Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

Well said. I'll have to read more about this, rather than the purely theoretical stuff.

Came across this tonight, really awesome piece:

http://aeon.co/magazine/science/the-universal-constants-that-drive-physicists-mad/

But some constants involve no dimensions at all. These are so-called dimensionless constants – pure numbers, such as the ratio of the proton mass to the electron mass. That is simply the number 1836.2 (which is thought to be a little peculiar because we do not know why it is so large). According to the physicist Michael Duff of Imperial College London, only the dimensionless constants are really ‘fundamental’, because they are independent of any system of measurement. Dimensional constants, on the other hand, ‘are merely human constructs whose number and values differ from one choice of units to the next’.

Perhaps the most intriguing of the dimensionless constants is the fine-structure constant α. It was first determined in 1916, when quantum theory was combined with relativity to account for details or ‘fine structure’ in the atomic spectrum of hydrogen. In the theory, α is the speed of the electron orbiting the hydrogen nucleus divided by c. It has the value 0.0072973525698, or almost exactly 1/137.

Today, within quantum electrodynamics (the theory of how light and matter interact), α defines the strength of the electromagnetic force on an electron. This gives it a huge role. Along with gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism defines how the Universe works. But no one has yet explained the value 1/137, a number with no obvious antecedents or meaningful links. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote that α has been ‘a mystery ever since it was discovered… a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the “hand of God” wrote that number, and “we don’t know how He pushed his pencil”.’

 

[Dak]

Interesting piece. Was there some specific related topic you had in mind to apply this to?

On a different note, read this in the reactionary blogosphere on why both the "right" and "left" believe things are moving against them:

He [the leftist] ignores the fact that actual public policy is increasingly left because he’s only looking at outcomes and he’s not getting the outcomes he thinks should happen.

 

[Einherjar86]

Interesting piece. Was there some specific related topic you had in mind to apply this to?

No, just thought it was worth posting. I consider this thread to be more of a philosophical/theoretical materials depository (along with abstract political discussion).

On a different note, read this in the reactionary blogosphere on why both the "right" and "left" believe things are moving against them:

This seems to suggest that things have moved measurably "left," and so attempts to describe why the leftists still pretend to underdog status. Didn't see anything about why the right feels things are moving against them... or is he suggesting that the right is accurate in perceiving things moving against them?

Additionally, I'm skeptical of any accurate qualitative measurement of society moving either left or right, even in comparison to fifty years ago. As new issues become politically relevant I think this distorts the spectrum, and makes it really difficult to tell whether the country or the political sphere is moving either left or right.

 

[Dak]

If you're a traditional "family oriented, small government" conservative, it's pretty obvious things haven't gone your way in a long time.

 

[Einherjar86]

That assumes a generally accepted measurement of government that has remained static over a long period of time, and that our government has increasingly departed from. The ideology of "small government" is a very new idea, going back probably only to the '80s or so, and it doesn't reflect any agreed-upon standard of government size. There were no "family oriented, small government" conservatives in the late nineteenth century. In fact, most conservatives believed in central government until Ronald Reagan came along and a new brand of conservatism composed itself along with him.

In other words, many of the "family oriented, small government" people today only hold those beliefs because of a rapidly growing ideology within right-wing conservative politics that has championed small government. The irony is that, according to the corporate liberalist theory, strong centralized regulations on business may have originated with entrepreneurs and businesspeople in the early twentieth century.

The current ideology of "family oriented, small government" is very much a construct of recent political trends, not a longstanding resistance to increasingly expanding government.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

That assumes a generally accepted measurement of government that has remained static over a long period of time, and that our government has increasingly departed from. The ideology of "small government" is a very new idea, going back probably only to the '80s or so, and it doesn't reflect any agreed-upon standard of government size. There were no "family oriented, small government" conservatives in the late nineteenth century. In fact, most conservatives believed in central government until Ronald Reagan came along and a new brand of conservatism composed itself along with him.

In other words, many of the "family oriented, small government" people today only hold those beliefs because of a rapidly growing ideology within right-wing conservative politics that has championed small government. The irony is that, according to the corporate liberalist theory, strong centralized regulations on business may have originated with entrepreneurs and businesspeople in the early twentieth century.

The current ideology of "family oriented, small government" is very much a construct of recent political trends, not a longstanding resistance to increasingly expanding government.

lol, absurd. The government's powers were far more limited in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, and religious "family oriented" values far more widespread. They obviously weren't always the prevailing ideas (see Republican losses during FDR's time, or Goldwater getting destroyed over the Civil Rights Act), but they certainly weren't new.

 

[Dak]

@Ein: So you're basically saying Jefferson vs Madison wasn't a thing?

You don't have to be obviously interested in small govt when the govt is already small, only after it mushrooms. Same for "family oriented".

 

[Einherjar86]

lol, absurd. The government's powers were far more limited in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, and religious "family oriented" values far more widespread. They obviously weren't always the prevailing ideas (see Republican losses during FDR's time, or Goldwater getting destroyed over the Civil Rights Act), but they certainly weren't new.

They were more limited, but you can't compare now and then; the environment is entirely different, new issues have emerged on the political stage, and the ideology of "small government" did not exist prior to Ronald Reagan. We're being specific here, and the new ideology of small government has countless other ties to it that did not exist prior to Reagan's administration.

@Ein: So you're basically saying Jefferson vs Madison wasn't a thing?

You don't have to be obviously interested in small govt when the govt is already small, only after it mushrooms. Same for "family oriented".

I'm saying that new "small government" ideology isn't the same thing as anti-federalism. Saying that people who are in favor of small government now are the same as people who were in favor of small government in the eighteenth century is misleading and, ultimately, an equivocation, because contemporary small government ideology of the Tea Party variety carries numerous connotations and insinuations that were not in existence in the eighteenth century.

Reaganite small-government ideology is a very new thing; it isn't a rebirth of anti-federalism.

 

[rms]

I don't get how small government and anti-federalism are different. Both are in fear of the oppressive nature of a strong centralized power. What am I missing?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Examples of specific issues that differentiate the two plz.

 

[Dak]

I concur with rms. The specific nature of the centralization was different, but it was inherently concerned with the same issues.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think I'm failing to communicate the point I'm trying to make. It has to do with where you place the emphasis on "small government."

I'm not using the term "small government" as a catch-all phrase for describing any political ideology that opposes large centralized government. I'm using it to describe the very specific political agenda that emerged on the right/far-right during and after the Reagan presidency. If you prefer, we can call this "Reaganite conservatism," but it's generally what people mean when they refer to themselves as being of a "small government" mentality. This is historically different from anti-federalism for several reasons, the big ones being:

Race
Gender
Homosexuality
Drugs
Terrorism

These issues make "small government" infinitely more complicated today than two centuries ago. To make things more complicated, "family oriented, small government" mentalities are often rife within contradictions, since family values groups often oppose large government but also support the drug war, the war on terror, and laws against gay marriage. Furthermore, there are plenty of liberal-minded people who are also for small government, and many of these people tend not to be (necessarily) concerned with family values.

All I meant to say was that when someone says they are small government today it means something so much more complicated than it did two hundred years ago, and often we discover that people who claim to be for small government in fact support several measures that would increase the size of government.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

You do realize that there were sodomy laws on the books in the 60s and 70s right? Let alone considering homosexual rights in the 50s and earlier. I mean, hell, even Europe didn't have gay marriage until the 2000s. And when it comes to race and gender issues, again there's Barry Goldwater who ran hard on a right/libertarian message against the Civil Rights Act in the 60s, not to mention the many that were simply outspoken Dixycrat types.

On drugs I can agree, Reagan was a big part of the war on drugs, even though a lot of that came about through FDR's rape of the commerce clause, and through lingering support of general prohibition (which was just as supported by the progressives of those days). I think the American right-wing is increasingly taking a more libertarian stance on drugs though, and certainly it isn't a top issue except for those in the police or DEA that stand to personally benefit from it. The war on terror is more of a Dubya thing, unless you mean the general philosophy of using fear of foreign invaders/violence to curtail personal rights, in which case that's something that's always been used.

 

[Einherjar86]

By the mid-twentieth century yes, of course; I thought we were specifically discussing Jefferson versus Madison.

Obviously, many of these issues have changed significantly (race being perhaps the most obvious). Another development I would toss out that invites new definitions of "small government" is the advent of the internet, cybernetics, and cyber-crimes/warfare.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

They were discussing Jefferson vs Madison, I'm speaking more in terms if the ideologies of 80s conservatives still having much in common with 60s conservatives and 20s conservatives and so on.

I'm not sure how the internet and other technological changes differentiates Reagan-praising "small government" from others. I'm pretty sure that anti-internet neutrality laws had bi-partisan support, certainly both are in bed with the MPAA/RIAA and support perpetual copyright laws, recent things like the government working with AT&T to spy on Americans isn't divided by party lines, etc.

 

[Dak]

I think you are both right and wrong in calling then vs now an equivocation. It is definitely an equivocation in the sense that the "cuckservative" (to borrow the term) call for "smaller government" is not exactly the same as the more libertarianesque anti-federalism of Jefferson.

However, the reasons for calling into question centralized power has significant enough overlap across centuries that even if there is some "questionability", the point stands. Hell, Jefferson himself (as Prez) was inconsistent in application in principle, so calling out Tea Party-ites on a lack of emphasis on the MIC and farm subsidies isn't really gaining any ground.

I hesitated to link the whole blog because it is from a source which emphasizes the Christian trad angle of NRx, but the nature of the contention warrants to inclusion of the data presented (plus Land links to FN enough that it's not obscure or anything):

http://freenortherner.com/2015/09/18/swimming-right/

I find myself at this juncture identifying somewhat with with NRx (as opposed to any available alternative) as one of those "libertarians mugged by reality" that has been spoken of, but not so much that I would be ecstatic over the imposition of any possible city state. This old post by Land kind of covers some of the different question marks for me in terms of specific "thede" fit. Without any specific answers I'd have to probably fall, by more hardcore NRx estimation, in the techcomm portion of the triad.

Edit: I need to clarify I don't accept the "genetic" excuse for a lack of change in outcomes that FN throws out, at the least in education. I see that the spending increases have been concomitant with a reduction in educational systems which have any measure of historical efficacy as it relates to the "3 Rs". However, improving the "3 R's" is last on the list for a govco controlled school system, so: why should anyone be surprised?

 

[Einherjar86]

I found his blog after you quoted it earlier. Just to be clear, my point in making the whole argument about "small government" didn't have to do with calling out contradictions within those who claim to be for smaller government. Actually, I was responding to FreeNortherner's claim that society has moved "further left."

All I was trying to say was that you can't measure society today against society two hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, without taking new developments into consideration. And seeing as these developments often invite contradictory commitments, I don't think it's easy to state that Western society has qualitatively moved "further left."

In short, "left" and "right" don't exist in a vacuum, and their application also changes as centuries pass, so I don't see much point in making the claim that we're plunging leftward, or something like that.

 

[Dak]

I think the Moldbuggian "ratchet" is one of the more on target critiques of NRx. The left basically points to one off stands of defiance like Davis (a Democrat no less) as examples of the advances of rightwing extremism, and ignores pretty much every single law, bureaucracy, and poll to the contrary.

As far as I can tell, and I already referenced it a few posts earlier, the only issues in which a "limited government" position has succeeded has been in terms of firearm "freedom", and even this has been quite regulated. As a CCW permit holder, I don't often actually CC (like many who hold a permit), and part of the reason for this has to do with the book of laws involved in legally doing so.

I know Citizen's United gets thrown around as a rallying cry, but there is a ton of money flowing to Democratic candidates as well, so I don't know where the injury lies.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Good blog post Pat, I enjoyed the read. Coincidentally, I'm using the Orwell essay you mentioned in a paper I'm working on at the moment.

 

[Dak]

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/42/wiles.php

“Population Density and Social Pathology” was, for an academic paper, a smash hit, being cited up to 150 times a year. Particularly effective was Calhoun’s name for the point past which the slide into breakdown becomes irretrievable: the “behavioral sink.” “The unhealthy connotations of the term are not accidental,” Calhoun noted drily. The “sink,” a para-pathology of shared hopelessness, drew in pathological behavior and exacerbated its effects. Once the event horizon of the behavioral sink was passed, the end was certain. Pathological behavior would escalate beyond any possibility of control. The writer Tom Wolfe alighted on the phrase and deployed it in his lament for the declining New York City, “O Rotten Gotham! Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink,” anthologized in The Pump House Gang in 1968. “It got to be easy to look at New Yorkers as animals,” Wolfe wrote, “especially looking down from some place like a balcony at Grand Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon. The floor was filled with the poor white humans, running around, dodging, blinking their eyes, making a sound like a pen full of starlings or rats or something.” The behavioral sink meshed neatly with Wolfe’s pessimism about the modern city, and his grim view of modernist housing projects as breeding grounds for degeneration and atavism.