Rational Philosophy

On nuanced news, suspect psychology and scientific black holes.

With much fanfare Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. today announced a set of changes to government organizations that regulate and oversee financial markets. Touted by the administration as a sweeping reform that will avoid future mishaps like the sub-prime mortgage mess, it is, upon closer inspection, nothing of the sort. In fact, Paulson’s plan is a market-friendly distraction from the real issues; it has been in the works for a while as part of the Bush administration’s market-friendly momentum toward less regulation. [Since I first drafted this blog entry the NY Times has altered its article to emphasize resistance to Paulson's plan.]

The presentation of Paulson’s plan, however, deliberately aims to make people think that the administration is responding to the current financial crisis by firming up regulation. One has to look twice and read through several sources to uncover the story behind the story. If one just reads the headlines and first paragraph or goes to a less rigorous source, one could be left with the mistaken impression that Paulson is taking swift and effective action.

Reporting on the interface between the worlds of literature and dating, Rachel Donadio manages to make me cringe with embarrassment. Not only have I not read and barely heard of Pushkin, but I’ve raved about Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Both dating faux pas for some of those Donadio interviewed. “When a guy tells me [Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance] changed his life, I wish he’d saved us both the embarrassment,” says Judy Heiblum, a literary agent. It seems that many people believe quite strongly that we can tell a lot about a person and our compatibility with them from what they read. Fortunately I had the emotional stamina to read on and find that Donadio also talked to those who think that such literary snobbishness is either overblown or wrong-headed. Writer Ariel Levy’s partner doesn’t read and Levy likes it that way.

And a judge in Hawaii is being asked to put a stop the work on the new large hadron particle collider in Switzerland’s CERN research facility by two men who claim that the experiments being contemplated could result in the destruction of the world. In countering the idea that high energy collisions between protons could lead to a disaster, one scientist who has studied the theoretical work around the artificial generation of black holes, says: “Maybe physics really is so weird as to not have black holes evaporate. But it would really, really have to be weird.” Comforting, perhaps, to some, but not so comforting, I’m sure, to others.

These three diverse stories all raise the matter of uncertainty in life and ideas. We read the news but how can we rely on what we read with any degree of certainty? People tell us how they make judgments, but how do we know that we can rely on their judgment? And important decisions get made about things that may affect our lives, but how do we know what to think of those decisions?

This difficulty seems to be amplified rather than assuaged by the amount of information available to us. Multiple perspectives on government, dating, and scientific research can lead to a situation in which nothing seems certain. If people with more direct access to information or more informed opinions than ours take diametric positions, how can we know what to believe?

In approaching the uncertain rationally, we should begin by exploring the reason for the uncertainty:

1. Insufficient information: Paulson’s plan seems appropriate if we only have a little information about it. But the more we know about the specifics of the plan and the specifics of the crisis it purports to respond to, the more we can feel certain of our judgment of it.

2. Conflicting experience: If we listen to the daters who care about what someone reads, we may think that we should pay close attention to what we read or to the literature of potential partners. If we listen to those who don’t care, we may form the opposite opinion. The answer to conflicting experience is to dig beneath the response to the reactions. What do the opinions tell us? How does that analysis relate to us?

3. The real unknown: Even well-informed scientists can’t say for sure that running the hadron colider won’t have unexpected and disastrous consequences. They all speak of the extreme unlikelihood of anything untoward happening. What we face in this kind of situation is a risk analysis. If the risk is infinitesimally small we have, relatively speaking, nothing to worry about. The more renowned scientists examine and discount the risk, the more comfortable we should feel. (But let’s not think too hard about whether we could live without these experiments!!)

We don’t necessarily come any closer to eliminating the uncertainty, but we can rest easier knowing that we know why we don’t know.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On economic expansion, the fear and actuality of recession, and global warming.

Top stories today dwell on the economy: “U.S. Markets Open With Steep Fall,” “Fed Cuts Rate 0.75% and Stocks Swing,” “Bank of America Profit Plummets.” The president’s confirmation last week that he would support a stimulus package didn’t seem to raise anyone’s level of optimism. All this fear of economic recession has me wondering about the much-touted virtue of economic expansion. As stocks tumble, losses post, and job markets shrink there’s an underlying presumption that growth is good, that higher economic value is good. But, if I understand this correctly, economic growth typically means higher consumption driving higher production. The exact mechanism of a stimulus package will be debated, but all seem to agree on a formula that supports economic growth by creating incentives for consumption and production.

The nagging question this raises for me is whether we should be thinking about economic growth in isolation from other important factors, such as global warming. I understand that at the most fundamental level a sharp recession means unemployment with associated misery and suffering; it seems entirely rational and appropriate to ward of an extended economic depression. What I’m curious about is whether economic growth is intrinsically good for the world.

People work for money and use that money to buy goods and services. In large part these these goods and services consume natural resources such as raw materials, power and water. If the economy grows, therefore, we’re consuming more natural resources.

(Even the so-called “virtuous circle” of macroeconomic expansion by which an innovation leads to reduced costs and a corresponding increase in consumption, demands increased consumption of natural resources, unless the innovation reduces consumption of natural resources without generating a higher level of product consumption. A great counter-example of this is the length of time it’s taken to bring more efficient, longer lasting light bulbs to market. A great innovation from a natural resource perspective, but until recently, lousy from an economic perspective — the higher cost and lower profits inhibited the innovation from taking hold for a very long time.)

This is all incredibly obvious, and of course global warming has brought focus to the consumption of natural resources, particularly as the economies of third world countries grow and they become more industrialized, but what about economic growth in general? What about the seeming inevitable equation between growth and consumption? Can we really think about them separately?

I realize that I’m raising questions that are to some extent naive. Consumers consume what they want to consume. So, as with more efficient light-bulbs, influencing production should really begin with an influence on consumers. This is why raising awareness of global warming, disappearing species, and environmental protection plays such an important part in determining the future of the planet. But it strikes me that there can also be important governmental and economic influences on production and consumption, too.

This leaves me with two questions:

1. Is there a good balance between the size and health of the economy and the welfare of the planet?

2. At this time of threatened recession, and in general, does the government have an opportunity to stimulate “green” growth rather than “gray” growth?

In contemplating an answer to the first question, I’m thinking of something quite controversial: When considering the welfare of the planet we live on and feed off, consumption beyond that required for our health, sustenance and shelter is superfluous. If we use resources to make our lives easier or more comfortable we should be prepared to anwer for the consequences of such excess consumption. The size and health of the economy and the welfare of the planet already exist in an imbalance (in developed areas). Shouldn’t we be constantly measuring the degree of that imbalance and trying to keep it steady or falling? Isn’t a “green index” an essential economic measure?

This leads to an answer to the second question: If we were to develop a measure or index for our overconsumption, it would push us to develop strategies for stimulating the economy in ways that helped keep the index steady or falling. Why stimulate the economy indiscriminately? Why not disproportionately stimulate “green” sections of the economy?

If the government is good for anything, let it be good for good things, things that help society and the world.

On a cautionary note, if governments don’t do it, corporations will, and not always to the benefit of society. Is it beneficial to the world that Microsoft has pledged cash for technology training in the developing world? On the face of it, the investment seems noble enough. But Microsoft of course will be training the developing world to use Microsoft systems. Bill Gates is not one of the wealthiest individuals in the world for no reason. And despite Gates’ incredible focus on philanthropy, does his generosity and selfless distribution of a good part of his wealth justify retrospectively the profits that Microsoft has reaped from the unbridled growth in computer systems (much of which has been completely unnecessary — if Windows 95 had been a better quality operating system we wouldn’t have needed Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows Vista…)

 

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Today:

In a CNN poll, 65% said that the UAW workers didn’t have the right to strike after a breakdown in talks with GM. In a Best Buy poll 90% of consumers said they didn’t fully understand high definition TVs. And after rallying in the wake of the fed’s cut in the lending rate last week, stocks dropped back as consumers began to worry again about the economic outlook.

Each of these statistics seem to point to a very interesting philosophical problem — sufficient understanding. I first encountered this concept in reading Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer rests the foundation of his philosophy on what he calls “the principle of sufficient reason,” by which he means that we cannot know everything, but we can draw conclusions from a solid ground of knowing (and no more).

In many aspects of life, it seems to me, the critical and the trivial, we just don’t know enough to form a valid opinion, or make a determination. Do the union representatives know enough about the complex repercussions of GM’s business strategy to determine that it will ultimately benefit their members to strike for a better deal? And do the respondent’s to CNN’s poll understand enough to say that it is wrong to strike? Clearly most consumer’s don’t understand enough about high definition technology to make an informed purchase decision (and yet we go out and buy HDTVs anyway). And can anyone claim to know enough about the hugely mysterious workings of the stock market to be able to accurately predict whether, even after a half percent cut in the minimum lending rate, it would be better to buy or sell.

We tend instead to approach these kinds of questions by parsing the broad principles at work, such as: GM’s plans to succeed in the free market must be better overall for workers and consumers than the union’s objective to do well for its members. HDTV is new technology and seems to synonymous with thin panel TVs so it must be worth buying. The lending market is in trouble so a cut in lending rates will be good for the market.

As I think about these kinds of things, I often wonder whether we can ever know enough about the questions at hand to form and draw sufficiently educated conclusions. And perhaps the broad brush stroke approach is the best we can do. Certainly, when we’re buying a new TV it is philosophically acceptable to assume that the newer technology has some merit and, depending on how much we value TV, is worth the money. After all, what’s the downside? Likewise, when we invest in the stock market, we know that we are engaging in an ultimately risky practice, and gauge our investments accordingly. But what about the UAW and its members? What about GM?

After all, the advent of unions was critically important to society in the early decades of the industrial revolution. Without unions, workers were at the mercy of their employers. Today it sometimes seems that the companies are at the mercy of the unions. Certainly, the equation is more balanced.

I’m not trying to draw a conclusion here, but just to point out that each problem requires that we attempt to dig deeply to find the appropriate principles at work. And we can’t arrive at these principles without considerable reflection and research. Too often, perhaps, we hold opinions based on a simplistic and tenuous understanding.

This, I think, is partly because the questions we’re faced with are many and varied, huge and sophisticated; how can we possibly know enough to draw sufficiently reasoned conclusions about the myriad complex questions of the day? And why then do we attempt to do just that? A fair answer would be that if we don’t somebody else will…