What I Think of the Opinions of Someone Called Raymond S. Kraft (a Rant)

Okay, gigantic disclaimer here: I like to keep this blog fairly politics-free, not because I am apolitical, but because there are many better-qualified folks to read out there, and I chose to focus on the weird things I think up that maybe others wouldn't otherwise think about.

This post is drastically political. A friend of mine emailed me an essay by Raymond S. Kraft and said he hadn't found any kind of reply to it, so I thought I would take the time to pound one out. It's an issue I take pretty seriously. Please ignore at your pleasure:

World War Two was a war the US initially didn’t want to fight, but it’s a good thing we did end up fighting, especially if history begins at about 1936.

Raymond S. Kraft’s essay, Why are we in Iraq?, is an explanation of the US government and military actions of late. These actions are supported by a worldview that I think is narrow, paranoid, fatalistic, and self-righteous. He compares the unwillingness of Americans to go to war in the 1930s with the same unwillingness today. He compares the death tolls and dollars spent on each war, and suggests that although Americans had more reason to oppose World War Two, if we had been as pacifist then as we are today, we’d all be kissing Hitler’s grandson’s boot right now. Similarly, if we remain pacifist now, our grandsons will kneel before Allah.

I take issue, first and foremost, with the comparison of the war in Iraq with World War Two. World War Two, when we entered it, was an ongoing war (by which I mean rattattatt, boom! SSSSSSSSssssssssssssssshhhhhkaPOW! Oh God, my leg! &c.) between two comparably-capable sets of armies. One side was the aggressor, meaning that it had entered foreign, sovereign states, overthrown the government, and set itself up as ruler. Never since 1776 has there been a more appropriate time for the United States to use force.

Let me begin to illustrate some pacifist reasoning here: if World War Two weren’t actively happening, that is, people dying and losing legs day by day, we should not have started fighting in it. The side that draws first blood is morally culpable, in whole or part, for every death that results. (Kraftians are pulling their hairs out and screaming “9-11!” – I’ll get to that. (Do I really need to get to that?))

If the sides aren’t roughly equal, force is less appropriate. If two roughly equal armies have a dispute, it may be naive to think they will simply settle their differences diplomatically. But war between two drastically unequal forces is cowardice versus heroism. The threat of force by the more powerful side should suffice. I know Iraq is an exception, as Hussein’s minions were so deft at moving his stockpiles of WsMD from place to place, frustrating the efforts of Hans Blix and the weapons inspectors, that Blix threw up his hands in disgust and asked the UN to take the bastards out . . . wait, that’s not how it happened at all. Iraq is no exception; the threat of force was, in fact, enough to keep Hussein harmless.

If there is no aggressor, if no nation is under attack, fighting should not begin. An arguably-applicable, but eventually not-applicable, exception: if some country is run by a tyrant, an outside force can invade to overthrow it, if the outsiders’ interests are truly those of the abused citizens. However, and I may sound cold and isolationist here, a revolution by the tyrant's own citizens needs to start before a foreign power gets involved. These citizens may be thoroughly incapable of actually toppling their government and freeing themselves, but let’s have some token sacrifice, at least, as a sign that the people of a nation so hate their leadership, and that they show such broad solidarity against it, that it is right and just for a powerful outsider to invade.

I have illustrated three attributes of World War Two that made it arguably worth fighting; Iraq fails all three tests. There was no fighting going on. The dead Kurds had been dead for fifteen years. We ask native Americans to forgive much graver aggressions. If we had stood up for the Kurds then, when they were actually being gassed, it would have been acceptable. But we were too busy giving Hussein that very gas. The sides were not equally powerful. Iraq was no match for us, militarily; we risked virtually nothing to completely overthrow Hussein’s regime, and Hussein knew it. Continued carrot-and-stick diplomacy would have literally saved tens of thousands of lives. There was no aggressor, no army illegally occupying another country. There was no Iraqi revolution we were helping out in.

Kraft compares the money and lives spent on World War Two and asserts that American pacifists have a “short attention span.” He says that wars are not like TV, which is well-scripted enough to deliver a satisfactory ending to an American audience spoiled by decades of instant gratification. But what time frame are Americans supposed to expect? Kraft notably omits time spent from his war comparison. As of this month, the US has spent more time in Iraq than it spent fighting the Nazis. Why has it taken so long? The part of the fighting which was analogous to that in World War Two (eerily similar, in fact, to Hitler’s blitzkrieg) ended days after the war began. But instead of being (here we go again) lauded as liberators, as we were after World War Two, we have been viciously assaulted. Why? Please re-read the above, especially the part about the interests of the outside invaders being truly those of the oppressed citizens. And think about it. We are now an occupying force that the local citizens, for better or worse, do not trust or accept as leaders. Is it ours to reason why? It’s pretty apparent that our form of government is better. It is arguable that there are better forms of government than ours. But Americans, particularly southerners, will just dare some foreign power to come over here, set up a couple of military bases, and show us how. (Kraftians reply that it is a few loner terrorists, mostly foreign nationals, who are instigating the violence in Iraq. This is mostly false.)

Iraq is no World War Two. It is an ongoing police action in a foreign land against a nebulous enemy who has been ideologically vilified by the US executive branch. I will give you a hint at a much more appropriate comparison: it rhymes with Giet Nam.

Let’s go back to World War Two and pacifism then. In retrospect, it probably was a war that needed to be fought. But it could have been avoided had people acted earlier. And a broad war against Islam can be avoided today.

Adolf Hitlers don’t come to power in a vacuum. Hitler may have been a crazy lunatic, may even have been evil, but were the German people evil as a whole? I don’t think so. They were poor and humiliated after the Great War and the harsh punishments levied against them by the victors. Whether by fear, religious fervor, or intellectual laziness, they put their support behind someone who would fight to restore their dominance, and who had given them an enemy to blame their misfortunes on and to ideologically despise. Several enemies, actually; the pursuit of whom could have given Hitler and the German war machine indefinite support, had he not bitten off a bigger bite than he could chew. It is in this way that crowds support evil leaders.

(It is also by spreading the culpability of the evil acts thinly among the perpetrators – Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obeying authority are illuminating.)

If we forget how Hitler came to lead good, reasonable people, if the only lesson we learn from that terrible chapter of our history is “don’t be evil, and don’t be a Hitler,” then we do the victims of the Holocaust a terrible disservice. The next World War may be avoided, saving millions of lives, if we defeat the next Hitler at the ballot box instead of the battle field.

Kraft was right to distinguish both National Socialism and radical Islam from liberalism. Neither aims to empower the citizens of a nation. And I’m sure it is confusing to conservatives when liberals, who are the true ideological adversaries of Islamic fundamentalists, are reluctant to wage war against the enemy. I’m sure it’s vexing that a group that is generally ambivalent about belief in God at all feels morally compelled to ask what Jesus would do when our enemy strikes our cheek. I’m sure conservatives feel betrayed when liberals won’t, apparently, put their lives on the line for their own ideology, and leave that to small-government conservatives. I can’t speak for all liberals, but I won’t support a war that my side started. I won’t be convinced that it is necessary to start a fight in order to avoid a bigger fight later. I won’t be scared of being dominated by a Hitler or a bin Laden, because I am a strong, empowered, liberal American. I won’t kiss anybody’s boots, so why expect me to kiss Bush’s?

Kraft moves on to scare tactics about how Muslim fundamentalists will, if we let them, control the oil and bring the energy-thirsty West to its knees. Aside from the fact that this is morally neither here nor there, it’s also not true. Oil will be gone in a hundred years anyway - that’s why I vote for conservationalist legislators. The logic is not complicated.

Kraft says we can defeat Jihadists now or wait until they are powerful, when we will defeat them while suffering many more losses, or lose to them. I see it differently. We can fight a mysterious ideological enemy, surrendering our tax dollars and human rights to the effort, to a war that’s over when the US government says it is. We will make more enemies than we destroy. We will have more Hadithas than war crime trials. We will catch more Jose Padillas, but we will not catch all those we create.

Or we can recognize the moral responsibility that comes with being the far-and-away world superpower, and start being the good guys again. We can stand for life and justice even when it’s risky. We can recognize torture as an abomination. We can help struggling nations who don’t have the natural resources to pay for our help. We can rebuild alliances with our historical friends who will stand with us against true tyranny. We can turn the other cheek, even when our enemies won’t.

Toro!

I saw Raging Bull for the first time last night and it got me thinking about what I like about movies and why. So this is a post about movies, and has spoiler content for that movie, Lawrence of Arabia, Braveheart, Barry Lyndon, Boogie Nights, and Ghost World.

My last post was about ways in which I’m a “regular guy,” absent extreme personality quirks, and how I think most people really are, too. (I guess that would have to be the case in order to achieve regularity.) I really like movies whose characters are regular in somewhat the same way.

My favorite protagonists (and antagonists, for that matter) are characters you could call complex because they do good and bad things. I just call them regular. I found Lawrence of Arabia way more intriguing than Braveheart (and this is not out of old-guy stubbornness; I saw Braveheart first). William Wallace killed the guy who slit his wife’s throat because the guy didn’t get a chance to prima noctis her, then Wallace got drawn and quartered for defending his homeland. Very heroic. Lawrence cruelly slaughtered a bunch of outmanned Turks in a war of nebulous cause, then spent a while thinking about it and riding his motorcycle too fast. Not heroic, but it makes for thought-provoking cinema.

As I said in my last post, basically nobody I know can be summed up in a word. (And if any can, it certainly wouldn’t be hero.) I like people like that – they have things they do well, and things they don’t; they are totally clutch at times, and they fall short at times. I’m like that. I want more movies about that kind of dude. If I were forced, at gunpoint, to pick a favorite movie of all time, or get my brains blown out my ear, it would be Barry Lyndon. It’s the only story of a jealous, immature, philandering, deserting social climber whom the audience really grows to love; and his stepson, who shoots him in the leg, whom the audience can’t really despise.

So it is with that mindset that I popped my girlfriend’s copy of Raging Bull into the VCR (that quaint old device – we actually had to rewind it first). It is a biographical story of the boxer Jake La Motta, who is beautifully played by Robert De Niro. Acting-wise, De Niro is outdone only by Joe Pesci, who plays Jake’s brother, Joey. These parts went a long way in making these two men famous. All the supporting cast is solid. The editing is miraculous – I think the best moment in the movie is late, when the estranged/divorced (I forget) Jake begs his ex-/wife, Vickie, to let him in the house so he can get his championship belt and (stupidly) hammer out the gemstones and pawn them. She finally assents, and as Jake hammers the belt against the counter some plates fall off a nearby shelf. Jake begins yelling at Vickie, but the scene cuts in the middle of his first sentence.

The reason I think this scene is so great is that it is an admittance to the audience that the movie has featured enough spousal abuse already, and that since virtually every filmed interaction between Jake and Vickie to that point has involved direct or indirect wife domination, the editors can finally let the audience fill in the blank. So my problem with Raging Bull is that Jake La Motta is portrayed as such an awful human being that I can’t sympathize with him. The tiny exception is the scene in the cell when he yells WHY? and beats his head and fists against the wall, but it’s the kind of sympathy you have for anybody crying out in pain and frustration. Within screen minutes, he’s out on the streets being a complete waste again. The end of the movie is a shot of him rehearsing for a little presentation in some club (maybe his own, called Jake La Motta’s, illustrating his unparalleled ego-centrism, but maybe somewhere else; I’d need to watch it again) in front of a dressing room mirror. Boogie Nights ended the same way; it’s an obvious homage. I loved Boogie Nights, because it made me adore an unintelligent, drug addicted porn star. I felt no such adoration for Jake. I don’t really think Scorsese intended for me to adore him. But I don’t really like to get into movie makers’ intentions while reviewing – I like to examine the results. And the result of Raging Bull is a movie that is hard to watch, to the point where I’d have a hard time recommending it, because I simply can’t sympathize with Jake. Good, in that it inspired me to write about it, I guess, but not good to watch.

I do really like a movie called Ghost World. I found it quirky and atmospheric. But I recommended it to a friend of mine who didn’t like it much because he felt Thora Birch’s character was childish and hurtful to Steve Buscemi’s. At the time I criticized his criticism – I didn’t like the movie because of what a wonderful person the protagonist was; I liked the picture as a whole. And although we still differ on our opinions of Ghost World, I can now see his point of view a little better, in that I have seen a movie that was virtually ruined solely by my dislike of the protagonist.

A Wand'ring Minstrel I

Are you right-brained or left-brained? I have no idea which half of my brain dominates. It is said that people whose left hemisphere dominates are good logical thinkers who excel at math and engineering and always know which way is north. Right-brainers are more creative and intuitive (as opposed to puzzle-solving lefties) and are good at picking up subtle meanings of movies. One can take tests for this kind of thing (there are plenty online, like similarminds.com) but mine usually come out pretty even. So it may be that I am straight down the middle and I'm simply the wrong person to be blogging about this topic. But it may also be that anybody who believes that one side of his brain is stronger than the other and that defines his personality is completely full of shit. Let's go with that assumption.

So I could be left-brained. The sides of the body are putatively controlled by opposite sides of the brain. I'm right-handed, and -footed (I assume; I kick a soccer ball with my right foot). Everything on my right side is slightly bigger than its counterpart on my left (and yes, I mean everything). On standardized tests I do a bit better on math parts than writing or language parts. I think my percentile rankings are about the same though - a nation of left-brainers? I'm a scientist by profession. I've spent about twelve hours of my life trying to figure out a simple answer to Fermat's Enigma.

But I could be right-brained. I'm a musician. I'm even one of the lazy ones who don't really read music, so don't pull any of that music is totally mathematical tripe. Okay, you can pull it a little; I know when I'm in 4/4 or 3/4. But I've failed one class in my life - freshman algebra. I lose my sense of direction after making anything other than a ninety-degree turn, or going inside any kind of a building. I like to read, and I prefer fiction. The only reason I do better in math on tests is that I don't read quickly, and I haven't heard of ADD being associated with either form of brainededness. I make up words like "brainededness."

So I can't claim that either half of my brain stands out. I'm also SO neither Type A nor B. Type A people are social and extroverted, while B Types are reclusive and quiet. They also have names like Carl, I suppose. I know almost nobody who is strongly either. When I'm out with friends I like to talk and hang out; then I like to go home and be by myself. What - doesn't everybody?

I'm simply okay at reading maps - not great, not bad. I can get around with oral directions and landmarks, too. I can do more than one thing at a time if I have to, but I prefer to focus on a task. I win about half the time at Scrabble. I can fix things that go wrong with my car if they've gone wrong before. I excelled at science in school, but more by memorizing facts than learning concepts. I like learning things by being told, but I can learn them from a book, too. People I've seen before tend to look familiar later, but by no means do I "never forget a face." Half my friends are better at math than I am. I have probably written twenty-five songs in my life, but started about five hundred. I know pi to six digits and e to eleven, but I can't subtract multiple-digit numbers without actually crossing out the next higher-order digit and adding ten to the one I'm on (when necessary - you know how to subtract). I nearly failed spelling in fifth grade and now I only use spell-check as a backup.

So I appear to be one of the most human attribute-neutral people on the planet. I'm not even medically underweight anymore. Am I a freak of normalcy?

Would it be reaching too far for me to rail against these human categories, like I just did against astronomical ones? Again, I think it depends on whether I am truly one of the most middle-of-the-road people out there. From what I know of the people close to me, I think there are more like me, but since I'm sure my readers are mostly people who are close to me, please feel free to correct me. And to all 'dlog readers - let me have it; don't spare my feelings. Am I so like everyone else it's weird?

Careful With That Label Gun

There is a ridiculous song that goes "You say tomato, I say tomato . . . let's call the whole thing off." The conflict to be called off is difficult to convey in print without spelling things phonetically, which I'm not into. Add a comment if you haven't heard it and I will explain it in further detail; I simply don't have enough time right now.

Many human debates over standards are best called off. I think it is a human urge to define and categorize. We also gravitate towards codes of conduct, belief systems, and emergency protocols. I think we depend on definitions and broad categories to communicate efficiently. I think the rules we follow are in part a natural consequence of our thirst for justice, that worthiest of thirsts.

But in many cases we develop standards to our own detriment.

Standards tend to over-simplify complicated issues. The International Astronomical Union met yesterday to debate the classification of Pluto. There are several differences between Pluto and all the nearer eight planets. Pluto's plane of orbit makes a 17.1° angle with Earth's (no other planet's is more than about 7°), and Pluto is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune for a small part of its orbit (the other planets remain in consistent Sun-distance ranks). Pluto's surface is icy (all others' are rocky or gaseous). Pluto was discovered in 1930, 84 years after Neptune; many assert that American astronomers wanted to have discovered a planet, and that Pluto's distinction as such was an unwarranted prestige-grab. Many astronomers also assert that Pluto is one of many icy objects within the Kuiper Belt, and to include it as a planet requires the inclusion of tens of more such objects. There is also some ambiguity about Pluto's moon, Charon. The center of mass of Pluto and Charon is actually between the two, not inside Pluto, opening up some debate as to who's the planet and who's the moon, if each is either.

There are many reasons to keep Pluto a planet. It orbits the Sun, it is round by its own gravity (an easy, non-arbitrary way to distinguish it from an asteroid), and it is an indispensable member of any number of similar acronyms involving My Very Excellent Mother and her various activities.

But why all the hubbub surrounding the definition of planet, and whether Pluto fits it? Can't all the great minds in astronomy today do something more worthwhile? (Dr. Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California-Berkeley reportedly (by The New York Times) agrees.)

What is the benefit of having a logical, consistent, and hopefully non-arbitrary definition of planet, including Pluto or not? That way we would have a familiar, easy word, the use of which would concisely refer to some objects in space. When scientists hypothesize about the existence of planets around other stars, they could know for sure a set of conditions for a hypothetical object they are all talking about by using that simple word.

What are the drawbacks? We now have a word, the use of which demands the knowledge of its definition (but will not always be accompanied by it, resulting in confusion, inaccuracy, and myth), which, if correctly understood, will still require further clarification. Rocky? Gaseous? Mooned? Ringed? Inhabited? Discovered? Retrogradational? The word, whether its definition is modified to include Pluto or not, cannot encapsulate the complexity of the objects it represents, so its use conveys little information and will inevitably draw controversy when applied meaningfully.

I think the cons outweigh the pros, especially considering the near-certainty of the IAU having to change the number of planets in the solar system if the definition is rigorized.

But I don't think the term planet needs to be abandoned. We have a vague notion of what it means, and I think that is enough. The aspiring astronomer, who will talk meaningfully about heavenly bodies, must learn many more terms and concepts anyway - one word that refers to both Mars and Jupiter is going to require a whole slew of adjectives to be scientifically interesting. So I propose that we use planet to introduce a conversation about the heavens, which may include any number of truths and falsehoods, and relax about old Pluto.

Standards don't just over-simplify; they also limit real-world options. Illegal immigration from Mexico was a hot-button issue in US politics earlier this year. In December 2005 House conservatives passed House Resolution 4437, which called for various anti-immigration tools such as cameras and walls to be put into use along the USA-Mexico border. It also would have made illegal residency a felony. A more moderate anti-immigration bill passed in the US Senate the following spring.

Illegal immigration is not a party-line issue in the US. Some conservative people oppose it because of cultural, security, and job-stealing issues; some support it for cheap and willing labor's economic benefits. Liberal Americans who oppose it usually do so over jobs, over security, or out of fear of human rights abuses by US employers. Those who support it either agree with more conservative Americans that it helps our economy or sympathize with the foreign poor (or both). But a common thread is that people tend to want to standardize the rules over immigration, whether they want the rules to be stricter or more lenient.

As I said above, I think the primary impetus behind standardization is justice. Americans, nobly, want to live by impartial, fair laws. We want, in theory, everyone to be treated the same. Anyone who tries to enter our country illegally, we think, should face the same risks and rewards. I believe that is why many people are frustrated with America's recent immigration policies. Twenty years ago the Reagan administration granted widespread amnesty to undocumented residents while strengthening anti-immigrant regulations of businesses. In 1980 amnesty was awarded to Vietnam refugees; in 1997, to Nicaraguans and Cubans. American immigration policy is not unfairly categorized as anti-policy: we put up a half-hearted (yet ever-strengthening) effort to keep out most would-be immigrants, then every several years we give everybody who has managed to evade the law for a while a free ticket. It drives us nuts, but every effort to standardize the procedure is reviled by such a portion of American voters as to make it politically unfeasable.

I believe illegal immigration is another issue where we excessively standardize at our own peril. By keeping our laws fairly strict but enforcing them modestly, our government retains a flexibility for adjusting the flow of immigrants and a selectivity in the ones it rejects (i.e., the government can pick and choose where to crack down on immigration and which offenders to prosecute). Immigrants benefit by being given a chance to prosper here, a chance which is improved by good behavior - in this way, American citizens benefit by the influx of more law-fearing immigrants. I won't debate the economic pros and cons of immigration here, except to say that the government's enforcement flexibility also gives it yet another economic lever to pull or push, depending on whether the pundits agree we have too much or too little immigration.

Another way in which the powers that be limit choices is the judicial principle of stare decisis, or the precendent system of deciding cases. This came up quite a bit when the Senate was trying to figure out how rabid a pro-lifer Samuel Alito would prove to be. I'm not about to try to argue Constitutional law; I will say that I think previous cases should be used as precedents with great caution. It is a very complicated world, and each case has its own ins and outs.

Finally, foolish people tend to try to standardize concepts that are archaic, that are part of the luggage of human history, which we carry along with us through the generations not out of logical choice but for comfort and sentimentality. The recent attempts by some politicians to define marriage as a pact that may only exist between one man and one woman (and possibly God) would have seemed ridiculously redundant a few centuries, or even decades, ago. But humanity, praise be to the very same God just mentioned, is growing up, and in need of some bigger marriage-pants. In a perfect world I would advocate dropping the entire issue and letting the concept of marriage grow organically with those free individuals who wish to dabble in it. Since that appears to be politically (and possibly conceptually) impossible, I suggest we leave marriage entirely to the church, where they don't give a damn what I think, and that we make fair legislation over civil unions, which can be made regardless of gender. By removing all legal meaning to marriage and enacting equitable and just civil union rules, I believe the government will have done its job and left the church to do its. All at the expense of having one more little category for everybody to study. Thus a lovable old concept is salvaged for those who are into it, and the rest of the world moves on, to debate something worthwhile.

Which takes me back to planets. The word derives from the ancient Greek word for to wander; it was given to the "stars" which actually move about in the skies (with respect to the majority of stars, which remain fixed). If we just have to have a cold, hard definition for planet, why not go back to its original? A wandering speck in the skies. A definition that's not very scientific, but easy to remember, and with any luck, one that will inspire a little stargazing. That would be so much more productive than debating gay marriage.

I got some facts from The New York Times, Space.com, http://mips.as.arizona.edu/~stansber/Planet.html, http://www.govtrack.us/, and http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/ for this entry.

Smart Crowds and Dumb

Blogger-dot-com uses a flagging system, whereby blog readers report offensive material for censorship. I have no idea what is supposed to qualify; I assume it's primarily intended for illegal postings like copyright infringements and child pornography. But while I was reading about it they (the website authorities) turned me on to a concept: the Wisdom of Crowds. There's a recent book about it by James Surowiecki called, of all things, The Wisdom of Crowds, of which I have only read an excerpt. But Wikipedia sums it up, and if you faithful 'dlog readers know anything it's that you can trust information that is posted on the World Wide Web. On the Wikipedia page about the Wisdom of Crowds it is pointed out that the term is a counterpoint to the Madness of Crowds, described at length in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay in 1852.

Are crowds wise or mad? I think feedback is a key factor. According to Wikipedia, one of Surowiecki's necessary conditions for crowds to display wisdom is that one crowd member's opinions don't affect anyone else's, nor are they affected by others'. If this is the case, the common wisdom of the people is likely to outweigh the ignorance of the individual. I read an example where townspeople tried to guess the weight of a cow. I imagine this is pretty much the ideal scenario for crowd wisdom. Nobody talks to each other about it (I assume there is a prize at stake); everyone just takes a stab. It would be like everyone in town throwing a dart at a dartboard; the average throw would quite probably be exactly in the bull's-eye (given enough contestants). Or like that game where you try to guess how many jelly beans there are in the jar. Ask 5,000 adults and average their guesses - that will tell you.

But what about when people's opinions do affect one another's? Mackay describes the craze over tulips in Europe in the 1600s. It is regarded as an early description of an economic bubble, and it is just what happens when feedback runs rampant in crowd behavior. I am a tulip importer (really!) and I understand that tulips are all the rage in Holland's upper class. The Turks I buy them from don't speak the language, so they don't know to raise the price, so it's my opportunity to make a killing. I can still buy them from the Turks at 20 florins a bushel, but my selling price goes from 30 florins to 100. People will pay this - these are the Air Jordans of 1642 (this is of course a feedback loop in itself - Lord and Lady Alabaster Buntcake have a beautiful tulip garden - we'll follow suit or be a laughingstock at the autumn colly-wad-hollow regalia! Lord and Lady Filigree DuPont follow suit, paying a bit more, who of course are not to outdo the Viscount of Hamslice and his ample-bosomed mistress, who will gladly pay double what those charlatans can afford. People's opinions do, of course, affect one another's).

So anyway, almost perversely, from a Smithian supply and demand sort of point of view, people start buying the crap out of tulips. The higher the price, the more buyers. This is of course partially because tulips are all the rage, and the regalia is in three weeks. But most of the buyers are now speculators: they have seen the dramatic rise in tulip price over the last few weeks, and they want a piece of the action. They're looking to unload the tulips at an inflated price and make a fast buck. Danger! Add to this the fact that the Turks have figured out something's up by my ten-fold increase in requests, plus the cropping up of Tulip Time and Tulips On Your Face, the new chains that are driving me out of business by buying ten times my volume at half the price, plus the King of Holland suddenly whipping the citizenry into a fervor over how Turks treat their prisoners and swearing that the imminent war is not over the tulips, and the next thing you know the Turks raise the price. Tulipmania is out of control.

This bubble bursts when people realize you can't eat tulips (for much nutritional value, anyway), when they are no longer the rage, or for whatever reason people start to speculate that it's time to jump ship. The last people to sell before the bubble bursts will be the most fortunate. But it will invariably be the case that people realize the stupid flowers are way overvalued, and a large bunch of folks will be left holding the bag. The Tulip Bag, which cost them 50,000 florins, and for which they now can't get 500. They're just flowers, after all. They pretty much grow on trees. Stems, anyway.

What would have happened without feedback? Let's remove the causes. Each seller now has no idea how much people would pay for flowers, so he charges what it cost him to pick the things, plus enough for him to pay the mortgage and buy the cow. Making less would make necessary a new line of work. Making more would, I think, require some idea that people will pay more. (Of course this is the case. I'm not saying it's possible for feedback not to exist in an economy; I'm just trying to describe this absurd scenario.) Buyers no longer have human envy and competitiveness, which cause fashion rages, so they will only buy tulips if they really want a tulip. There is no record-keeping of prices, so no speculation about future prices, so no investors buy tulips who really just want money. It's almost as though we're playing a game at the county fair and the prettiest tulip in the world is at stake. Everybody has to guess the price, and whoever comes closest wins the tulip. Nobody says anything to anybody else; we all just quietly pray that we know the value of a florin, and the value of a flower.

Conversely, what if the jelly bean game were to be infected by feedback? What if, instead of looking at the jar and trying to do some math, we could only look at our immediate neighbors' guesses at how many jelly beans were in the jar? We might well start off with reasonable guesses based on regular-sized jelly beans and jars. Guesses would range in the low hundreds. But this is a potentially volatile system; a small perturbation could send it spinning off to God-knows-where. What if one guy discovers the jelly bean keeper has stock in the industrial-sized jar market? Estimations could go to tens of thousands of jelly beans. What if one guy takes the The Price Is Right route and guesses one bean, hoping everybody else overbids? His neighbors will call him out and wager 15 beans or so, and now just the opposite is going on, and the bean number is driven down. Madness ensues, all because of feedback. How Nature Works by Per Bak is a good related read.

So two questions are a) which scenario, if either, dominates in actual human crowds; and b) what are the consequences of madness? There might be advantages. Our economy is broad and complicated and not everybody is a farmer or some other worker who provides some necessity. And as long as everybody is working and living, isn't that all that matters? (Of course, it isn't the case.) But everybody has different ideas about what the current housing bubble is going to do, and how bad the pop will be, and was it possibly created intentionally by the Federal Reserve to keep us out of recession, &c. I'm personally fascinated by this kind of stuff, and if you're not, you're probably not reading this post to this point, so I imagine you are, too. I plan on addressing these questions, with my unending cavalcade of expertise, in future posts.

Notes Along the Same Lines As Discussed Previously, in Total Disregard for Promises Made (Apologies); or, Obelisk and Brisket Taco

I would feel remiss in my duties if I left this now-three-part post where I left it at the end of Part the Second. What duties? Good question. For I am a Blogger, and of course have not taken any kind of journalistic hippocratic oath to tell you guys the truth. Suffice it to say that I am trying my best to make this an accurate retelling of what goes on in some jackass's head.

I was talking with a co-worker a few months ago; she claims her mother consistently wins at slot machines in Vegas. Her mother is Catholic and tends to believe there is powerful, mysterious stuff going on all around us (i.e., she believes just the opposite of what I've been trying to argue over the last two posts).

I think my coworker said her mother wins so much at slot machines that it affects her taxes. So I am led to believe that either she has undergone a period of incredible luck, or that something mystical is going on in her life that causes her to do well at slots. There is no reason to discount the former; indeed, it would be extremely difficult to disprove. Were I about to be made privy to the secrets of the universe and all of reality, and a betting man, I would put my money on that explanation. But let's not, for the sake of argument and an interesting (also fair and balanced) blog entry, discount the second possibility.

Those who have played slot machines will acknowledge some protocol for choosing which machine to play. More pattern-seeking players might well choose one that a previous player had good or bad luck at, believing, respectively, that the machine is hot or due. Such players, if more spatially inclined than temporally, might choose a machine close to/far from another winning/losing machine. Superstitious players may of course have any number of personal preferences, such as machines at the end of an aisle, machines painted a certain color, machines near a duck or rabbit of some sort, &c. Players who are neither of the above may only be concerned with proximity to bathrooms, malodorous neighbors, air conditioning vents, &c. Then you have people like me, who so manically disbelieve in supernatural influence that we try to have an anti-protocol.

I get my chips, or nickels, or thing resembling a credit card, or whatever it is I am to put into the machines, and I basically go directly to whichever machine I see first. I try to keep my mind completely clear of anything while this happens, because I staunchly believe there's nothing I can perceive in my surroundings to improve my chances. Of course, I don't try too hard to clear my head, because that itself is difficult, and my belief is that any effort expended trying to select a machine is wasted effort. I wasn't always this way. As a boy at a Sunday school function (ah, church, where so much superstitious behavior is fostered) I selected the cupcake with a jellybean inside out of probably 200, and was crowned king of that night's Christmas-trees-burning festivities. My thought process in selecting the cupcake was meaningfully different from my current slot machine selecting protocol.

Mind you, since that fateful cupcake selection I've become thoroughly convinced that it was just luck. Again, this is just to sum up my entire volume of thought on fate versus luck. So permit me to investigate. . . .

So back in the day I put a lot of thought into games of chance. It's hard to describe what would go through my head; suffice it to say that I would wait until I had developed a feeling that the selection I was about to make was the correct one. One of these cupcakes is it. (Scan the pile.) No - too near the edge. No - icing too fluffy (a ruse, no doubt). No - awkwardly scrunched paper holder-thing. Ah, the one, right there in the middle.

How can I explain further, except to say that there was a pause, a time for deliberation, before my selection? I certainly don't have enough data to support any kind of claim, but I can say, as your faithful Blogger, that as far as games of chance go, I am not as lucky as I used to be. I have never won or broken even at slot machines (now I prefer blackjack, on the rare occasion that I do gamble). When I was younger and more superstitious, I at least won sometimes. And now my co-worker tells me her mother believes in crazy phenomena, psychic energy, omens, or somesuch (I need to talk to her) and she banks so hard the IRS is watching.

The next time I play slots I will take a moment to see if my crusty old brain is not so logic-withered that I am numb to any feelings. I will, of course, report any findings.

What Was I Saying?

Some additional thoughts along the lines of my previous post, Everybody Tuck Your Pants Into Your Socks:

I'm afraid of flying. Not cripplingly so; I have boarded many planes throughout my phobia's duration, but they do horrify me at a gut level. I understand the chances are so remote it's ridiculous, but the extent of the terror I would feel in plummeting from the sky towards my crushing death, and my inability to stop thinking about it on the plane and before the flight (starting when I buy the ticket), compete with my confidence that the chances are infinitessimal. I am the only person I know who, when asked whether I would rather die in a plane wreck or be eaten by a shark, has to think about it.

I can't sleep on flights, no matter how long (I think my longest has been nine hours) - this is for two reasons: that I rarely fall asleep in chairs at all, and that my heart races every time the pilot so much as tilts the plane a degree. I hate more than anything slowing down when we're not yet near our destination. I intellectually know the plane must maintain speed to stay aloft, yet after not accelerating for two hours or so you lose track of the fact that you're moving at 500 miles per hour, so slowing down makes me anticipate the plane going into a nosedive. I also just have no idea why a plane needs to slow down at all, other than to land; I imagine it's in order to barely escape clipping another plane and sending everybody, of course, to a screaming death. Maybe if I were told some other reasons I could undergo some serious self-improvement.

But so anyway, what was I saying? The lesson I learned from the trials and tribulations of Grimey and Salieri help me to get on the plane. Spineless maggot that I am, I admit I do pray a little before flights, but they're always of the okay God, if you can hear me, I'm ready to come home if it's time, but I sincerely hope it's not time kind of thing, as opposed to the get me out of this and I'll go to church and not fall asleep kind of thing. But exposing my last post as utter hypocrasy nonetheless.

But what helps at least as much as praying is my confidence that God will not, in fact, interfere with the flight. I am happier to roll the dice than to make any kind of bargains with God or Fate or anybody. I feel the latter would be much more risky. I would have to be righteous, instead of just statistically non-freakish. So I imagine that it is just better to believe the only powers in play are the natural, objective, physical laws of the universe. I don't imagine there really are mystical things afoot in the world, because before a trip to Europe in 2000-01 I saw the mother of all omens.

I can't seem to write a post without talking about football. It's August, after all. But on December 29th, 2000, I watched the Texas Longhorns play the Oregon Ducks in the Holiday Bowl. My trans-Atlantic flight was to leave the next day, and those are particularly scary, for the prospect of drowning in a saltwater-filled airplane is even scarier than exploding against a mountain (and, let's face it, far less romantic). So my mind was full of crazy things, including the thought, it's okay - the chances of the plane crashing are lower than those of the 'Horns running back a kickoff for a touchdown. Much lower, in fact, but both seemed impossibly slim, for I was well aware that the Longhorns had not run back a kickoff for a touchdown since about 1978. I think that was the longest active streak in college football at the time. Within about thirty minutes I was on the verge of soiling myself. Victor Ike crashed into the endzone.

Of course it was because I had that thought that I was worried; crazy streaks come to their ends all the time. But my having envisioned it, in all its long-shottedness, made me seriously reconsider getting on the plane. But I did get on, partially under the conviction that my not getting on would make my vengeful God even vengefuller: John, you're such a weinerface that you actually let your futile mind think you could predict the future? You were going to have a great time in Europe, but now, next time you do get on a plane, I'll teach you to practice divination. . . .

But I ramble; here's my point: if ever there were a time for an actual omen to come and actually foretell the actual future, with such clarity as for me to actually act on it, it would have been then. But what I have come to believe is that stuff just happens on Earth, and if you look too much for patterns and warnings, you will find them. If you start believing there is a supernatural force that affects your life based on what you do (or based on whatever), you can convince yourself it's going on. But it has been my experience that this just isn't the case. Mind-blowing, I know. Next post will be more erotic, I promise. Dick, pussy, you name it.