I usually feel rather guilty leaving physics lab, because by Friday I'm completely wiped out, which means I'm the least contributing member of the team. But this Friday, I felt guilty for an entirely different reason.
You see, this week the shoe was on the other foot, in the most extreme sense possible.
For those who don't know (and really, there's no reason you should), each week we're assigned to groups of three to complete the labs activities. These usually involve a fair degree of programming and/or calculation, after which we stumble out with completed assignments and (in my case, at least) an utter lack of comprehension. The entire course seems to be a mass of anti-conceptual nonsense, but that's beside the point.
This week, I had an interesting group arrangement. I'd never worked with these two individuals before (each week is usually that way, unless we retain the previous week's groups). These two, however, proved to be quite interesting.
One of the group, a girl of I believe subcontinental origin, had all but completed the lab beforehand (as I would do if I had time--but in this instance I actually had time, but used it for a more entertaining purpose). There were plenty of mistakes, but they were corrected with a fair amount of ease once the ever patient TAs pointed them out.
The other in the group, however, was the precise intellectual opposite, as I'll explain as follows.
Now, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, I'll happily admit. The purpose of this lab was to calculate a number of quantities based off our jumps (yes, physical crouch and leap jumps) using the energy principle. This fellow, rather jockish in nature, mocked my attempt. I used so unintegrated excuse, mostly out of fatigue, but ironically our jumps had the same displacement (though he was shorter).
But that would be a minor annoyance on it's own, certainly not worth an extended blog entry that no one will read. But the young man in question made no contribution, not the slightest hint of effort at contributing, throughout the remainder of the lab. He made a few halfhearted attempts at conversation, irrelevant, regarding the fact that someone had brought a few basketball players back to his fraternity the night before. While some might see the probable lack of sleep from this incident as an acceptable excuse. Priorities, man! I at least got about 7 hours that night, though I will admit I overslept and missed part of my first lecture.
And so, you see, the other two of us carried him on our shoulders. We played Atlas.
You see, I should have shrugged, told the TA he didn't make any input, and before that, should have asked him to do some of the work. But I didn't. I accepted my role as a producer supporting a consumer.
This, in fact, illustrates the greater trend. The basketball players that he spoke of are most certainly consumers more than producers. Our entire economy, it is clear to me, is based around the idea of supporting the unproductive, especially the beloved celebrities. We're not a capitalist nation anymore. Were we ever?
I'm not going to make that mistake again. I won't play Atlas for people anymore. For the time being, this producer is on strike.
30 March 2013
22 March 2013
Libertarian Party as a Coalition
I've had a bit of fun on various libertarian and Objectivist Facebook pages the last few days introducing somewhat unpopular opinions and watching the little piranhas tear at whatever I have to say despite the fact that it's largely in accordance with their views. I've been implicitly called a neocon, a fascist, an irrationalist, an altruist, and a mystic. All in all, it's been good fun.
What I've concluded is that many people have a little fetish of purism, and this is probably why libertarianism and Objectivism aren't very popular. To be frank, a lot of these people are overweight middle-aged jerks who spend their time arguing with teenagers on the Internet without actually accomplishing anything. But there's more than that.
The specific case I'd like to reference is the Libertarians and Rand Paul. Rand Paul got a lot of attention a few weeks back after his 13 hour filibuster. The media, being idiots, sometimes capitalized the 'l' in libertarian, to the consternation of some actual Libertarians. There are a fair number who actively despise him as a socially conservative neocon. Fascist gets thrown around surprisingly much, despite the fact that I think he's actually a conservatarian. (Right-Middle rather than Middle-Bottom on the Nolan Chart.)
My own views aside, I can say with certainty that this purism is not an asset to the Liberty Movement. Both Pauls have done a great deal to increase the popularity of libertarian ideas, such as non-interventionism, abolishing central banking, eliminating crony capitalism in favor of the real thing, and getting the federal government out of the economy. Now there are things that I disagree with both Pauls on, such as marriage freedom and abortion, but they think that those are state issues, and neither of them have served in state government, so really its irrelevant.
In summation, the Pauls are an integral part of the movement to reduce the size and scope of government. Many Libertarians, though, prefer to focus on the fact that the Pauls are social conservatives and that Rand is a proponent of Israeli militarism. While these are legitimate points, they entirely write off huge groups of supporters over relatively minor issues.
What does this mean? In effect, by alienating potential allies, they weaken their movement. These absolutist Libertarians refuse to do business with people that are working towards the same goal, and consequently, neither has the same kind of success that they would have together.
This is highly notable in leftist circles. The Leninists and Trotskyists are an immediate example, but in my own casual research I've been utterly amazed at the number of American socialist parties that have experienced schisms. There are literally dozens of the organizations and in many cases they hate each other over irrelevant or inconsequential differences. It's no wonder socialism never succeed in America: they were too busy biting each other in the back after Eugene V. Debs stopped running that the electorate completely forgot about them.
The same thing is happening today in the libertarians. Libertarianism is a coalition: there are Objectivists, Austians, cosmotarians, left-anarchists, minarchists, anti-corporatists, liberaltarians, anarchocapitalists, neohippies, paleoconservatives, and a dozen other groups involved in the movement. Many of these overlap; many of these have bones to pick with the others. But none of them have anywhere near an elective majority--the entire Liberty Movement doesn't have that. Sniping at each other will only reduce the Party's credibility to the electorate.
If electoral success is the goal, the Libertarians are going to have to accept the fact that they are a coalition party. The platform doesn't take a strong stand on the issues, because it can't. The Libertarians need all the voters they can get to put some cosmotarian like Gary Johnson in office, at which point they can actually go to work.
In short, the Libertarians need to focus on outreach, teaching the ideology. As a near Objectivist (Semi-Objectivist? Objectivoid? Galt, we need a word for that) myself, I think that Rand fans should be an important part of this. Didn't Rand smear libertarians by saying they just used her ideas with the teeth torn out? Aside from the fact that she ignored the possibility of parallel development, Objectivists are just the people to put the teeth in Libertarianism.
To the point, though: we should work together to spread the ideas of Liberty. Rand Paul advocates smaller government which respects our rights, even if he disagrees about the extent of those rights. Someday, the government will be in a situation that Rand Paul likes but we do not, and at that people, we will part ways. But until that day comes, there's no reason not to work together towards common goals.
And that's the critical issue with the Libertarians: they'll always be a coalition party. Small 'l' libertarianism is a broad political class with extreme and significant variations therein. Once the Libertarians have achieved repeated electoral success and begun implementing the generally accepted program, the party will tear itself apart. The Objectivists, Minarchists, and various capitalists will pull away from the the left-anarchists and anti-corporation strong government types, the anarchocapitalists will be trying to eliminate the government entirely, the various hippie-esque folks (usually left-libertarians) may or may not become a significant factor, and the cosmotarians will become the new "moderate" party.
I, myself, am making preparations even now to take advantage of the Objectivist-Minarchist wing post-separation. It's quite another post entirely, but my Capitalist Party of America is developing nicely. The thing about CapPAm, though: we're not running any candidates anytime soon. CapPAm will be strictly a Libertarian Party ally until the Libertarian program begins to take effect, after which we'll start to run our own candidates. In the interim, however, we'll forcefully campaign for capitalist causes--and tell people to vote LP.
That's what we need, people: Alliances. The purist impulse to excommunicate anyone who doesn't agree with you perfectly is electorally harmful. You can't hope to grow support by hating anyone that doesn't agree with you.
In the end, the answer isn't to love the enemy. It's to love those who don't know better--and tell them.
What I've concluded is that many people have a little fetish of purism, and this is probably why libertarianism and Objectivism aren't very popular. To be frank, a lot of these people are overweight middle-aged jerks who spend their time arguing with teenagers on the Internet without actually accomplishing anything. But there's more than that.
The specific case I'd like to reference is the Libertarians and Rand Paul. Rand Paul got a lot of attention a few weeks back after his 13 hour filibuster. The media, being idiots, sometimes capitalized the 'l' in libertarian, to the consternation of some actual Libertarians. There are a fair number who actively despise him as a socially conservative neocon. Fascist gets thrown around surprisingly much, despite the fact that I think he's actually a conservatarian. (Right-Middle rather than Middle-Bottom on the Nolan Chart.)
My own views aside, I can say with certainty that this purism is not an asset to the Liberty Movement. Both Pauls have done a great deal to increase the popularity of libertarian ideas, such as non-interventionism, abolishing central banking, eliminating crony capitalism in favor of the real thing, and getting the federal government out of the economy. Now there are things that I disagree with both Pauls on, such as marriage freedom and abortion, but they think that those are state issues, and neither of them have served in state government, so really its irrelevant.
In summation, the Pauls are an integral part of the movement to reduce the size and scope of government. Many Libertarians, though, prefer to focus on the fact that the Pauls are social conservatives and that Rand is a proponent of Israeli militarism. While these are legitimate points, they entirely write off huge groups of supporters over relatively minor issues.
What does this mean? In effect, by alienating potential allies, they weaken their movement. These absolutist Libertarians refuse to do business with people that are working towards the same goal, and consequently, neither has the same kind of success that they would have together.
This is highly notable in leftist circles. The Leninists and Trotskyists are an immediate example, but in my own casual research I've been utterly amazed at the number of American socialist parties that have experienced schisms. There are literally dozens of the organizations and in many cases they hate each other over irrelevant or inconsequential differences. It's no wonder socialism never succeed in America: they were too busy biting each other in the back after Eugene V. Debs stopped running that the electorate completely forgot about them.
The same thing is happening today in the libertarians. Libertarianism is a coalition: there are Objectivists, Austians, cosmotarians, left-anarchists, minarchists, anti-corporatists, liberaltarians, anarchocapitalists, neohippies, paleoconservatives, and a dozen other groups involved in the movement. Many of these overlap; many of these have bones to pick with the others. But none of them have anywhere near an elective majority--the entire Liberty Movement doesn't have that. Sniping at each other will only reduce the Party's credibility to the electorate.
If electoral success is the goal, the Libertarians are going to have to accept the fact that they are a coalition party. The platform doesn't take a strong stand on the issues, because it can't. The Libertarians need all the voters they can get to put some cosmotarian like Gary Johnson in office, at which point they can actually go to work.
In short, the Libertarians need to focus on outreach, teaching the ideology. As a near Objectivist (Semi-Objectivist? Objectivoid? Galt, we need a word for that) myself, I think that Rand fans should be an important part of this. Didn't Rand smear libertarians by saying they just used her ideas with the teeth torn out? Aside from the fact that she ignored the possibility of parallel development, Objectivists are just the people to put the teeth in Libertarianism.
To the point, though: we should work together to spread the ideas of Liberty. Rand Paul advocates smaller government which respects our rights, even if he disagrees about the extent of those rights. Someday, the government will be in a situation that Rand Paul likes but we do not, and at that people, we will part ways. But until that day comes, there's no reason not to work together towards common goals.
And that's the critical issue with the Libertarians: they'll always be a coalition party. Small 'l' libertarianism is a broad political class with extreme and significant variations therein. Once the Libertarians have achieved repeated electoral success and begun implementing the generally accepted program, the party will tear itself apart. The Objectivists, Minarchists, and various capitalists will pull away from the the left-anarchists and anti-corporation strong government types, the anarchocapitalists will be trying to eliminate the government entirely, the various hippie-esque folks (usually left-libertarians) may or may not become a significant factor, and the cosmotarians will become the new "moderate" party.
I, myself, am making preparations even now to take advantage of the Objectivist-Minarchist wing post-separation. It's quite another post entirely, but my Capitalist Party of America is developing nicely. The thing about CapPAm, though: we're not running any candidates anytime soon. CapPAm will be strictly a Libertarian Party ally until the Libertarian program begins to take effect, after which we'll start to run our own candidates. In the interim, however, we'll forcefully campaign for capitalist causes--and tell people to vote LP.
That's what we need, people: Alliances. The purist impulse to excommunicate anyone who doesn't agree with you perfectly is electorally harmful. You can't hope to grow support by hating anyone that doesn't agree with you.
In the end, the answer isn't to love the enemy. It's to love those who don't know better--and tell them.
15 March 2013
Eugenics and the Future of Human Evolution
Eugenics has a bad reputation. Most people either associate the idea with Nazi Germany or Brave New World, but as a proponent of eugenics myself, I think that both of those are examples of precisely what not to do.
First, I do not think any eugenics program should be mandatory. In fact, having the majority of the population, at least 65%, probably more, continue to play reproductive roulette is necessary to keep a strong control group of humans with plenty of random mutations and a great diversity of traits. More importantly, forcing someone to reproduce (or not!) is a disgusting violation of the Right of Liberty. The ends of such a program most definitely do not justify those means.
Second, I think that sterilizations are a rather ineffective way of promoting better offspring. Sterilizations are a very crude method: it is very unlikely that ever gamete an individual produces has the negative allele(s) that the eugenicist wishes to suppress. There are most likely plenty of traits the eugenicist favors present in gametes that do not contain the negative allele(s); these should be selected for producing zygotes, rather than a full ban.
Third, the current reproductive roulette cannot realistically be channeled to produce superior offspring. Simply, you cannot realistically hope that all the children of a certain parent will have the traits you wish to promote if they reproduce through the traditional method, unless the trait in question is superdominant (and it probably isn't).
My view on eugenics is such: using modern genomics technology to ensure that the offspring of a perfectly normal couple is the best possible offspring, given the genomes of the parents.
In more detail, a couple wishing to have children would pay for tests to map their genomes. (In respect to the cost of raising a child, these are relatively cheap. Basic tests are now within the monthly salary of a middle-class adult.) From these, they would go through a sort of genetic counselling, discussing which traits (such as deleterious recessives) which they wish to avoid passing on, and which they would like their children to have. Two gametes would be selected based on these preferences for in-vitro fertilization, and the zygote implanted in the mother-to-be for an otherwise normal pregnancy.
There are two important things I must say about this method:
First, I do not think any eugenics program should be mandatory. In fact, having the majority of the population, at least 65%, probably more, continue to play reproductive roulette is necessary to keep a strong control group of humans with plenty of random mutations and a great diversity of traits. More importantly, forcing someone to reproduce (or not!) is a disgusting violation of the Right of Liberty. The ends of such a program most definitely do not justify those means.
Second, I think that sterilizations are a rather ineffective way of promoting better offspring. Sterilizations are a very crude method: it is very unlikely that ever gamete an individual produces has the negative allele(s) that the eugenicist wishes to suppress. There are most likely plenty of traits the eugenicist favors present in gametes that do not contain the negative allele(s); these should be selected for producing zygotes, rather than a full ban.
Third, the current reproductive roulette cannot realistically be channeled to produce superior offspring. Simply, you cannot realistically hope that all the children of a certain parent will have the traits you wish to promote if they reproduce through the traditional method, unless the trait in question is superdominant (and it probably isn't).
My view on eugenics is such: using modern genomics technology to ensure that the offspring of a perfectly normal couple is the best possible offspring, given the genomes of the parents.
In more detail, a couple wishing to have children would pay for tests to map their genomes. (In respect to the cost of raising a child, these are relatively cheap. Basic tests are now within the monthly salary of a middle-class adult.) From these, they would go through a sort of genetic counselling, discussing which traits (such as deleterious recessives) which they wish to avoid passing on, and which they would like their children to have. Two gametes would be selected based on these preferences for in-vitro fertilization, and the zygote implanted in the mother-to-be for an otherwise normal pregnancy.
There are two important things I must say about this method:
- Every step of this operation was undertaken voluntarily, and every service provided by private firms. The state is uninvolved.
- As a consequence of the state's uninvolvement, there will not be a national direction of a eugenics program. This will not create a reduction of useful mutations, as different couples will usually select for different traits.
Eugenics is condemned for being coercive. It needn't be.
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