Links

1. The effect of soil on sub-Saharan African agriculture and development.

2. What happens when you resubmit previously published journal articles to peer-reviewed psychology journals?

3. Are we breeding the nutrition out of food?

4. Teens' use of social media. 

5. Pictures of Finland from World War II.

6. In praise of New Zealand's health care system.

Links

1. A Hungarian student's redesign of the egg carton. 

2. The battle over junk DNA.

3. An 18-year old Romanian has created a design that may drastically reduce the cost of driverless cars. 

Thomas Nagel and Natural Teleology

Michael Chorost has written a reappraisal of the furious debate over Thomas Nagel's claims about natural teleology. Chorost purports to offer scientific evidence in support of Nagel's view (which he criticizes Nagel for failing to offer in his own defense):

But highly regarded scientists have made similar arguments. "Life is almost bound to arise, in a molecular form not very different from its form on Earth," wrote Christian de Duve, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, in 1995. Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and biogeologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, struck a similar note in 2007: "With autotrophy, biochemistry is wired into the universe. The self-made cell emerges from geochemistry as inevitably as basalt or granite." Harold J. Morowitz, a biophysicist at George Mason University, argued that evolution has an arrow built into it: "We start with observations, and if the evolving cosmos has an observed direction, rejecting that view is clearly nonempirical. There need not necessarily be a knowable end point, but there may be an arrow."

Chorost seems to conflate the claim that the development of life and complexity is causally determined with the claim that the development of life and complexity is naturally teleological; unfortunately, even if there is evidence for the former, this does not itself constitute evidence for the latter.

Links

1. Photo of Iceland. 

2. Yitang Zhang, an "obsure" mathematician, stuns his peers with a major result about primes. 

3. Japanese barista makes 3D latte art.

4. "Our American Pravda." Claims about the failures of the American media.

5. Thinking big about small talk.

6. The story of one man and his colonoscopy bag. 

7. If you go back far enough, everyone is descended from a king (because everyone has the same ancestors). 

The Metaphysics of David Birnbaum

David Birnbaum, a Hollywood jeweler and self-styled metaphysician, has somehow convinced Bard College to host a conference dedicated to his theories. Birnbaum claims to have seamlessly reconciled religion and science in his (self-published) magnum opus, the Summa Metaphysica. He mailed copies of the Summa to 2,000 philosophers. (I received a copy, but only read a few paragraphs before giving up.) 

Garry Hagberg is a professor of philosophy at Bard College whom Birnbaum falsely claimed served as an editor to the Summa. Here is Hagberg's summary of the Summa: “His work so far as I can see does not (this is description, not criticism) intersect at any point with what the discipline of philosophy considers to be within the field of historical or contemporary metaphysics.” 

A bizarre tale, worth reading.

Progressives' Truck with Trek

Matt Yglesias has written a fine essay on the many incarnations of Star Trek, including a celebratory discussion of its implict (or should that be blatantly explicit?) progressive ideology, with a concluding plea for a new series.

I agree with Yglesias' interpretation of Trek ideology, though I do not join in fist-pumping such a utopian statism. Also, I could do without another series. Yet the importance/impact of the franchise is undeniable. 

Paul Bloom, "The Case Against Empathy"

Paul Bloom's critique of empathy. In fact, it should probably be presented as a critique of the sloppy / careless use of empathy, since the criticisms it offers seem to rely upon empathic concern of others to ground their normativity. Also, the innumerate character of empathy is characteristic of human intuitive cognition and affect generally, so it's misleading to frame the innumerate objection as being against empathy specifically; many instances of self-love are no doubt also innumerate in the same problematic way.

LInks

1. The economics of social status. And: the "Gervais Principle" (an analysis of corporate power dynamics).

2. Tribute to physicist Richard Feynman. 

3. Retrospective of David Graeber, anarchism, and the Occupy Movement. 

4. James Hamilton on the Reinhart and Rogoff kerfuffle. And Greg Mankiw and Ryan Avent.

Two Books on Samuel Johnson

Kate Chisholm reviews two books on Samuel Johnson at the Times Literary Supplement: Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone's edited anthology, Samuel Johnson: The arc of the pendulum, and Julia Allen's Swimming with Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale: Sport, health and exercise in eighteenth century England. The review quotes Johnson on his struggles with the dictionary:

one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them

Allen's work reveals the surprising range of Johnson's physical activities (given his considerable bulk and reputation for melancholy):

Inspired by her knowledge of lexicography and a desire to rescue Johnson from caricature as a “stout, elderly-looking man in a wig”, Allen reproduces a collection of curious gobbets to illustrate the physical (as opposed to mental) activities enjoyed by Johnson and his contemporaries, and the opportunities for exercise afforded them by skating, riding, boxing, swimming, foot-racing and climbing. Of these we know that Johnson attempted all six; not something you might expect of a man noted for his physical awkwardness, depressive tendencies and prodigious hours devoted to his literary output. Yet, if anything, Johnson was a truly twenty-first-century man in his adoption of fast days and vegetarian diets, and his belief in the beneficial effects of exercise on mood and motivation. Allen gives us Johnson the swimmer, diving nude into the sea at Brighton; Johnson the physically daunting nephew of a champion boxer; and Johnson, aged fifty-nine, in defiance of time, space and the balanced life, rolling down a Lincolnshire hillside (is there such a thing in the fenlands?), “turning himself over and over till he came to the bottom”.

Who would have guessed it?: Johnson the boxer, the skinny-dipper; Johnson fasting, foot-racing, and rolling down a hill.

Links

1. "I was swallowed by a hippo."

2. The astounding art of Siyu Chen.

3. Newark mayor Corey Booker played Dungeons & Dragons.

4. The fantastic 1970s interiors of Verner Panton.

5. The sublime cluelessness of throwing lavish Great Gatsby parties. "It's like throwing a Lolita-themed children's birthday party."

6. "I hate fun."

7. The decline of state and local public investment.

8. The Open Borders Movement. 

9. "There are more people living inside of this circle than outside of it."

10. "I still love Kierkegaard."

Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul But Jesus

I just learned of the existence of Jeremy Bentham's Not Paul But Jesus. This work is in three volumes, only the first of which was published during his lifetime, under the pseudonym "Gamaliel Smith". In this work, Bentham argues that Jesus, unlike Paul, was not an advocate of asceticism or a foe of pleasure, and that Christians should return to the ethic of Jesus, and abandon the ascetic ethic of Paul. It's surely no coincidence that Bentham's interpretation of Jesus' ethics is consistent with Bentham's own pleasure-loving doctrine of utilitarianism.

In the third volume of Not Paul But Jesus, a critical edition of which has just been released for free over the internet (pdf), Bentham  argues, among other things, for the toleration of non-traditional sexual relationships ("the eccentric pleasures of the bed"), including homosexuality. This would have been quite radical in Bentham's time, so perhaps it is no surprise that this volume of the work went unpublished, even under a pseudonym.

As another example of just how radical the work is, chapter 13 is entitled "The Eccentric Pleasures of the Bed, Whether Partaken of by Jesus?", and in this chapter Bentham presents evidence from the Gospels to support the claim that Jesus had homosexual relationships with the Apostle John and with a certain "stripling of loose attire". Upon a cursory reading, I don't find Bentham's arguments in chapter 13 to be particularly compelling, but it is fascinating that Bentham should see fit to even make such an argument, particularly considering the attitudes of the majority of his contemporaries, and it is evidence of his extreme broad-mindedness and originality, which is in abundant evidence elsewhere in his life and works (such as in his advocacy of the auto-icon, a display case containing the mummified corpses of deceased scientists and other cultural luminaries, to help preserve their memory among the living; an auto-icon was created for Bentham himself, in accordance with his wishes, but the practice sadly failed to catch on).

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

Tyler Cowen on Government and Public Goods

In a New York Times column, libertarian economist Tyler Cowen argues that the government should provide more public goods, including rewards for medical research, patent buyouts, and pandemic preparation.

A public good is a good characterized by non-excludability--once produced, it is difficult or impossible to exclude people from consuming it. In contrast, a private good is characterized by excludability. An example of a private good is Medicare, since the benefits can be limited to particular people. An example of a public good is a public health measure which reduces the risk of infection with a given disease to the members of a given population. Even vaccines, which can be given to particular people, have positive externalities, in that they reduce the risk of infection for others who are not vaccinated, and so they count as public goods.

It may seem surprising that a libertarian is arguing for more government production of public goods, and in a sense that is right given the current culture of 'libertarianism' in America, but in fact the libertarian or classical liberal ideology has included the view that the proper role of the government is to produce public goods and not private goods. The point is not made enough that, even from a libertarian standpoint, governments may fail by not doing enough, as well as failing by doing too much or engaging in activities which should be left to civil society. To my mind, another salient example of insufficient government action is prosecution of financial fraud and "white collar" crime.

Kintsukuroi

Cracked indigo bowl
A caring soul restored it
With veins of bright gold.

Links

1. Gypsy law (.pdf).

2. "The diploma's vanishing value." Community colleges provide a better deal than four-year colleges or universities.

3. The genetics and neuroscience of violence.

4. Profile of philosopher Daniel Dennett. In some ways Dennett is the modern-day version of Charles Sanders Peirce, except that people actually care about what he has to say.

5. Why Iceland.