A Curious Little Blog

Election-night pundits talked a lot about how this presidential election was unique, and it certainly was surprising in many ways.  But Trump, the candidate, was as different from previous presidential candidates as the election itself was from previous elections; not just in his demeanour, but in a host of measurable ways.  (All of the following assume he actually takes office in 2 1/2 months, which seems likely but I feel like I need to cover myself in case some unlikely event prevents him from doing so.) Trump will not be the oldest president to take the inaugural oath, but he will be the oldest to take it for the first time (he is 70, Reagan was 69).  Reagan also beat Trump to become the first divorcé to be president, but Trump has two divorces to Reagan's one.  He is the first billionaire to be elected.  Ironically, however, Hillary Clinton raised twice as much money as Trump did.  This makes him the first person to win an election in spite of raisin...

Everyone wants to know what a president Trump would actually do.  I think the only surprise would be if Trump governed mundanely for four years, not surprising the whole country -- supporters and opponents -- several times.  However, there are some issues that have more urgency than others, so they will be the ones we are most likely to see action on relatively soon. (a) Supreme Court vacancy:  Highly placed Republicans have decided that Trump will safely nominate a conservative to replace Scalia.  If he doesn't, I expect Republicans to begin looking for ways to impeach him soon thereafter.  This is absolutely the main thing that got the support of many Republicans, and it would be a surprise if he changed directions immediately.  (It also makes me sad that the most important thing about the president is that he gets to appoint Supreme Court justices, but that's another matter.) (b) Appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton:  I...

I heard several analysts on Tuesday night saying that Trump was the only one who saw the wave of populism and figured out how to get on it.  I think this is giving Trump way too much credit for being in the right place and time.  I certainly won't say that he deserves no credit for winning the election, but let's think about the populist wave and resentment against Washington. There is always a lot of resentment against the government.  If you don't think so, you probably live in a wealthy section of a big city, because I am sure it is there and I hear it all the time.  In many ways, Reagan's election was the same theme, and there have been many would-be populist candidates in the meantime.  Think about Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Hermann Cain, Bernie Sanders...They all lacked something.  One thing they lacked is that they never got a major party nomination.  Perot didn't even try.  If he had (and I don't know which party that would have been), I'...

I hear that Hillary Clinton gave a magnanimous concession speech.  Nevertheless, I suspect she is still bitterly disappointed at the moment.  I know I would be.  She might be directing her anger at a lot of people:  Trump, of course; Jim Comey; Julian Assange; maybe Anthony Weiner; maybe a little for Bernie Sanders as well.  But I'll bet that, in the long run, the person she is most angry at is Barack Obama. The 2008 election was hers to lose.  Everybody knew.  Everybody knew that the Republican candidate would face very difficult odds with such an unpopular sitting president.  Hillary Clinton seemed set to be nominated.  There was hardly any opposition.  I'll bet that Obama himself didn't expect to win when he started his candidacy; he was probably laying the groundwork for the future.  And then this thing happened, and he got all this support, and suddenly Hillary was sitting on the sidelines watching him sweep to victory for th...

The presidential election still isn't over, but I can make one prediction that I feel confident about:  at least 30% of the electorate will think it is the end of our country, and another 15% will be depressed until the first scandal hits the next administration. My suggestion for solving this problem:  Think about your most cherished social issue that is currently under dispute, such as same-sex marriage or abortion.  First, ask yourself how far your views need to prevail in order for you to feel morally reconciled to the result.  Your town?  County?  State?  Or do you have to see your views enforced on the entire country (or world, for that matter) before you can sleep in peace at night? Now ask yourself the converse.  Presumably people on the opposite side of the issue feel as strongly as you do.  How far are you willing to let them extend their interpretation if they are successful?  Remember that the answer will be symmetric wit...

While waiting in line to pay for my groceries today, I started thinking about what an amazing thing the shopping cart is.  It's not a technological marvel, admittedly, but it is really, really convenient for buying groceries.  Imagine if you had to put all your groceries in a hand basket.  You would probably be more inclined to make more frequent, smaller shopping trips, as is still common in Europe, especially where people use public transportation rather than driving to the store.  I only go once a week unless I forget something, and even weekly shopping is more than I want to do.  I would go once a month if I had a big enough refrigerator and freezer, making only small trips to get produce and milk that don't last that long. I was looking down through the bars on a shopping cart.  Not making the cart's bottom and sides solid is an obvious benefit for the store.  If they were, the corners would be impossible to keep clean of bacteria and mold, and ...

There is a popular video on YouTube right now, a skit from Saturday Night live about a game of " Black Jeopardy ."  If you haven't seen it, you should, both because it is funny and because I think there are a lot of things about race relations in America to learn from it (though perhaps not always the things that most people take from it). But I don't want to talk about race relations; I want to talk about politics.  At one point, Tom Hanks's character responds to the Jeopardy "answer" "They out here saying that every vote counts" with "Come on, they already decided who wins even before it happens."  And in the skit, it is axiomatic that this is a standard view of blacks in America, as well as an assumption shared by many whites.  This strikes me as extraordinary. I say it is extraordinary, although I grew up among people who thought along similar lines.  What is extraordinary is that no political analysts that I am aware of ever ...

That grandiose title is simply meant to convey that people can be stupid about some things and not others.  I enjoy a good collection of people saying stupid things on the internet as much as anyone; this one , for example.  All of these are cases of people being too ignorant for most people even to fathom, but let's consider how they are being ignorant for a moment. Several are, of course, about spelling, or knowing the sound of a word without thinking of what it really represents:  "hall of cost" for holocaust, "meaty oaker" for mediocre (that one gets me every time), "flaming young" for filet mignon, "synonym rolls" for cinnamon rolls, "Rosetta Stone" for Rosa Parks.  Although they evince terrible spelling, in none of these cases is the person getting the meaning wrong because of misunderstanding the root.  The last one is not so much spelling as a person who has heard a name getting it mixed up with something that sounds simil...

This election is going to be bad for conservatism no matter what the result.  I think the tendency is for conservatives, even those who don't like Trump, to think that a victory for him would still be marginally better than another Democratic presidency.  That may be -- but then again, it may not be.  I know the primary reason for this feeling is that it is the only hope of keeping the Supreme Court from being completely liberal.  This is true, but I'm not sure this is a winning battle in the long run.  Conservatives hope the Supreme Court won't invent new "rights" and entitlements that further expand government and limit freedom, but liberals have little to fear from an activist conservative court because conservative justices are, on principle, opposed to activism from the bench.  Moreover, the court system as a whole is so filled with liberal judges that conservatives often need the Supreme Court to overturn lower court rulings that have already been mad...

I read a few weeks ago that Elon Musk, and apparently a lot of other people, think we are very likely living in a simulation .  His argument goes like this: The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation, I think, is the following: Forty years ago we had Pong--two rectangles and a dot. That is what games were. Now 40 years later we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have virtual reality, we'll have augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality. Although this seems to be a popular view among the technological elite in San Francisco, there are people who disagree.  Some people think it is more likely that humanity will destroy itself before we get to the level of simulations required.  Another line of argument is that the technology is harder than Musk is giving it credit ...

For conservatives, this is a sad election any way it turns out, but there are advantages as well as disadvantages in every situation.  I haven't gotten the sense that either major candidate has a big advantage to this point, but it seems that the edge is to Clinton.  If that happens and we do find ourselves with a third consecutive Democratic win in a presidential election, obviously that wouldn't be good for conservatives on the whole.  On the other hand, a Trump win might be even worse, so let's consider the possible advantages that might accrue to conservatives from a Clinton victory. The one thing that everyone is concerned about is the Supreme Court.  It is almost inconceivable that Hillary Clinton would not appoint a very liberal justice to fill Scalia's spot, and there may be two or more retirements in the next four years as well.  The Supreme Court, which has been pretty tightly balanced for years now, would become (barring unprecedented rejections on ...

Typically, the vice presidential candidate is viewed as an attack dog:  someone who can make edgy attacks on the other side while the presidential candidate remains dignified.  This is exactly reversed in the Trump/Pence ticket.  Trump says edgy things all the time; Pence is a stabilizing influence who pooh-poohs his running mate's wilder attacks. We have never had a president who wasn't an avowed Christian.  I was struck by the fact that both Kaine and Pence seem to be serious in their faith, unlike many politicians who are Christian mostly because it is a political disadvantage not to be, at least nominally.  But we will have an atheist president soon, I would venture.  Kaine and Pence grew up at a time when most Americans were raised Christian as a matter of course.  I think the next generation contains many more people who were raised either indifferent to religion or hostile to it.  I would be surprised if we didn't have an atheist or agnos...

Some more things that I bought, or received as gifts after asking for them, and how they worked out for me. Fixr tool :  I have an unhealthy fixation with multitools.  Somehow, it seems like my life will get organized if only I have the right set of tools in my pocket.  Even if that is true, however, this tool isn't the one.  It looks awesome, and it is very solidly constructed.  The one weakness is the rotating gold part, which you have to move to get to the blade and the screwdrivers.  It was pretty tight at first, but quickly became loose and rotated in my pocket.  This left an exposed blade and made it snag on everything.  The screwdrivers are hard to use, even if you can get the rotating component to hold still, which you rarely can.  The "box opener" is the jagged part.  Seriously, it works if you push hard enough but it isn't very good.  The worst of all is the blade, which you'll notice tucked into the middle of the tool...

Among those who do not support aggressive government reaction to the terrorist threat, a common argument is that terrorism is actually not much of a threat at all. After all, they point out, you are more likely to be killed in a car accident, to be shot, even to be shot by a toddler, than to die in a terrorist attack. (This argument is so well known that I'm not going to bother linking to instances of it, but they aren't hard to find if you don't believe me.) As far as the death statistics go, they're not wrong. Even at the worst year, 2001, the number of deaths to terrorism was minuscule compared to almost any other cause, most of which (such as automobile accidents) we tolerate with hardly a word of protest. If its sole purpose was to save lives, the government could do far more good by increasing automobile safety regulations than by trying to stop terrorism. The trouble, as anyone who stops to think about it for a few minutes realizes, is that it's not a...

I neglected to mention one central feature of the Critique of Practical Reason that bothers me quite a bit, namely, Kant's apparently boundless faith in the ability of reason to create a moral code. I am a strong believer in reason, and I hardly ever do anything without reflecting on it. However, I have also come to fear reason, because apparently reasonable conclusion can lead to ghastly results, such as eugenics. One could argue, of course, that true reason could never lead to anything so inhumane, but it would be impossible, I'm sure, to prove it with any degree of certainty. The whole field of morals is covered with uncertainty. Perhaps there is a refutation for every logical argument that leads to inhumane behaviour, but what if we can't find that refutation? What if we ourselves come to a morally reprehensible conclusion that appears to us, nevertheless, to be logically airtight? I refuse to be bound by such a conclusion. I think reason helps us do the right...

What is this "categorical imperative" that is associated with Kant? It is, simply, a moral rule that must be followed regardless of circumstances. Kant notes that philosophers and theologians have tended to start with the "summum bonum," or highest good, and derive morality from that: pursuing the summum bonum is good. The problem with that approach is that there is no way to tell what is good in any particular circumstance; it all depends on whether it would benefit the highest good. Kant believes that this undermines true morality. "Thou shalt not kill" should be a universal rule, and not something that you make exceptions for: well, it is Hitler, he will kill a lot of other people if we don't; it is in self-defense; etc. I can't say that Kant would endorse this particular rule, nor any other particular rule, because he remarkably avoids discussion of any specific moral laws in the whole book. Nevertheless, this is clearly the gist of wh...

My most popular post by a huge margin is on Hume and Popper , although I'm not sure if it gets so many hits because it is insightful or because philosophy professors keep sending their students to it as an example of how not to analyze philosophy.  I finally got around to reading Hume's famous work "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" and I was curious whether it would cause me to rethink my other post.  In a word, no, because that post was mostly (I realize now) about Popper.  But I'm still glad I read it. After slogging through Spinoza and Leibniz, I can't say what a pleasure it was to read a book in the Anglophone tradition, where the author's primary effort is to be understood.  That, and Hume's empiricist outlook, make this book a pleasure to read even where I disagree with it, and that does not include his generally sceptical approach. Hume tries to show that we can only ever assume causality, never know it directly, which is unobjec...

The mascot question has become much more acute since I wrote about it here 7 years ago ( Offensive mascots , 11/27/09).  The NCAA has imposed penalties on teams with Native American nicknames and mascots, and the pressure on the Washington Redskins has become much greater, including many networks that will not say the name on air. A new poll highlights the stupidity of the whole effort:  Native Americans overwhelmingly don't care.  They either aren't offended or actually like the names.  Which should be obvious, since team names are taken not to mock a culture, but to hold it up as a symbol of pride. I doubt this will shame any of the people campaigning against Native American names into minding their own business, because they do not have a normal sense of shame when it comes to their touchstone issues.  You're either right, or you're a racist/fascist/sexist.  I don't know what they would say to Native Americans in this case; perhaps they would argue ...

Having devoted the last two posts to the issue of illegal immigration, I thought I should offer my opinion lest people think the arguments in those posts cover my views exactly.  I have mixed feelings about immigration, which seems to make me unique in the country, everyone else being strongly for or against it. First, I am convinced that illegal immigration is bad and should be punished.  It makes a mockery of a country to have its laws flouted with impunity.  If people think the law is bad, they should repeal it.  As long as it is on the books, and that includes up to the present, it should be enforced. But is it a good law, or not?  In principle, I see the value to increasing population.  This is the classic measure of a successful state, and perhaps no country in history has been more successful at attracting voluntary immigrants than the U.S.  (Ironic, I suppose, since the U.S. also had one of the larger populations of involuntary immigrants,...