Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

This was my answer to the question whether Plato's account of Socrates can be relied upon:  Plato’s account [or accounts] of Socrates has [have] to be considered in connection with other evidence, especially in my view the comedy THE CLOUDS, written by Aristophanes during Socrates’ lifetime. That is the TL;DR answer. For more, bear with me. Aristophanes portrays Socrates as a sophist, and in fact as the leader of the sophists. And he portrays sophism in general as what we might call a cult, the purpose of which is to make bad arguments seem good, and good arguments seem bad. Now this is odd on its face. Plato after all portrays Socrates as an anti-sophist. In PROTAGORAS especially, and even in the early going of THE REPUBLIC (the exchange with Thrasymachus), the Platonic Socrates devotes himself largely to showing the sophists — or to showing impressionable youngsters — the errors and arrogance of sophism. And Plato’s Socrates seems to object to s...

By a miracle of timing, the manuscript of John Bolton's new book leaked to the TIMES as the talk in the US Senate was turning to the question of whether they were obliged to call witnesses. I hold no brief for John Bolton. He has been a neocon hawk from the moment the muse of history first stooped to pay any attention to him at all. He works from an old playbook without so far as I can tell the slightest intellectual originality, curiosity, (no small thing) concern for the human consequences of the policies he advocates. His departure from the White House arguably made Trump less inclined to tail-wagging-dog warfare, as such it is a good thing for humanity. Saying that, I have to say -- it is wonderful to see his old friends lining up to malign him now. He's a crook, he's a traitor, he's blah blah blah. Simple question: who hired him? Oh yeah, Fox News. But after that? He was in the White House at Trump's whim, just as he was later sent out at Trump's wh...

The group hate on elite folk who have been cheating their kids' ways into college, and on two actresses in particular who have become the public face of this scandal. has begun to die down: there are other things to think about after all, and the new headlines cause some fading in the urgency of the old, even if 'old' isn't very old and even if one of those faces of the scandal was big on Full House. Heck, Bill Cosby is doing hard time.  R. Kelly seems headed that way. If you're gonna keep people wowed by a scandal you have to up your game from just busting "Aunt Becky." At any rate, here is a skeptical look at what is going on. Please skip or skim through the opening three paragraphs about Enron. Anderson is a guy with a bug up his butt about Enron.  He does eventually sort-of-admit that there was real financial harm caused by that company and its sudden demise, although he doesn't believe "real" crimes were involved. I don't thi...

On January 13, 2020, the US Treasury Department de-listed the People's Republic of China as a currency manipulator. It is worth our while pausing a bit over this. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/u-s-treasury-removes-designation-of-china-as-currency-manipulator-idUSKBN1ZC2FV There are three obvious questions that come to mind: 1) why does the Treasury maintain a list of currency manipulators? 2) why was the PRC on the list? 3) why is the PRC now off the list? The most consequential currency manipulation on the planet of course is that of the United States, arranged jointly by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The US dollar continues to serve, through a sort of institutional inertia, as the world's currency OF currencies. And plainly its value IS manipulated for a range of political purposes. But just as plainly the US doesn't want other countries challenging it for the title of master manipulator. And China, which aspired to have its yua...

The graves are now full of the coffins of campaigns for the Democratic nomintion for POTUS in 2020 that have bitten the dust for a number of reasons. One of the most fascinating of the departed is the campaign of Marianne Williamson, a New Agey spiritualist writer and lecturer whose interest in electoral politics took everyone by surprise when she announced it, almost a year ago now.  On January 28, 2019 she walked onto a stage in Beverly Hills, California to announce her candidacy and its goal, to: "engage voters in a more meaningful conversation about America, about our history, about how each of us fit into it, and how to create  sustainable future." You might fairly judge from that language that it was never entirely clear that the office of the President was part of her goal. Williamson enlivened the first  couple of debates, and her presence has been missed from the subsequent ones. She was the very rare intersection of two Venn diagram circles -- one might ...

The opening words of Faulkner's masterpiece, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, are as follows: "Through the fence, beneath the curling flower space, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward me where the flat was and I went along the fence....They took the flag out and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence." Most adults 'get' this in its straightforward meaning after a couple of reads. To be clear, though, we are asked to identify with an "I" who is watching  two men play golf. A bit of a golf course (including the putting green for one hole and the tees [the "table"] for the start of another) is on the other side of the fence. The description of this action is literal to a fault. One oddity may strike you -- the observer of the golfers doesn't mention the golf balls that the golfers "were hitting" No explicitness...

" You could binge-watch the entire first season of  After Life  instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself because his wife dies of cancer, and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert: Season 2 is on the way, so in the end, he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein." Groans from audience "I know he was a friend of yours. I don't care."  In our moment of Gervais appreciation, it is well to remember that the "suicide" death of Jeffrey Epstein came three weeks after another "suicide" attempt. After that latter effort, Epstein was supposed to have been put on suicide (though not apparently on "suicide") watch.  There were, when Gervais spoke, plenty of reasons to believe him literally right. Epstein was murdered. But the case became stronger a short time AFTER that Golden Globe ceremony, when the major news organizations all carried stories that the footage taken ...

No new babies in my life but I do have a new laptop. It is a bit wrenching to realize how long I have gone without being able to see the letters on the keys. I had worn them right out on the older one. And I am not the conscientious sort of writer who will remain forever free of typos. I'm not proud of it, but I can use these letters. So let's call this a red-letter day for me.

The world needs more forthright retractions. The tendency, given the nature of the human ego, is to defend one's own record. This is a temptation perhaps especially for highly intelligent people, who bend their intelligence to defend what they see as their legacies, and thus find themselves looking back and fighting defensive wars. Frances Arnold is obviously very intelligent -- she is a recent winner of the Nobel in Chemistry! -- yet she resisted whatever temptation in that direction she may have felt. https://retractionwatch.com/2020/01/02/nobel-winner-retracts-paper-from-science/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral Three cheers!

He sat balanced with his feet on the seat of the chair and his ass on the top edge of the back. An observer might have thought him in danger of falling over and doing some serious damage, except that his face conveyed no such concern, simply a slight irritation at the inconvenience of having to sit like this. Which was odd, since to all appearances there was no reason he had to sit like this. And he was 50 years old, so it was not some adolescent prank. Ned (Linda's husband -- we've met him before, uttering disconnected snippets in his sleep) was just a month beyond that big milestone birthday. He was here in court without her, or a lawyer or any other visible support system, sitting on a chair in a conference room awaiting the woman who was suing him, a former high school teacher. One of his former high school teachers. This was the first time Ned had perched on a chair like this since ... well ... high school. Now he was sitting there and Mrs Washington (with her ...

I believe I may have mentioned at some point in the history of this blog, or its precursor, that at least one great physicist, Roger Penrose, believes quantum mechanics offers the key to the understanding of how consciousness arises within the function of the human brain. Today, I simply want to make the observation that quantum computing is no longer a hypothesis. It is a fact. Google declared its breakthrough this year. Some of the premier quantitative-analytic hedge funds in the world, including Renaissance and DE Shaw, have high hopes for quantum computing and expect that it will help them discover and make profitable use of now-invisible patterns in the markets. Let us be clear on what Google is saying. It says it has physical operating computers that make use of the quantum aspects of matter to outperform conventional (digital) computers for some specific tasks, a situation it grandly calls quantum supremacy. The qualifying phrase there, "some specific tasks,"...

According to its admirers, something called "statement analysis" is the new breakthrough in forensic science. It is also sometimes called SCAN (scientific content analysis). It will replace the polygraph in law enforcement.  Maury Povich will start using it on his show. What is this miracle? http://skepdic.com/statementanalysis.html Statement (or content) analysis is the notion that there are linguistic give-aways to whether someone is telling the truth.  And well, yes, as a matter of common sense and interrogatory experience this is true, the give-aways work as a matter of generality. There is nothing scientific about them. After all, the usual give aways are well known to experienced frauds, who adapt their stories accordingly. "Don't add too much irrelevant detail to your story, they take that as suspicious," one con artist must commonly tell another. Here we stumble upon one of the great distinctions between the human and the physical sciences. ...