Holiday Hodgepodge

Heh!

Reader Snedcat emails me a link to a news story whose title just about says it all: "Gay Community Apologizes to Amy Koch for Ruining her Marriage". (Koch supports a ban on gay marriage.)

The letter comes on the heels of Koch's own apology, released yesterday, in which she expressed her deep regret for "engaging in a relationship with a Senate staffer." Although the letter did not specify the identity of the other participant in the "inappropriate relationship," it is widely rumored to be former communications chief Michael Brodkorb, who lost several positions with the GOP in the wake of the scandal.

The only thing legalized gay marriage really threatens is the shaky sense of self-esteem of meddlesome theocrats.

Holiday Reading

"Capitalism and business get the blame for people's shopping compulsions. That's like blaming air for the fact that people say stupid things." -- Michael Hurd, in "Be Happy Within Your Means" at DrHurd.com

"Even in an age of instantaneous electronic communication, there's simply no substitute: You can't email a tanker full of methanol." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Stocks that Could really Sail in 2012" at SmartMoney
 
"If the eventual GOP nominee supports 'personhood,' they risk alienating these independent voters for whom outlawing birth control pills and IUDs would be anathema. In other words, 'personhood' could give the 2012 election to Obama." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Would a President Gingrich Ban the Birth Control Pill?" at PJ Media

"Yet ever since the writings of Mises, Hayek, and Rand, we've known the nature and outcome of such intervention, economically, politically, and morally. Seventy more years of its practice, both here and abroad, has only served to confirm and reinforce that knowledge." -- Amit Ghate, in "Time for Emergency Freedom" at PJ Media

One More...

I've always considered Leonard Peikoff's "Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial", to be a classic. I particularly like what he says about Santa Clause: "Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice--Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones."

Annual Blogging Break

Each year, during the holidays, I take around a week off from blogging -- completely: I don't even look at my blogging-related email account. A couple of times, I have even taken a holiday from the Internet altogether. This year, I'm taking slightly more time off than usual. There will be no post tomorrow, and I'll resume posting here on either the third or fourth of January. I'll respond to email and comments through tomorrow morning, and maybe again the day before my return. So don't be surprised to see me disappear from the face of the earth until the Tuesday or Wednesday after New Year's Day.

As I get ready to relax, I would like to take a moment to thank you, my readers, for making Gus Van Horn a part of your Internet routine. Those of you I have met, be it through comments or correspondence, or in person, have invariably enriched my blogging experience through the interaction and, for that, I thank you.

I look forward to seeing you again in the new year. In the meantime, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-- CAV

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The Fallacy of the Fence

Technology blogger David Pogue, considering a few of the more questionable decisions made by CEOs over the past year, naturally considers what Megan McArdle called the "brief and tragic life of Qwikster." In the process, Pogue reminded me of McArdle's post, whose title, "If Everyone Else Is Such an Idiot, How Come You're Not Rich?", intrigued me when I encountered it. I hadn't gotten around to reading it yet, so I did, because I saw Pogue, although not directly calling Reed Hastings an idiot, questioning how he could have reached the decision he did.

After reading the two pieces, I think McArdle and Pogue are on the same page regarding Hastings, which I would sum up as, "That was a bad decision, but one Hastings made, based on what he thought were good reasons."

But the McArdle piece brought up something called, "The Fallacy of Chesterton's Fence," which she quotes elsewhere, and which I think is worthy of consideration by people who, like myself, are interested in cultural change as a means of achieving political change. There are obvious and non-obvious reasons for thinking about this:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Libertarians, who see no need to understand political philosophy before embarking on reform, are guilty of this fallacy, and the liberty-endangering results are perhaps most clear when we see so many of them -- such as Ron Paul -- adopt a pacifistic "non-interventionism" in foreign policy.

People who so reflexively reject traditions that they seem unable to entertain the idea that they might exist for good reasons -- and rush to condemn anyone who upholds a tradition as, ipso facto, an unthinking boob -- also fall prey to the fallacy. Both fail to connect their abstractions with reality, failing in the process, as McArdle puts it so well, to form "a theory of the transition" between the state of affairs they "want" and the one that exists.

The scare quotes around "want" are significant. Someone who does not thoroughly understand some cause he supports risks damaging that cause, because what he means when he uses the words of that cause is highly questionable. A nation cannot have freedom for very long, for example, without a strong military and a principled foreign policy of national self-interest. Someone like Ron Paul clearly does not understand this on some level, or his praise of "freedom" and his military "non-interventionism" would not be bedfellows in his own mind.

In the realm of cultural activism, someone like Paul damages his own cause not merely by espousing notions that plainly contradict it, sewing confusion in the process. He also understandably repels potential allies (to the actual cause) by sounding like an idiot.

While people who don't know what they are talking about can sometimes accidentally lead others to discover knowledge, it is worth considering how a rational person would properly react to what such people say. "A statement isn't necessarily false because it comes from an unreliable source, though it is more likely to be false," as John Cook has rightly pointed out. Based on an implicit understanding like this, it would not be unreasonable for a perfectly rational person whose only exposure to, say, the thought of Ayn Rand, were due to the fact that he thought Ron Paul fairly represented her -- and he'd heard Paul say something patently ridiculous -- to think that Rand is a crackpot. Other exposure to Rand from other sources could cause such a person to revise his opinion later, but this will be despite Paul's insistence that he is a champion of liberty.

The kind of error that manifests as the "Fallacy of Chesterton's Fence" is thus both an impediment to thoughtful reform and to communication about why such reform is necessary, in what direction such reform must move, and in how best to achieve it. This is why advocates of Ayn Rand's ideas should distance themselves from the likes of Ron Paul.

-- CAV

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Pipes on Socialized Medicine

Writing at Forbes, Sally Pipes discusses something I commented on long ago:

[British patients have] foregone cutting-edge medical treatments available in the United States, told by their leaders that these new therapies were no better than the old ones -- just more expensive. At least in Britain, they thought, everyone has access to basic health care. That has to be better than the situation in America, where tens of millions of people lack health insurance, right?

Hardly. The British healthcare system may "guarantee" access to care -- but that doesn't mean patients actually receive it.

Take the case of David Evans, a 69-year-old farmer living in Cornwall, in southwest England. About a year ago, he developed a hernia and needed an operation. Despite government requirements that he receive treatment within 18 weeks of diagnosis, he still hasn't been treated.

Recently, he had to use his own ultrasound equipment -- typically used to examine pregnant sheep -- to check the hernia himself and determine if it was getting worse.

Pipes puts scare quotes around the term "guarantee", but she could have just as easily used them around the word "access", as I did when considering the issue before:

That's right: If you obtain more medical care than John Conyers, Barack Obama, or Donna Christian-Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) feel like allowing you to have, that's "excess consumption."
I suppose that one way to get around your constituents not having "access" to medical care is to effectively make it illegal.

And the global economic depression is, as Pipes notes, only going to further curtail "access" to "excess" medical care. The whole article is worth reading for its up-to-date examples of central planning -- once again -- utterly failing to provide customers with services their lives (or the quality of their lives) depend on.

Following the article is this interesting blurb:

Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. Her next book -- The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare (Regnery) -- will be released in January 2012.

I am unfamiliar with Pipes, and tend to react with skepticism when I hear claims to the effect that some public policy proposal or other relies on "market forces". Nevertheless, I hope that this book and others like it succeed in rekindling the debate about the government's current, improper role in the medical sector.

-- CAV

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Keep on Talking!

Over the years, I have learned that sometimes, the best way to defeat someone spewing nonsense is to sit back and let him keep on talking, and then make it easy for the thinking part of the audience to connect the dots.

For that reason, I found myself first wondering why leftist blogger (and OWS cheerleader) Matthew Yglesias posted "U.S. More Unequal than Ancient Rome", on the "problem" of income inequality, at all -- and then wishing he'd spent more time explaining why he would consider this a problem, if it were true, rather than simply implying that he disagrees with the analysis.

Research from Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen suggests that the Gini coefficient for the ancient Roman Empire was 0.42–0.44, slightly lower than today's 0.45.

Of course an interesting exercise would be to try to think about this in human welfare terms rather than in monetary terms. The past would arguably have been extremely egalitarian in welfare terms simply because the overall living standards were so low compared to today. No air conditioning, no out-of-season food, no air travel to visit family in a different city, no penicillin if your kid gets sick. 

Indeed the exercise Yglesias suggests would be, "interesting", and much more, in part for reasons that Paul Hsieh recently brought up in "In Praise of Capitalist Inequality":

The fact that Steve Jobs earned a greater fortune than most others reflects the fact that he created much more value than most others -- and in the process enhanced others' lives to a proportionately greater degree. Steve Jobs' earned wealth was a direct reflection of the value he added for himself and others -- and his wealth should be praised and respected as a noble achievement.

It is also important to recognize that America is not currently a capitalist country, but rather a mixed economy with both capitalist and socialist elements. Hence, some Americans have become undeservedly rich through political "pull" and favors. But the OWS protestors aren’t opposed to government favoritism in principle -- they merely want to shift those special favors onto themselves.

Another exercise in a similar vein would also be "interesting" -- a thought experiment that I dare say not a single OWS sympathizer has bothered to attempt, but which Ayn Rand once conducted for their 1960s and 1970s counterparts: imagining what the results of stealing the property of "the rich" would really entail:

In view of what they hear from the experts, the people cannot be blamed for their ignorance and their helpless confusion. If an average housewife struggles with her incomprehensibly shrinking budget and sees a tycoon in a resplendent limousine, she might well think that just one of his diamond cuff links would solve all her problems. She has no way of knowing that if all the personal luxuries of all the tycoons were expropriated, it would not feed her family -- and millions of other, similar families -- for one week; and that the entire country would starve on the first morning of the week to follow . . . . How would she know it, if all the voices she hears are telling her that we must soak the rich? [from "The Inverted Moral Priorities," which appeared in The Ayn Rand Letter]

Seeing Yglesias actually think of all the modern conveniences we have that the Romans didn't caused me to wonder for a moment whether he'd had a Yeltsinesque "supermarket epiphany," or might be on the verge of one. If so, he could potentially be a valuable ally in the (actual) fight against poverty, with his words being even more valuable for the cause than they would be otherwise.

But either way, I hope he keeps on talking.

-- CAV

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Manufacturing Rebounds

Despite what one blogger at The American Interest calls, "efforts to regulate it out of existence," manufacturing is making a comeback across America. The blog links to a longer article by Joel Kotkin of New Geography, who names the following proximate causes:

Already the  boom in natural gas has sparked a considerable industrial rebound in parts of eastern Ohio including the building of a new $650 million steel plant for gas pipes in the Youngstown area.  Karen Wright, whose Ariel Corporation sells compressors used in gas plants, has added more than 300 positions in the past two years. "There's a huge amount of drilling throughout the Midwest," Wright says. "This is a game changer."

But the industrial rebound is not only about energy. Another critical factor is rising  wages in East Asia, including China. Increasingly, American-based manufacturing is in a favored position as a lower-cost producer. Concerns over "knock offs" and lack of patent protection in China may also spark a growing "Made in the USA" trend.

The American Interest also rightly points out that, "Solyndra style subsidized and government planned 'green jobs'", are not part of the picture. But this mere slap at central planning verges on generosity when we consider the enormous costs to our economy exacted by regulations and the mis-allocation of resources that also result from the "investments" of know-nothing government "planners". It cannot be stressed enough that American manufacturing is coming back because of the remaining capitalist elements of our mixed economy, and despite the increasingly numerous and large statist elements. Without the latter, we would be enjoying a roaring comeback that would not have required a bloodhound like Joel Kotkin to sniff out

-- CAV

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12-17-11 Hodgepodge

Why Publish?

Several times (most recently, here), I have brought up the problem of unreliable published scientific results. Be that as it may, Ben Goldacre, writing at Bad Science, discusses why scientific publication is so important, despite the fact that bad papers do get past the process of peer review:

But the value of a scientific publication goes beyond this simple benefit, of all relevant information appearing, unambiguously, in one place. It's also a way to communicate your ideas to your scientific peers, and invite them to express an informed view.

In this regard, I don't mean peer review, the "least-worst" system settled on for deciding whether a paper is worth publishing, where other academics decide if it's accurate, novel, and so on. This is often represented as some kind of policing system for truth, but in reality, some dreadful nonsense gets published, and mercifully so: shaky material of some small value can be published into the buyer-beware professional literature of academic science; then the academic readers of this literature, who are trained to critically appraise a scientific case, can make their own judgement.

And it is this second stage of review by your peers -- after publication -- that is so important in science. If there are flaws in your case, responses can be written, as letters, or even whole new papers. If there is merit in your work, then new ideas and research will be triggered. That is the real process of science.

Goldacre's whole post is well worth reading, for he raises an issue that is often lost in today's media-driven culture: the importance of critical review of expert opinions by other experts. Publication of a result may be newsworthy, but it is often the beginning -- not the end -- of the story.

Weekend Reading

"Long before Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and even Friendster, online dating was the most prominent social experience changed by the Internet." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Dating Stocks to Go Steady With" at SmartMoney

"A relationship is a dynamic collaboration. If one person changes significantly, his or her relationship will not be the same as it was." -- Michael Hurd, in "Not Everybody Welcomes Change" at DrHurd.com

"What possible market value did Gingrich produce to attain such net worth while occupying political office?" -- Richard Salsman, in "Why Do Takers Obama And Gingrich Attack Creators Like Romney?" at Forbes

My Two Cents

In bringing up the business background of Mitt Romney (in contrast to the backgrounds of Gingrich and Obama), Salsman raises a very good point. Nevertheless, as he argues elsewhere, such as in "Warren Buffet and Other Anti-Rich Capitalists", this doesn't get Romney off the hook for the lack of understanding of capitalism he showed in signing RomneyCare into law.

Salsman has, in successive columns, succeeded in making me willing to consider voting for Romney over Obama (versus abstaining from such a choice), but I would do so with open eyes about Romney.

Heh!

Some time ago, reader Snedcat emailed me a link that includes the following amusing anecdote:

Soon, the members of the collective began taking to the road to spread the gospel of universal togetherness and stuff, which led to their participation in big open-air rock festivals, such as Woodstock and the Texas International Pop Festival, where B. B. King inspired Hugh Romney to adopt the name "Wavy Gravy." While still on the road, Johanna gave birth to their son, and since B. B. King wasn't around to suggest a name for the kid, his parents put their heads together and christened him Howdy Do-Good Tomahawk Truck Stop Gravy. Interviewed today, the young Mr. Gravy, who seems remarkably well-balanced, all things considered, says, "The legal age you have to be to change your name is 13. I spent my 13th birthday in court." He answers to "Jordan" now. [bold added] (HT: Snedcat)

It's nice to read a story about hippies that includes an example of rebellion against something other than reality, for a change.

-- CAV

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Friday Four

1. The "official" record is two minutes and two seconds, but I stopped counting several days ago. Baby Van Horn is now routinely sitting for minutes at a time without falling! It is astounding to realize, upon watching a baby learn how to do all the "simple" things we take for granted, how complicated such things really are. No less astounding is the noticeable progress one can observe from one day to the next.

2. Here are links to three videos I hope to watch (or start watching) during some lulls I expect to have over the next few days. The first two come by way of HBL, and the third I learned about through a local Objectivist mailing list. Peter Schiff's "I am the One Percent: Let's Talk.", Yaron Brook's "Ayn Rand and the Tea Party: A Recipe for Cultural Change", and Yaron Brook debating Dominick Ianno at Ford hall Forum in "From the Government and Here to Help".

3. Football fans will find this piece on the NFL's proprietary "All 22" game film interesting: "The reality of special teams remains largely unknown for this reason. No one sees it. The ball is kicked, it flies through the air and a man catches it. Then he is swarmed by a murder of crows, followed by a TV timeout."

4. Along the lines of advice to book a meeting with yourself at work in order to have uninterrupted work time, but taken to a "big picture" level, Jacob Gorban recommends a weekly appointment dedicated to "thinking time" at Lifehacker.

In this age of Internet and social networks with all the fun distractions that they provide, it becomes more important to go away from it all at least for a couple of hours each week, sit down with a pen and paper (or even an iPad running some notepad-type application), and just think it all through.

This sounds like just the sort of thing I need to do each week, and it would compliment my daily planning sessions very well.

-- CAV

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How the Islamists Won

Spiegel Online offers a good account of how elections went in Egypt after the so-called Arab Spring, and why they look certain to turn Egypt into an Islamist theocracy.

Is it for this that the Egyptian youth took to the streets in late January? Is this why they overthrew autocratic former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak?

No, says Amr Iss al-Rigal. "But this is merely a transitional phenomenon. We had a feeling that the religious groups would triumph at first -- because they, like the Salafists, have friends in the oil monarchies. And because they, like the Muslim Brothers, were long members of the opposition, which gave them time to organize."

The financial support of our "ally", Saudi Arabia comes as no surprise, and is not unimportant, but Rigal notes something else that is much more important, although he seems not to fully appreciate it:

The former revolutionary has now turned into a candidate for parliament. And his prospects are good, even though he is campaigning directly against the Islamists in the poor Imbaba neighborhood. As the son of a bus driver, Rigal is familiar with the people who vote for the Islamists. And because his father was once a member of the radical group al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, he also knows what makes the Islamists so successful. "They appeal to your religious feelings, to your conscience. They distribute meat and coal. But that isn't a platform. You don't create jobs just by being devout." Rigal says that whenever he has told voters about their political rights, about their right to participate in the democratic process, to education and to healthcare, they have almost always reacted with astonishment and curiosity. [bold added]

Rigal is correct to note the incompatibility between Islamic altruism and the requirements of prosperity, but he grossly underestimates the power of morality as a motivator. Even if theocrats -- or some theocrat-military alliance -- actually permitted free elections (and honored their results) down the road, unless this morality is challenged directly and often in Egypt's popular culture, there is no reason to think that an Islamist-dominated parliament is somehow a "transitional phenomenon".

-- CAV

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Coming and Going

Noticing that Matt Drudge had linked to a story about rising electricity costs, I read it and found that, as I expected, environmentalist regulations have quite a bit to do with the problem:

The increase reflects higher fuel prices and the expense of replacing old power plants, including heavily polluting -- but cheap to operate -- coal plants that don't meet federal clean air requirements.

And don't forget that environmentalists have kept us from taking advantage of a "clean" alternative, nuclear energy, for decades, now, not that building a plant any time soon would be feasible -- again, due to such required red tape as environmental impact studies and the omnipresent threat of litigation made possible by a court system more intent on redistributing wealth or dictating its use than on protecting the individual right to property.

None of this is really news to anyone who has followed this blog, but it occurred to me that another tentacle of the Big Government Octopus is intimately involved, to wit:

Residential demand for power dropped briefly in 2009 but rebounded strongly last year to a record high. Air-conditioners and household appliances use less power than ever. A new refrigerator consumes half the electricity as a similar one bought in 1990. But consumers have bigger houses, more air-conditioning and more electronics than before, outpacing gains in efficiency and conservation.

How many people nationwide, thanks to the government's practice of "encouraging" home ownership at all costs, live in much larger houses than they can really afford? It is interesting to speculate on how much the artificial, government-produced demand for housing might be contributing to the strain on our utility grid, on top of the government-imposed restraints on the supply of electricity. And the people living in such houses get to pay for more electricity, and at a higher real cost, using inflated dollars.

-- CAV

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Early Risers

It looks like Joseph Kellard, my baby daughter, and I have something in common, at least this morning. With the baby up unusually early, we're all early risers.

Not to engage in one-upsmanship, but ever since Baby Van Horn's arrival, I have shifted to going to bed at 9:00 and waking at 3:00. (Yes. The other three o'clock!) It's really the only way I can have time to think or get various thought-intensive tasks, like blogging, done. (Now and then, I even manage to take a peek at other blogs...) I especially like the following passage:

When I used to live with others, including night owls who watched TV late, getting up early in the morning was always the only opportunity to take advantage of some quiet in the house, which was a tremendous value when I needed to think, write or read. Today I live alone in a studio apartment in a home that almost seems hermetically sealed to sound. It's too good to be true.

I am currently in the process of reevaluating my use of time from top to bottom, and one thing that I've come to enjoy is the half-hour or so I now start with, before doing anything else, to plan my day. In addition to helping me get my bearings, this ritual has turned out to be a nice, quiet, and reflective way to ease myself into the day, with a nice cup of coffee, of course.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Probably one of the most obvious (and annoying) symptoms of scientific and philosophical illiteracy is the confusion of correlation with causation. I'll take pleasure in whipping out these graphs the next time I have to make such a point. Continuing the theme of the main post: Who knew that naming so many babies "Ava" could wreak such havoc?

Via the LinkedIn group for Jean Moroney's Thinking Directions course alumni, I recently encountered "Eight Habits of Highly Productive People", and several other useful articles in a similar vein.

Provocative/Inspirational Quote of the Day: "Remarkable work often comes from making choices when everyone else feels as though there is no choice." -- Seth Godin, via John Cook, who also points to some interesting-looking reading about choice by Venkatesh Rao.

Updates

12-16-11: Corrected a typo. 

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Sowell's Latest Book

Via the following quote, Arts and Letters Daily led me to a piece in Commentary that reminded me of what an enjoyable writer Thomas Sowell is:

If a mad scientist were to repair to his laboratory to design a machine that would make white liberals uncomfortable, that machine would be Thomas Sowell...

True, and quite amusing, but the article put me off a little bit by accounting for this discomfort by painting Sowell as a consummate "nerd". I suppose, but despite the sympathetic use of the term, its shallowness tends to distract (and detract) from the very things I find most engaging about Sowell's body of work: the honesty and first-handedness with which he approaches the issues he writes about, and the broadness of his interests. These are both virtues, and not mere personality quirks.

Fortunately, the article succeeds in giving the reader a taste of both. The above quote continues:

... whose input is data and whose output is socioeconomic criticism in several grades, ranging from bemused observation to thorough debunking to high-test scorn -- all of which are represented in The Thomas Sowell Reader (Basic Books, 404 pages).

Starting off by noting Sowell's rare -- for a modern intellectual -- plain-spoken-ness, the article continues by looking at some of the writing he has done about his other interests:

[U]nder the heading of “Social Issues” in the Reader, ... the essay is "'Dead Ball' Versus 'Lively Ball'." Baseballologists will be familiar with the debate: Relatively few home runs were hit before 1920, after which the number grew very quickly. Legend has it that the Powers That Be in MLB introduced a so-called lively ball in 1920, hoping to produce a crop of exciting new home-run hitters to distract the public from the recent scandal of the Chicago "Black Sox​," who had fixed the 1919 World Series​. "Denials by baseball officials that the ball had been changed have been dismissed out of hand," Sowell writes, "in view of the dramatic and apparently otherwise inexplicable changes in the number of home runs hit in the 1920s and thereafter."


Sowell, as is his habit, does not accept the orthodoxy, in baseball or in politics. He goes to the data: How did specific hitters perform before and after the putative introduction of the lively ball? Did Ty Cobb and Joe Jackson start hitting more home runs? What do the statistics say? ...

Sowell's answer is that in baseball, as in economics, culture matters. In this case, the culture of baseball seems to have been changed by the phenomenon of Babe Ruth​, whose home-run-hitting prowess made him a baseball demigod. Batting styles changed. "Gross numbers may suggest a change in the ball," Sowell writes, "but a finer breakdown of the statistics indicates a change in the batters." [links dropped]

I remember this wide-ranging exploration from my readings of several of Sowell's other books, most recently Black Rednecks and White Liberals a few years ago. Although I do not follow baseball closely, I have read about this controversy and like Sowell's approach to the question.

Having recently settled on an ebook reader, I'm sure, after this review, that this is one book that will land on it. Incidentally, Sowell himself makes some other intriguing reading suggestions in a recent column.

-- CAV

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12-10-11 Hodgepodge

Charlotte vs. OWS

The city of Charlotte, North Carolina, which will be hosting next year's Democratic Convention, is enacting ordinances to keep OWS protestors at bay.

.... The North Carolina city, sometimes called the "Wall Street of the South," is not taking any chances, and is already working to pass an ordinance that would make occupying downtown spaces with tents a "public nuisance," in addition to banning "noxious substances," padlocks, and other camping equipment. The fact that it would knock out the city's current overnight demonstrators is an added bonus.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx said dubiously last month that the rule, which could be enacted in January, is not aimed at a specific group. "Unlike many cities that have well-developed regulations governing protest activity, our local regulations contain gaps that need to be filled," he said. But a memo about the ordinance does note, "The recent issues related to camping on city property have further amplified the need to review whether the city wants to regulate this activity during the DNC." A city councilman added of the current Occupy Charlotte faction, "Once those ordinances go into effect, those overnight stays will end."

Note that, of these measures, (1) only (perhaps) the proposed nuisance ordinance would exist in a truly capitalist society; and (2) none of the others would be needed were all property private, and trespassing were consistently treated like the crime that it is. As with an annoying union protest, on the sidewalks and streets in front of a hotel, I've had to walk past daily for over two weeks, this story reminds me that the streets would be far cleaner in a capitalist society.

Score this one a victory for the anti-freedom, anti-property OWS movement, as unintuitive as that might sound to many, including the impudent squatters themselves.

Weekend Reading

"But what is capitalism, exactly? How do we know it when we see it or have it -- or when we haven't, or don't?" -- Richard Salsman, in "Capitalism Isn't Corporatism or Cronyism", at Forbes

"Although never actually pursued under President Bush, the principles of private property, free trade and individual choice implied in The Ownership Society would remedy the economy in a way no other stimulus can." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Bring Back the Ownership Society", at SmartMoney

"Some of us have a hard time receiving criticism because we automatically take it personally." -- Michael Hurd, in "Don't Take It Personally!", at DrHurd.com

Two Perspectives on Apple

I have long been ambivalent about Apple products, having a high degree of respect for the quality and aesthetics of the hardware, but too much annoyance with the user interfaces of its software to ever seriously consider switching over. (I also strongly object to vendor lock-in.) Two articles I ran into recently have helped me better understand both the "love" and the "hate".

First, one writer argues that Apple's hardware design is good at essentializing:

Apple never designed the iPad. Instead, they undesigned it by creating the simplest shape possible. The iPad is the core essence of what a tablet *can* look like.

Apple is really good at this. Look at the Cinema Display, the Apple wireless keyboard, the Macbook Air, the iPod, and all their other devices. The reason why their "design" is so successful is because they are not actually designing their products. They are reducing them to the simplest form possible.

It is beauty through simplicity.

The writer's main thrust is an argument that Apple shouldn't be able to get legal protection for its iPad design. He raises interesting points, but I'm not sure I agree with him.

Regarding the "hate" (which extends to aspects of Windows and relates to my preference for Linux), another writer has finally identified the aspect of modern GUIs that puts me off:

Growing up I was always very small for my age. I didn't mind the size ("the bigger they are, the harder they fall!" was my rallying cry), but I hated being thought of as younger than I was, be it in physical or intellectual capabilities. When you're a knowledge sponge as a kid, the first time someone tells you something, it feels amazing, and you love that person. The second time someone tells you the same fact, it's pure torture. "I know this already, I'm not an idiot! Sheesh."

My problem with many modern UIs is that they never get past the telling phase. They're always dressing up their various functions with glows and bevels and curves, and in the process they somehow become overbearing to my senses. "Did you know you can click this? ...

Related to this tendency is skeuomorphism, the use of familiar metaphors in computing interfaces to permit non-computing people to use computers easily. I think the practice does help sell lots of computers, but I agree with Paul Miller and Andy Mangold that it doesn't always help that much, and can even get in the way of productive work.

Praising the Good

While I'm dumping computing links, I might as well end on a good note. As a very satisfied Dropbox user, I pass along what Scott Hanselman calls a "good [user experience] in the wild":

We need to continue to push ourselves and our work groups to implement ideas that we know are right. We need to advocate for the Customer and always try to see things from their experience. I don't know anyone at Dropbox but I think it's a fair guess that not only did they have the will to implement this friendly download feature, but they also knew it was the right kind of attention to detail that their customers needed. What a nice, almost subliminal way to kick off your relationship with your users than a subtly customized download page.

I didn't have to use this feature myself, but the degree of thoughtfulness Hanselman discusses extends throughout my user experience with Dropbox.

-- CAV

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How to Cover a Baby Bjorn

Editor's Note: I am, in fact, a very satisfied Baby Bjorn customer and do appreciate the fact that pictorial instructions save money. Nevertheless, I feel entitled to have some good-natured fun with this. That said, I highly recommend the carrier and the cover. What's really odd is that, looking over the instructions without time pressure or being distracted by the baby (but still, after having assembled things properly), they seem borderline obvious, now! Perhaps the moral of the story is something like, "Assemble new baby gear as a sort of 'playtime activity', and not just before you need to use it."

1. Receive text from wife on way to work: "VERY COLD!! Cold strong winds. Maybe use baby Bjorn bunting. It's on table."

2. Think, "Hmmm. I meant to look at that when it arrived, but how hard can using a slip cover really be?"

3. Get baby dressed for morning stroller walk, being sure to put on socks snugly, due to the cold.

4. Put baby in ExerSaucer.

5. Get self ready for morning stroller walk.

6. Consult to-do list for any morning errands.

7. Recall that art studio is garden level, and has no elevator.

8. Pick up very cranky baby.

9. Remove pants and socks from baby, who gets too hot easily, like her old man.

10. Rock baby to sleep.

11. With baby on chest and netbook in lap, get about an hour's worth of work done on side project.

12. Feed baby.

13. Put pants and socks on baby.

14. Place baby in crib.

15. "Saddle up", by strapping Baby Bjorn most of the way on. Glance at picture on box. Think, "This should take about five seconds."

16. Put right sock back on baby.

17. Strap baby in.

18. Remove cover from box, roll eyes at "hieroglyphic" pictorial instructions.

19. Put right sock back on baby.

20. Realize that hood needs to be detached from cover, or it will cover baby's face.

21. Detach hood.

22. Discover that cover is too short by attempting to slip cover onto baby, as suggested by picture on box and common sense.

23. Put left sock back on baby.

24. Remove cover from baby and Bjorn.

25. Attempt to decipher hieroglypics.

26. Discover that there are two small slits in cover for straps on Bjorn. Also, conclude that cover orientation was wrong, and that cover must be strapped onto Bjorn first.

27. Place baby in crib.

28. Remove Baby Bjorn.

29. Unfastening and refastening the appropriate straps, install cover on Baby Bjorn.

30. Change baby's diaper and put pants back on.

31. Saddle up.

32. Find socks.

33. Put socks on baby.

34. Discover that cover, as installed, will not cover baby by saddling up and attempting to place baby in Bjorn-cover assembly.

35. Place baby in crib.

36. Put right sock on baby.

37. Unsaddle, and take cover off of Baby Bjorn.

38. Attempt to use picture on box as Rosetta Stone for hieroglyphic instructions on Baby Bjorn cover.

39. Install cover on Baby Bjorn in correct orientation and saddle up.

40. Hastily conclude that cover is too short by attempting to slip cover onto baby, as suggested by picture on box, knowledge of slit locations,  and common sense.

41. Place baby in crib, unsaddle, and take cover off Baby Bjorn.

42. Put left sock on slightly cranky baby.

43. Turn on computer monitor across room so screen saver can mesmerize baby.

44. Realize that cover goes on after saddling up, but before last two straps holding baby in carrier are fastened by doing a slightly better Champollion impression.

45. Saddle up.

46. Put socks on baby.

47. Put baby in Baby Bjorn, except for last strap.

48. Slip last strap into cover and fasten.

49. Slip cover over baby and Baby Bjorn.

50. Unfasten corresponding strap on other side, slip it through its slit, and re-fasten.

51. In parallel with the next three steps, solve mildly interesting topology problem en route to snapping hood onto cover in the opposite orientation to that in which it shipped, and by pairing the following snaps together: hood snap 4 with cover snap 2, hood snap 3 with cover snap 1, hood snap 1 with cover snap 3, and hood snap 2 with cover snap 4.

52. Notice that baby is getting hot and cranky.

53. Consider putting off run to art store and doing carriage stroll instead.

54. Think, "What the hell? If she's still complaining by the time I get outside, I'll do that."

55. Go outside and see that baby is fine.

56. Formulate "Van Horn's Weather Codicil to Murphy's Law": "You never get a stiff wind, unless you really don't want or need one."

57. Take subway for one stop rather than hiking to art store.

58. Realize on platform that the walk would have been quicker.

59. Go to art store.

60. Take not being flash frozen over saving time and wait on subway again.

61. Make mental note to check cover for socks after removing it from baby at home.

62. Remove cover from baby and Baby Bjorn.

63. Place baby in crib.

64. Unsaddle.

65. Take pants off baby.

66. Take socks off baby.

-- CAV

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Rickover on Humble Pie

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who brought the numerous advantages of nuclear propulsion to the United States Navy, had the following to say, among many other valuable job-related insights, about the value of admission -- the first stage of correcting a major error:

It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation. This is particularly hard if one has invested much time and energy on a project and thus has come to feel possessive about it. Although it is not easy to admit what a person once thought correct now appears to be wrong, one must discipline himself to face the facts objectively and make the necessary changes - regardless of the consequences to himself. The man in charge must personally set the example in this respect. He must be able, in effect, to "kill his own child" if necessary and must require his subordinates to do likewise. I have had to go to Congress and, because of technical problems, recommend terminating a project that had been funded largely on my say-so. It is not a pleasant task, but one must be brutally objective in his work. 

Rickover thought he had a good idea, but learned that he was wrong. He had the good sense to admit as much, rather than obstinately stick to his guns, or double down on what he had come to realize was actually a folly.

Many people in our culture would mistakenly accuse someone who failed to do what Rickover did of being too "proud" to admit his error, but that is exactly the opposite of the problem. This is most easily grasped by taking the use of pride in the idiom, "pride in a job well done", as being closer to the true meaning of pride than the arrogance or putting-on-of-airs too commonly (and wrongly) associated with that virtue.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

I can't use Item 4 on the list, but this list of the Top Ten Slate Readers' Best Ideas for Starting a Business or Reinventing a Career is worthwhile. Item 5 is, for example, the idea of "market disruption" applied to the individual level.

Alan Greenspan's betrayal of capitalism has, fortunately, not made it impossible for people to "trust a Randian banker". Thank you, Mr. Allison!

I already had the flashlight when I ran into this list of free apps that can "turn your [Android] device into a digital toolbox".

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Beyond Evasion?

Writing at Slate, Katie Roiphe, herself a victim of statutory rape, takes as her point of departure the question of whether the New York Times was wrong to interview Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant coach who stands accused of numerous instances of sexual abuse of boys and adolescent men. Roiphe doesn't really address the question on ethical or political grounds, but she does demonstrate that, in her words, "the interview is valuable and certainly news."

Specifically, the interview shows just how far a sustained habit of evasion can shape someone, psychologically, even to the point of helping someone get away with horrible crimes for quite a long time.

At one point in the interview, he says, "In my mind, there wasn't inappropriate behavior." And one gets the sense that on some crazy level that may well have been true: In his mind, he may not have been abusing little boys. This is striking because if there is any story that the rest of the world sees in black and white, it is this one. There does not seem to be any moral ambiguity, any subtle shading toward gray, and yet to the child molester himself he may have done nothing wrong. Father Bruce Ritter, for instance, founded Covenant House in the '70s to shelter runaways and homeless kids, whom he claimed to be rescuing from a life of prostitution. Over a dozen of these kids later accused him of sexual improprieties. Sandusky may also believe that he was helping the boys from his organization, the Second Mile -- that he was devoting his energy to save them.

...

Likewise Sandusky says: "They've taken everything that I ever did and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever." He may, in truth, not believe that his motives were sexual; he may believe, like many pedophiles, that the physical relation flowed naturally or organically from the situation, from his fatherly affection for these boys. He says that the physical part of the relationships "just happened that way," as if he were not the active, dominant, responsible adult; his syntax itself transforming him into a passive participant, into someone just going along with things. It's fascinating to watch in action this trick of the mind, this way the mind makes a man bearable to himself.

...

If the pedophile actually believes that he is exceptional, that the sexual act he is engaged in is not a violation, that the ordinary world cannot understand the purity and exquisiteness of his motives, this does not make him less terrible or disturbing. (It may, in fact, make him more terrible and disturbing.) It does, however, explain a little how these men are not caught, or caught sooner, and how they create around themselves so effective and convincing an aura of innocence and good intentions. The best liars, of course, believe their own lies.

Be that as it may, even the psychological self-destruction caused by this astounding degree of evasion doesn't exempt someone like this from culpability. Assuming guilt, if Sandusky were unaware that what he did was considered a crime, he wouldn't have felt the need to conceal his actions. Conversely, Sandusky could have abstained from such acts entirely and attempted to make the case, as incorrect as that would be, that the law should be changed. (In the process of the latter, he might have discovered why, on a moral level, it is as wrong to have sex with minors as it is with non-consenting adults.)

The self-inflicted psychological problems of someone this evasive notwithstanding, men have free will: That is, they have the choice to face reality or not, and since there are no contradictions in reality, that choice is always there, on some level. The very fact that a serial child molester covers up what he does demonstrates that he knows, and always has, the following, at bare minimum: It is illegal to have sex with people under the legal age of consent. That fact alone raises a whole host of issues that such a person must actively choose to ignore. A warped psychology may make it easier to do so, and to get away with the crimes, but it doesn't excuse the crimes or the evasion at all.

-- CAV

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Wrong Question

Matt Drudge links to a news story about what could be a series of covert military attacks against Iran, and whose headline is, "Has the War with Iran Already Begun?" The headline borders on sensationalism in this day and age, with its pacifistic -- and misplaced -- concern for civilian casualties during war. (The blame for all casualties a country fights in a war of self-defense lies with the aggressor.) However, this headline is anything but perspicacious. Iran started a war against the United States when it stormed our embassy and took hostages over thirty years ago, and invited war long before that, when it nationalized the oil fields of British and American countries sixty years ago.

Were it true that America is fighting back, the proper headline would be more like, "It's About [insert expletive here] Time!" However, I would find such a headline premature, absent an unequivocal condemnation of Iran, a declaration of war, and something quite a bit more impressive than the kinds of pinprick strikes that will leave its evil regime in place, undeterred, and able -- in any way, shape, or form -- to continue waging its barbaric war against the West.

What the headline ought to ask is this: "Why Beat Around the Bush?" As Ayn Rand once indicated, we have had the right to invade Iran for decades.

Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent "rights" of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.

And, yes, we have ample reasons, related to our national self-interest, to do just that.

Sadly, our current administration, like the one before it, does not regard national self-interest as a legitimate reason to exercise its military might, which could lay waste to any Middle Eastern "power" in a very short time.

Stay tuned for wishful official "intelligence estimates" that Iran hasn't enough nuclear capability to do anything sufficient to outrage the West -- what would that take, anyway? -- and more of the same raving denouncements of America and earnest preparations for war by the Medieval barbarians of modern Persia.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Right Target, Wrong Reason: OWS squatters have come to Washington, but are still making redistributionist demands. Given their propensity to use the ground as a latrine, the first image in this pictorial, of copies of the U. S. Constitution lying on the ground, is unintentionally apropos.

Farhad Manjoo makes part of a case that needs to be made against modern culture when he notes that, "You're as much to blame for Facebook's privacy woes as Mark Zuckerberg." I agree with his pithy advice to apply a sort of bedroom window test to anything you may contemplate posting there. And this beer cozy might help, too!

Clint Dempey's lone goal yesterday was the difference as Fulham beat Liverpool, and with it, he broke Brian McBride's record as the highest-scoring American player in the EPL.

Updates

12-7-11: Corrected a typo. 

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One Missing "If"

Reacting to the latest embarrassing release of emails among climate scientists, a writer at the Orange County Register notes the flimsiness of their "scientific" case:

What they have is a theory that things are getting warmer, which may or may not be true. Then they take a leap in logic that says things will continue to get much warmer, even though the purported cause of this warmth, greenhouse gas emissions, have escalated for 15 years while temperatures have remained flat or even declined.

Then they take another leap that presumes warming is harmful, even though it makes growing crops easier, and life less expensive in cold places, and more CO2 in the atmosphere is a boon to agriculture. Then they presume man can reverse all of this by using windmills and solar panels, which no one will buy unless someone else subsidizes them, and even then must be backed up with conventional, C02-emitting energy plants for when the sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow.

This is a chain of so many "ifs" it's amazing so many people have bought in to it. Until, of course, they are asked to sacrifice their own prosperity and comfort. Then, as they are discovering in Durban, that's enough of this nonsense.

These criticisms are all well and good, and Mark Landsbaum could have gone even further about the tenuousness of the theory behind anthropogenic global warming. Even if he had, though, he would not have gone far enough. To wit:

If the economy improves, decision-makers and the public will should use real science to decide whether mankind is superheating the Earth. And if so, what, if anything can or should be done about it. We hope someone will suggest weighing costs against presumed benefits.

The one thing practically nobody is questioning remains why (and really, by what right) the government should be in charge of "doing something" about AGW at all, presuming it were happening. There is no rational moral argument for the government to do so, and the proposal is highly impractical, as well.

The government can't know what is best for millions of individuals and it shouldn't deprive them of the property and liberty they need to promote their own lives and pursue their own happiness according to their best judgement. Perhaps the economy will improve, by finally becoming less centrally-planned, if people begin to realize that in time. By then, the threat of massive growth in central planning excused by AGW will be impossible to resurrect.

-- CAV

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12-3-11 Hodgepodge

Well, we're back in Boston from a combined Thanksgiving break/round of baby-related family visits. (Hmmm. Is anything for me really not baby-related anymore?) I'm running on fumes and the baby is completely off-schedule after yesterday's cross-country flight from the West Coast, so I'm going to make an abbreviated weekend post and leave it at that.

As of this moment, I'm debating between crawling back into bed or catching up on non-blogging matters once I hit "publish"...

Weekend Reading

"There's no egalitarianism in economics." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Not All Stock Trades Are Equal" at SmartMoney

"[W]hy should she trust you, knowing that you condoned and participated in [an affair]?" -- Michael Hurd, in "Is All Fair in Love?" at DrHurd.com 

"Conservatives should grow up, cease their promiscuity in the GOP primaries, and take Article VI [of the Constitution] seriously." -- Richard Salsman, in "GOP Conservatives -- Not Romney -- Are the Real Flip-Floppers" at Forbes

"Despite this seeming contradiction, in both cases the government is really saying, 'We'll decide who can do what with your body.'" -- Paul Hsieh, in "Screening for Terrorists vs. Screening for Cancer" at PJ Media

My Two Cents

Reading the above columns makes me unable to resist adding a couple more comments. (1) Michael Hurd offers the best answer I have ever seen to what has to be a painful dilemma. (2) I regard Richard Salsman's piece as required reading for anyone considering whether Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney would be a preferable opponent to Barack Obama in 2012. For one thing, Salsman does an excellent job of explaining how atrocious Gingrich really is. For another, he is the first person to make me regard Romney as palatable in any way.

-- CAV

Updates

12-7-11: Corrected a typo. 

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Friday Four

1. Sometimes, the best advice comes from those who have to fight against their own limitations to see what it is that seems to come naturally to many others. David Finch tells us how to give great Christmas gifts -- something he had to think about explicitly due to his "Asperger's-induced empathy deficit".

2. If -- among many other possibilities -- you like your TiVo, your Android smart phone or iPhone, or, in most cases, the non-Windows OS on your main computer, you are directly benefiting from "The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix" on a daily basis. I especially enjoyed reading about how early developers figured out how to get their bosses to sign off on developing their ideas despite the cancellation of a similar project earlier: 

So [Ken] Thompson and [Dennis] Ritchie got crea­tive. They formulated a proposal to their bosses to buy one of DEC's newer minicomputers, a PDP-11, but couched the request in especially palatable terms. They said they were aiming to create tools for editing and formatting text, what you might call a word-processing system today. The fact that they would also have to write an operating system for the new machine to support the editor and text formatter was almost a footnote.

Dennis Ritchie, who recently died, is, incidentally,the creator of the C computer language, so don't forget to thank him for the Internet (scroll down), as well.

3. The title sounds subjectivist, but the lesson, to account for the context of individual differences when offering advice to individuals, is anything but. Marco Arment, a recovering Mac fan-boy, has finally realized that, in some contexts, "Whatever Works for You", is actually legitimate advice. Drawing from somewhat similar experiences of my own, I will note that full recovery is marked by the realization, one day, that the kinds of choices others make that one once found irritating no longer annoy.

4. This browser start page serves as a nice reminder to focus when using the Internet.

-- CAV

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On Being "In the Know"

When I was young, I would sometimes encounter ads in such popular publications as comic books, Reader's Digest, or The National Enquirer that purported to help people achieve some type of goal by means of special knowledge that not everyone is privy to. Usually, these would have titles like, "Advice Your Stockbroker Doesn't Want You to Hear," or, "Score with Women Using Lance Conway's Exclusive Seduction Method."

You get the idea: It's not just that someone can benefit from learning specialized knowledge, but that this knowledge is, in some way, impossible for ordinary mortals to obtain without special insight -- or access to someone with such insight. One way to begin seeing that this un-integrated view of knowledge is wrong, at least regarding financial advice, is to ask a question like this: "If this guy is making such a killing, why is he wasting his valuable time giving seminars?"

It is no accident that the publications that carry such ads also feature a heaping helping of ads that look even more blatantly ridiculous, at least to an active mind. The fact is that it doesn't take psychic powers to see why a self-proclaimed psychic would feel the need to advertise in media consumed by people who don't really understand what knowledge is, or how to acquire it. Absent rational epistemological standards, the only alternative a mark -- I mean, a customer -- will see is uncertainty about everything vs. (essentially) mystical insight. Such minds are non-conceptual, and, therefore, not in the habit of checking claims against reality. Not all such ads are explicitly mystical, nor are most people consistent mystics, but that is the view of knowledge that infects the thinking of so many, and makes it possible for people to generate an income by pretending to know things.

An interesting article about the "mental gymnastics" required of someone with a high security clearance reminded me of those kinds of ads and the view of knowledge they embody and depend upon. There are some grains of truth to the article -- I would imagine that one would have to be on guard against arrogance, and ever-mindful of keeping secrets, for example. However, I disagree that having a high security clearance would necessarily lead one to adopt all of the attitudes the article implies.

That said, here is what reminded me of all those psychic ads I used to see:

In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. Because you'll be thinking as you listen to them: "What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?" And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I've seen this with my superiors, my colleagues....and with myself.

... You'll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you'll become something like a moron. You'll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.

The author identifies a danger associated with having actual, concrete knowledge that others don't have, and becoming tired of the constant necessity of checking possible new knowledge against what one already knows. That's bad enough, but consider how dangerous this tendency could be to someone who only thinks he knows something and hasn't a well-developed habit of checking new information. Such a person will be even less likely to avail himself of the knowledge of others, however imperfect or incomplete. (Let me emphasize that this is not to say that just anyone is worth listening to.) As other passages from the story indicate, what those with high security clearances hear about isn't always true. In other words, succumbing to the arrogant, mystical-looking (to me) attitude that knowing something others don't impugns anything they might say only further entrenches any errors one might have made.

Whether someone willfully adopts a mystical view of knowledge or slips into functioning as if all knowledge isn't interrelated and accessible to all men, the end result is the same: He may think he is "in the know", but he increasingly doesn't really know what he's talking about.

-- CAV

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