The poison of perceived objectivity

The last time we discussed the tendency of polarization in our society. I will try to exemplify this by the Swedish election now.

In Sweden we, like much of the rest of the world, have parties that are generally agreed to have positions along a left-right axis.



The left-right scale is widely accepted and most politicians use it for implicit or explicit reference when they communicate policy. If you are not on the left-right scale, which none of the new "parties" are, you are not considered to be very serious. And when you think about it; how on earth would the debates look like on TV if the politicians were not placed on the panel accordingly to their political positions? Did you ever see a round table on a political debate? The viewers would for sure revolt such a complicated political structure. The political left-right establishment is also helped by this as they gain high ground in any debate just by living on the "serious" left-right scale. The most effective way for a new "party" to escape "strangeness" seems to be to paint its political symbol with either "redish" (FI) or "blueish" (SD). This is apparently almost considered to be serious enough by most, although it doesn't help the Pirate Party who in the pirate spirit has to paint its symbol black, forever preventing any kind of seriousness to the party.
One strength of the left-right system is that although people may question the relative position of every party to a certain degree, once it is established you can scientifically tell how different the parties are. We only have one scale, and although no one knows or accurately can define the left-right axis, it is presumably linear. Linearity helps us understand how different parties are. As an example: M is much more different to S than C because they are further apart on the scale. This makes social clustering a simple task as it doesn't require much nasty own thought.

There have been suggestions for an updated political landscape by adding at least another dimension. Like here: Political compass. In short they claim that the left-right scale may be expanded into something like this.



We hence added a dimension to the picture and can now place parties both by traditional social scale, as well as an economical scale. The problem comes when I now ask which of the parties S, FP and SD that are closest. The problem is now that we have set up set up a two dimensional "orthogonal" basis set. Orthogonality roughly means that no matter how you try to describe X with a portion of Y, you will fail if they are orthogonal. Apples and Pears are sort of orthogonal since they are both fruits but no matter how hard you try you will never be able to objectively describe one with the other.

Now we freak. By introducing this scale we have made the art of politics subjective. And since we (wrongfully but never the less) consider everything subjective (like "flum") with great suspicion we have created chaos. Imagine if the political commentators are caught being "subjective" in their analysis. And what about the social clustering? How on earth do we know if we "should" cluster more with SD or S if we are FP? Imagine the confusion of the anarchistic kids who enjoy throwing rocks at the racists if they cannot objectively "know" if they are closer to V or SD? In short, by introducing this new model of politics, we have destroyed the collective subjective reality of political ideas which we earlier could use as a basis for objective rational analysis, since it was not objective but at least collectively subjective. It may be possible to build a new collective subjective reality in time, but it would take much time and effort. Why did we frek? For the same reasons that we had issues with morals the last time: subjective reality needs to be collective in order to make objective analysis, and by introducing an arbitrary orthogonality to ideas it is up to everyone to come up with an approximation of how to translate apples into pears. As long as we had a totally flawed model like the left-right model, it is at least collectively subjective, and possible to do objective analysis on.

So let's stick with the left-right scale for now, so that we don't rock the boat too much.

Why Objetivity-Subjectity is poison to society

Objectivity and Subjectivity are fundamental inventions of how we perceive reality. Most people believe that there is an objective reality which we perceive subjectively. Not all people believe that there is an objective reality, but since we still behave like there is one this doesn't matter (The fact that you are making an effort to walk around a parked car instead of walking right through it is seen as evidence that you strongly believe it is "really" there objectively"). The popular view from this is that "things" are either subjective or objective, where the Eiffel Tower is clearly objective, while thoughs, feelings and morals are subjective, and this is loosely what Ethical subjectivism claims.

If I were a paid philosopher I would be troubled by this, as it means that my morals are just as good as any persons. And if that is really the case (if a matter is totally subjective, how do we know who is "good" and should get paid) I would be worried. I will go back to what could happen here in a moment but first lets review two professions who had this issue and were in trouble because they couldn't produce any "good" results:

The physicists (me, and what I do) who were having calculational issues with interacting electrons and decided to make a model where they didn't interact (sort of) to make things easier for them. Job saved!
The economists who were having calculational issues with people being unpredictable and hence decided to make a model where they didn't interact (they were greedy and only wanted to maximise their own wealth) and were not limited by non-local phenomena (they knew everything and there were not any uncertainty). Job saved!

In the first case the result is that we can calculate more electrons.
In the second case we got a lot of new economic models.

The difference between the examples are that while Physicists are always in danger of getting bad results, we know we did something wrong when we compare with reality. In no way will our models bullshit the real electrons to behave differently. Economics is a social science (my claim, since it involves people) where perception of reality is actually able to change reality. If people are taught in business schools that reasonable people are maximising their own wealth, it will soon be impossible to know whether this was the case to begin with or not. If you don't apply what you learned in school; why go there?

So we haven't proved anything, but we have seen.
If things are complicated: simplify
If you are simplifying perception of reality in physics, reality will not change. We know for sure
If you are simplifying perception of reality in social sciences, reality may or may not change. We don't know for sure.
Philosophy is a social science

Now as going back to philosophy there was a perspective called moral subjectivism which, if "true" (note that "true" here would just mean "considered to be true by most people") would erase every persons high ground in fashion, politics (at least the moral part of it), law, or any other man made subject. Our culture would be similar to that of the lions, plus mathematics and out knowledge of natural science. We (Philosophers) really needed to be able to reject moral subjectivism to stay in business.

Fortunately some philosophers were up for the challenge.
More about this can be found here:


In short it says that although for example headache is a subjective reality, there are plenty of ways to make it an objective science. Most drug companies are hence building valid objective knowledge and reality on a platform of subjective knowledge and reality. The analogy from a drug developer to an art critic should be straight forward. The analogy to morals should be similarly straight forward.

This is not true. The reason it is not true is this:
Headache is a subjective reality but since people share over 99.9 % of their genes; this subjective becomes a "collective subjective" reality. With this I mean that people respond subjectively but similarly to pain. And since they do; collective subjectivity is a close approximation to objectivity. But you cannot give a pill to a Dolphin, as he is not defined as part of your collective.

Here comes the take home message. Ethical subjectivity can only be eliminated when people think or function alike. This often works as we like and dislike many things collectively, giving rise to ethics. But many people claim subjective knowledge to be objective mainly by experience. This is in not guaranteed by philosophy without a proper collective platform. Even though our genes are 99.9% the same: our thoughts are not. Our collective subjectivity probably emerged as a consequence of evolution (People less prone to murder was on average more likely to reproduce). But there is no collective subjectivity in matters of whether or not Israels blockade on Gaza is moral (correction, there are plenty of collective subjectivities but each fraction has its own, all of them stating moral superiority). The question of the whether the blockade is moral can hence only be answered with "mu", which is Robert Pirsigs way of answering neither Yes or No but that the question is Ill defined.

(Edit: this came to me while out running later)
This matters because it removes focus on the answer (since it is neither yes or no but "stupid question") of the polarizing question and shifts it to the question itself. And when focus is put on the question we see that there is much more room for debate. We can for example discuss what morality means in this context to us and explore similarities and differences. Now comes the climax: we find that what was polarizing with the question was NOT the question but rather the answer! We are so formed in our thinking about objective reality that we suppose that every question and statement is either Yes/No or True/False regardless of context. The logical (which is a trap) step from there is that anyone disagreeing with me (saying False when I say True) is then as far away from my values as philosophically possible , which will lead to a mental blockade in which no knowledge is generated.

We see this all the time. One example is if you are going to vote left-right, which leads to mental blockade in a debate or at least to competitive argumentation (I do this all the time: if someone is left i pretend to be right just for sports). No truth or knowledge is generated by this unnecessary (illogical) focus on the answer. Now it should be said that most people in these debates are not knowledge seekers more than a soccer mob are really soccer enthusiasts. But accepting focus on polarizing answers only engages the mob to scream and throw bottles. The question of whether the blockade on Gaza is immoral is mu, let's discuss and rephrase the question to see how different our version of collective subjectivity is.

Trapped

Reading Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance makes you question things. Scientists, philosophers and mathematicians (and others) often explore concepts very difficult to imagine or visualize. We can do that because we know that as long as we stay rational and don't disobey logic we will prevail wherever we end up. Most of mathematics is impossible to visualize correctly, although we suspect it is right since we didn't break any logical rules getting there. In the end we can always fall back on rationality and reason.

But rationality and reason are clearly concepts our minds made up. Assuming that would always work is just like a bad movie where a bad guy in prison is of course is going to find a tool to break out. In real life this rarely happens. Would you assume that a moron always will reach the right conclusion just because he claims he used reason? Probably not. But the moron who used his "reason" will probably fail to identify his lack of "reason" rather than to correctly conclude that he is stupid.

If I am also stupid and my reason sucks, I am likely to fail to see this. Because of genetic pride I will rather use my poor reasoning to conclude untrue things than to rightly conclude that I am too stupid to reason.

If this is not the case then reason is objective and only truly applied if one knows how to handle it. But the moron will nevertheless believe he is worthy of this objective tool and use it happily to conclude untrue things. And if we are the moron, we, will never know.

Common people

I got a philosophic boost by listening to Common People by Pulp today. I just love the lyrics where a poor Englishman genuinely makes an effort to show a Greek rich girl of how life as poor is. But she just doesn't get it (She didn't understand, she just smiled and held my hand).

"cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do"

Dancing, drinking and screwing is hence just an inferior substitute to something better. Although they hint that there is something better to do for "un-common" people, they unfortunately don't mention what it is.

Apart from the part which I think is hilarious (the part when he drags her to the store to "pretend you have no money", just to show what "common" is being like. I find it funny that he tries so hard for her to get it), one has to note that Pulp doesn't seem to know what they would do if they weren't "common", but just the things they want to avoid from being "common". The grass seems to be greener on the other side, but what does "un-common" people do that is so attractive? We never learn that in the song, which is unfortunate. Great song in any case, listen to it if you haven't .

Non-linearity

This entry will be the first of a few trying to explain why you should have no more than one emotional argument when trying to make a decision, and that you should spend most of your time figuring out which to pick. This will help you a lot when trying to philosophize over though questions.

I kick this off by the following statement: Humans react to inputs non-linearly. If you believe this you are all set for continuing to the next entry. If not, I'll try to explain why I believe this.

If you are not trained in the field of non-linear processes (which is the case if you for example don't know what a non-linear process is), I'll summarize it in a few lines. When the cause and effect of something (almost anything I guess) doesn't seem to be proportionate, the cause and effect are probably goverened by a non-linear process. Here are some examples:

When you shake a ketchup bottle and for a long time nothing happens; then without any proportion to how much you shake all the ketchup suddenly decides to come out.

When you play on a slot machine and bet the same amount every time. At some time you may win alot of money even though your input was just the same as the time before when you won nothing.

When you fall from 1 meter you land on you feet, from 3 meters you may fall and scratch yourself. From 5 meters you may sprain your foot but from 7 meters you could actually die.

This morning I was late for work and waited for hot water in the bathroom. I turned the heat up and suddely realized the water was so hot that it hurt. If you think about it like this it makes more sense.
Holding your hand in 20 degree water is tolerable
So is doing it at 40 degrees
I sort of hurts at 60 degrees
It is completley untolerable at 80 degrees.
So for some reason the difference is way bigger between 60-80 than from 40-60. We of course know this. I suspect that the reason for this is that the skin receptors start to send impulses to the brain that this hurts at maybe 40 degrees. The brain interprets these impulses non-linearly and will we will experience non-linear pain. I am no neuro scientist so I may be wrong on the mechanisms, it can also be that the receptors send out signals non-linearly based on heat input, but right now we only care that we do experience it this way.

Non-linear processes are difficult to predict. This is because the input has to be determined very well in order to get an accurate estimation of the output. This is partly why weather is so difficult to predict.

When you have to make a decision based on emotions in any way (this is almost allways the case, few decisions are not related to emotions), you will MAKE the desicion based on one argument, but when you think about it you BELIEVE that you make the desision based on careful consideration based on many arguments. This may require some explanation.

When inputs are non-linearly connected to output, like the case when our senses create input for the brain to produce emotions, even similar (but not identical) input from senses will affect our emotions very differently (remember the oven and how seemingly similar temperatures affected our brain very differently). This has two implications:
(1): When our brain has created the emotion based on the input from our senses, it is very difficult to use the output (emotion) to determine the input(you know that putting your hand in hot water hurts like hell, but you can't use that knowledge to derive the temperature)
(2): The probability that two inputs derived from different senses or will affect your emotions with comparable strength is small. To do that the objective facts has to be very very similar to each other AND connect in the same way to different inputs. The emotions however are of the same kind and will sort of add up in your brain and affect your overall well being. It will be difficult to separate your overall emotion into components AND THEN determine the quantity of the input.

This affects you a lot! But more about that next time.

Life is a game

Games are like reality but in a box. This may not be quite obvious but hang on for a while.

How do you define a game? I am not 100% sure but I am pretty sure it has to look something like this:

* It has rules.
* It is limited.

I can't figure out anything that I call a game that doesn't fulfill these criterion. With limited I mean that the rules that I apply to the game are at some point turned on and off. A football game for example has clear rules, but they only apply for 90 minutes (at the time, until the next game). When the game is on, other rules of other games are turned off. With this I mean that there can be games within the timespan of other games, but that only one set of rules apply at the time. While playing football we live in a democracy for example. But on the field the rules of democracy are disabled, and you are not allowed to determine the football game by popular vote. Is democracy a game then? Yes, it has rules and it started many years ago. It is actually also bound to stop sometime, be it due to war or the collapse of the universe. This new exciting type of game is a little different: it is played for an unknown time. The game of democracy is also paused when for example your mother demand that you do the dishes and you enter a new exciting game of family. These rules are dynamical and varies between families.

You may question this with something like this: "Your definition of a game is so broad that I can't figure anything out that isn't a "game"." This is precisely true and it takes me to my next statement; games don't have an antonym. I will help you and propose that the closest we can come to something that is not a game would be called "reality". The thing is that reality is not experienced objectively but by humans, and we live finite lives and follow rules while living our finite lives. Our lives are also small boxes placed in reality. Such rules are not meant to mean "rule of law"; those can clearly be broken. The rules I mean are for example cause and effect and laws of physics, but social laws are also useful when discussing the subject. If I rob a bank, I may or may not go to jail but the action itself affects the way people act towards me, usually due to the applicable social norms and conventions that exists.

So with my definition of games, life is definitely a game. We play it for an unknown but finite lifetime and we play it by rules (except if you are Neo in the Matrix). When we die we leave the playground (although we hopefully affected other people in a positive way, but that is then part of their games and not yours).

If you can believe this I have some ideas of how I can use this and develop some appropriate philosophy, based on how I like to play games. This is what I like in games.

* They are clear enough to understand.
* You can differentiate between success and failure.

Knowing me I realize that both these are an effect of me being very competitive. I hate games i which I don't know how I am doing and who is winning. How do I translate this to how I should live my life? The rules of our life are clearly very messy, and often good things comes with bad and vice versa. This is how I should it.

* I make my own rules, but call them ideals. Then I live by them. This satisfies my desire for clear rules.
* I set up goals. When reaching these goals it is the definition of success. When not, it the definition of failure.

This is surprisingly almost how I live my life. It has its problems, especially I have to experience loads of failures when I don't reach my goals. But in the end it is all of what I appreciate in a good game.

You may object and say that you can't set up your custom made philosophy based on what you like in games because "life is more serious than games". Then you are completely missing the point. Life is a game. But since we live in it we perceive the stakes of the game to be very high. But in principle it is not different from playing Super Mario with only one extra life and no continue. Besides that Mario gets extra lives by lethal mushrooms while we die from them.

Can you derive your philosophy from what you like with games?

With this we can now be very constructive! For example; knowing a persons favorite game may tell much about the persons' philosophy. Examples (Very Quasi scientific at best) :
No favorite game -> Either depressed or at least not much of a philosopher.
Solitaire -> Either a Christian fundamentalist (simplistic enough for you?) or hermit (no opponent to play)
Poker -> Poker professional (Self explanatory)

Why do intellectuals believe in the market?

Economics is the science of how "stuff" is produced and consumed, and by who. This may sound simple until you find out what stuff really means. Stuff includes among other things: Cars, electricity, video games, TV-shows, security, risk, sex, house cleaning, ideas, experience. The interface between producer and consumer is called "the market". This is where people exchange stuff.

Why do we study this? One reason is that we spend all our life on either side of the market. We wake up and go to work, spend eight hours producing stuff (with some small breaks for consuming food). Then we go home to consume the the stuff we are entitled to get since we produced things for other people during the day. We live all our life on either side of the interface that connects producer and consumer. A simple example may look like this:
Wake up (consumed one night on your bed)
Breakfast (consume corn flakes)
Go to work by bus (consume bus ride service)
Work (produce cars for others) (Example not applicable in Sweden anymore)
Go home (bus service again)
Relax and Recharge (Consume TV subscription.)
Eat (consume corn flakes)
Go to bed (consume one night on your bed)

Does it alarm you that your life is one big supermarket in which you work some shifts as a cashier just to be able to buy your food? I don't mean to upset with this but I think it shows why we want to study economics (well maybe not you and I, but some guy). If we understand this process we can use it to develop better public economic policy which means that we will know if we should spend our tax money on schools or bailouts. Important stuff.

The problem is that we will never be able to know this. I usually explain why this is impossible by showing an (empty) beer can with the following statement: "At least 10 people were involved in the brewing of this beer in some unknown country (usually Denmark though, Its' usually a Carlsber)g. In some way they made it because they had some value of my calculations. How did they benefit from my calculations?"
The answer is of course that no one will ever know how this happened. For some reason some guys brewed beer for me because I provided something for them. But they don't even know who I am. It's like magic.

People used to believe that there were two different ways to deal with this complex process. The first one was called communism and was based on that clever people were very able to understand this process and use it to make everyone better off. They came up with a plan for their economy and applied this plan to control what was produced and consumed. After the Berlin wall fell it became obvious that they weren't that good at doing this since eastern Berlin looked like the retarded cousin of western Berlin. This was strong evidence against a planned economy. Most sensible people now consider communism as ineffective and wasteful, although many people are still drawn to its more romantic aspects like fairness and such.

The other way of dealing with this is to say that we are too stupid to understand the market process and should hence leave it alone. The government should not intervene and try to fix the market any more than a moron should try to fix a car engine. This side is called capitalism. From this ideology it is easy to derive policy like Free trade, no taxes, no unions and no minimum wage.

Slow down, you may say. All this things are big policy decisions. How do they derive these again? I'll explain it in steps:
1) assume you have perfect engine.
2) assume a moron is standing next to it.
3) Now ask yourself: Do you want the moron to mess with the engine?
If you are reasonable you say NO and start to support all kind of economic policy that keeps that moron away from the engine.

If you are not an economist you may apply some common sense and say: Should we assume that the engine was perfect just like that? What if it is not? Maybe if it is not even working a moron may be able to make some things better. Economists have thought about this and decided to deal with it like this:

1) In the economy, the engine is made of people.
2) These people are not homogeneous. They are problematic to predict since they are different.
3) Well, assume that they are homogeneous then. At least then I can do some calculations before I go home.
4) This calculation turned out to be a pain. Let's also assume that they are extremely selfish and only want to maximize their OWN happiness, that reduces my calculational pain. (This is actually very similar to what we do in Physics: we assume that the electrons are independent and don't care about each other, then we compensate for this later. We do this because it is painful to calculate anything else.)
5) Wow! If this is true; markets are truly very efficient.
6) If markets are efficient, let them govern themselves. Keep the moron away from the engine.

Now we can conclude three things:
1) Markets are efficient and can be left alone IF our assumptions are right.
2) If the above is true it would be disastrous to let the market break down. We should only intervene if our efficient market is threatened. Banks are crucial to the efficient market since they provide liquidity, they should be bailed out.
3) If the above is true investing in schools may actually ruin the market for private education which is more efficient. No more investing in schools.

Intellectuals like capitalism for the same reason that I like my faulty model that I use to calculate how electrons interact. Because I can pretend that I know the truth and I will get numbers and funny predictions out. They will get numbers and fancy policy out.

Better hope that people are selfish and homogeneous (also that they have all the information in the world to make educated decisions, but I didn't have time to talk about that).