture of the day, where multiracial themes of harmony were coming to prominence.

All this reminded me strongly of two other shamans of the day, Carl Jung and Walt Disney. Where Martin was a spontaneous and demotic shaman, Jung come at it from a scholarly, indeed logorrheic perspective, producing book after book of memories, dreams, reflections, and rationalizations by which he straddled the scientific and credulus approaches to spiritualism. Most evocative was his Red Book, which features highly colorful dreamscapes full of pregnant symbols and meaning, harvested from his forays into the inner world of his own fixations and archetypes.

Lastly, Disney obviously shared the fantasy and dream motivations of Martin, though seemingly without much of the spiritual baggage. Disney was also moved in some mysterious way to make these fantasies concrete by creating theme parks where this positive message of colorful suspension of reality was given relentless and popular expression. These are demotic shamanism on a vast scale, drained of any deeper significance other than the lightest symbology that fleetingly speaks to part of us that hopes for an escape from the humdrum and pressing constraints of reality.

• Another healing fantasy in glorious animation- Secret of the Kells.
• Private schools- the real scandal is that they exist at all.
• Slavery.
• Crytocurrencies are a criminal accelerant- and should be banned. Not to mention being an environmental disgrace.

This Starship has Gone off Course

Review of the Star Trek Discovery series.

At risk of outing myself, I do occasionally watch Star Trek franchise material. Their original series was incredibly hokey by today's standards, but contained a beloved kernel of curiosity and adventure, and the franchise later matured into a thoughtful and inspiring series in The Next Generation. The ensuing series, such as Deep Space Nine and Voyager, kept to similar themes, and had fine moments (such as the spiritual environment of Bajor, and its supernatural orbs, within their orb cabinets). The last series of the original franchise, Star Trek Enterprise, was sort of a dull affair, with particularly wooden acting, before it veered, in its last season, into total "war on terrorism" territory with torture and other gratitous violence. My watching of the movies has been spotty, and I won't comment on those, as they are not really at the heart of the franchise, as I see it.

What makes (or made) Star Trek special was its modicum of thoughtfulness and philosophy, in a medium and genre otherwise ridden with thoughtless stereotypes, plots, and action. Its genre originated in the Western, but evolved into something all its own, which now can be endlessly replicated, mocked, and spoofed. While fights, killing, and other elements of typical plots abound, there are also elements of curiosity, scientific pursuit, ethical conundrums, and genuine compassion. It is in some ways a workplace drama, but about people who are all passionate about the work they do, making its world one to look forward to, and its tasks ones of adventure. At its very best, it can interrogate relevant social dilemmas in a way that is distanced enough to be entertaining and novel, while incisive enough to pack a punch.

A lengthy and rich history, but what does the future hold?

The three more recent renditions of Star Trek have included an independent series by Seth McFarlane, (The Orville), and official reboots from Paramount including an animated series (Lower Decks), a Patrick Stewart vehicle (Star Trek: Picard), and its main series, Star Trek: Discovery. The Lower Decks offering has been delightful- a very snappy, funny, and intelligent spoof of the whole Star Trek concept,  (and those who watch it), located on the USS Cerritos, named after perhaps the most uninteresting city in California. Only one season has been put out so far, but it has been superb, and fundamentally consonant with the founding Star Trek ethos.

The Orville series has been perhaps the best of the new bunch, despite not being an official part of the franchise. All the names have been changed- such as a "Planetary Union", in place of the United Federation of Planets. While it was originally conceived as heavy on the humor- some quite juvenile- McFarlane was clearly (and perhaps invountarily) taken with the Star Trek concept, and has progressed, as the episodes went on, to more adventurous and serious plots, ending up with complex time travel and one of the most thrilling episodes of TV I have even experienced (season 2.20, concerning the Kaylons, whose name may derive from the Mary Kay franchise ... who knows?). With the third season, his ambitions may have outstripped his resources, in addition to running into a Covid-induced hiatus. That season may never appear.

Meanwhile, Paramount put most of its effort into the Star Trek: Discovery series. This is set slightly before the original series, and features tremendous production quality, and a typical mixed cast of aliens and ethnicities on the bridge. But something seems to have gotten lost along the way. We are immediately launched into a war with the Klingons, who are now so festooned with makeup that they look like giant toads. Rather than exploring strange new worlds and civilizations, we are cast right into a heart-pounding deathly fight with a baroque enemy, complete with gratuitous torture and operatic pomposity on both sides. It is like we have landed in a Die Hard 2 reboot instead of a Star Trek series. "Discovery", indeed!

One would think that, to an erstwhile fungal researcher, the mycelial spore drive central to the Discovery plots would be a welcome bit of fictional technology. The premise is that an invisible (if sparkly) fungal mycelium pervades the galaxy, allowing suitably tuned neural systems to map it out and then follow its paths by travel that is not warp 5, not warp 10, but instantaneous in time. The crew's first tuned neural system was a humble tardigrade microbe, blown up in the show to monster proportions and strength. Later they develop an interface to a crew member, who sacrifices his sanity to the need for speed. Even given the modest standards of Star Trek tech talk/science-y fiction, all this is absurdly ridiculous. While tardigrades may be able to stand exposure to space, they can hardly live there. Likewise with fungi and their mycelia, (not the same as spores), which need water like anyone else. These technologies are so transparently and carelessly grabbed from decade-old issues of Science News that it is embarrassing. If the writers could not come up with something even remotely plausible, it would have been better to devise a nonsense bit of techtalk, which has a storied history in the franchise.

On the whole, Discovery has been a severe disappointment, at least to someone with minimal tolerance for empty action plots. As of episode 9, I can only watch a few minutes at a time before hitting action-trauma overload. Thankfully, there is streaming. It would be unimaginable to watch this the old-fashioned way, as everyone did who was fortunate enough to see the original series over its first few decades of broadcast and syndication.

• The success of the Western US electricity interconnect market.
• The biosphere is falling apart.
• Need a solar car port?
• What a course on inequality would look like.

UFOs, God, and the Evidence of Absence

Sometimes, what you can't see isn't really there. And why you may see it anyway requires some deeper consideration.

A recent New Yorker story resurrects the topic of unidentified flying objects. While drawing quite a bit of well-deserved humor from the field, it also teases some putatively serious observations, and notes that the field has gotten some high-level love from politicians like Harry Reed, Ted Stevens, and Marco Rubio. On the whole, it was disappointing to see mostly uncritical treatmtent of this retread story. Are any UFOs actually objects? The answer to that is almost universally no. Almost all turn out to be optical phenomena, which come in a startling variety that leave observers dumbfounded. The rest are mistaken aircraft, test rockets, balloons, and pranks of various sorts. Reports of UFOs have trailed off over the decades, as their cultural weight has diminished, and people's imaginations drift off to other preoccupations. Yet die-hards remain, finding conspiracies, coverups, and compelling evidence. What is one to say?

It is worth taking a big step back and asking why, over all this time, and over all the people who have been looking for clues, either for or against, nothing concrete has been found. There are no space ships, no alien bodies, no extra-terrestrial materials or technologies. There is nothing- nothing whatsoever to show for all the shocking observations, pregnant hints and leading questions. Nothing for all the political pressure and top-secret investigations.

We'd know if they were really coming.

It shouldn't have to be said, but I will say it anyway, that religion has similar evidence behind it. Namely none. For all the heartfelt convictions, the positive thinking, lovely intuitions, and entrenched tradition, the supernatural remains fugative from observation. Is this by definition? Not at all. Plenty of religious claims, and the ones that are most moving and effective in efforts of proselytization, are very this-worldly- the virgin births, the resurrections, the water from wine, the walking on water, the revelations directly from god, etc. 

While formal logic says that lack of evidence is not positive proof of absence, it is evidence for lack of evidence, which says alot about the momentous claims being made, about UFOs, as well as analogous conspiracies and super-powers. It is absurd to seek, after so many UFO sightings have been resolved as oddities of the atmosphere, of optical, even collective, illusion, innocent projects, or even pranks, for the "real" evidence, the true story behind the coverup, etc. It bespeaks an archetypal imagination, and, philosphically, a grasping at straws. 

Lack of evidence is a serious philosophical condition, in areas where evidence should be readily available and has been fervently sought. If aliens were routinely flying through the atmosphere, we have the technology to detect them. We have countless satellites looking down to earth as well as up into the heavens, at incredible resolutions. We are increasingly using radar to detect birds, in their migrating millions. Surely an alien spaceship would show up with little problem. Naturally, the aliens do not want to be detected, and have the technology to hide themselves from view, allowing only odd glimpses during unusual weather. Did I mention grasping at straws?

What was a scientific problem thus becomes, by process of elimination, a psychological problem. Why do alien and all-powerful beings have such a hold on our imaginations? Could it be that the constellation of childhood is phenomenally durable, causing us to assume/imagine parental figures in political, celestial, and philosophical spheres? We are right now falling atavistically into a renewed kingship psychological complexes with authoritarian figures, not only amongst the Republicans in the US, but all across the world from Brazil to India. After a couple of centuries of shaking off such fixations, it is disappointing how durable our imaginative and affiliative psychology is, and how fragile the discipline it takes to recognize that the parents are not out there, in whatever guise or color, and that we are fully responsible for our world.

• Religion and Q.
• More on aerosol spread of SARS-CoV2, with pictures.
• Notes on qualified immunity.

Aisha and Ali

Women's rights and the crackup of Islam.

I am reading the highly interesting book "The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad", by Barnaby Rogerson. It takes a docu-drama and highly hagiographical approach, yet works in a lot of facts as well. It covers one of the most dynamic and transformative periods in world history, when the newly founded religion, Islam, swept out of Medina to defeat and convert its old enemies in Mecca, then progressively the rest of the Arabian peninsula, into the Byzantine stronghold across Syria and the Near East, the Persian empire, and lastly The Byzantine rump state of Egypt and points west. Let no one mistake Islam for a religion of peace. 

Muhammad left no succession plan, and wise heads got together in turn to appoint the first three successors to lead the community, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Uthman. These were each, in their own way, strong and very effective leaders, just the fortune that Islam needed to press its jihad against each of the neighboring empires. Riches started to flow into Medina, and by Uthman's reign, religious restrictions were eased, wealth spread, slaves and concubines proliferated, and an enormous baby boom occurred in the desert. But Uthman had planted the seeds of destruction, by appointing only his relatives to run the provinces- the Umayyads.

Uthman's reign reeked of nepotism, and he ended up assassinated in a revolt by disgruntled provincials, who took up the standard of Ali. Ali was one of Muhammad's earliest and closest converts, a son in law, war hero, and in personal and thelogical terms, an obvious choice as successor (or Caliph). Ali was acclaimed as Caliph right after the assassination, thus gaining the immediate enmity of all the Umayyads. And there were other problems, which had clearly led the earlier meetings of the companions of the prophet to choose other successors. First, Ali was not an effective leader. A true believer, yes, but starry-eyed, unrealistic, and unskilled in the tribal politics that underlay the new empire and faith. 

Aisha, on her camel, directing the battle against Ali, near  Basra. Turkish depiction, 16th century.

Second, Aisha loathed him. Betrothed to Muhammad at age 6, married at 9, Aisha was his favorite wife, of a stable that grew eventually to 12. Aisha remains a sort of Mary figure in Islam, and was granted a higher pension than any other figure after Muhammad's death, in recognition of her special position. She had once gotten into hot water after being left behind by a caravan, and was brought back to camp by a handsome soldier the next day. Tongues wagged, and eventually the gossip got so bad that Muhammad conjured a revelation from god absolving Aisha of any blame, and bringing heavy punishments on her accusers. What was Ali's role in all this? He had casually advised Muhammad that wives were cheap, and he should just divorce the inconvenient Aisha and be done with it. 

Now, when Ali needed help in his new role as Caliph, Aisha remembered, and whipped up a couple of Muhammad's companions into opposition, and led them personally across the desert to Basra, and into battle with Ali, the battle of the camel, which camel was Aisha's command post. Aisha lost, was personally wounded, and went into a life of retirement in Medina under Ali's protection, helping compile hidiths, providing recollections of the old days, and running a school for women. But the war against Ali went on from this fateful spark, and he gradually lost support to the wilier Umayyads. Thus, Aisha stands as a pivotal figure in Islam and world history, responsible in part for the disastrous Sunni-Shia split, but also a clear standard bearer for women's rights within the world of Islam, an aspect that has clearly been in occultation for some time, especially in what are ironically regarded as the more fundamentalist precincts of the faith.

• Strength and terrorism.
• Lies are a feature, not a bug, of sociopathy.
• We have not been serious about contact tracing in the US.
• Darwin- on target again.
• As if shipping weren't bad enough.

They Thought They Were James Bond

Review of Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA.

Why do we still have the CIA? Its track record is atrocious on both operational and moral grounds, and much of its role has been assumed by the NSA and by military intelligence. It is fundamentally contrary in principle to everything the US stands for, making its reputation, such as it is, damaging abroad, and making recruitment at home excruciatingly difficult. It is a testament, in the end, to bureaucratic inertia and its own skills in backroom politics and public relations that it survives at all.

Headquarters of a bloated bureaucracy

Tim Weiner tells a totally biased history of the CIA, proving a truism of intelligence that everything bad ends up on the front page and everything good remains under wraps. This book covers every disastrous escapade from the exploding cigars sent to Fidel Castro to the torture of prisoners in a farflung network of black prisons and those of our "allies" during the "war on terror". What is even worse, however, is how its sterling successes, like its fomented coup against Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, or the arming of Pakistani proxies in the Soviet-Afghan war, turned out, in the end, even more disastrous than its front-page disasters. The Bay of Pigs made the US a laughing stock. But the melt-down of Iranian democracy haunts us and the rest of the Middle East, even the world, to this day.

The CIA has routinely lied to congress and to the president. It has, at other times, lied to the entire nation and world on behalf of the president, such as during the runup to the Iraq war. Its daily brief is notoriously bereft of deep analysis, and its ranks notoriously short of foreign language and cultural skills. 

Towards the end of the book, even while recounting a rising tide of mediocrity and error, Weiner oddly throws in repeated denunciations, evidently drawn from his stable of CIA veteran interviewees, of the underfunding and underappreciation of the CIA over recent decades. All in all, it is a difficult book (and situation) to make sense of. Yet it is clear that the CIA is a disaster zone, and we need to think carefully about how America's intelligence community should operate on a restructured basis.

One thing to note is that the US is simply not adapted, culturally, to run a great intelligence apparatus, as, say, Russia is with its KGB/FSB/SVR/GU. We are an open society with a well-founded dislike of deceit, and are not skilled at it. We also are a lawful society, unwilling to instill the kind of fear / terror that it takes to staff and run such shady operations. Aldrich Ames, for example, is enjoying a pleasant retirement at a medium-security prison in Terre Haute. Jonathan Pollard is now living a heroic retirement in Israel.

So, maybe we need some of the functions of the current CIA. But they should be made as compact as possible, not subsumed in the current bureaucratic dinosaur. The main function it does not need is the gathering of mundane foreign news via newspapers, low-level contacts, and fake visa officers, to create master "intelligence estimates". All that can and should be done by the State Department. Indeed, such functions should be increased with the addition of open person-on-the street contacts all over the world. We are frequently blind-sided by developments that intelligence agencies fail to see based on their derring-do, tradecraft, and focus in the highest echelons, and which normal people in that other society can easily see coming. These functions may even be replicated into red-team/blue-team competitions, with retrospective evaluations carried out to grow successful teams. The understanding of foreign cultures is a difficult task, and putting it into the hands of a white-bread secretive bureaucracy has not been fruitful. 

What would then happen to all the under-cover intelligence that we gather, mostly via the NSA and the satellite services of the NRO? These have been independent of the CIA for a long time. The CIA has not been "central" for decades. So we should dispense with the charade of special knowledge and integrated deep analysis, leaving that to the State department and perhaps the Director of National Intelligence. The CIA should be confined to espionage and covert operation in a focused way on current and future crises. It should not be meddling in Central American countries, running its own private foreign policy. It should not be trying to span the world with agents all over the place. It should not be trying to carve out bureaucratic slices from the NSA and other agencies with better track records.

Whether the CIA can even be successful in such a truncated remit is highly questionable, given its history. But at least it can then be judged more accurately, without all the distractions of routine newspaper reading, world-wide reporting, etc. It should stand or fall in whether it can supply high-level intelligence from our major adversaries- China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and North Korea, in any way beyond our technical resources. And naturally, it goes without saying that its covert operations need to be kept on a tighter leash, run not only by the president, but put on specific timelines of reporting to the NSC (cleared in advance) and select congressional oversight bodies (reported within thirty days). Malfeasance, either in reporting or in execution, would result in consequences such that the CIA fires poorly performing personnel, and keeps only a select and small cadre, perhaps in competing teams.

• Ministry of Love, in Eastasia.
• Let's go solar!
• Big soda- lethal and corrupt.
• The joy of piano.

There Are no Natural Rights

Rights are always a political construct, which we devise and grant each other.

American politics is drenched with "rights". The Bill of Rights, natural rights, god-given rights, human rights. Both right and left use "rights" language to claim victimization and seek restitution. But the history goes back much farther, to the Magna Carta and beyond, into the heart of being a social species. Sociality means compromise, giving up some powers in return for other things, some of which are called rights. Good civilized behavior and diligent work entitles us to membership in the group, and benefits such as collective defense and shared resources. Since there can be long time lags between service and repayment, even extending over a lifetime or even multiple generations, a way is needed to keep track of such obligations. One way is to proclaim rights, such as a right to communal fields and pastures for members of the group, in perpetuity.

Thus rights are generally keenly felt as obligations and matters of long-standing, even eternal, usage. But all are social agreements, as our proclivity to murder and execute each other makes clear. If one does not even have an inalienable right to life, what are the others worth? They are neither natural nor god-given, but entirely human-given. They are rhetorical constructs meant to structure our communal relations, hopefully for good of all and the durable continuance of the system, but sometimes, not so much. Indeed, rights can be brutally oppressive, such as those of Brahmins in the Indian caste system, among many others.

Gun nuts frequently make a fetish of their rights- to guns, self defense, and in various convoluted ways to religious rights and duties. When rights have been written into the law, such as our constitution, that moves them into another rhetorical level- the legal system. But that just expresses and codifies agreements that exist elsewhere in the social system, and which the social system can, through its evolution, change. Gay rights have been an outstanding example, of the destruction of one rights system- that of normative sexuality and marriage rights- and the rise of a new set of rights oriented to personal freedom in the expression and practice of sexuality. Where in ancient times, fecundity was of paramount importance, that need has naturally fallen away as a societal imperative as our societies and planet creak under loads of overpopulation.

This mutability and social basis of rights leads to a lot of one-upmanship in rights discourse, like the attempts to found abortion rights in presumptively more universal or fundamental rights like privacy, autonomy, or women's rights, versus competing formulations of rights to fetal life with related arguments about the legal and life-like status of embryos and fetuses. All this speaks to the fact that rights are not discovered on tablets handed down by either god or Darwin, but are continually developed out of our feelings about our communities- what is fair based on what is required from each of us to live in them, and what they can reasonably demand and give in return.

• Let's hear it for the neurodivergent.
• Cattle are unsustainable.
• Good riddance.

The Parables of Octavia Butler

Review of Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents, about earily familiar dystopias and the religions they call forth.

Octavia Butler is having a moment. The late science fiction author published the parable books in 1993 and 1998, not even knowing of the coming G. W. Bush administration, let alone that of Donald Trump. But her evangelical-supported right wing presidential candidate issues a call to "Make America great again". Her insight and prescience is head-spinning, in books that portray an America much farther gone into division, inequality, corporate power, and chaos (all owing to climate change(!)) than we in actual reality are- yet only by degrees. That is only the window dressing and frame, however. Her real subjects are religion and human purpose. I will try to not give away too much, since these make dramatic and interesting reading.

The books introduce heroine Lauren Olamina, who is totally together and possessed of a mission in life. She grows up in a neighborhood compound walled off from the chaos outside, but quite aware of the desperate conditions there. Her father is a pastor, and both she and her brother become, through the books, preachers as well. The brother in a conventional Christian mode, but Lauren founds a new religion, one maybe tailored for the generally skeptical science fiction audience. God is change. That is it. Lauren emphasizes empathy, usefulness, education, and the shaping of change, but there is no god as traditionally conceived. It is a sort of buddhistic philosophy and educational / communal program rather than a supernaturalist conjuring, and love (or fear), of imaginary beings.

One question is whether such a philosophy would actually gain adherents, form communities and function as a religion. I get the sense that Butler would have dearly loved for her ideas to gain a following, to actually ripen, as did those of fellow science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, into an actual religion (however horrible his escapade actually turned out to be!). But their difference is instructive. Hubbard's Dianetics/Scientology is a floridly imagined narrative of super-beings, secret spiritual powers, and crazy salvation. Absolute catnip to imaginative seekers wanting to feel special and purposeful. On the other hand, Olamina's system is quite arid, with most of the motive force supplied, as the book relates, by her own determination and charisma. Her philosophy is true, and therein lies a big, big problem. Truth does not supply purpose- we already knew that scientifically. Natural selection is all about change, and makes us want to live, flourish, and propagate. Change is everpresent, and while it might be healthy to embrace it and work with it, that is hardly an inspiring and purpose-filling prospect, psychologically. As the books relate in their narrative of Lauren's life, change is also often quite terrible, and to be feared.

But the more important question is what role people such as Lauren play, and why people like her followers exist. People need purpose. Life is intrisically purposeless, and while we have immediate needs and wants, our intelligence and high consciousness demands more- some reason for it all, some reason for existence, collectively and individually. An extra motive force beyond our basic needs. We naturally shape our lives into a narrative, and find it far easier and more compelling if that narrative is dramatic, with significance beyond just the humdrum day-to-day. But such narratives are not always easy to make or find. Classic epics typically revolve around war and heroic deeds, which continue to make up the grist of Hollywood blockbusters. Religion offers something different- a multi-level drama, wrapped up in collective archetypes and usually offering salvation in some form, frequently a hero, if not a militaristic one. Last week's post mentioned the life of Che Guevara, who found purpose in Marxism, and was so fully seized by it that he bent many others, possibly the whole nation of Cuba, to his will / ideology. Lauren Olamina is a similar, special person who has, through her own development and talents, discovered a strong purpose to her life and the world at large that she feels compelled to share, pulling others along on her visionary journey. Are such people "strong"? Are their followers "weak"? 

Human social life is very competitive, with the currency being ability to make others think what you want them to think, and do what you want them to do. Our ideology of freedom was built by a founding class of dominant, slave-holding rich white men who wanted only to come to a reasonable accommodation for political power within their class, not extend freedom to women, blacks, or the poor. This ideology was highly successful as a sort of civic religion, coming down to us in two traditions- the "winning" tradition of native American extermination, ruthless capitalism, and growing international empire- all set within a reasonably stable elitist political system. And the second "freedom" tradition, which gave us abolitionism, the civil rights movement, and the modern Democratic party, which takes Jefferson's ideals at their word, however little he actually meant them.

Religion is a particularly powerful engine of political and social ideology, making people go through ridiculous rituals and abasements to keep on the safe side of whatever the powerful tell them. So yes, domineering social personalities like Lauren and Che, (and Trump), are very powerful, deservedly treated as larger-than-life, charismatic figures. Their powers are archetypal and dangerous, so it falls to skeptics and free-thinkers to offer antidotes, if their charisma goes off the rails. Butler offers a hero who is relentlessly good and positive, as well as charismatic and strong, so the only competition comes from ignorance, conventional wisdom, and from the competing religious powers like traditional Christianity. But the power of artificial purposes, and of the charismatic figures who propound them, is almost uniformly corrupting, so Lauren's opposition is, in the end, far more realistic as a portrayal of what we are facing, now and in the future.

• "China is about to bring 21 gigawatts of coal fired power online."
• Stocks are euphoric, headed for a fall.
• Obstruction of justice, in a continuing saga of impeachable offenses.

Domineering Freeloader Decides Communism is the Answer

General, executioner, economic development czar, and head of the national bank of the Cuban revolution: the biography of Che Guevara, by John Lee Anderson.

Ernesto Guevara began life as a reckless, adventurous, and very intelligent kid. His first inspiration was medicine, indeed medical research on leprosy and other diseases common in South America, and he got a medical degree. But toiling away on small problems in the lab didn't fit his temperament, and he decided to bum around South America instead, living off the generosity of others, running up debts, fast-talking his way out of jams, and building up an implacable hatred of the US. A common thread through his travels from Argentina through Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and points north was the overwhelming influence of the US, usually corrupting the local political system for the benefit of mining interests in the south, and for the benefit of agricultural interests in Central America. Eventually he got caught up in the liberal quasi-socialist reforms of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, later fleeing to Mexico after a US-supported right wing coup.

It was there that he fell under the spell of Fidel Castro, eventually becoming, despite his evident non-Cuban origins, Castro's right-hand man at the head of the communist revolution in Cuba. Not that it started as communist. No, Fidel was a master politician, and started as an anti-communist, currying favor with the Cuban population and the US. But both his brother Raul and Che were dedicated communists by that point, in thrall to Stalin and Mao, and their influence, combined with the logic of perpetual, one-party / one-person power, brought Fidel around to a gradual process of revealing, after the revolution had already gained power and Che had executed resistent elements of the army and police, their new (red) colors. Then came feelers to Moscow and the rest of the eastern bloc, the Cuban missile crisis, and that is pretty much where things stand still today.

Che and Fidel, when times were good.

Anderson's biography is definitive- fully researched, well written, and judiciously argued. He portrays Che as a seeker- a youth on the prowl for good times, but also for a purpose, which he ultimately found in full-on socialism. He found himself most fully during the early fight in the hills of Cuba- a trial by privation, exhaustion, and blood- where he put revolutionary principles to work organizing his men, making alliances with the local peasants, and executing deserters and traitors. Che's socialism was a pan Latin-American Bolivaran ideal, where all the countries of Central and South America would band together- possibly even unite- under state socialism as inspired by the peasant revolutions of Russia and especially China. It was both austere and visionary- a whole continent escaping from under the yoke of the great oppressor- the US.

It is clearly a religious conversion- the epiphany of a wholly captivating ideal. Che became Castro's second in command by his great intellectual and leadership talents, but even more by his absolute dedication to the cause- the cause of liberation from oppression. Unfortunately, after cleansing the army and securing Fidel's rule, Che was assigned to make the economy run, and here he came up against the immovable obstacle- reality. Socialism is healthy in small doses, but communism has not, in Cuba as elsewhere, been able to run an economy. Motivation to work needs to be supplied somehow, and if it is not by the lash of money and its lack, then terror will have to do the job, and poorly at that. Che did what he could, but the system he had fought so hard to establish was impossible to operate, and his thoughts turned back to his first love- revolution.

It is here that we see mostly clearly the religious nature of Che's motivations and of communism generally. If he were a rational researcher in the template of medical or other research, he would have sat back and realized that communism was not working in economic and social terms, let alone in terms of personal individual liberation. And then he would have adapted intellectually and tried to figure out a middle way to preserve Cuba's independence while running a realistic economic system. Possibly even elections. Unfortunately, by this time, Cuba had settled into a dependent relationship with Russia, which bought its sugar and gave aid, preventing either economic or political independence. Cuba is today still relatively poor, in the middle to lower ranks of GDP. Not as poor as Haiti, however, (or North Korea), and therein lies a message, which is that the Cuban revolution remains relatively humane, despite its many debilities and lack of political, social, and economic freedom. The collapse of the Soviet Union shocked the communist government into slight openings for private business and a heavy dose of tourism from Europe, which sustain it today.

But instead of recognizing the errors and failures of his dream, Che fomented more revolutionary cells all over Latin America and Africa, paying special attention to one sent to infiltrate Argentina, one that he was to join himself and die serving in 1965. One can not fault his dedication or consistency, but one can question the intellect that took him and so many other idealistic freedom fighters over the twentieth century into communism only to author monumental disasters of political and economic mismanagement. To think that dictatorship would resolve the class struggle, and produce washing machines and military might ... it had to be a religious movement, which unfortunately, once in power, became incredibly difficult to dislodge.

The motive force obviously was the US. We, through our callous and greedy treatment of our backyard over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and our betrayal of the paternalistic impulse of the Monroe Doctrine, not to mention similar failures of principle in the Middle East and Vietnam, motivated the intense anti-Yankee hatred of idealistic men such as Che Guevara, and the peasant resistance that, at least in Cuba, gave him and Castro support. It is a fascinating history of what the US has wrought, and how our failure to hold to our own ideals has come back to haunt us over and over again.

• It has been abusive, unnecessary, toxic, and we will need some time to work it out of our system.

Fair and Balanced

Momentary virality is not the best way to construct and distribute news. Nor is fear-based button-pushing. But what can we do about it?

Our political system almost ran off the rails over the last few months, and the ultimate cause was the media, which on the right-wing side has shaped an alternate reality of breathtaking extremism and divergence from reality. Outlets like Rush Limbaugh, FOX news, NewsMax, and Sinclair Broadcasting have fundamentally reshaped our political discourse, from a place fifty years ago where facts and problems were generally agreed upon, and policy discussions founded on those facts conducted- if not in a civil manner, then in a functional manner in legislative bodies like the US Senate. Now Limbaugh is broaching secession.

Rush, in his lair.

Even the Reagan era, conservative as it was, hewed to basic democratic principles and a centrist media environment. But then came Bill Clinton, and in response, Newt Gingrich, blazing a scorched-earth trail through the House of Representatives, followed soon by the establishment of FOX news as a relentless and shameless propaganda organ for the right. Now, even FOX is reviled by true believers as not extreme enough, as the end of the Trumpian epoch comes shudderingly into view. Which is worse- the internet melee of Russian disinformation and viral Q-conspiracies, or the regimented lying brought to us by corporate right-wing media? It is hard to tell sometimes, and both have been disastrous, but I think the latter has been substantially worse, forming a long-running environment of cultivated lies, normalized idiocy, and emotional trauma. Why anyone watches it or listens to it is beyond me personally, but clearly many people like to have their buttons pushed and participate in a crudely plausible vision of a black, white, and bloviatingly Christian (or un-Christian, depending on your theological ethics) world. 

Government censorship is probably not going to happen in this case. Even if we changed our legal system to allow it, the right wing would manage to subborn those regulatory bodies, as they have the Supreme Court, Senate, and the White House. These media outlets don't breathe oxygen, however, they breathe money- money that comes from advertisers who appreciate their ability to reach a uniquely gullible demographic. But those advertisers are not political. They are fomenting our divisions and destroying our political system for purely transactional reasons. It is, we can note in passing, another classic and ironic breakdown of the free market. 

The rational response, then, is to boycott the sponsors in systematic fashion, publicizing who advertises with which outlets, for how much. Several of these sites and petitions are already happening. But it is clear that they have not gained enough traction to have much effect. Only when the most egregious and appalling violations of decency occur does any attention rain on the channels and scare away sponsors. The tracking, petition, and boycotting system needs to have better centralization. Perhaps like the eco-friendly food labels, we need truth-friendly labeling of companies at the point of consumption, marking those (MyPillow! SmileDirect! Nutrisystem! Geico!) who are pouring money into these cesspools of psychological manipulation and political destruction.

Sure, this kind of accountability would heighten political divisions, causing a polarization of the business world, which has (supposedly) tried to keep itself out of the fray, and invite counter-boycotts of, say, NPR or MSNBC. But business has not been unbiassed at all, rather, through every organ, from chambers of commerce to K-street lobbies and Ayn Randian talk shops, they have pushed the right wing agenda in tandem with the propaganda organs that broadcast relentless pro-business and anti-public interest messages. It is high time to hold the whole ecosystem to account for the state of our country, directly and financially.

• Should federal office holders be held to their oaths?
• The business of the kidney dialysis business.
• Apparently, Trump supporters put their money where their minds were.

Eugenics, the Catholic way

Woe betide any tampering with God's nature! However, destroying it with overpopulation is OK.

The current Supreme Court battle puts a spotlight on Catholicism in law and ethics. With the impending justice, six of the nine will be Catholic. The more rightward Catholic justices are coming from a culture that has some peculiar views on itself, on key ethical issues, and on the future of the world. First is its self-righteousness. Fundamentalist Catholics like Antonin Scalia and Attorney General Barr are confident that they come to government service steeped in the most exacting and time-honored moral code- that of the church which has been in existence going on two thousand years. It is a church that has weathered millennia of political turmoil and tectonic shifts of philosophy. But does all that history make it right? Does durability imply anything other than a canny grasp of human psychology, both in keeping its parishioners in the fold, and in keeping the wheels of its authoritarian structures turning? I don't think so. Far better moral systems have been imagined and enacted, and the Church has, time after time, grudgingly taken them up, typically a century after the rest of society. Today, a Catholic woman is nominated to the Supreme Court. Maybe in a hundred years, a female cardinal? 

But what is particularly galling is the prating about the sacredness of life. William Barr has restarted federal executions, to add to all his other lying and subversions of justice, giving one a curious impression of this "culture of life". What is obviously a simple policy of patriarchal power is dressed up in gilded rhetoric of concern for "life", which, maddeningly, is swallowed as gospel by the women who are its victims. For opposition to contraception and abortion are foremost attacks on the agency and full personhood of women, who are demoted to vessels for male procreation. But the Catholic church's policy is not just patriarchy of a demeaning and sexist kind, it also constitutes a eugenic policy. Ron Turcotte, one of the great horse jockeys, born in a family of twelve children in French Catholic New Brunswick, recalled in his autobiography that the priest would make the rounds of local families and berate every woman who did not have babies in diapers. The Catholic imperative is to fill up the world with Catholics, no matter the suffering of women, families, or communities. The entire biosphere groans under vast overpopulation. And what is the answer of the Catholic church? More Catholics, more oppression, more mental straightjackets. Care for creation apparently does not extend to continence on the part of men, basic personal rights or autonomy on the part of women, or to creation in general.

Just another day at the Supreme Court.

So when I hear "distinguished" lawyers, scholars and ethicists from Catholic institutions pontificate about the evils of genetic engineering, stem cell research, or use of embryos in research, (not to mention abortion or assisted suicide, among many other topics) I can not take them seriously as intellectuals- as anything other than mouthpieces of an antiquated system of oppressive, and now catastrophic, archetypes of political and social power. It is one thing to be a scholar of an artistic tradition full of glorious human expression and yearning quests for deeper connection with whatever power animates the world. But with the loss of humanism, then Protestantism, Catholicism retreated into an intellectual fortress of defense, nostalgia, and counter-reformation. The Federalist societies, the constitutional textualists, the Opus Dei fundamentalists... this ecosystem that has funded and nurtured a conservative assault on US legal institutions, apparently heavily Catholic, all are backward time machines fixated on dead controversies and traditional, frankly eugenic, policies of world domination. 

Nominee Barrett's textualism, following Scalia, seems to endanger the last century or two of constitutional interpretation. Whatever is not explicitly enumerated in the text is not, by this view, in the federal government's power. This could include women, (other than the 19th amendment; notably, the word "he" is used repetitively to refer to the president, representatives and other officers), federal regulatory authority in countless areas such as labor, antitrust, and finance, and the very meanings of concepts like cruel and unusual punishment, militias, privacy, due process, "needful rules", and "general welfare". The constitution and statutes are frequently vague, precisely so that society can construct its meanings according to the spirit of the document, not a cramped view of its letter, or a psychoanalytic plumbing of its mental conditions of origination.

Nor is Catholicism alone in this backwardness and revanchism. Islam shares its authoritarian, righteous, patriarchal, misogynistic, domineering mentality, even while lacking a pope. It goes the Catholics one better by approving of polygamy, another eugenic gambit. Consequently, Islam has even higher birth rates than Catholicism, immiserating its populations, stoking misplaced resentment, and imperiling the biosphere. However, Muslims in the US are not at this time constructing legal pipelines into US federal judgeships or dominating the Supreme Court, so their similarities in this regard are of global, but not federal, concern.

• Yes, religion is an issue here.
• Extended video of Barrett expressing her views, as also linked above.
• Abortion was perfectly fine in colonial America.
• Our feudal future, clarified by the GOP.
• Donald's hair is charged to the taxpayer. Also, Ivanka.
• Maybe the whole business deduction system should be scrapped.
• What happens if ACA dies?
• State of our politics- getting people to not vote.

Science Says ...

What are facts, and how can we respect them?

The recent and prevalent locution of "science says ..." is grating to everyone- scientists, civilians, red, and blue. We get the shorthand meaning, but it has unpleasant, domineering overtones. Yet, sadly, something needs to be said, if facts can not make themselves heard. The "science says ..." mantra means that not only is something a fact, but it is widely, perhaps unanimously, recognized as a fact by experts who know where such facts come from and what they mean. Lately this usage has been in flood due to the pandemic, a way for data-driven people to criticize their more negligent neighbors.

The problem is that facts are not always totally clear or secure. So we have to fall back on arguments from authority, to support what we believe are important actions, based on other values. Masks were originally denigrated - by scientists! - as not very useful for protection against viruses that were small enough to easily pass right through typical cloth. But as more data came in, it became clear - to scientists - that even partial filtering and simple dispersion of infectious aerosols was quite helpful, not only for others facing a possible asymptomatic carrier of SARS-COV2, but to mask wearers themselves, by reducing the infecting dose. This is especially true in a setting with decent ventillation. Evidence piled up from epidemiological studies as well as mechanistic studies of mask wearing, that even lax masking is better than none. Now a shorthand for all that is "science says...". 

But the evidence is hardly 100%. Small studies and suggestive trends in disease data from well and poorly-masked populations make for important public health recommendations, but not quite facts. More detail and mechanism will be helpful, including the relative amounts of virus capture and dispersion by masks, and the role of the infectious dose in the severity of disease- the race that is run between viral replication and immune defense. Few people are themselves directly conversant with all this work, which means that most have to appeal to the authority of those that are. But then any blogger can claim to be an authority, and declaim a different set of conclusions and thus facts. 

We seem to have mostly settled down about these facts, tentative as they are, when it comes to the coronavirus, even though actually respecting them and changing habits comes hard to some. But climate change has been a different matter, being so economically important and implicated in everyone's current way of life. One's conservatism is directly related to resistance to changing one's way of life, which necessarily implies denying and disbelieving the once-subtle, now overwhelming evidence that "science says" assigns blame for accelerating climate change to us and our production of heat-trapping gasses.

Facts? What facts?

This is where the "science says ..." mantra becomes politically fraught and adversarial. If reality is knocking on your door and telling you to repent, confess your sins, and change your ways, experience tells us that is has to knock extremely hard. Addicts tend to change only after they have hit rock bottom, and see death in the eye. Listening to a bunch of pointy-heads and libtards go on about the biosphere, arctic ice, and obscure species is just not compelling. Quite the opposite- it is often taken as offensive and completely out of touch with a fossil fuel addict's immediate struggles and attachment to basic habits and ways of being.

And who cares about facts anyhow? Not the modern Republican party, not our president. Whether "science says" those facts or their own eyes behold them, the social facts of political control in grossly unfair setting of US power structures, and continuing support from the morally unmoored rich and their corporations, are far more significant than any global risks that all will bear with increasing pain over the coming decades. The social facts of the right wing media's blizzard of propaganda are likewise shaping a totally different world, in both values and truths and facts, than what scientists are perceiving. The mantra of "science says" then comes to mean a set of values rather than just facts, that we should perhaps attend to non-human species and ecosystems instead of worrying about a war on Christmas; that expertise is more valuable than con-jobbery and lying propaganda; that worrying about the vastly excessive human population on Earth might be more important than saving every fertilized egg for the patriarchy. For science is a value system, both in its methods and its objects. It is largely and generously funded by society, but naturally has its own agenda, which seems far-sighted and logical enough to its practitioners, but is, in the end, a set of values, which themselves will be judged by society as worthy of propagation, or not.

• An example of how the science has to be parsed pretty carefully, by expert observers. Masks, planes, and time.
• Our degraded country.
• That tired Taliban, ready to take over all of Afghanistan.
• Medicare advantage, or disadvantage?
• Are we great again, or what?
• Climate action and inaction.. still highly insufficient.