Centanium

Early Modern English Abuse

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:53:00 +0000

In a recent post on ethics, Bryan Caplan attempts to silence an opponent with a shopworn Shakespeare allusion: "Methinks you doth protest too much."

The appalling proliferation of the "doth protest too much" meme is beginning to test my sanity. As a certified apostle of the mother tongue, set apart for the spreading of the one true English, I adjure all speakers and writers to cease this wickedness. But if my pious command falls on deaf ears, can we at least keep the examples grammatical? Saying "you doth" in early modern English is tantamount to saying "you does" in modern English.

The Insanity Defense and the "Fog of Fatalism"

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:38:00 +0000

G.K. Chesterton, touching on a paradox of criminology that continues to trouble me:

Nobody seems even to know where the fatalism itself begins or leaves off. A man argues that a particular murderer is a madman and therefore irresponsible. He argues it on grounds that would make all murderers irresponsible. He argues it on grounds that would make all men as irresponsible as all murderers. Intellectually speaking, it negatives not only the murder and the punishment of the murder, but quite equally the pardon of the murder. For if there is no real responsibility for anything, why should we be responsible for either justice or mercy towards murderers?

From "Mencken and the American Mercury," June 23, 1928, reprinted in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, vol. 34 (1991), 547–48.

Scattered Thoughts, IV

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:46:00 +0000

1. The "wrong side of history" is often the better side. It is the basest form of cowardice to let history do your thinking for you.

2. The easiest way to defend an absurd doctrine is to define it out of existence. The preachers of the equality of man discovered this ages ago. It is only a matter of time before materialists figure it out as well.

3. Utopias may be above man, but they are also beneath him. The truth is that utopians are an under-ambitious lot. There is no "best of all possible worlds," any more than there is a highest number. Perfection is one long march into infinity.

4. It used to be thought that a man was not educated until he had studied history and the classics. No one believes this anymore, but it is still true.

5. Reason never advances beyond intuition. All it ever does is pit one preconception against another, showing that the two can't both be right. The beliefs that survive this process are not the most rational, but the most cherished.

A Disgruntled Reviewer

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:18:00 +0000

Via Facebook:

Report on the American Principate

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:03:00 +0000

The administration's contraception edict vindicates, I dare say, my longstanding (and probably pathological) grudge against the presidential veto. Under the current system, sweeping grants of law-making power to the president and his minions are extraordinarily difficult to reverse, for the simple reason that the president can always veto any clarifying legislation.

It is bad enough that the president can set legislative policy without going through the ordinary system of "checks and balances" (to use that hackneyed and ridiculous phrase). But that Congress should need to muster two-thirds of both houses just to reverse his imperial decrees defies every stricture of sense and sanity.

The Birth-Control Brouhaha

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:03:00 +0000

I am beginning to suspect that the whole world is really a grand comedy performed for the amusement of the angels. I only hope they are enjoying the show as much as I am. As we know, a large section of the public was outraged to learn that the Obama administration would force religious organizations to pay for their employees' birth-control coverage, even when the methods violated their religious convictions. Well, yesterday President Obama, beset on all sides by religious objectors, announced a compromise. His new plan? Same as the old one, but with more attractive packaging. Now religious organizations will only have to pay someone else (i.e., the insurers themselves) to ensure that their employees have birth-control coverage. In return for this imaginary concession, Catholic (and any similarly situated) organizations are supposed to drop their objections. The ruse may work. Such is the power of obfuscation.

Meanwhile Rachel Maddow, from her podium in the Washington Post, discloses the existence of a GOP war on birth control. The war has hitherto gone undetected, because it is undetectable, because it does not exist. In the universe that Maddow has imagined for herself, opposition to having to pay for someone else's birth-control methods is a "war on birth control." There are astrologers, and probably even a few congressmen, with a better grasp on reality than that. O tempora, o mores, indeed.

[Update, February 12:] Mario Rizzo has a much more in-depth take on the issues involved.

A Neglected Truth

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:17:00 +0000

"Ten bad arguments do not make one good argument." — Attributed to Eduard Fraenkel

Quoted in Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (2011), 749, n.31.

Induction: The Pre-Scientific Method

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:30:00 +0000

Thomas Babington Macaulay speaks the truth:

The inductive method has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns, that a cloudy day is the best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his father.

From The Life and Writings of Francis Bacon (1837), 87–88.

Down the Foggy Ruins of Time

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:56:00 +0000

Every time I reach a turning point in my life, I give this song a listen. It resonates with me in a way I can't quite articulate.

Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

A Two-Word Dictionary of Vulgar Epistemology

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:25:00 +0000

Prejudices: A word denoting all ad hoc assumptions that freethinkers disagree with.

Rational: A word used by freethinkers to describe their own ad hoc assumptions and everything that follows from them. Just who they think they are fooling with this tactic is not altogether obvious, but mostly they seem interested in fooling themselves. At this they are quite successful.

The Failure of Praxeology, Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:33:00 +0000

Jonathan M.F. Catalán thinks my criticism of the Austrian law of demand fails, since no economic methodology will allow us to predict market behavior (see here and here).

But my quarrel with the praxeological law of demand is not that it doesn't allow us to predict, in any given situation, the actual quantity of an item that will be demanded. My problem with it is that it doesn't even specify a causal relationship between the price and quantity demanded of a physical good.

As far as the Austrian law of demand is concerned, it is not in the least improbable that increasing the per-unit price of apples will result in a larger number of apples being demanded than would otherwise have been the case. (The italicized words are crucial. The baseline is a counterfactual situation rather than an earlier time period.) After all, the new price of apples might make a number of potential buyers value the product more, in which case it now becomes a completely different "good" within the meaning of the praxeological law of demand. Apples and apples have become apples and oranges, and the law of demand has become completely meaningless.

(Side note: I apologize for my tardy reply. I was swamped with work over the last couple of days.)

"Theory" and "Law" in Scientific Folklore

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:47:00 +0000

Over the last several days I was cruelly and wantonly subjected to not one, but two, lectures on the so-called scientific method. Both were full of absurdities, as such lectures always are, and I left begging the angels for my three hours back.

One of the lecturers even repeated the bit of academic folklore that a "theory" is a well-confirmed hypothesis, while a "law" is a rigorously tested theory that has proven universally accurate. That distinction has no real basis in usage. Newton's law of gravitation bore that name long before his heirs and assigns had explained away most of the lingering anomalies (of which there were many); and it still bears that name today, though no one any longer thinks it a "correct" account of gravitational phenomena. There are even laws—like the biogenetic law—that were never more than crude postulations. String theory, meanwhile, has yet to be confirmed in any sense at all, but that has not prevented scientists from referring to it as a "theory."

So what is a theory and what is a law? If we want our definitions to track actual usage, probably the best view is that a "law" is a posited regularity in nature, while a "theory" attempts to explain certain regularities in nature. Compare, for instance, the kinetic theory of gases with the ideal gas law.

The Best Idea Since One-Click Shopping

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Suppose I am about to save (or open) a file. The program will always default to a certain folder, which is almost never the one I want. Because I have a lot of sub-directories, it sometimes takes me more than 30 seconds to work my way to the correct folder. Now having been raised in the modern West, I am of course spoiled to the point of imbecility, and so naturally this drives me crazy.

This got me asking the usual question: How can the world pander to my every whim and impulse? Suddenly, eureka! It should be possible to assign a set of keyboard shortcuts for moving directly to a desired folder. For instance, I might make Ctrl + Shift + b move directly to my eBooks folder and Ctrl + Shift + p move directly to my Projects folder.

Quick, get the United States Patent and Trademark Office on the line. This is the most ingenious breakthrough since one-click shopping, and I want my monopoly right presto.

Bob Murphy and the Close of His System

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:12:00 +0000

Economists often horrify the public by suggesting the government should increase the price of using certain roads in order to stamp out traffic congestion. This proposal is supported by what we might call the "classical" law of demand—the version of the law of demand in which "goods" are defined strictly in terms of their material properties.

Another version of the law of demand—the one favored by partisans of praxeology—instead defines goods in terms of anything a potential buyer should happen to find significant. As I pointed out a month ago, the curious thing about this law of demand is that it is hardly an economic law at all. It tells us nothing about the relationship between the price and quantity demanded of, say, iPads or snow cones. If 500,000 iPads can be sold at $500 a piece, it might still be the case that 700,000 can be sold at $550 a piece. Is that likely? No. But the point is that praxeology doesn't tell us anything—categorical or probabilistic—about what will happen. Why? Because the higher price-tag of the iPad might make a number of potential buyers value the product more.

Enter Robert P. Murphy, a prolific Austrian economist. Like many free-market economists, Murphy recognizes that price rationing would be a great way to keep down traffic congestion. Hence he writes:

As an economist, it appalls me how wasteful the current system is. Every weekday, millions of very productive engineers, doctors, writers, and other workers sit in traffic jams going into and out of Manhattan. Under private ownership, the tolls on bridges and tunnels, and the fees (however allocated) for driving on the normal roads would reflect the actual demand for the scarce product.
There would be time-varying prices, too, so that people who could rearrange their schedules to avoid rush hour could save money and thereby reduce peak congestion.

This is good economics, but it is not good praxeology. And this sort of thing appears again and again in Austrian literature. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, Austrians always supplement their praxeological laws with common-sense assumptions about human psychology and motivation. In our gut we all know that people are not going to start valuing road access more because the authorities start charging for it. But praxeology can't tell us that; it is an introspective and empirical judgment.

Kudos to Google

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:10:00 +0000

They've drawn up a privacy policy and terms of service that someone might conceivably read.

Constitutional Bloopers

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:37:00 +0000

Some fun facts about the Constitution:

1. It is easier to remove a president from office than it is to overturn a presidential veto. The latter takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress; the former takes only a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.

2. If the vice president is impeached, he is entitled to preside over his own trial in the Senate. (If, on the other hand, the president is impeached, the chief justice presides.)

3. The president has plenary power to pardon himself for federal crimes (though he cannot immunize himself against impeachment).

4. Article IV, §3, cl. 1 reads: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress." Taken at face value, this would seem to prevent the formation of a new state even within the (prior) geographic boundaries of a consenting state.

5. The First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law . . . ." Yet the Constitution makes treaties as well as statutes "the supreme Law of the Land."

6. The Eighth Amendment forbids "excessive" fines, but it prohibits only "cruel and unusual" punishments.

7. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, whenever the right to vote in elections to certain offices is

denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The Nineteenth Amendment forbids sex discrimination in the franchise, but does nothing (by its terms) to broaden this rule. Neither does the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which forbids age discrimination in the franchise among those eighteen and up.

Well, have I missed anything?

Gene Callahan Will Be Thrilled

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:01:00 +0000

"An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, the capstone of Murray Rothbard’s career, is one of the greatest works of intellectual history written in the twentieth century." — Blurb for a Course Taught by David Gordon

Reinventing Presidential Debates

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:32:00 +0000

This post by the always-interesting Ann Althouse got me thinking about just how useless post-primary presidential debates are in this country. Nothing intelligent is ever said on either side.

I suggest it's time for a new paradigm. Instead of the two presidential candidates "debating" one another for an hour and a half, each presidential candidate should have to debate a non-candidate who (a) does not hold any public office and (b) knows what he is talking about.

Question: Who would you make each candidate debate? I propose Glenn Greenwald versus Barack Obama, and Ron Paul versus whoever gets the GOP nomination.

Gingrich Wins South Carolina

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Well, well, what hath South Carolina wrought? I admit that the outcome caught me unawares. Like everyone else, I saw the polling results, but it seemed to me there had to be a defect in them. To nominate Gingrich as the party's standard-bearer is a policy so contrary to logic that I thought surely South Carolina Republicans would refuse the bait. Gingrich is the only candidate remaining who is less electable than Ron Paul.

Electability is not everything, of course. Paul is politically radioactive, yet a double-digit defeat with him is preferable to a rousing victory with anyone else. But in the case of Gingrich there are no saving graces. He is as unprincipled as Romney, as impulsive as Santorum, and as unlikeable as Judas Iscariot. If he snatches the nomination, I predict a replay of 1964.

GOP primary voters, alas, have precious little sense. In 2008 they had three articulate candidates to choose from: Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee. Yet somehow McCain secured the nomination. Well, all I can say in consolation is that the party deserves everything it is about to get.

"Corporations Are Not People"

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:57:00 +0000

No creed is too absurd to win the assent of newspaper columnists. In today's Boston Globe, Jim McGovern and Jeff Clements haul out the tired line that "[c]orporations are not people." They say this in the course of denouncing Citizens United—a Supreme Court decision involving a constitutional guarantee that is not even limited to "people" by its text. Here are a few constitutional guarantees that are limited to people:

No person shall . . . be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; . . . nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Under the populist jurisprudence of McGovern and Clements, Congress would have a free hand to seize outright the property of any corporation in the land, without a trial and without a hearing.

McGovern and Clements might respond that this would affect the rights of actual people—namely, stakeholders in the corporation. That won't do. By the same reasoning, restrictions on corporate speech involve the free-speech rights of a corporation's owners and employees.

The sloganeers bemoaning corporate personhood seem not to have the slightest grasp of the implications of their argument. If corporations have no constitutional rights, what are we to say of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal? How will Regnery and Crown Forum fare in this brave new regime? Not well; and neither will the rest of us.

Hitler Reacts to SOPA

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:29:00 +0000

It seems he is not pleased:

A Trivia Question

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:57:00 +0000

How many decisions of the United States Supreme Court are reported in the first volume of the United States Reports?

Secession and the Consent of the Governed

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:38:00 +0000

According to Brad DeLong, Ron Paul "at some deep level" does not think blacks are people. His evidence? Paul had the audacity to invoke the "consent of the governed" in the course of defending Southern secession.

That would indeed be a strange argument to make, if the South had seceded in response to a federal edict abolishing slavery. But as DeLong surely knows, that is not what happened. The South seceded "over slavery," to be sure; but there was no imminent threat of abolition.

The Simplest of Free Elections

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:46:00 +0000

"I order you to hold a free election, but forbid you to elect anyone but Richard my clerk." Writ of King Henry II, quoted in W.L. Warren, Henry II (1973), 312.

Best Article Title Ever?

noreply@blogger.com (P.S. Huff) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:45:00 +0000

"Abortion Law: What Would Solomon Do?"