Expertise and Writing

For the purposes of this post, I'll clear the air first: The attitude of ordinary people towards expertise should be neither unquestioning acceptance of whatever an expert says, nor an equally naive suspicion of anyone regarded as an expert.

This should be obvious, but the promotion of these attitudes -- the former usually by leftists and the latter usually by populists -- makes it necessary.

With that out of the way, I am impressed by oncologist Peter C. Everett's succinct post titled, "On Professional Expertise," especially the following passage:

When I was in software, I learned a motto, "When a vendor wants to punish a customer they deliver exactly what they asked for."

Now that I am a consultant on hematology and oncology cases, and training future consultants, I tell the residents and fellows, "Your job is not to answer their question. Your job is to answer the questions they should have asked."

Both sides of that coin remind me of a joke I once heard about a carpenter whose customer objected that all he did was hammer in a nail. He replied: But the fee is for knowing where to hammer it in.

Everett elaborates a short bit on the above, but those two short paragraphs are memorable enough that I think they also make great writing advice. Know what you're talking about (and consult experts if necessary), and consider what your audience might not know to ask throughout the writing process.

-- CAV

Trump's 'Left Turn'

The following headline appears in The Financial Times: "Donald Trump Leans Left in Bid to Revive Flagging Poll Numbers."

I completely agree with the first four words; the rest of it is true, but wrongly implies that this is a new development on his part.

The blurb does indicate the cause of that perception, though: US president's proposed pharma price cuts and tax increases for the rich echo policies of progressive Democrats . The piece elaborates:

"I think Trump realises that these things are popular and he's a guy that likes to be popular," said Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning economic think-tank, and a former Sanders aide on Capitol Hill.

Trump's shift [sic] in certain areas of tax and health policy has come as his poll numbers droop over his handling of the economy and the severe market whiplash from his tariff plans, which he has been rapidly rolling back.

He may also be looking to defuse Democratic attacks ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. During Trump's first term, Democrats regained their majority in the House of Representatives by criticising the president and his party for giving giant tax cuts to the wealthy while seeking to slash healthcare access for middle- and lower-income Americans -- a fate the president will want to avoid in his second term.

But the change also reflects a broader drive by Trump [sic] to recast the Republicans as the party of the working class rather than of business -- a transformation that began during his first term but is more pronounced during his second. [links omitted, bold added]

This pro-capitalist voter saw enough of this before the election that he voted for Harris as the lesser of two evils. Even if Trump hadn't tried to overthrow the government in early 2020, what would be the point in electing someone whose opposition to the left took the form of embracing leftist policies -- like a dovish foreign policy and tariffs -- and putting leftists like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard into major cabinet posts? Why not vote for the candidate who at least had the good grace to admit being a Democrat?

Also: Does anyone still remember Trump's campaign promise to cap credit card interest rates? I certainly do.

On top of this being a shift-that-isn't a shift and a sellout of his supporters that anyone should have seen coming, the shift in the GOP isn't entirely being driven by Trump, who merely wants to be popular and has no coherent ideology.

Trump used the religious right and Christian Nationalists in his party to gain power, and they are using him. The likes of J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, for example, favor industrial policy and have worked on legislation with Elizabeth Warren. Ideologues, including the current Secretary of State are publishing pieces that show clearly that this isn't your father's GOP.

The idea that workers and industrialists don't have the same interest in freedom is about as far a cry from classical liberalism as one can get -- but it is popular, given the generations of spadework our cultural institutions have done teaching it. The fact that it is such a commonplace shows where our culture is now, and explains why, when Trump latches onto something to boost his popularity, it is almost invariably leftist.

I haven't time to comment much more on this today, but it does bring to mind earlier political figures like Trump, who was the first of these to manage to get elected. One of these was George Wallace, about whom Ayn Rand said:

Lacking any intellectual or ideological program, Wallace is not the representative of a positive movement, but of a negative: he is not for anything, he is merely against the rule of the "liberals." This is the root of his popular appeal: he is attracting people who are desperately, legitimately frustrated, bewildered and angered by the dismal bankruptcy of the "liberals'" policies, people who sense that something is terribly wrong in this country and that something should be done about it, but who have no idea of what to do. Neither has Wallace -- which is the root of the danger he represents: a leader without ideology cannot save a country collapsing from lack of ideology.

It is enormously significant that in many sections of the country (as indicated by a number of polls) former followers of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy are switching their support to George Wallace. At a superficial glance, this may appear to be a contradiction, since these two figures seem to represent exact opposites in their political views. But, in fact, it is not a contradiction: in terms of fundamentals, both Robert Kennedy and George Wallace are "activists" -- i.e., men who propose (and clearly project the intention) to take direct action, action by the use of physical force, to solve problems or to achieve (unspecified) goals. In this sense, both these leaders are symptomatic of a country's intellectual and cultural disintegration, of the ugly despair which seizes people when -- disillusioned in the power of ideas, abandoning reason -- they seek physical force as their last resort. [emphasis in original]

"A leader without ideology cannot save a country collapsing from lack of ideology."

What was once an observation is now a warning to those of us who would not want to see it as a prophecy.

-- CAV

China Reminds: He's Just a Bully

"Trump is a classic bully who craves submission and fears conflict. His fervent supporters want him to be Michael Corleone, but he's more like Biff Tannen. Standing up to Trump does not mean that you win. But giving in guarantees that you lose." -- Jonathan Chait

***

Jonathan Chait's postmortem on Trump's trade war with China provides insight into the President's psychology -- meaning that it will offer a partial road map to anyone with the misfortune of having to deal with him.

(The sooner that the people he calls his followers and the rest of his party include themselves in that category, the better for them.)

Chait reminds us of the blusterous start of Trump's War on World Trade, and points out how fruitful it was for other countries to comply with his infantile demands:

Most of the world accepted this advice, only to discover the difficulty of making global trade deals with a president who doesn't seem to understand how trade works. Foreign diplomats expressed repeated frustration as they failed to ascertain what Trump even wanted from them, let alone what he was prepared to offer in return. To date, only the United Kingdom has managed to resolve its trade status with the United States. [bold added]

Note that Americans lost: We now pay higher taxes on imports from Britain than we did before.

The only other country to make any headway so far is now China, which did not comply:

China, however, retaliated with countermeasures of its own, imposing steep tariffs on American imports. Trump decided to make an example of the country. "Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World's Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately," he announced on Truth Social. (This figure eventually increased to 145 percent.) Other countries, which had showed proper respect, would receive a merciful reprieve. "The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction," claimed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Trump held out for one month before backing down. Under the new 90-day agreement, tariffs on Chinese goods will come down to 30 percent; China's tariffs on American goods will likewise decline to 10 percent... [links omitted]

Trump's people are trying memory-hole this latest episode of all hell breaking loose, not to mention the decades of "ripping off." (In January of 2018, we had been paying a mere 2.2% tax on imports from China, so Americans are getting screwed by Trump here, too.)

The real strength of Chait's piece is something I hope Americans catch onto sooner, rather than later:

This makes for an unusual style of governing, to say the least, and even a decade into the Trump era, the president's targets often respond with confusion. But the evidence suggests a fairly clear pattern: Although Trump instructs his targets to submit, doing so merely sets them up for more humiliation and abuse.

Following are parallel examples from closer to home.

-- CAV

Air Farce One

Over the weekend, Donald Trump showed his true colors regarding "the swamp" by announcing his acceptance of a bribe from Qatar:

In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar -- a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News.

...

... [L]awyers for the White House counsel's office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concluding that [it] is legal for the Department of Defense to accept the aircraft as a gift and later turn it over to the Trump library, and that it does not violate laws against bribery or the Constitution's prohibition (the emoluments clause) of any U.S. government official accepting gifts "from any King, Prince or foreign State." [link omitted, bold added]

On top of the legal fiction that the plane isn't being given-given to Trump, we have the following:

Both the White House and DOJ concluded that because the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it does not constitute bribery, the sources said.

I am not an attorney: Perhaps this is literally legal, but it so blatantly ignores the whole point of the Foreign Emoluments Clause as to insult the intelligence of any halfway intelligent, semi-conscious adult.

What practical difference does it make that Trump himself does not hold legal title to the plane if he still owns it for all practical purposes, even after he leaves office?

And so what if it isn't being given in exchange for any (past? specific?) official act?

This is not a gift in the same way a tariff isn't a tax, and it is likewise easy to argue that it is worse: The pretense that it isn't a gift shows that the President -- far from prioritizing his oath to uphold the Constitution -- is eager to find or create loopholes for the mean purpose of getting stuff.

And the fact that this gift isn't "conditioned on any official act" is not just open to the same very loose interpretation of the law: It suggests an open-ended spigot of favors this foreign power can now demand of Trump.

-- CAV

Four Funny Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. If you're new to Louisiana, do try the boiled crawfish, but know (Item 7) that it's a faux pas to eat them at your desk at work:

Now, crawfish are delicious but they are both 1) fragrant and 2) messy. I love a good weekend crawfish boil where you're eating outside with family and friends and wearing old clothes.

You could smell the crawfish as soon as you got off the elevator. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and wore several napkins as bibs to keep from getting anything on his shirt.

Finished and did the surgeon just-scrubbed-in walk to the bathroom so he could wash his messy, messy hands. We had to call maintenance to come empty the garbage cans because the smell permeated the office and we couldn't work that way that afternoon.

The above comes from a collection of other similarly amusing first impressions by new coworkers at Ask a Manager.

2. At The Speculative Grammarian one R.S. Sriyatha expounds on ancient Greek verbal fillers:

The perspicacious reader will have already figured out where this paper is headed (aside from oblivion). It is obvious, when we consider that Xenophon did not write down his work himself, but rather dictated it, that it is the student rather than the instructor who has translated the text most faithfully. No one, in speech, says things like, "Thereupon, accordingly, indeed, on the one hand, they pitched camp; and then on the next day also likewise they arose indeed and accordingly marched ten stades." But everyone says things like, "So, um, ah, un...they pitched camp; and, well, the next day...ah, you know, they got up, um, and, ah, marched ten stades."

What more need I say here? It is obvious that for hundreds of years classicists have misinterpreted the meaning of Greek particles. Most, if not all of them, have no meaning whatsoever...

The piece, which popped up at Hacker News recently, is from the 1990 issue of that satirical journal, for which a friend from my Rice days sometimes contributed. I didn't know it has been around that long, and I'm glad to see it's still there.

3. A recently-retired Ford executive has made the Wall Street Journal for maintaining an extensive record of his coworkers' verbal flubs:

The risk of getting flagged added to the pressure of presenting at meetings, Murphy said. "All the sudden you'll hear a pen click, and you're thinking, 'What did I say that wasn't right?'" Often, a Board Word would help defuse an intense meeting, he said.

Murphy appreciates O'Brien's grievance process, where he allows the person to argue their case before the entry is made. Murphy rarely wins the appeal, though, like the time he blurted out: "He's going to be so happy he'll be like a canary in a coal mine!"

O'Brien explained that the canary in that particular idiom ends up dead. Murphy, laughing, explained that the canary was probably happy when it first got down there.

There are several pictures of his records, which he kept on whiteboards in his office.

4. I'll end with a visual: Yes, This Photo From Everest Is Real.

-- CAV

AI Outing Cranks, Mentally Ill

"No mind is better than the precision of its concepts." -- Ayn Rand

***

The headline and blurb of an article at Rolling Stone well describe a tragic phenomenon at the intersection of advanced technology and primitive philosophy (and possibly mental illness): "People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies", and Self-styled prophets are claiming they have 'awakened' chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.

Likewise, the following, on the flood of responses to a Reddit post by one of these AI widows, does well enough to elaborate (The whole piece is about a ten minute read.):

Kat was both "horrified" and "relieved" to learn that she is not alone in this predicament, as confirmed by a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT that made waves across the internet this week. Titled "Chatgpt induced psychosis," the original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model "gives him the answers to the universe." Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was "talking to him as if he is the next messiah." The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy -- all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.

What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. "He would listen to the bot over me," she says. "He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon," she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as "spiral starchild" and "river walker." [links omitted, bold added]

Even if we grant that artificial intelligence even is intelligence or that some bot has evolved sentience, the following Ayn Rand quote applies to both the program (in part) and its user (wholly):

Many people, particularly today, claim that man cannot live by logic alone, that there's the emotional element of his nature to consider, and that they rely on the guidance of their emotions. Well, ... the joke is on ... them: man's values and emotions are determined by his fundamental view of life. The ultimate programmer of his subconscious is philosophy -- the science which, according to the emotionalists, is impotent to affect or penetrate the murky mysteries of their feelings.

The quality of a computer's output is determined by the quality of its input. If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character. You have probably heard the computer operators' eloquent term "gigo" -- which means: "Garbage in, garbage out." The same formula applies to the relationship between a man's thinking and his emotions. [bold added]

To the best of my limited knowledge, AI is -- unlike humans -- incapable of forming abstractions, and would be severely handicapped even if it could because -- forming its output from human-provided training sets -- it has no perceptual connection with reality with which to form valid concepts. Any abtractions it could form at this point would presumably be akin to floating abstractions:

"Floating abstractions" [are] ... concepts detached from existents, concepts that a person takes over from other men without knowing what specific units the concepts denote. ("Definition as the Final Step in Concept-Formation," Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 96.)

In this new phenomenon, the AI user is simply accepting these mystical abstractions (or even arbitrary assertions) indirectly from the humans who originated the training data, and perhaps modfied by the AI. (I'd be tempted to treat anything mystical sounding from an AI like the more obvious phenomenon of AI hallucinations, if not classify it as a type of hallucination.)

Even if there were a nonhuman intelligence, such as a space alien or a sentient program, anyone interacting with it would have the same obligation to himself he now does with other humans: Satisfy himself about the extent to which what he is hearing is true, and non-arbitrary.

Falling for some story about being a messiah, or, for that matter, passively accepting a repackaged science fiction trope about a program "awakening" are evidence of very poor thinking habits: While it would be devastating to see a loved one fall off such a cliff, I would rather know sooner than later. As we see here, there is a strong chance that the significant other needs help, the relationship is untenable, or both.

I strongly suspect that anyone succumbing to such fantasies is some serious combination of gullible, mystically-inclined, subjectivist, second-handed, or mentally ill.

Many of these "widows" will be better off in the long run.

-- CAV

Great News for Ossoff or Maybe Abrams

As if the Trump-Harris presidential matchup weren't already ample evidence that our political milieu has descended into farce, MAGA conspiracy nut Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is reportedly considering a run for Jon Ossoff's Senate seat or the Governorship of Georgia.

If nothing else, this news exposes the parlous state of the Republican Party -- which is evenly split between delusional MAGA types and cowardly traditional Republicans.

We'll look at the traditional Republicans first. To the reporter's credit and my great surprise, he managed to find a Republican officeholder who, although he is much more diplomatic than Greene deserves, at least calls out her nuttiness:

"That is a swing state that's pretty independent minded," he added. "If I was to put my political science hat on and look at all the criteria, she wouldn't be high on my list of recruits."

[Kevin] Cramer [R-ND] wrote an essay for Newsweek in 2021 that called out Greene for endorsing some of the "crazier" theories [sic] floating around in conservative circles, such as claims that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington were an inside job, or that the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida was a false flag.

He also flagged her suggestion in 2018 that a deadly California wildfire was caused by laser beams from space and that it might have been part of a scheme by wealthy financiers to clear space for a high-speed train line. She later deleted her post from Facebook.

"I think she's recanted some of the crazier things she's said," Cramer acknowledged, but he insisted that "electability is one of the more important criteria in recruiting a candidate." [bold added]

Cramer may well be the bravest sane Republican left, but this is generous to a fault in terms of diplomacy. Not so long ago, it might have been easy to find a Republican who would say something like If they run her, they are out of their minds.

On the other hand... I'm no politician nor do I deal much with people like Greene. Perhaps Cramer is being diplomatic because he's afraid any sort of confrontation -- especially with facts -- will only embolden her.

Here's what one of Greene's staff had to say:

A spokesperson for Greene said that Senate Republicans are "afraid of her" and questioned whether senators poo-pooing the idea truly support Trump's MAGA agenda.

"These are likely the same Republicans refusing to confirm President Trump's nominees, like Ed Martin, because they never stood with [Trump] and still don't," the spokesperson said, referring to Trump's controversial pick [a lawyer for January 6th rioters --ed] to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

...

Greene's spokesperson said she would cruise to the Senate Republican nomination if she jumps in the race.

"Polling shows Congresswoman Greene would blow out a primary. She has the same type of support President Trump has, and now he's president," the spokesperson said. "She has one of the largest digital files in all of Congress, has donors from all 50 states, and has over 11.6 million followers on her social media.

"Congresswoman Greene would be any candidate's worst nightmare," the source said. [bold added]

Of course: To a mind constantly marinating in the MAGA echo chamber, the only possible reasons someone could oppose such a luminary are betrayal to the Dear Leader or cowardice.

Given Trump's stranglehold on the GOP, she might well be any Republican candidate's worst nightmare, but hard-core Trumpists are hardly a majority of the general electorate, and Georgia is a swing state, as the article indicates repeatedly.

Should Greene run for Senate, I would expect Jon Ossoff to return to Washington, and should she run for Governor, I could see Stacey Abrams taking advantage of the chance to be the "sane" candidate.

-- CAV