The Fallacy of Idle Action

When appearances are considered more important than substance, common sense goes out the window.

These days, we’re all being told to simply “do something” about any number of issues we face (or have simply made an issue of).

But what does that accomplish, beyond a warm feeling inside, some false relief of guilt? “Doing our part” becomes a mantra for unjustifiably useless and costly acts.

Take, for instance, airport security. These days, it’s incredibly invasive to the point of groping and/or nudity, in addition to spirited exploration of your possessions, including computer files.

To get on an airplane, you must forgo any privacy.

It wastes millions of hours and dollars a year, and there’s no guarantee that it do anything but keep the honest people honest. There are so many ways around the “safety” measures that anyone with an inclination could avoid being caught without much effort. Plastic/carbon fiber weapons. Hidden blades within luggage, belt buckles, canes, or anything else. Clubs or batons made of anything hefty and solid. Poisonous puncture weapons. Even makeshift firearms or bombs can be hidden in a number of ways.

All these measures do is give us a false sense of security and relieve our guilt of “not doing anything”.

We see this same sentiment in environmental movements (turn off your lights or the planet will die!), political movements (vote for the lesser evil or you’re unAmerican!), schools (collect soda can tops to save the world!), and countless other ideologies.

Perhaps there is no problem with the values underlying these movements or ideas. Maybe they have the best intentions of anyone who has ever lived. But don’t confuse intentions with actions. That’s what politicians have been doing ever since the first government was forced upon a populace. Politicians are always expected (and live up to the expectations) to “do something” about this problem or another.

What if the answer is to let the problem work itself out? Or what if it is a long-term, non-spectacular action that people can take on voluntarily? Why must the government force us to do anything? So that we feel good inside?

When you’re told to do something for some broad, unarticulated cause, consider what it is actually accomplishing and its cost, and make sure it’s worthwhile.

You don’t have to be an evolutionist.

You really don’t.

Somehow, people these days seem to think that evolution is scientific fact, when by definition it is clearly not.
Science must be testable by repeated experimentation, and while microevolution is established scientific fact (I don’t dispute that in the least), macroevolution is a theory with no means of being proven. I would argue that it is a theory that raises more questions than answers. I don’t pretend to be the go-to expert in this matter, but I think there’s enough information going around that it’s worth reconsidering your assumptions, in any case.

Something like this.

1. First of all, how do things evolve? Darwin didn’t have a good mechanism. Neo-Darwinists would say it’s from repeated mutations over a long period of time, but only about 1 in 1000 mutations are considered “not harmful”. Geneticists have still not been able to produce a case of a mutation being clearly beneficial, other than at a very localized level. Scientists have studied mutations of bacteria excessively, as their reproductive cycle is 400,000 times shorter than ours, and the likelihood of bacteria mutating in a beneficial way several times is ludicrously small. Even the largest estimations of the age of the universe are far too small for that probability to arise. Note that a mutation is akin to a typing error. It is extremely unlikely for a message with unintended letters strewn randomly about would be improved. Macroevolution is a car without an engine.

2. Natural selection is thought to be evidence for evolution, but I would argue the opposite. Much has been made of its self-definitional, recursive nature (“The animals that were the fittest survived. How can we say they were the fittest? Because they survived.”), but even if we take it at its words, it counters evolution more than it supports it. I’ll grant that whatever is more fit to its environment is more likely to survive than something that is less fit. Where does that leave plants and animals with mutations? There are countless instances of features organisms have that would be entirely useless until completely perfectly finished. To name one off the top of my head, consider the eye. This incredibly complex organ is 100% a liability to any organism that has it unless every single cog in its workings fits together perfectly. It is irreducibly complex, and any step-by-step development would be entirely pointless to the organism. Natural selection would likely give the short straw to such an organism with extraneous features. What if it evolved all at once? The odds of that happening are less than is comprehensible by human minds. Even if that happened though, how can we explain the several entirely different types of eyes that exist in Earth’s organisms? Would there be any benefit in developing a different type of eye from scratch? There are innumerable other examples of inconceivably complex organs as well.

3. Where did life itself come from? There has not been a single instance of life from non-life, despite years of scientific research and attempts of the finest minds we can offer. And we’re to believe that this was all created by chance?

4. Sexual reproduction was entirely unnecessary when it was supposedly evolved. It entails an enormous cost in efficiency and the benefits of a more diversified DNA pool are not so large as they appear to be. In short, the first organisms to reproduce sexually were at a distinct disadvantage according to the macroevolutionary model. Sex itself is extremely complex, and any organism that didn’t completely develop the entire system at once would be entirely unable to reproduce. Not only that, but a second organism within the first’s immediate vicinity would also have to evolve sexual organs at exactly the same time. How’s that for unlikely?

I wish this was my great-grandfather. I really do.

5. There’s never been a proven “missing link”. Look into all the claimed missing links from man to ape and you might be surprised at the levels of falsification and assumption involved. If evolution was true, there would have to be billions of in-between organisms who died without full development of features of the next evolutionary tier. There is no such fossil evidence. The fossil record is held as the one area where evolution reins king, but there are several counter-theories that make at least as much sense. Creationists have provided a variety of alternative explanations for fossil succession. These include such mechanisms as the sorting of organisms during the Flood, differential escape of organisms during the same, ecological zonation of life-forms in the antediluvian world (such that different life-forms in different strata reflect the serial burial of ecological life-zones during the Flood), and TABs (Tectonically-Associated Biological Provinces—wherein different life forms occur in successive horizons of rock as a reflection of successive crustal downwarp of different life-bearing biogeographic communities).
All of these mechanisms do away with the notion that horizons of fossils demand successive passages of time during which the organisms lived. In other words, they allow for there to have been only one set of mutually-contemporaneous living things on a young earth, instead of a repetitive replacement of living things over vast periods of time. Most of the earth’s sedimentary record is viewed as being deposited by the Noachian Deluge (the great flood of Noah’s time), and not over successive depositional events in analogues of modern sedimentary environments on an evolving earth.

6. If we’re feeling legislative, we can see how evolution works within the laws of science. For instance, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. There’s clearly energy in our current universe. Evolution doesn’t explain how it was created in the first place. What about the second Law of Thermodynamics? It states that spontaneous natural processes increase entropy overall. So everything without forces working on it to improve it by definition devolves, loses energy, increases disorder. Evolution claims to counter that by sheer improbability.

There are many more arguments against evolution, including extrapolation of today’s decreasing magnetic fields, the decreasing spin of the earth, the recession of the moon, the low levels of atmospheric helium, the basis of all dating methods on assumption, the continuing life of comets, and a ton of other things I could talk about.

I’m not trying to convert you from one to another with this simple post. I’m trying to get you to realize that evolution is not a foregone conclusion. I think it takes more faith to believe in than creationism, once you consider all the angles. I’ve been reading about this issue from both sides for years now. Creationism is still a 100% valid belief to have.

Some great resources:
Apologetics Press – This is an incredible resource for anyone wanting to know about creationism or Christianity in general. They have free e-books dealing with it, too.
The Truth About Human Origins – Free e-book dealing with the problems with evolutionary theory of humans and the numerous false “missing links”.
Darwin’s Black Box- A challenge to evolutionary thinking, written by a biochemist.
The Collapse of Evolution – An excellent summation of creationist theories and challenges to evolution.
Does God Believe in Atheists? – Great book on Christianity vs. other religions and philosophies, including atheism, and with a section on Darwinism.

The basis and value of true hope.

True hope can be defined as “confident expectation”. It has far more value than blind, desperate wishful thinking.

What is its rightful, healthy basis?

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.

Colossians 1:3-5a

So what is the value of hope?

Hope proves man deathless. It is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

- Henry Melvill

The heart not only decides where home is but also what its treasures are. In order to look back at my current life and have no regrets, where does my heart need to be? What should I treasure? Where should my home be?

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

When I have so much of myself invested in this world, succumbing to the numbness of current surroundings, I lose track of the powerful hope that is laid up for me in heaven. I become bound by the daily grind, depressed by the human tragedy, and unable to overcome the difficulties in life.

Sometimes we need a higher perspective.

But when we focus on the things that persevere, we begin to place our hope in those things which will never fail. Putting hope, faith, and love in the eternal God frees us, mentally and spiritually, from so many of the hardships of terrestrial life that it finally becomes apparent to all that though we are in the world, we are truly of a very different one.

Once we realize that things of highest value are not fundamentally money or fame, personal relationships or experiences, the things that affect us begin to change. We think of some things more lightly than most people would, even some things that would tear someone else apart. We also start to gain an appreciation of the seriousness and importance of some things which most people would brush off as irrelevant and unworthy of attention. Hope in the promises of God produces in us love, joy, and peace.

I’m nowhere near there yet. I don’t pretend to be. But I know that what has kept me afloat many times in the past has been knowing that there are far better and more lasting things awaiting me in heaven. It’s a security that is fundamentally irreplaceable and incredibly freeing.

See here for further thoughts.

The Musical Bridge.

Most songs, even since the classical age of music, have had a bridge, a contrasting section before the return of the melody.

Unfortunately for listeners, there happen to be many songs in which the bridge is far more powerful and engaging than the rest of the song, so they have to trudge through the whole thing just to get to the good part.

A few examples of disproportionately good bridges:

Dereliction of the Dream

Going with the flow.

When the current is strong and the river is wide, sometimes we don’t have a choice but to go along with the flow. It takes time and effort to make your way to the shoreline.

What’s disconcerting is how easy it is to simply accept that we’re headed downstream no matter what. We lose our will to fight for the treasure that can be found upriver.

It moving on unceasingly. Are we just in for the ride?

How much conviction does it take to float? How much drive does one have to have in order to lounge?

If we, like Alice, wish to get somewhere but go nowhere in particular, the downhill way is the one we’ll end up taking.

But it makes sense on the surface, to take the easy way through life. We all tend towards laziness. We all want security. We don’t want to have to adjust to change.

Are we afraid of what lies beyond? Do we fear failure to the point where we won’t try to succeed? Are we genuinely content with lackluster  blandness? Do we really want to be exactly what is expected?

My challenge to myself and to all who care to listen, especially young people, is to reexamine our premises and see why we do what we do.

Without a theme-of-life, a purpose, a common thread — a dream — life becomes tiresome, dull, tepid. We find that we tend towards the same ruts, day after long day, getting less and less satisfaction from the things we used to think could fulfill us. Where is our humanity, our passion? Even the dead are at room-temperature.

What’s the value of self-determination if we’re don’t take the reins and make something of our future?

When we have a dream, something that keeps us following one powerful line of thought and behavior, what is today’s drudgery becomes tomorrow an important piece in a grand road leading towards the light. The adventure that awaits us when we travel upriver is something we don’t want to miss while we cruise effortlessly towards mediocrity.

I say we take taking our lives back. I say we take some chances. No one’s ever made a difference by being the same.

Irrational? I'm not so sure.

What seems like irrationality is a viewpoint, action, or decision based on a foreign set of premises, beliefs, or assumptions.

Consider those thought to be insane. Insanity may even be defined as living by a set of premises so foreign to most people that it is irreconcilable with the common view of reality. Often, their actions are called irrational. Indeed, if an observer was to perform the same actions he sees the “insane” person performing, he would be acting irrationally. However, within that person’s perspective, he is acting entirely rationally. He is responding in accordance with reason.

Let’s start from an assumption that each person acts according to his perception of self-interest. If we also assume that each person is inherently rational, we gain a sense of understanding as to why they act and believe as they do. We can no longer ascribe it as irrational.

This gives us a respect for people who do or believe in things we do not understand. It gives us an entry point into their perspective, a starting point from which we can begun to understand who they are, what their assumptions are, and the reasoning behind their actions and beliefs.

By seeing things from the perspective of those people so foreign to us that we would otherwise consider them irrational, we can get closer to understanding how life works. The more information we gain, the more likely we are to arrive at the objectively true, correct conclusions. “Keep an open mind” is a common feeling of the day, but we can take that to the next level by learning the perspectives of others without allowing ourselves the excuse of their rationality.

A Case Against CAR/STAR Interviewing

I’m against incentivizing lying.

Perhaps its my particular brand of ethics, or perhaps its my utilitarianism and global focus, but lying doesn’t add anything to the world. Ever. Whatever value it seems to add is either focused on one particular party at the expense of another or is an illusion (and don’t think those who lie don’t have incentives to create illusions of value, either).

With that said, Context-Action-Result (CAR) and Situation-Task-Action-Result (STAR) interviewing do not agree with me.

These are forms of behavior-based interviewing and are quite common these days in looking for new employees. They are supposedly founded on the belief that the past actions of an applicant predict what they will do in a future situation.

I happen to agree with that basic premise to a point, but what something cites as its founding value does not automatically mean that it really pursues this end.

In this style of interviewing, the interviewer will draw from a bank of questions he/she has and will ask applicants things like, “When was a time you persuaded someone of something?” or “When is a time your ethics came into question on a project?”

Of course, the interviewee needs to have a good answer to each question. That is implied by the questions’ very existence. The problem is that not everyone has a good answer to every question. It becomes easier to lie and make up a great answer than to search one’s index of the memory by category (persuasion?  uncooperative teammate? high-stress environment?) and find a great anecdote. Even those who would normally tell no lies are tempted to invent a story rather than simply say, “I cannot come up with an answer to your question.”

Frankly, not everyone stereotypes their memories into times that fulfill the basic premises of these questions? One could be the most accomplished young person ever to live and not be able to think of a time when “Quality A” was displayed within the 10 seconds or so they are given to think about the question.

In short, those people who are most willing to invent plausible stories during CAR/STAR interviews always have the advantage. There is not any way the interviewer can fact-check much of the interviewee’s stories, especially if he is slightly vague about anything in them.

Even little “white” lies are hugely incentivized. One is encouraged to take sole credit for anything valuable that emerged from a team-based setting, and his testimony cannot be tested for truthfulness. It is truly a case where integrity is tested.

Another point about job-interviewing in general and CAR/STAR interviews in specific is that they reward those who are especially self-centered. People who can most pleasingly answer interviewers’ questions about their past are those who constantly think about themselves and their past. The humble and client-centered applicants are often passed over because they do not present themselves as the solution to the world’s problems. Those who admit their faults or shortcomings are not given the positions that those who are utterly and foolishly self-confident so often receive.

An alternative to these self-centered and lie-incentivizing methods would be case analyses and the response an applicant would have to a given situation, weighted, substantive recommendations from respected figures, and quantitative tests of skill or talent.

The Effects of Uncertainty

Much ado has been made about the actions the government has taken in the form of intervention in the markets, and rightly so. It is a momentous occasion when the national debt is doubled and the production of money launches to new heights.

One aspect that perhaps has not been considered so fully is how governmental intervention causes deadweight loss in markets simply because it is uncertain where and how it will move.

Every intervention in a market has a disruptive effect beyond its first-stage implications. Because markets incorporate future value in current prices, the mere possibility that something may occur in the future has an effect on the current value.

We face intimidating entrenched forces. The struggle will be difficult.

Participants in the market necessarily have imperfect knowledge. They simply cannot know everything, or even close to everything that affects a narrow spectrum of a market. Even if someone knew every bit of transactional and physical data at a given time, he would not be able to predict where it would be going to 100% accuracy because value is subjective by location, time, and personal preference.

When a problem occurs in the market (likely due to interference in the first place, but that is an argument for another day), the natural reaction is, of course, “How can we fix this? What can be done?” The questions that are all-too-seldom asked are, “Is this fixable by articulated, rational plans and actions? If so, whose role is it to fix everything?”

This principle can be applied to the judicial system as well. The role of judges has been subject to debate for centuries. There are two common outlooks; judges are either supposed to interpret the law and determine whether it applies to a given case or they are to determine the merits of the law itself and the spirit of the law as they see it and to decide whether they want to interfere or not. The uncertainty of judges’ roles causes far more court cases and worse results than would exists otherwise.

Respect for precedents allows judges to refrain from acting on every whim they have, and to trust in the systematic results of common law, where the nail that stands out most is the first to be hammered down to make the best end product. There is simply no feedback mechanism in civil law systems, which function similarly to centrally-planned economies.

Who knows best how to fix the markets? Many would argue that they do, but each one may have contrary ideas. The value of capitalistic markets is in their lowering of the knowledge cost per person and the use of selfish motives to increase the welfare of the population at large.To put it simply, participants in a capitalistic economy only need to know what they are willing to pay for a given good or service, and the system will work as well as possible. To get the optimal result in a state-run economy, central planners must literally know everything, including subjective preferences of each individual at any given time and place.

Things are not as they should be.

There exists a well-known idea in economics called the Coase Theorem. It states that where property rights are well-defined and bargaining costs are low, an efficient outcome will be reached regardless of who actually has the right to the property.

The implications of the Coase Theorem apply even to markets on a large scale. To some degree, it doesn’t matter what the government decides to do, so long as it is well-defined and predictable. Precedents decrease the bargaining costs for all participants, as they determine the litigative outcome beforehand.

Perhaps more efficient results would arise from certainty in almost any form than from uncertainty as it exists today. No investor knows whether the government will bail out company A or increase tax rates in month B or keep printing money until hyperinflation is inevitable, and these uncertainties keep them from being able to make effective predictions. The very ability for the government to do whatever it wills reduces the possibility for an efficient outcome in the end. If the government had a policy that it could not break from, the market would be better-able to flow around it, even if it was a limiting policy.

As Ludwig von Mises argued, the calculation becomes more expensive the more each participant must know. Uncertainty about governmental actions only adds to the costs of economic calculation.

Insurance exists only to alleviate the risk of uncertainty. Puts and calls on market price movements exist for the same purpose. These market functions are necessary because knowledge is not free.

So in the end, how can we avoid the problem of uncertainty in actions by the government? First of all, the government can establish a tradition of non-interference in market actions. This is absolutely not the case in the US. Because of this, the only option is for the government to steadily but quickly reduce its holdings in the market. It needs to put money back in the hands of those who earn it and to start disbanding programs and agencies in order of least- to most-important. The US government needs to return to its Constitutional roots.

Capitalism Is Chaos, But Is That A Bad Thing?

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable.  What he wants above everything else is safety.

-Henry Louis Mencken

People have an innate fear of the unknown and need for control. When we cannot see explicit causality, they we either led by faith in or fear of the system as it exists.

In addition, people are perpetually lazy if they are allowed to be; that is, all persons tend towards inaction or nonproductive action when incentives to do otherwise are absent.

With these assumptions, let’s look at the question of capitalism/minarchism versus socialism/statism. 

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

-Benjamin Franklin

Capitalism is an incredibly efficient system wherein people have incentives to do things that are good for others even (especially?) when they are against altruism. The beauty of capitalism is that literally everyone can pursue greedy goals but still benefit the greater whole incidentally. It takes into account that trade-offs exist and cannot be avoided because scarcity exists. The best we can do, according to capitalism, is set up incentive structures to benefit the greater whole as well.

A capitalistic economy is also a chaotic system. One of the most interesting ideas to come out of chaos theory is the paradox that chaos is not actually random, that chaos contains order, and that order contains chaos. A natural, spontaneous order arises, and the functions of the system can be predicted, albeit with much difficulty. The interdependence and complexity of chaotic systems makes them very hard, if not impossible, to predict accurately. In systems set by human interactions, that order is set by incentives. These incentives vary from person to person and even to one person, depending on the time and countless other factors. Needless to say, it is fundamentally impossible to simplify an economy without losing important variables. The value that chaos theory gives to the idea of capitalism is that it is quantitatively but indescribably an ordered system. It just happens to be far too complex to know completely.

There are innumerable transactions that take place every second. Causality is a very hard answer to garner from a system of qualitative value-judgment and an enormous quantitative pool of data. For instance, the question of, “Why didn’t we sell as many widgets this month as we did last month?” likely has more legitimate reasons than one could comprehend, let alone predict.

That very complexity and the blurriness (if not absolute opacity) of the connection between cause and effect make people anxious. We want life to be predictable. We don’t want to have the risk of bankruptcy. We want to be able to control our respective and collective destinies.

These concerns bring up questions that don’t immediately have clear answers. How could we set it up where everyone has everything he/she needs? What can we do to manipulate the system to where our simplistic and misplaced notions of causality are fulfilled and those we feel are repressing the rest of us can become true and guilty scapegoats?

Politicians have inherent incentives to take advantage of people’s lack of understanding and trust in the markets. If they present simplified versions of reality that seem to work most of the time, they will be able to offer “solutions” and “change” to the people whose votes they so desperately need. It does not matter if the ideas that “corporations are greedy and harmful to you” or that “fluorescent light bulbs are categorically better” are true, as long as they capture the feelings of the masses enough to give that politician a better chance of (re)election.

Politicians take advantage of that fear of the unknown, the need for an explicit connection of causality, and the desire for security to build themselves and thereby larger, more involved government up. They can offer incredibly wonderful ends but then get away with some temporary economic expansion. They pass the baton of blame to whomever they please and then make policy out of punishing the other party when, more often than not, the politicians themselves are responsible.

The incentives of politicians are to maximize short-term prosperity to focused groups. With the   2-6 year span of attention of the majority of voters and the inherent difficulty of finding the real culprits in complicated systems, politicians get away with policies that have terrible effects in the long-term.

Our laziness is appeased by increased activity by the state as well; we don’t have to work as hard, just so long as everyone else does. We can rest on their laurels because their income will be redistributed. The only problem there is that everyone thinks the same thing in the end, and the producers no longer produce what they were led to produce before because the incentives are no longer there.

But people get what they really want: someone to blame and a hope that maybe one day the government will finally deliver on its promises. Because in the end, hope and blame are all that politicians can offer. Solutions come from allowing people to make choices individually rather than collectively, as in capitalism.

Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.

-The Joker