Club Troppo

I read an article with an attractive title recently. “Complexity and Context-Dependency“.  It’s not very good, but it raises an important point that is important to what I call the psycho-pathology of disciplines and it puts me in mind of something I’ve thought for a long time about policy and politics. I don’t have time to do this subject justice in this post, but thought I’d try to put down a marker.

The paper argues this.

We may look down on other animals, perceiving that they have a biased and limited understanding of the world, but somehow assume that we don’t have analogous biases or limitations that we cannot somehow overcome. Surely this is merely another example of anthropocentric arrogance. That we have had some notable successes at understanding our world and even a systematic set of approaches that has been shown to be useful is not sufficient evidence to assume a lack of limitations and biases.

This astonishing assumption takes many forms in philosophy and discussions about the scientific method. One such is that somehow simplicity is a guide to truth. That is, that simplicity in a model or theory has advantages other than the obvious pragmatic ones (pragmatic virtues are such as: being able to analyze/solve it; being able to have good analogies with which to think about it; needing less data in order to parameterize it; and being able to compute it).

Another version is that everything somehow must be simple if only we can find the right way of looking at it, or formalizing it. It is true that frameworks such as Newtonian Physics are relatively simple (though I doubt many in Newton’s time would have thought so), and using this, many useful models and reliable predictions can be obtained. . . .

I am not going to spend time arguing the above points here. Rather I will consider the case under the anti-anthropocentric assumption, that much of the world around us is organized in a way that is beyond adequate modeling in a sufficiently simple and general manner for us to cope with. . . . Under this, admittedly pessimistic, view the phenomena that are simple enough for us to understand in a scientific manner are the exception – the exception to be sought and struggled for. Under this view, we should make the greatest use of the strengths we have, and seek to acknowledge and mitigate our limitations. Under this view a “Science of Complexity” makes no more sense than a “Science of Non-Red Things”, since both red objects and simple systems are the exception rather than the rule.

Why is it that we can see political benefits from the hyper-connected world produced by Web 2.0 in undemocratic countries but no big apparent improvements in democratic countries? (Continued)

Thomas Paine was a remarkable fellow who lived at a time of, and helped bring about two great revolutions of the modern age – the American and French ones. His time discovered political pamphleteering in a way that’s quite similar to blogging today. People wrote pamphlets and then others responded – with subsequent editions of the original pamphlet going out with responses to later pamphlets.

Letters, the tongue of the world, have in some measure brought all mankind acquainted, and, by an extension of their uses, are every day promoting some new friendship. Through them distant nations became capable of conversation, and losing by degrees the awkwardness of strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion, they learn to know and understand each other. Science, the partizan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosopher of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who sits beside him.

Yet even at the height of his fame and after the American revolutionaries’ success in breaking away from the mother country, he was already  disillusioned by how little his own public achievements and spiritedness had served his own interests. He was a man of great generosity – and some impetuousness. He had given away what wealth and security he might have had in support of the revolution and felt unacknowledged by his adopted United States while others had profited mightily from the revolution, either financially or in acquiring high office. Against the extension of civilization being worked by letters and the spirit of science there was a counterforce:

The principal and almost only remaining enemy it now has to encounter, is prejudice. . . . [P]rejudice, like the spider, makes every where its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. There is scarcely a situation, except fire or water, in which a spider will not live. So, let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of thinking; let it be hot, cold, dark, or light, lonely or inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live, like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly charactered by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.

Paine would come to despair of both revolutions he had helped set in place. Paine was elected to the French National Assembly (I think that’s what it was called at the time, it kept changing and changing its name). He defended the King with energy, decency, courage and ultimately naiveté - arguing in a debate after the sentence of death had been passed that it carried the stain of revenge rather than justice. “My language has always been that of liberty and humanity, and I know by experience that nothing so exalts a nation as the union of these two principles, under all circumstances. . . . My anxiety for the cause of France has become for the moment concern for its honour.”

As France descended into chaos and horror his naturally sunny and disposition turned to another cause – that of deism.  He wrote The Age of Reason to promote deist views. As he began the book “I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.” Deism was very common amongst enlightenment intellectuals and men in high places. But they had always understood that it was polite not to be too trenchant about them publicly or to promote deism in competition with Christianity further down the social order. It was typical of Paine that his deism was democratic and generous of spirit.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

And it was also typical that his deism was simple and combative.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.

But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

This ruined his reputation in polite society for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile in Paris he stuck around as things went from bad to worse, helping others to leave but not leaving himself – perhaps out of vanity and/or naiveté believing that he would be OK. Paine’s heart and health were broken awaiting execution in a Paris jail though he survived long enough to outlive Robespierre’s and so the terror. He lived many more years, but he nevertheless emerged a changed man.

Memory, like a beauty that is always present to hear itself flattered, is flattered by everyone. But the absent and silent goddess, Forgetfulness, has no votaries, and is never thought of; yet we owe her much. She is the goddess of ease, though not of pleasure.

When the mind is like a room hung with black, and every corner of it crowded with the most horrid images imagination can create, this kind, speechless goddess of a maid, Forgetfulness, is following us night and day with her opium wand, and gently touching first one and then another, benumbs them into rest, and at last glides them away with the silence of a departing shadow. It is thus the tortured mind is restored to the calm condition of ease, and fitted for happiness.

Treasury’s mission is broad — to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people. And according to Peter Martin its wellbeing framework empowers it "to fight homelessness just as much as it empowers it to fight inflation". As Martin explained back in 2008 the framework goes well beyond purely monetary or material ideas of wellbeing.

If Treasury’s framework is broad enough to include issues like homelessness, perhaps it’s broad enough to absorb the idea of social inclusion. Integrating social inclusion into the wellbeing framework might give the idea a more definite meaning and a useful theoretical base.

(Continued)

At the Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Erica Grieder suspects that "the biggest untapped constituency is people who are fiscally conservative and socially moderate or liberal." Grieder links to a post by former Cato research fellow Will Wilkinson where he explains why he is not a libertarian:

Here are some not-standardly-libertarian things I believe: Non-coercion fails to capture all, maybe even most, of what it means to be free. Taxation is often necessary and legitimate. The modern nation-state has been, on the whole, good for humanity. (See Steven Pinker’s new book.) Democracy is about as good as it gets. The institutions of modern capitalism are contingent arrangements that cannot be justified by an appeal to the value of liberty construed as non-interference. The specification of the legal rights that structure real-world markets have profound distributive consequences, and those are far from irrelevant to the justification of those rights. I could go on.

Wilkinson now identifies as a liberal. He writes: "I am interested in what it means to be free, and the role of freedom in flourishing or meaningful or valuable lives."

In the US, no major political party or movement stands for this kind of liberalism. The same is true in Australia. According to Greg Barns: "The Liberal Party, in the Howard and Abbott incarnation, is a socially conservative force which also believes that the state should play a paternalist role in steering the economic direction of the nation." Oddly, the most enthusiastic supporter of "the the role of freedom in flourishing or meaningful or valuable lives" seems to be the Australian Treasury.

George Monbiot bells the “libertarian” cat:

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Rightwing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Policy Exchange. Their concept of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.

Quite.

Herewith an paper about my encounter with design, on taking up the Chairmanship of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation and encountering the Family by Family program.  The site where it’s been published doesn’t have any comments facility, so I’m opening up discussion here should anyone wish.

And I read today a quote that might have been a good complement to the quote appearing at the head of the article – immediately below.

Not only was he [Edward Land - inventor of 'instant cameras' and founder of Polaroid] one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that.

Designing better lives: An economist’s appreciation of design

Design is often described as making things not only useable but useful and desirable/delightful. We’d agree this is important – but what is even more fundamental (and rare) is making things that prompt change. – Sarah Schulman and Chris Vanstone [2]

       I.

Design is on the march. Apple teeters on being the most highly valued company in the world – its core competitive strength lying in design and systems integration, not technology. ‘Design thinking’ is becoming increasingly prominent not only in the development of products and processes, but also in the delivery of services. So much so that Deloitte has recently begun investing heavily in its own ability to provide its clients with design knowhow as a crucial engine of its innovation and competitiveness. As I write this, a prominent article on Australia’s Deloitte Online’s homepage [3] is titled “Design thinking demystified”. So what is the core contribution of design and what is behind its rise?

Adam Smith’s invocation of the benefits of self-interest – or as he called it self-love – is famously encapsulated in this aphorism:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

Smith’s point is not that self-interest is good in itself, but that the self-interest of one person in a market brings them into relation with others’ self-interest. Note that Smith’s injunction (implicitly to both parties) is for each to seek their own interest by addressing themselves to the other’sinterest. Since Smith founded it, the discipline of economics has focused on the incentives facing each of the parties to a bargain and on their relative bargaining strength.

But there are more things in heaven and earth. For the butchers, bakers and brewers of Smith’s time there was no great mystery as to what constituted the customer’s wants or needs. Today’s world is much more complex. If you’re making computers or even cars, customers have specific wants that are not so easily divined by producers. Thus, part of Japan’s auto-producers’ recipe for competitive success was meticulous attention to consumer needs.[4]

This process has now gone much further. A great transformation occurred at the outset of the personal computer era when the Apple Macintosh showed that consumers didn’t just want more technical capability from their software and hardware – something that could be captured well enough in standard disclosures of those technical capabilities. They wanted user-friendliness – a very different thing and something inherently difficult to ‘disclose’ in specifications.

It turns out you can’t really make a car or a computer useable without a lot of work, almost invariably involving the users themselves. And indeed there is a discipline that has grown up under our noses which has been all but ignored by economists and policy makers but which nevertheless addresses itself to this issue. That discipline is design. (Continued)

I am just no good at those ‘values’ questionnaires. Whenever I’m asked a question about values my only answer is “it depends”. I don’t think this is very clever, but there you go.

Here is the first page of 120 questions in a questionnaire I’m supposed to fill out about an organisation I’m involved with.

In your preferred culture, to what extent should people be expected to…?	Select your response by clicking a number here…					… or by typing a number here.
	Not at all	To a slight extent	To a moderate extent	To a great extent	To a very great extent
point out flaws	1	2	3	4	5
show concern for the needs of others	1	2	3	4	5
involve others in decisions affecting them	1	2	3	4	5
resolve conflicts constructively	1	2	3	4	5
be supportive of others	1	2	3	4	5
stay on people’s good side	1	2	3	4	5
be a “nice guy”	1	2	3	4	5
do things for the approval of others	1	2	3	4	5
“go along” with others	1	2	3	4	5
win against others	1	2	3	4	5
work to achieve self-set goals	1	2	3	4	5
accept goals without questioning them	1	2	3	4	5
be predictable	1	2	3	4	5
never challenge superiors	1	2	3	4	5
do what is expected	1	2	3	4	5
stay detached and perfectly objective	1	2	3	4	5
oppose new ideas	1	2	3	4	5
help others to grow and develop	1	2	3	4	5
be a good listener	1	2	3	4	5
give positive rewards to others	1	2	3	4	5

But in each and every case the only answer is not ‘more or less’ but in some circumstances more, in some less. I expect these kinds of questionnaires can do more good than harm. But I’m no good at them.

What thinkest thou Oh Troppodillians? (I wonder why my spellcheck doth say that ‘thinkest’ is not a word?)

In conclusion, please tell me whether values are really like this? (And where is Dr Troppo when you need him?)

I posted a while back about my pet theory that the South of the US was a psychotic society, which psychosis was brought about by the politics which arose in a slave society.

Anyway, I just came upon this article which looks interesting, and in the same vein.

Slaves as capital investment in the Dutch Cape Colony, 1652-1795
Johan Fourie (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers149&r=his

The Cape Colony of the eighteenth century was one of the most prosperous regions in the world. This paper shows that Cape farmers prospered, on average, because of the economies of scale and scope achieved through slavery. Slaves allowed farmers to specialise in agricultural products that were in high demand from the passing ships – notably, wheat, wine and meat – and the by-products from these products, such as tallow, skins, soap and candles. In exchange, farmers could import cheap manufactured products from Europe and the East. Secondly, the paper investigates why the relative affluence of the early settlers did not evolve into a high growth trajectory. The use of slaves as a substitute for wage labour or other capital investments allowed farmers to prosper, but it also resulted in severe inequality. It was this high inequality that drove the growth-debilitating institutions posited by Engerman and Sokoloff (2000). The immigration of Europeans was discouraged after 1717, and again during the middle of the century, while education was limited to the wealthy. Factor endowments interacted with institutions to create a highly unequal early South African society, with long-term development consequences.

As Theodore Roosevelt finished his address to the people of Osawatomie his speechwriter leaped up and cried: "Citizens of Kansas, you have just listened to one of the greatest pronouncements made by any man. Its effect will be felt in the nation and the world for years to come." Last week President Obama turned up in Osawatomie to deliver a speech that harked back to that 1910 address. So it may be the speechwriter was right.

Roosevelt’s Osawatomie speech was the most radical of his career. According to historian Robert La Forte, Roosevelt let Gifford Pinchot write it and "Pinchot, even more of an extremist than Roosevelt in upholding strong governmental control over individual activities, tinted the address with radicalism far in excess of what Roosevelt would probably have done alone."

Roosevelt argued for equality of opportunity and the destruction of privilege. He insisted that the "conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress." He explained:

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

According to psychologist Jonathan Haidt: "The psychological meaning of fairness is proportionality. Human beings have been engaging in cooperative enterprises for hundreds of thousands of years, and we’re now vigilant for signs that anyone is taking out more than they’re putting in." And this was the sentiment President Obama hoped to tap when he arrived in Osawatomie, Kansas to deliver his most radical speech yet.

(Continued)

Herewith my op ed from the Herald and Age today.

What is the good life and are we living it?

Assessing and measuring wellbeing has vexed us since ancient times. But a funny thing happened on the modern world’s way to the answer. The metric that economists used to dampen down the business cycle – Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – received such prominence that it ‘went viral’ as we say these days. It became the default measure of national progress.

But there’s lots wrong with GDP as a measure of economic wellbeing let alone more general wellbeing. Measuring gross activity, it ignores the growth and depreciation of assets – such as buildings, equipment, natural resources like farmland and mineral deposits, biodiversity and clean air. And that’s not to mention the greatest asset of all – our knowhow.

Moreover GDP is measured by money changing hands. So converting bread, mince and salad into a hamburger increases GDP in McDonalds but not at home. More starkly, an evening of passion and pleasure only adds to wellbeing as measured by GDP if it happens in a bordello! More broadly still, GDP takes no account of the distribution of income or of our physical or social wellbeing.

But considering how different all these phenomena are, how can we possibly measure their sum impact on national wellbeing in a single number? Because it would ‘dumb down’ complex issues, economics Nobel Laureate Amatya Sen initially refused to participate in the construction of a single index of human development to help guide development in poorer countries. But he relented because he appreciated that, however unsatisfactory a single wellbeing index might be, it was better than the alternative. Given the thirst for simple answers, the alternative is even more dumbing down as would occur if GDP yet again filled the vacuum. (Continued)