leftovers - reading review - sceptical essays (riff off)

Hi,

One portion of these riff offs ended up turning into an extended rant about the future of capitalism. I thought it was better to handle the lengthy tirade in its own post – here it is, reader.

Socialism becomes feasible as monopolies develop in many industries because socialism tends to bring economic democracy wherever systems have lost the ability to regulate and encourage competition within markets.

Capitalism has two advantages over its direct competitors. First, its success in lifting billions of people out of poverty speaks for itself – no other method of social or economic organization has a remotely comparable track record. Second, the system has created permanent value for humanity by motivating inventors to create new technologies, medicines, and ideas that have propelled many societies upward from the drudgery, disease, and cruelty that defines almost all of human history. However, I don’t expect capitalism to stick around forever. To me, the system’s flaws are too obvious to ignore and I don’t think future societies will put up with them. The most significant of these flaws is the way capitalism’s winners are not compelled to alleviate the suffering of the system’s losers.

I think capitalism ends in one of two ways. The positive ending would involve the full eradication of poverty, disease, and conflict. This outcome would leave capitalism with nothing to accomplish and the system would gracefully cede the stage for the next act. I believe the trends are as positive as they have ever been. Poverty will be eradicated even if we do nothing more than wait for market forces to work while it is cheaper today for nations to buy enemies rather than wage wars of conquest against them. At this moment, I believe disease is the only open question, and given the nature of new diseases to step into the vacuums created by cures, the battle for new medicine may ultimately prove the strongest justification for maintaining a capitalist system. However, if we collective agreed that everyone had Enough and could conceive of a way to maintain the same level of current investment in disease research, I believe we could turn our focus to stabilize rather than demolish the hypothetical paradise I've just described in the above.

The negative ending is alluded to in my initial note – monopoly. This ending feels more likely to me because it is the fastest approaching natural equilibrium of the system. The system’s design flaw is the accumulation of wealth for the winners without a built-in redistribution mechanism to take care of the losers. This flaw is further emphasized when collective bouts of insanity lead communities, societies, and nations to reduce or eliminate the carefully constructed compensations, parachutes, and safety nets we've put in place for capitalism's losers. This form of madness is what allows billions to flow into research for rare disease cures while cheaper medical ‘innovations’ that would massively improve global health – like mosquito nets – remain lacking in areas of need.

To put it another way, if capitalism works out to something resembling a voting system where each dollar is worth one electoral vote, then we currently fall far short of the democratic ideal where each person gets the same say as another. The folks who need mosquito nets might win the popular vote but we cancer-fearing rich folks in the West prefer the electoral college. How long such a system can hold up is a compelling question. My bet is that in the same way democracies tend toward preserving the principle of one person having one vote, free societies built on a foundation of equality for all will tend toward limiting systems that give one person the power equivalent of multiple votes. The frustrating aspect here is that such a process will be slow. I suppose the bright side is that no matter how inevitable capitalism's vice-grip seems to be on the global economy, any individual committed to valuing others fairly and ensuring everyone gets their voice heard is making a small crack in the system's seemingly unshakable foundation.

reading review - sceptical essays (riff off)

Let’s wrap up my reviews about Bertrand Russell’s Skeptical Essays with a quick… well, maybe not so quick riff off on some of the remaining ideas I liked from his collection.

Although there are some obvious limits, it is a fact of physics that it is not possible to properly order all the events that happen in two different places without light traveling from one place to the other after the event in one location and before the event in another. Otherwise, the observations about time-order are merely points of view from the observers and not representative of any physical fact.

I think our K-12 education would improve if students graduated having learned the basics of many more subjects. This core feature of physics is the sort of learning I think would benefit many students – it’s not so much the fact of time-order that matters but rather the rigor of thinking required to understand the concept. The most important skills a student must develop are knowing how to think, learn, and teach throughout the many decades after graduation. This kind of concept is sure to help in all three domains.

Men have historically pursued the virtues that win respect from others. This has not always meant accumulating wealth or money – in some societies, artistic excellence, a certain level of education, or sainthood has proven to be the most sought after virtue. To put it another way, the modern desire for wealth is not in our nature but rather in our society.

The great delusion of our age is the excessive emphasis on the economic aspects of life.

I think these are helpful observations but I’ll reframe the message in a more direct way – people have been and always will be concerned with how someone contributes to a community. Money is an imperfect way to value contribution but it remains our preferred method of measurement thanks to its simplicity and utility. Societies that value other forms of accomplishment have merely substituted rather than replaced the role of money in this regard.

The same boy who rages when told he cannot climb a tree will admit defeat when he tries to climb the same tree and fails. It is an issue of resentment, and societies that recognize resentment will allow people to do certain harmful things so as to limit the buildup of resentment.

I recognized early on in my career that some people learn only by doing. With these colleagues, my role was to create safe spaces for failure so that their experiments would not harm the performance of the team or cause irreparable damage to the individual. A society must pair education with appropriate safety nets so that those who learn by falling can do so without suffering outsized consequences.

Machines exchange opportunity for spontaneity – therefore, a human must take on an outsized responsibility for initiative whenever a machine replaces what once was a human task.

Machines have adjusted our way of life without our adjusting our instincts.

I read years ago that automated equipment suffers from a lack of flexibility. I notice this lesson these days in too many ways to list. I think for the most part my fellow citizens do a fantastic job of finding the initiative to replace what gets lost in the transition to machine automation. One of many examples is the parking lot of any suburban gym – all those parked cars belong to people who are working hard to regain the fitness lost to the hours spent at the steering wheel.

I worry more about regaining the mental toll than I do the physical. Russell’s thought about instinct rings true anytime I notice my phone light up or a new email enters my inbox – I’m wired to notice and I find ignoring the distraction takes up a great deal of my mental energy. I know these technologies erode my capacity to pay attention in the way someone accustomed to using a power tool never develops the same muscles as the person with a box full of hammers, saws, and wrenches.

A community must always ask itself – how much can we interfere in an individual life for the sake of the community? It should do the same with government – how much should we allow the government to exercise its biggest defect (interfering with our social freedom) in order to maintain its biggest advantage (maintaining our physical freedom)?

The bare minimum for freedom involves meeting certain fundamental needs – food, drink, health, clothing, housing…

My feeling on the matter is that the community must intervene if someone is unable to meet basic needs. I do feel it is callous in some respect to stop there but I think doing more cripples our upward potential and sets a community’s trajectory toward stagnation.

On a side note, Russell includes sex and parenthood on his ‘bare minimum’ list. Those two concepts aren’t so easily resolved by my ‘community intervention’ concept and I’m therefore unsure if I agree on their inclusion among a list of fundamental needs. However, as far as policy goes, we should continue to support whatever builds strong communities for the future. I would include on this list anything that increases access and education for safe sex as well as programs or subsidies that help working parents find high-quality day care for their children.

The law of averages says we’ll stop in the next town, where petrol price is down, what do I know anyhow…

What do I know about global financial systems? The answer, as always, is next to nothing. Maybe I should just do what we all are pressured to do – look at the numbers, ‘analyze’ to find the smaller one, and spend, spend, spend…

…huh?

Well... what?

OK, fine, that’s not from Skeptical Essays, it’s from Courtney Barnett’s ‘Dead Fox’, a repeat offender on my riff offs. But who better to play the last note?

Thanks for reading.

reading reivew - sceptical essays (teaching, training, and education)

The most significant category in my notes from Bertrand Russell’s Skeptical Essays was about education. Russell’s main concern was that education from a monopoly source – such as the state – endangers freethinking and threatens the creativity required by societies to meet the challenges of the future through invention, development, and growth. He notes that this is a danger a society often gleefully notes in foreign schools yet often finds unable to see in their own curriculums.

His concerns formed a couple of recommendations for how professional educators should approach their craft. First, he thought teachers who cared for their own credit could not be allowed into the classroom. These teachers, he suspected, would favor strong students who could outwardly demonstrate the teacher’s influence via performance or competition. The goal of a school should be to do right by all students, not just a handful of elite performers. A teacher who encouraged students to try new things and learn from inconsequential failures would serve a majority of his or her students. This goal, he reiterated, is not achievable by teachers worried about their own credit because every student’s failure would be counted against the teacher’s performance.

Second, he thought a teacher must harness a child’s natural curiosity to learn about the world. The best teachers awaken the instinct and nurture it by preventing common or traumatic errors in the learning process. A good way to encourage a student’s curiosity is to create conditions that make expending effort fun. A teacher should also bear in mind that, just as a parent does with an infant learning to speak, creating opportunity and providing regular reinforcement are often all that is required for any form of learning.

reading review - sceptical essays (overthinking)

A theme I enjoyed from Bertrand Russell’s Skeptical Essays was his general distaste for thinking too much about simple concepts. He likened this to a scientist running crazy experiments – a logician must learn to recognize the limits of logical extensions in order to stop thinking when a train of thought has run past its useful terminus.

Russell uses the concept of rationality to demonstrate how logic is best applied in the simplest possible manner. He defines rationality in a modern community as not harming others so long as such actions do not harm the self. He adds that individuals apply rationality when they protect long-term interests from the temptations of short-term considerations. Many of today’s various definitions of ‘rational’ could benefit from having a second look at Russell’s simple and universal explanations of the term.

I also liked the recommendations for how a student might learn to simplify in the face of complex, contradicting, or voluminous information. One suggestion recommends presenting the various schools of thought on problems of practical importance and teaching students how to seek, identify, and follow the thread of arguments that come from different points of view. Another thought points out that newspapers with opposing ideologies are a great way to learn this skill – simply present students with multiple articles about a particular event and ask them to summarize what actually happened.

reading review - sceptical essays

Sceptical Essays by Bertrand Russell (October 2018)

Bertrand Russell’s Skeptical Essays introduced me to the 20th century Englishman’s philosophy and the collection is dense with essays describing many of his most well known ideas. A key section of this work set Russell’s three ground rules for skepticism. First, agree whenever the experts are in unanimous agreement. Second, do not accept any opinion with certainty whenever the experts disagree. And finally, when the experts agree to disagree, suspend your own judgment.

These ground rules helped me apply his insight that thinking is fully free so long as the competition among all beliefs remains open and there are no advantages for holding one belief or another. By understanding how to use the wisdom and knowledge of experts as a reference point, a thinker can efficiently identify the best subjects to apply his or her mental energy. It also helps determine when opposition to a belief is honest from an intellectual perspective because comparing a point of view to the consensus of the experts reveals whether there is any political, social, or selfish benefit for maintaining a certain worldview.

A common theme in these essays is how ideas can shape institutions as a means of building a stronger society. Russell notes that politicians who wish to serve through government must recognize how passions excite people and create energy. A good politician harnesses these passions and helps people funnel them into productive activity without letting people harm themselves (or the politician’s platform).

I compared this thought to a couple other observations to form a conclusion about young politicians. First, the young tend to overestimate their ability to persuade others to act reasonably. Second, in general those who believe in rational opinions ahead of their passions will often completely dismiss the importance of passion as a motivator. I took these thoughts to conclude that the biggest threat to a young (or perhaps just inexperienced) politician’s success is relying too much on logic and not recognizing the importance of connecting to a voter’s passions or feelings.

One up: Russell makes many observations about education that I intend to cover in an upcoming post. For now, I’d like to highlight two of his chief complaints.

First, he notes that memorization is widely known to have no effect on training the memory. He asks - why do we then spend so much time having students memorize? I suppose he answers his own question in another section when he suggests that spelling ability is merely one of many ways a snob separates the educated from the uneducated.

One down: I enjoyed the statement that a belief should be considered true if it helps promote life and achieve our desires. However, I suspect this idea can prove harmful at a community level if individuals rely on it as a central principle to guide their own lives. A community can fight off the selfish impulse baked into the concept by learning to harness group desires ahead of individual urges. A shared lifestyle of harmonious cooperation can result as long as groups place universal dreams, goals, and desires ahead of those of any one individual.

Just saying: The point that modern society respects anyone who works every day without considering the harm certain employers bring to society is an important example of the way our present-day mentality challenges our capacity to succeed in the future. The approach I prefer is to find ways to respect those who do not disappear into a workspace for eight hours every day. This would give those who know best the harm caused by a given employer – the employees – an alternative to their current lifestyle that does not risk disrespect from the surrounding community.

Footnotes / endnote

0. Good men? Apparently, they do a lot of harm...

Although I enjoyed many of his essays, I only chose to reread one, ‘The Harm That Good Men Do’. Somewhat to my surprise, I found I didn’t enjoy it as much on the second pass. I suspect this had to do with how much I enjoyed the fresh quality of Russell’s ideas and the fact that his writing didn’t capture my imagination in the same way once I established familiarity with his thinking.