What is most notable about the phrase, "Nobody could have seen this coming," is that it is never uttered in reference to something truly unpredictable, such as a plane crash. Shockingly, the more inevitable an event is, the louder the professional predictors will protest that it was unforeseeable. Why is this?
This particular irony is instructive in deciphering the phrases true meaning: "I didn't see this coming, and since I must be smarter than everyone else, none of them could have seen it coming either." This mainly stems, I believe, from a mistaken belief that professionals in a field are inherently more intelligent that laypeople.
I do not mean to suggest that professional opinions are worthless; the knowledge and experience that comes from decades invested in understanding a field is of irreplaceable value. However, we must recognize that even the Einsteins of the world are prone to spells of myopia, if not outright stupidity. Yes, even the Einstein succumbed to such on occasion, most prominently in his dismissal of quantum physics out of a stubborn insistence that the universe make since.
What I advocate on this issue is something which our culture selects against: humility." Although, "I am always right," sounds far more impressive than, "I am right a statistically significant proportion of the time," it leads to far more embarrassment when one misses the mark. To insist that one's own intellectual failings must be shared by every other observer is not only arrogant, it's insulting.
This is why the phrase, "Nobody could have seen this coming," must die.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Executed Man Accidentally Found Innocent
Ft. Worth, Texas -
A top appeals court accidentally ruled Jacob Tollman, a man executed just days earlier, to be innocent of all crimes today, a state attorney says.
"We have no idea how this could have happened," Robbie Davis Esq. told this paper on condition of anonymity. "It is just so painful for all of us, seeing the judicial system go through this ordeal."
Tollman was convicted of first-degree murder based on the eyewitness testimony of Stan Clavin, a retired plumber, which was corroborated by his seeing-eye dog. He was mistakenly exonerated on the grounds that the dog's testimony was compromised by a quarter-pounder in the prosecutor's back pocket.
In a public statement, Davis announced, "Rest assured, safeguards will be swiftly put in place to prevent such reconsideration of the facts in the future."
A top appeals court accidentally ruled Jacob Tollman, a man executed just days earlier, to be innocent of all crimes today, a state attorney says.
"We have no idea how this could have happened," Robbie Davis Esq. told this paper on condition of anonymity. "It is just so painful for all of us, seeing the judicial system go through this ordeal."
Tollman was convicted of first-degree murder based on the eyewitness testimony of Stan Clavin, a retired plumber, which was corroborated by his seeing-eye dog. He was mistakenly exonerated on the grounds that the dog's testimony was compromised by a quarter-pounder in the prosecutor's back pocket.
In a public statement, Davis announced, "Rest assured, safeguards will be swiftly put in place to prevent such reconsideration of the facts in the future."
Thursday, November 19, 2009
If only protesters were really that scary
Via the San Francisco Chronicle:
The UC regents are expected to put the final seal today on a hefty 32 percent tuition increase as students resume the protests that shut down their board meeting three times Wednesday and required campus police in riot gear to maintain calm."Required" campus police in riot gear? Nowhere in the article is evidence provided that protesters were violent, or even armed. I find that specific choice of words troubling; it reinforces the distressingly common attitude that any action taken by law enforcement is by default proper and necessary.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Lime For Our Time
When The Third Man was released sixty years ago (read a plot synopsis if you haven't seen it — spoilers ahead) audiences were chilled by Orson Welles's portrayal of the villainous Harry Lime. His scheme of allowing the terminally ill to die from inadequate treatment, just to line his pockets, established him as one of film's greatest sociopaths. His behavior was so horrifying that the protagonist accused him of that most heinous of all sins, Atheism. (This, Lime denies; some things are apparently too horrible even for film noir.)
Now, imagine that Harry Lime's initial flight through the sewers had led him not to the Russian Quarter, but to modern America.
I think he'd find himself right at home.
Lime's "greed is good" ethos would, in today's political climate make him a solid moderate — halfway between the "greed is only mostly good" Democrats and the "greediness is next to godliness" Republicans. His famous quip about the merits of the Swiss would be right at home in the pages of The Weekly Standard. There is, however, at least one job that would suit Harry Lime even better than punditry.
I believe that, had Harry Lime existed in our time, he would have quickly ascended the ranks of the health insurance industry. Whether looking down from a ferris wheel at the street or from a corner office at a graph, the calculations are the same: how many of those little dots are worth more money dead than alive?
I think I'd rather have the cuckoo clock.
Now, imagine that Harry Lime's initial flight through the sewers had led him not to the Russian Quarter, but to modern America.
I think he'd find himself right at home.
Lime's "greed is good" ethos would, in today's political climate make him a solid moderate — halfway between the "greed is only mostly good" Democrats and the "greediness is next to godliness" Republicans. His famous quip about the merits of the Swiss would be right at home in the pages of The Weekly Standard. There is, however, at least one job that would suit Harry Lime even better than punditry.
I believe that, had Harry Lime existed in our time, he would have quickly ascended the ranks of the health insurance industry. Whether looking down from a ferris wheel at the street or from a corner office at a graph, the calculations are the same: how many of those little dots are worth more money dead than alive?
I think I'd rather have the cuckoo clock.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Godwin is in the house.
Let's get this out of the way: this discussion of American populism will involve Nazis. Comparisons will be made; conclusions will be drawn; warnings will be given. However, I do not mean by this to imply that any persons or groups, living or deceased, are Nazis, aspiring Nazis, or super double Nazis.
Unless that's your thing, of course.
The grand paradox of patriotism is that every nation exalts its uniqueness the same way: songs are sung; bits of fabric are flown; creation myths are recounted. Usually, these energies are directed towards something positive, like voting, or harmless, like soccer riots. Occasionally, however, love for one’s nation is directed towards the unspeakable. (Here comes the Nazi part!)
As millions of words, and several video games, have been written about the factors that allowed the Nazis' rise to power, this article will focus one but one sliver of one of one factor: the redefinition of, and emphasis on, what constitutes a nation.
To reasonable humans and reputable dictionaries, a nation is a geographically constrained collection of people and resources, with some stooge or stooges nominally in charge. Unfortunately for would-be agitators, few people feel serious passion for any particular set of latitudes and longitudes. To truly inspire the masses, a much grander conception of nationhood is needed.
In Nazi ideology (which could unfortunately be quite persuasive, as millions of graves can attest to), this was embodied in the concept of Volk. Although the term, approximately meaning, "we the people," was not a new one, its use by the Nazis raised the word from mere noun to tetragrammaton. The Nazis conceived of a collective German soul; a platonic ideal of German will, manifested exclusively as large-chinned blonde men.
The pantheon of deities was thus replaced with the pantheon of races, with Aryans as demiurge. From this perspective, conquest was not merely a political imperative, but a metaphysical one: as sole creator of the world’s culture, the reasoning went, the Volk had a responsibility to rule over the “culture maintainers,” and to exterminate the “culture destroyers.”
Democracy, civil rights, and the like and such were considered to be, at best, mere cave-shadows of the will of the Volk. At worst, they were means of sabotage by malicious or deluded interlopers. Only through the lens of Volkisch thought can we understand why so many were willing to send their friends and neighbors the the slaughter: there were no friends, there were no neighbors, only those who advanced the Volkisch will and those who impeded it.
Although the Third Reich is long buried, the idea of a venerated national oversoul has stubbornly refused to follow it. Its most notable and most worrying resurgence can be observed in the modern United States - like Germany in the 1930s, a great power in decline. Although modern American populism is not explicitly racial, and does not directly address the concept of Volk (or any English-language equivalent), the underlying mythology is nearly identical. Material factors, the story goes, are not enough to explain America's successes, thus America's growth was a result of divine favor.
How else can one explain the obscene levels of founder-worship in American culture - unprecedented in the modern world (with the notable exceptions of North Korea and Turkey, both cases involving severe legal encouragements)? The popular view of the Founding Fathers as a monolithic font of infallible wisdom is completely incongruous with the historical record. However, it is perfectly consistent with the mythos of a band of white-wigged rebel-prophets channeling a singular American oversoul.
So, too, can one explain ceaseless complaints about "activist" judges and legislators: proper law is considered to float timelessly in the aether, unable to be created or destroyed, only received by the faithful or obscured by the uninitiated. The rejection of a duly elected president as usurper becomes explicable as well, although no less nutty: although Obama received the majority of votes, most of those votes are dismissed as originating outside of the Volkweft, thus lacking legitimacy.
What a striking vision this worldview must yield: a unilinear parade of progress, trampling all who block the road out of jealousy or derangement; an above-unity engine of willful triumph, powered and nearly operational – if only those rusty gears could be purged! For the Volkish ideal is a pure one, beyond politics and ethics, beyond good and evil; it can tolerate no other Gods before it, nor can it coexist in peace with a pluralistic nation run to the benefit of all its citizens.
Unless that's your thing, of course.
The grand paradox of patriotism is that every nation exalts its uniqueness the same way: songs are sung; bits of fabric are flown; creation myths are recounted. Usually, these energies are directed towards something positive, like voting, or harmless, like soccer riots. Occasionally, however, love for one’s nation is directed towards the unspeakable. (Here comes the Nazi part!)
As millions of words, and several video games, have been written about the factors that allowed the Nazis' rise to power, this article will focus one but one sliver of one of one factor: the redefinition of, and emphasis on, what constitutes a nation.
To reasonable humans and reputable dictionaries, a nation is a geographically constrained collection of people and resources, with some stooge or stooges nominally in charge. Unfortunately for would-be agitators, few people feel serious passion for any particular set of latitudes and longitudes. To truly inspire the masses, a much grander conception of nationhood is needed.
In Nazi ideology (which could unfortunately be quite persuasive, as millions of graves can attest to), this was embodied in the concept of Volk. Although the term, approximately meaning, "we the people," was not a new one, its use by the Nazis raised the word from mere noun to tetragrammaton. The Nazis conceived of a collective German soul; a platonic ideal of German will, manifested exclusively as large-chinned blonde men.
The pantheon of deities was thus replaced with the pantheon of races, with Aryans as demiurge. From this perspective, conquest was not merely a political imperative, but a metaphysical one: as sole creator of the world’s culture, the reasoning went, the Volk had a responsibility to rule over the “culture maintainers,” and to exterminate the “culture destroyers.”
Democracy, civil rights, and the like and such were considered to be, at best, mere cave-shadows of the will of the Volk. At worst, they were means of sabotage by malicious or deluded interlopers. Only through the lens of Volkisch thought can we understand why so many were willing to send their friends and neighbors the the slaughter: there were no friends, there were no neighbors, only those who advanced the Volkisch will and those who impeded it.
Although the Third Reich is long buried, the idea of a venerated national oversoul has stubbornly refused to follow it. Its most notable and most worrying resurgence can be observed in the modern United States - like Germany in the 1930s, a great power in decline. Although modern American populism is not explicitly racial, and does not directly address the concept of Volk (or any English-language equivalent), the underlying mythology is nearly identical. Material factors, the story goes, are not enough to explain America's successes, thus America's growth was a result of divine favor.
How else can one explain the obscene levels of founder-worship in American culture - unprecedented in the modern world (with the notable exceptions of North Korea and Turkey, both cases involving severe legal encouragements)? The popular view of the Founding Fathers as a monolithic font of infallible wisdom is completely incongruous with the historical record. However, it is perfectly consistent with the mythos of a band of white-wigged rebel-prophets channeling a singular American oversoul.
So, too, can one explain ceaseless complaints about "activist" judges and legislators: proper law is considered to float timelessly in the aether, unable to be created or destroyed, only received by the faithful or obscured by the uninitiated. The rejection of a duly elected president as usurper becomes explicable as well, although no less nutty: although Obama received the majority of votes, most of those votes are dismissed as originating outside of the Volkweft, thus lacking legitimacy.
What a striking vision this worldview must yield: a unilinear parade of progress, trampling all who block the road out of jealousy or derangement; an above-unity engine of willful triumph, powered and nearly operational – if only those rusty gears could be purged! For the Volkish ideal is a pure one, beyond politics and ethics, beyond good and evil; it can tolerate no other Gods before it, nor can it coexist in peace with a pluralistic nation run to the benefit of all its citizens.
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