Thoughts for the Day: Monday 8 March 2021

Trust and the Competition Delusion - Griffith Review

griffithreview.com

[E]conomists’ vision of ‘perfect competition’ – in which the social role of virtue in serving the public economic interest is rendered redundant by the incentives competition generates in a market – might work tolerably in the market for vegetables. But it doesn’t in more sophisticated markets like those for knowledge and expertise.

--Nicholas Gruen, economist (@NGruen1)

Dark Star Rising

Gary Lachman

It is also important to present a powerful image, to conjure a “glamour” of success. “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” and Trump’s job is to tell them it is. They will do the rest. He conveys this message by surrounding himself with symbols of the fantasy life he is selling.

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

But things are not quite so simple as that. To begin with, people may have a motive for deceiving themselves and each other. Where certain things which may happen in people’s minds are conventionally regarded with disapproval, the lengths to which people in whose minds they actually do happen will go, in order to persuade themselves and others that they do not happen, are most remarkable.

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

The only way to eat a satiating meal while minimizing insulin secretion is to add fat. It’s the one macronutrient that does not stimulate an insulin response.

The Machiavellians

James Burnham

The masses can never successfully revolt until they acquire a leadership, which is always made up in part of able and ambitious individuals from their own ranks who cannot gain entrance into the governing élite, and in part of disgruntled members of the existing élite (members of the nobility, for example, in the opening stages of the French Revolution, or dissatisfied intellectuals and middle-class persons in the Russian Revolution). So long, therefore, as the governing élite is both willing and in a position to destroy or to assimilate all such individuals, it has a virtual guarantee against internal revolution.

The Fellowship

Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski

“The scientists who discovered the forces of electricity,” Barfield contends, “actually made it possible for the human beings who came after them to have a slightly different idea, a slightly fuller  consciousness  of their relationship with one another.”

The Science of Conjecture: Evidence & Probability Before Pascal by James Franklin

 

                                                                           2015 edition

If the title of this book seems daunting to you, well, then, your instincts are sound. This is not a book for the faint of heart. However, if you're up for an amazing intellectual trek through the high-country (and some low country) of the mind, then you'll find this book a genuinely rewarding experience. I came to the book via a recommendation from Nassim Taleb, and the praise that Taleb expressed for the book proved more than accurate. 

Author James Franklin

Author James Franklin is an Australian mathematician-philosopher, but this description sells him short. The breadth of learning displayed in this volume is truly astonishing. Reading it, you might guess him a linguist, a lawyer, a rhetorician, a medievalist, a scientist, and so on. As the title lets you know, his topics are broad--"evidence" and "probability"--and his account runs from the dawn of Western civ in Egypt and Mesopotamia up to the early modern period of Pascal. (Would that someone write a similar history of Indian and Chinese thought!) Pascal, along with Fermat and Huygens, and a few lesser-known figures, marked a change in thinking about probability when they developed mathematical models and algorithms for calculating the odds (probabilities) involved in stochastic games of chance, such as dice. But as Franklin notes from the beginning of this book, most thinking about probability throughout Western history, including the period after Pascal, addresses probability (and chance) by the use of ordinary language. We see this demonstrated in terms such as "more likely than not," "a preponderance of the evidence," and "beyond reasonable doubt" to give examples of common phrases still used today by lawyers, judges, and juries.

Franklin traces ideas about evidence and probability through the domain of law, which proves the most significant domain for delineating issues of evidence in general and probabilities in particular. But Franklin also addresses developments about these topics in rhetoric, philosophy, theology, moral theology and philosophy (such as the casuistry of the Jesuits), insurance and business law, and natural science. Thinking about issues of evidence and probability has its roots in Greek and Roman thought, but perhaps more noteworthy is the fact that medieval thought and practice analyzed and advanced these concepts greatly. Franklin argues adamantly against many calumnies hurled against medieval thought by modern critics. Many post-classical, pre-Renaissance thinkers receive attention and implicit praise from Franklin for their groundbreaking insights: names like Baldus, Orseme, Duns Scotus, Buridan, Ockham, John of Salisbury, and Nicholas of Autrecourt, and so on. Many of these thinkers and sources were new or only vaguely familiar to me. 

There are times, I must admit, when I found the going a bit slow, although only in the relatively small section on Pascal and his peers did Franklin delve much into math as such. However, I'm quick to forgive Franklin for going a bit deep into the weeds at some points because of the importance of his overall message. Indeed, if you're pressed for time or just want to dip your toe in the get the feel, just read his prefaces (original and 2015), Conclusion, and Epilogue and you will have received a valuable reward for your time. Issues of evidence and the challenge of probabilities are as important and vital to our well-being today as they have been at any time throughout history. Indeed, given the extraordinary human powers that now threaten the entire planet and the continued well-being and survival of humankind as a species, we'd do well to do all we can to educate ourselves about these principles and thereby promote sound decision-making involving issues of evidence and probability. These terms were a part of my everyday concerns as a lawyer who practiced before trial and appellate courts (and administrative tribunals). But issues of evidence and probability have application quite as much (albeit less explicitly so) in our everyday lives. We experience these issues as individuals and as members of groups, for instance, as members of political entities that make decisions that affect our well-being from the level of our neighborhoods to the level of our nation and even now involving our entire world. For instance, we see these issues raised and discussed in great depth and with great concern in our thinking about how to best address climate change,.

Conclusion: The Science of Conjecture is quite an amazing book as a work of scholarship and as a prompt to thought. I would compare in its comprehensiveness and depth to Thomas McEllivey's The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. High praise indeed!