by Michael Liss

There are times where we are simply unable to surpass our elders.

“Corrupt” doesn’t capture it. Neither does any other epithet or adjective or modifier you care to couple with corrupt. When it came to ballot stuffing, voter suppression, intimidation, bribes, and just garden variety mendacity, the Election of 1876 had it all.

In some respects, this all makes perfect sense. In 1876, America is seething. It is the last year of the (impressively corrupt) Grant Administration, early in the Gilded Age, where the buying and selling of virtually everything is more a question of price than right or wrong. Reconstruction has been a mess: eight of the former Confederate States have thrown off their “Carpetbagger” governments and are now controlled by “Redeemers,” the same old folks that seceded from the Union after Lincoln was elected. The substantive meaning of the 14th and 15th Amendments as they relate to former slaves has evaporated in most places. There is xenophobia and anti-Catholic agitation and the continued threat of violence. And there is a dawning realization that the two-party system no longer sorts itself out with consistency when addressing the growing divide between the rich and poor, labor and capital, industrialized vs. agrarian, hard money vs. soft, lavish spending on internal improvements vs. frugality, and so on.

It is still possible for Republicans to ”wave the bloody shirt” and recall the Civil War, but a surprising number of former adversaries are finding common interests that seem to supersede allegiance to whatever uniforms they previously wore. Democrats have been shut out of the Presidency since James Buchanan, but, in 1874, at the height of the recession caused by the Panic of 1873, they rode a Blue Wave to control of the House. Is 1876 the year they can break the Republicans’ iron lock, especially with federal troops still propping up Reconstructionist governments in Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana? Read more »

by R. Passov

“In … economics we are faced with … a need for accurate forecasts, yet our ability to predict the future has been found wanting”

—Systems Economics: D. Orrell and P. McSharry, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol 25 (2009)

*          *          *          *

The Stanford Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Economics (2018) stabs at a definition of the science:

… At first glance, the difficulties in defining economics may not appear serious. Economics is, after all, concerned with aspects of the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of commodities and services. But this claim and the terms it contains are vague…

Stanford [] portrays economics as a new science only coming into its own under Adam Smith, whose work “… offers a systematic Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

In Smith’s economics, an actor led by an “…Invisible Hand…intending only his own gain … gives rise to regularities …”

These “…regularities…” – the unintended consequences of individual choices – “…give rise to an object of scientific investigation.”

The individual choices, it can be argued, are the domain of contemporary Microeconomics while the regularities to which they give rise, might in some sense be our Macroeconomics.

*          *          *          *

Smith, a jocular, bulbous-nosed Scotsman, after graduating from Oxford in 1748 parlayed a penchant for soap-box speeches into a professor-ship at the University of Glasgow. There he rose to Chair of Philosophy. Economics would wait until 1903 when, finally, Cambridge set it apart from the moral sciences.

In 1759 Smith produced a work entitled “A Theory of Moral Sentiments” in which he mused on “… how a man who is interested chiefly in himself [can] make moral judgements that satisfy other people.”

His answer: “When people confront moral choices they imagine an Impartial Spectator who … advises them…Instead of following their self-interest, they take the imaginary observer’s advice,” and in so doing, “…decide on the basis of sympathy, not selfishness.”

After publishing Moral Sentiments, Smith followed the money. For two years, he wandered through France tutoring the son of a gentlemen who, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, devised the tax policies that sparked the Boston Tea Party.

During his wanderings Smith sought, among others, Hume, Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. After exhausting his stipend, he spent a decade socializing at the Literary Club of London, turning his notebooks into The Wealth of Nations. The Impartial Spectator morphed into the Invisible Hand. Empathy turned into self-interest. Read more »

by Rafaël Newman

A system update recently downloaded to my cellphone included artificial intelligence capable of facial recognition. I know this because, when I subsequently opened the “Gallery” function to send a photograph, I discovered that the refurbished app had taken it upon itself to create a new “album” (alongside “Camera”, “Downloads” and “Screenshots”) called “Stories”, within which I found assemblages of my own pictures, culled from all of those other albums and assorted thematically, evidently because they depicted identical, or similar, figures.

These AI-authored visual narratives had been given names, for the most part simply the date on which the visual elements had been created or sourced. In one case, where that date was associated on the template calendar with a particular observance, the “story” had been given that name: “Father’s Day,” for instance, had more or less accurately assembled photographs of me and my brother at an eponymous event; in another, a collection of snaps of my kids at various ages, the algorithm had wanly suggested “Memories” as an appropriate title, while, perplexingly, pictures taken during a family holiday in Riga had been collected under the inscription “The Royal St. John’s Regatta”, presumably because an event by that name had also taken place somewhere on the day date-stamped on my rainy Baltic souvenirs.

The “story” that bemused me most, however, had been given the title “Dog Days” (or “Hundetage”, since I have yet to change the operating-system language on the apparatus I purchased here in Zurich). “Dog Days” contained a collection of all of the pictures of dogs to be found on my phone: of which there is a surprisingly large number, given my own deficient ability to form an affective connection to animals, house pets included.

I had apparently taken and stored photographs of my mother-in-law’s dogs, past and present, as well as of a friend’s tiny Bolonka, which had pantingly accompanied us on a recent hike in the Emmental hills, although she was for the most part transported up to alpine meadows in a brocade bag. There was also an assortment of humorous dog “memes” for the robot to select from, which I had screenshotted for the ephemeral amusement of various correspondents.

Now, among the items from which this canine fumetto had been composed, one stood out: in part because it was in black and white, a rare effect these days; and in part because its subject was manifestly human. In fact it was a close-up of me, age 14, which I had re-photographed from an analogue snapshot in my father’s collection for a purpose now forgotten. Read more »

by Philip Graham

FRONT PORCH

Tucked away in my mind is a secret neighborhood, with a winding street plan that arranges all the music that I have come to love. It’s a sprawling, noisy place, block after block of obscure or popular songs, odd genres or unusual instruments that I have listened to over a lifetime. Back in 1968, though, when I was beginning to develop my musical tastes, I spent most of my time in the House of Psychedelia, absorbing the trippy music that was so popular at the time, in a house that resembled a cross between a Buckminster Fuller dome and a Silly Putty dream of Frank Gehry.

My secret neighborhood also included the House of Pedal Steel Guitar—a ramshackle affair, its front porch empty except for a single rocking chair—which I walked past without regret. Why would I enter? Though the instrument’s sliding notes might soar as fluidly as a human voice, as far as I was concerned it was little better than the handmaiden of a musical genre beloved by love-it-or-leave-it racist conservatives.

But one day I took a few tentative steps from the sidewalk to the edge of the front porch.

Why?

Sweetheart of the Rodeo, by the Byrds.

I had faithfully followed the band’s invention of folk rock to their birthing of psychedelic rock, so when they decided to audaciously fuse rock and country, I was willing to follow, though not without some hemming and hawing. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

Observation deck over the Stausee (the reservoir of a dam on the Eisack river) in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol, in September of 2020.

by Bill Benzon

Anyone with even a casual interest in photography quickly becomes acutely aware of light. It defines what you do, but your ability to control it is limited, even if you work in a studio with expensive equipment. I don’t work in a studio, nor do I have expensive equipment. But I am deeply interested in light, and have spent a fair amount of time taking photographs where light itself is the subject.

This is one of the earliest such photographs. I’m standing along the shore of the Hudson River looking at the sunrise over Manhattan. For some reason I decided to shoot right into the light and see what happened. This is what I got:

In that photograph the buildings exist to articulate the light. Read more »

by Bill Murray

“Please take that back, sir.”

The receptionist at Residence Inn by Marriott, Lexington, Kentucky, recoiled when I slipped my reservation confirmation onto the tabletop. Regrettably, they can not touch things at Residence Inn by Marriott. Surely we understand.

After sheltering in place since March, we’d driven off in search of … we didn’t know, really, towns down the road and then the towns after that. A pre-election driving tour of pandemic America, Georgia to Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee and back. Ten days, five states, fifteen hundred miles.

Who could ask for more? All the allure of a Sunday afternoon waiting for Monday. Like that last day before the end of Daylight Savings Time. Fun as folding clothes. 

Less than half of hotel workers have a job. Those who still do stay distant at work, skeptical by their new training, disengaged from the guests whose expense accounts would lead them out of all this. Rapport is a struggle from behind a mask.

It all feels surreptitious. With the card key come muffled breakfast details: Here is the menu web site (are we familiar with QR codes?), select one of four choices by touch tone. Delivery to the hallway. No one will change your sheets. We hope you enjoy your stay. On the other hand, crinkly eyes suggest a smile under that mask. The hotel has an eighth floor outdoor cafe, she says. Read more »

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 »