by Varun Gauri

The challenge for liberal societies is to understand the allure of illiberalism in the first place, with far more honesty and subtlety than we muster.  —Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Why does illiberalism appear attractive to so many people in liberal societies these days? Part of the answer, certainly, is that liberal regimes, and especially neoliberal economies, have failed to deliver economic prosperity to all. Liberal regimes have become less responsive to democratic demands, instead concentrating political decision making and economic market share among fewer and fewer individuals, organizations, and firms.

But why turn to illiberalism in response? Why not more democracy, more inclusion, rather than less? Why not approaches that might directly tackle social, political, and economic inequalities, such as northern European welfarism, shared corporate governance, or even Gandhian localism? Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Part of the explanation, I want to suggest, in a tentative and exploratory way, is that illiberalism never disappears, even in liberal societies. Features of human psychology, combined with contemporary moral demands, have produced a beast that is extremely difficult to kill off. The monster is always there, beneath the surface.

By liberalism, I mean the moral intuition that human beings are equal in dignity and all incommensurably valuable. Societies embed that moral idea in diverse constitutions, political systems, welfare schemes, property rights regimes, and child-raising practices. As a result, liberal societies take different positions on economic liberty, religious freedom, and equality among social groups, among other issues. Read more »

Sughra Raza. Lesser Weaver Nests, Akagera National Park, Rwanda. 2018.

Digital photograph.

“For the lesser masked weavers of Africa, evolution has provided a critical mass. The males weave elaborate nests, that resemble pendulous, open-weave baskets, hanging one by one from slender branches.

As the males work, the females judiciously assess their progress. A great deal of skill and industry goes into each nest: the weave must be of the right tightness and elasticity otherwise the eggs will slide out.

When the nest is finished and ready for judging, the male perches hopefully beside it. A messy, disorganised nest, and its designer, will be rejected. The better examples are given a stern and thorough examination, including an interior inspection. If the female approves, she immediately moves in. Thus she ensures that the standards of nest building among lesser masked weavers will remain very high.”

More here, and here.

by David Kordahl

Many of the best historical movies featuring “hard” scientists have used social problems, rather than than scientific controversies, to propel their action.¹ Two recently released films that address the legacy of Nikola Tesla reverse this trend. The Current War, a plummy costume drama whose planned 2017 distribution was delayed by the Harvey Weinstein scandals, mainly addresses the famously public feud between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. But at its heart is the question of whether the future of electrical power would run on direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC), a debate that Tesla’s polyphase AC generators eventually won. And the newly released Tesla, a formalist exercise in the postmodern style, takes Tesla’s story farther, leading viewers into his controversial work on wireless power transmission, work that, depending on which parts of the Internet you ask, was either awesomely visionary or deeply confused.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a truly odd person, the only scientist whose name a hair band and a car company might both want to borrow. It isn’t hard to figure out what has made him a mainstay of popular culture. Had Tesla merely been an inventor of genius, he might have been remembered only by engineers. But Tesla was also an entertainer. My Inventions, a compilation of Tesla’s scattered popular writing, includes many quotes that sound openly anti-scientific. In between his anecdotes about curing personal ailments with his mind and an exposition of his law of compensation (“true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made”), here’s how Tesla described his method of invention:

When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. […] When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and experiment comes out exactly as I planned it.

For a person of sufficient genius applying solidly established scientific principles, this method might work. But where the empirical principles haven’t been firmly established, this seems like a pretty bad method, and Tesla’s later explorations, which pushed ever farther into questions of basic science, were increasingly unfruitful, perhaps as a result of this. Read more »

by Paul Orlando

Two days after the 2016 presidential election I turned one day of my normal university classes into a history of recent presidential campaigns. I looked at a few of the more famous moments from campaigns of the previous 50 years, none of which the students knew.

If you’re reading 3QD you probably know these moments. But you might also want to remind yourself that not everyone does, especially if they have not lived through them. If it’s a help, here is a short list that you might send others who are interested.

The 1960 Kennedy – Nixon debate

Before this debate even begins, the first thing you might notice is the way JFK sits. He crosses his legs. He’s also in a dark suit against a light background. He is also the better looking of the two candidates. Nixon, on the other hand, sits with both feet awkwardly on the floor and can’t find a place for his hands.

As a televised debate — and the first ever — these things unfortunately matter.

The next thing you might notice is that the moderator announces that there will be opening statements of eight minutes. Eight minutes! (And JFK only used about seven). And while it was not stated, there were to be no interruptions. This, after all, was formal debating. If you watch the debate, the striking thing is how different that style now seems.

Presidential candidates didn’t debate on television again until the 1976 campaign. Read more »

by Tim Sommers

There’s something wrong with the sentence, “This sentence is false.” Is it true or false? Well, if it’s true, then it’s false. But then if it’s false, it’s true. And so on. This is the simplest, most straightforward version of the “Liar’s Paradox”. It’s at least two thousand five hundred years old and well-known enough that you can buy the t-shirt on Amazon.com.

I’ve been thinking about the “Liar’s Paradox” lately, because I’m teaching an “Introduction to Philosophy” class on paradoxes (and writing a book) called “Life’s a Puzzle: Philosophy’s Greatest Paradoxes, Thought-Experiments, Counter-Intuitive Arguments, and Counter-Examples from AI to Zeno”. It starts with the “Liar’s Paradox” because it’s one of the oldest and most well-known, but also simplest and most daunting, of philosophical paradoxes. Some people think that while “puzzle” cases in philosophy are fun and showy, they are not where the real action is. I think every real philosophical puzzle is a window onto a mystery. And proposed solutions to that mystery are samples of the variety and possibilities of philosophy.

So, let’s start with this. Why is it called the “Liar’s Paradox”? Let’s go to the Christian Bible for that one, specifically, “St. Paul’s Letter to Titus” (Ch. 1, verses 12-14)

“They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach – and that for the sake of filthy lucre.¹² One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’¹³ This statement is true.¹⁴”

Verse 12 has philosophers dead to rights. We are disrupting whole households, teaching things we ought not to teach and – speaking for myself at least – it’s all about the filthy lucre (hence, the book). But verse 13 is what we want here. It has “Cretan’s own prophet” saying “Cretans are always liars.” Now, if that just means that all Cretans lie a lot, but not all the time, there’s no problem. But if it means that Cretans are always lying whenever they speak, given that this is asserted by a Cretan (read: liar), we have a paradox. This then is the primordial, liar’s version of the “Liar’s Paradox”. If that’s unclear you can simplify the liar’s version down to: “I am lying right now.” Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Adele Wilby

Donald Trump’s presidency has generated a greater than normal interest in American politics, but not necessarily for the right reasons. How, people wondered, could such a poorly qualified candidate, and, as we have seen over the years, of equally poor calibre possibly become the President of the United States and leader of the ‘free’ world?

Events over recent days have added to that curiosity, not least his performance during the Presidential debate on 29 September. Moreover, his refusal to endorse a peaceful transition of power should he lose the presidential race in November in 2016, is troubling enough, but equally, and arguably of greater concern, are the recent revelations surrounding Trump’s business dealings and tax returns.  That a man of such purported wealth has not paid taxes for ten to fifteen years or has paid just 750 dollars since he assumed office in 2016, is not only outrageous, but is substantial evidence to raise legitimate concern about the integrity of the man sitting in the White House. Furthermore, given the business losses he is said to have incurred suggests that Trump is not the savvy businessman that he likes to portray to his base and the public, but rather is incompetent and reckless with finances: he is neither honest nor  a safe pair of hands with the national economy. Worrying also are the suggestions that he has used his office for financial gain. His tax returns confirm what his reluctance to reveal them has always implied: they have been worked in such a way to his financial benefit and exempted him from paying the amount of tax equivalent to his wealth, of not paying his required contribution to the national purse.

Theories abound to account for the support that Trump has enjoyed  and continues to enjoy: the emasculation of white working class men; his appeal to sections of white women voters; his criticism of  globalisation and his commitment to bring jobs home again; a rejection  of a liberal political elite that dominates US politics; anti-immigrant sentiments; a dislike of America’s contribution and participation in international institutions such as NATO and the United Nations; nationalism,  to name a few. There are also arguments that critically examine the problems with the American Constitution and democracy, and here I refer to the way the Electoral College works to allow the individual with the least number of popular votes to assume the office of President.

Each of these theories has its own credibility as an explanation to account for Trump’s appeal and electoral success in 2016. However, considering Trump’s track record over the past four years, many people scratch their heads in disbelief as to how he became the uncontested Republican candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections. Surely his record and behaviour would deter the American public from even considering him as a potential President. Read more »

by Sabyn Javeri Jillani

Sometimes it’s the anatomical heart, a muscle the size of a fist, pumping furiously to keep us alive, at other times it is the beating of the metaphorical heart that leads us astray. Fact or fiction, real or symbolic, the heart is central to the story of our lives. The heart is what connects us, what leads us, or misleads us. Heartbreaks, heartaches, heart to hearts, heartening and heartfelt, the heart is central to our emotions, and to our bodies. Although its bodily function is often underplayed in place of its emotional one, be it art, literature, cinema or even emojis. Like most people, I too had grown up associating the heart with recklessness, with spontaneity and intuition, and with love and sorrow rather than stability and strength.

And so when I recently went through a melancholic time in my life, I thought of myself as heartbroken. Little did I know that heartbreak could manifest itself medically too. For the last few days, every time I felt aggrieved, I felt my heart slam against my chest as if it was trying to break free of the hollow cavity that contained it. At other times when I felt anxious, my heart too felt overwhelmed as the world was closing in on me. Every time I thought of the anguish, I felt as if my heart was folding in on itself and sinking towards my stomach. At other times when the heartbreaking thought of losing someone I loved became too much to bear, I felt as if my heart was splitting in two, my pulse slowing down, my palms becoming cold. Read more »

Somewhere over the South Tyrol near the Swiss border, twelve minutes after taking off from Verona in October of 2017.