Category Archives: Philosophy

History, Philosophy, Political Commentary

Speaking Of Pirates

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Did you know that they were early incubators of democracy?

Yes, those stereotypically lawless rum-chuggers turned out to be ardent democrats. And in their strange enlightenment, Leeson sees the answer to a riddle about human nature, worthy of “Lord of the Flies” or an early episode of “Lost.” In the absence of government and law enforcement, what becomes of a band of men with a noted criminal streak? Do they descend into violence and chaos?

The pirates who roamed the seas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries developed a floating civilization that, in terms of political philosophy, was well ahead of its time. The notion of checks and balances, in which each branch of government limits the other’s power, emerged in England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But by the 1670s, and likely before, pirates were developing democratic charters, establishing balance of power on their ships, and developing a nascent form of worker’s compensation: A lost limb entitled one to payment from the booty, more or less depending on whether it was a right arm, a left arm, or a leg.

The idea of enlightened piracy is strange swill to swallow for those steeped in a pop culture version of the pirate – chaos on the high seas, drinking and pillaging, damsels forced onto the plank. Sure, there’s something about the independence of piracy that still speaks to people today. (Even the founders of International Talk Like a Pirate Day acknowledge that there is, in people who love to say “Aargh,” a yearning for a certain kind of freedom.) But it turns out that pirate life was more than just greedy rebellion. It offers insights into the nature of democracy and the reasons it might emerge – as a natural state of being, or a rational response to a much less pleasant way of life.

Of course, those were largely pirates of the Anglosphere. Somehow, I suspect that Somali Muslims might generate a different kind of pirate society.

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary

Some Thoughts On Charity

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Arnold Kling:

From a libertarian perspective, your generosity is reflected in what you do with your own money, not in what you do with other people’s money. If I give a lot of money to charity, then I am generous. If you give a smaller fraction of your money to charity, then you are less generous. But if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.

But it does seem to make you self righteous.

Philosophy, Science And Society

Multiverse Versus Intelligent Design

22 Comments

A useful post from Jim Manzi:

we actually do have good scientific explanations for many of the phenomena that were claimed to be unexplainable without an intelligent designer. But scientific knowledge is never absolute, so there are always gaps, and therefore always space for such an argument. The problem with both ID and multiverse theory is the same: Neither is true and neither is false in a scientific sense; they are metaphysical frameworks with the scientific task of inspiring testable hypotheses, but are not themselves scientific theories capable of testing through scientific means.

It’s tempting to see ID and multiverse theory as mirror images — one looking desperately to prove scientifically that humans are special, and the other desperately seeking to avoid this conclusion. This is almost, but not quite, appropriate in my view. The proper question to ask about both multiverse theory and ID is whether they are fruitful. Ultimately, either each framework will help scientists develop physical theories in the form of predictive rules that can be tested through observation, or it will not. It’s very hard to see how ID can do this, but I guess that anything’s possible. Multiverse theory is more likely to do so, if only because it is a point of view that embeds a metaphysic that is far more congenial to so many more smart scientists.

But to look to science to answer a metaphysical questions like “Did God create us?” or “Are there completely unobservable aspects of reality?” is a category error of the first order.

Yup. As I’ve said repeatedly, science isn’t about proving that there is no God — it can never do so. It s about understanding the universe as much as possible on the assumption that there is none, or at least none that is rigging the game. The question of whether or not God exists is entirely orthogonal, and unaddressable by science.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space

Why Are Spacers Libertarians?

78 Comments

I’ve given up on bothering with the Elhafnawy piece any more. As Jim Bennett notes:

Why would anybody take Elhafnawy seriously? His representation of both the market-oriented space side of the argument and what he defines as “conservatives” are wildly atypical of either community.

It particularly strains credulity that he would represent Nicholson Baker, a whackadoodle pacifist with serious perception-of-reality problems, as any kind of “conservative.” There’s the definition of conservative that’s been in use in the English-speaking world for the past century or so, which is to say, preserving the values that support a constitutional representative political system with a market economy, and then there’s Elhafnawy’s definition. Elhafnawy should just invent a word, maybe (typing at random, here) “dhziuueybdcnma” or ” uaygsrabsjdbue” to represent whatever he is using the word “conservative’ to describe, and let the rest of us use the words of the English language as they are generally understood.

Not only “wildly atypical,” but completely unsubstantiated. If this were an academic paper, given its anecdotal quality (except it only has one actual anecdote, with an unnamed source), it would be tossed out. One has the feeling that he wanted to do a Diane Fosse thing, a sort of “spacers in the mist,” but couldn’t be bothered to actually document his observations. At least Fosse and Jane Goodall named names.

But for the two or three people who are on the edge of their seats, here’s my thesis.

It’s genetic.

OK, not quite that simple, but it’s true. I was born to think space is important. Now I don’t mean that it’s genetic in the sense that my whole family, or even any of my ancestors share my views, and passed them on to me. They didn’t and don’t. If they did and do, that would in fact be more of an argument that it’s environmental (we were all brought up to believe this) but we weren’t. I wasn’t. I was born this way, as surely as I was born an extreme heterosexual. I know other spacers who are the same way — no one else in their family is into space, no one taught or told them they should be, and yet they are.

Thus, it’s some weird recessive, or a mutation.

Which makes sense, given that there aren’t very many of us. There aren’t very many explorers in general. If everyone was out exploring all the time, nothing else societally useful would get done.

This is my explanation for “progressives” (such as Ferris Valyn or Bill White) who betray their ideology by supporting human expansion into space. 😉

Now, having said that, there is a political component, and a reason why there are an inordinate number of libertarians in the space movement (and space enthusiasts in the libertarian movement, with a significant overlap). I discussed it years ago, back in the early days of this weblog (no need to follow the link — I’m reposting in entirety):

As a follow up to today’s rant over our “allies” in Europe, over at USS Clueless, Steven den Beste has an excellent disquisition on the fundamental differences between Europe and the U.S. They don’t, and cannot, understand that the U.S. exists and thrives because it is the UnEurope, that it was built by people who left Europe (and other places) because they wanted freedom.

I say this not to offer simply a pale imitation of Steven’s disquisition (which is the best I could do, at least tonight), but to explain why I spend so much time talking about space policy here. It’s not (just) because I’m a space nut, or because I used to do it for a living, and so have some knowledge to disseminate. It’s because it’s important to me, and it should be important to everyone who is concerned about dynamism and liberty.

And the reason that it’s important is because there may be a time in the future, perhaps not even the distant future, when the U.S. will no longer be a haven for those who seek sanctuary from oppressive government. The trends over the past several decades are not always encouraging, and as at least a social insurance policy, we may need a new frontier into which freedom can expand.

Half a millenium ago, Europe discovered a New World. Unfortunately for its inhabitants (who had discovered it previously), the Europeans had superior technology and social structures that allowed them to conquer it.

Now, in the last couple hundred years, we have discovered how vast our universe is, and in the last couple decades, we have discovered how rich in resources it is, given will and technology. As did the eastern seaboard of the present U.S. in the late eighteenth century, it offers mankind a fertile petri dish for new societal arrangements and experiments, and ultimately, an isolated frontier from which we will be able to escape from possible future terrestrial disasters, whether of natural or human origin.

If, as many unfortunately in this country seem to wish, freedom is constricted in the U.S., the last earthly abode of true libertarian principles, it may offer an ultimate safety valve for those of us who wish to continue the dream of the founders of this nation, sans slavery or native Americans–we can found it without the flawed circumstances of 1787.

That is why space, and particularly free-enterprise space, is important.

And current events are not very encouraging with regard to the direction of the country. A significant number of people (though not, I think, despite the recent election results, a majority) want to Europeanize us. If it happens, there’s nowhere to go but up.

[Update early afternoon]

(“Progressive”) Ferris Valyn is soliciting ideas for a(nother) Netroots Nation discussion on space over at Kos (he really should get his own site). I find the “more progressive than thou” food fight in comments pretty amusing.

[Friday afternoon update]

I have a follow-on post here for anyone interested.

History, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

More Thoughts On “Space Cadets”

15 Comments

I’m a little loathe to follow up on this morning’s Space Review article, because there is so much both good and disputable there, and one wants to praise the wheat while addressing the (all-too-much) chaff. I doubt if I’ll finish tonight, but I finally worked up a little before-bed gumption to at least start to go through it.

Let me preface by saying that the most annoying thing, overall, is the vague accusations throughout. There are no specific cites, examples, or people, who could then defend themselves. All of the “Space Cadets” (of which I assume that I’m one) are tarred with the same brush, and all of the “experts” and “space elite” march as one. It’s the same problem that I have with Mark Whittington’s imaginary “Internet Rocketeer’s Club,” whose membership is a secret to all but him. As an example, let’s go to the very second graf:

…as Jeffrey Bell put it in his Space Daily article, “The Totalitarian Temptation in Space”, “space travel is mostly the creation of Hitler, Stalin, and Khrushchev,” and in his view, the fact has led more than a few “Space Cadets” (I apologize to any offended by the term, though I have had a hard time finding an adequate alternative) to develop “a subtle anti-democracy, pro-totalitarian bias.” The most celebrated period in the history of the US space program, the 1960s, is also the era when confident New Deal-Great Society liberalism was at its apogee, and apparently here to stay.

Let us ignore the absurdity of citing Jeffrey Bell on anything (partly because it’s an ad hominem argument, but also because I don’t want to get into yet another issue with the piece). I’m not offended by the term “Space Cadets,” but I am offended as hell about being thrown in with a group that has developed such a “subtle tendency and bias.” Simply put, who is he talking about, and WTF does he mean? If he would tell us, I might agree, or not, but as it is, all I can do is scratch my head at the potential slander. And what is the relationship between this and the New-Deal/Great-Society liberalism? I might agree that they’re all of the same thread of fascism (which they are), but the author later pronounces Jonah Goldberg’s thesis “dubious” (though there’s no evidence presented that he is familiar with anything other than the cover of the book).

Of course, one should not rule out the role of specific personalities, organizations and projects, like Robert Zubrin and his Mars Society, Paul Allen and SpaceShipOne, Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic, or Elon Musk and his SpaceX venture. The prestige, charisma, and sheer financial resources they collectively bring to the table have certainly galvanized libertarian space activism, despite the daunting odds—and to date, the absence of the results long dreamed about, like a sharp drop in the cost of space access. (One need only consider the haste with which this group cites the case of the Falcon 9 rocket in any debate about the costs of space flight–as has happened to me personally on several occasions. I wish SpaceX success in its efforts, but I think that these observers are definitely jumping the gun when they talk about a rocket that has yet to fly as having already delivered the goods.)

It’s nice that he at least tips his hat to the latter day visionaries (though one of them is not like the other — Zubrin is no free-marketer or entrepreneur with his own skin in the game). And I agree that one shouldn’t point to Falcon 9 as an exemplar of a successful vehicle before it has flown. But the point that most sensible “Space Cadets” would make is that it is a lot closer to flight than NASA’s Ares 1, and that it has been developed for a couple orders of magnitude less money than is projected for that program. Falcon 9 is certainly a reasonable comparison to that project.

At this point, he gets into his thesis of the history of technology and how it is interwoven with political thought since the Enlightenment. I have to say that it is overambitious for the length of the piece. It is of course, precisely because of his unwillingness or inability to incorporate technological advances into his analysis that Malthus was so off in his predictions (and nothing, sadly, has changed in the last couple centuries, because neo-Malthusianism persists, all the way up to the current presidential science advisor).

But not everyone was ignoring technology at the time. The first modern science fiction novel, a retelling of the Promethean myth, was written by Mary Shelley at the time, after all. In his confusion about “right” and “left” and the origins of the modern inheritors of those terms (justly or otherwise), he misses the fundamental difference between the children of Locke, and those of Rousseau. The former was not at all averse to reason (as he later describes the conservative tradition when he attempts to shoehorn the post-modernists into it). And the latter professed allegiance to it but was in fact a key player in the Romantic movement. Mary Shelley had a foot in both camps (as do many writers of speculative fiction, for good reason). Political left and right can have their counterparts in the two parts of the brain (except they are generally reversed, in my experience).

[The hour grows late. To be continued, but probably not before tomorrow evening, because I have to get up early and drive to Boca from Orlando for a dentist appointment in the morning. The nice thing about blogging is that one can publish a work in progress, and refine it based on initial comments.]

[Tuesday afternoon update, while cooking corned beef for the occasion.]

OK, back to it. In this next section, he describes why so-called liberals may be less than enchanted with space technology:

The stunt mentality of the Cold War era space program (which may still be with us today) leaves many liberal critics seeing space as a waste of money that would be better used on Earth. Such pronouncements were common enough from figures like Kurt Vonnegut in the 1960s, and the attitude has likely been sharpened by the slowing of economic growth and tightening of public finances since that time (an issue I have discussed in my previous articles, “The Limits to Growth and the Turn to the Heavens” and “Long Waves and Space Development”). The tendency to see space spending as a form of corporate welfare, and to associate space activity with the military space ambitions of governments, only alienate it further. (Indeed, it is worth noting that the area of space policy that attracts the most overtly liberal attention is arms control and defense.)

The business-skeptic left is also little affected by the “market romanticism” (see “Market romanticism and the outlook for private space development”, The Space Review, September 2, 2008) which I have argued has much to do with the current climate of the debate about space development. (If anything, the thought of $200,000-a-seat space tourism is for them a pointed reminder of the world’s inequality, and an instance of repugnant self-indulgence on the part of today’s aristocrats.)

The same goes for the idea of space as a “final frontier,” liberals taking a more ambivalent view of romantic images of the winning of the West. (Those who are economically minded may be prone to see it as the work of government-subsidized railroads and other corporations, rather than hardy, self-reliant pioneers.) Indeed, a certain amount of writing has already been devoted to the ecology and ethics of space expansion. This is not only the case with regard to the effects of human impacts on celestial bodies, but also a question of what such thinking implies for behavior back home on Earth. Given a doubtfulness about the prospects for finding real solutions to our problems in this way, a vision of space development can (and to some, does) appear as an irresponsible fantasy—or worse. And while I suspect this attitude could change, at this point the burden of proof would really seem to be on the advocates of space development to show that space can generate really workable solutions to the problems with which they are concerned.

I agree with the first two grafs, and there are other examples (Mailer’s work, for example). Of course, there are also exceptions (e.g., Oriana Fallaci). As to the third, I would disagree quite a bit. First, the settling of the west was not an exclusive or. It happened both due to government activity and doughty private individuals seeking both freedom and prosperity.

And the “subsidies” provided to the railroads weren’t exactly that, at least not in the usual sense of taxpayers providing funds to support a private business. The government’s contribution was worthless (at least at the time) real estate, to which the railroads added value along the right of way (something worth thinking about in the context of the Outer Space Treaty and current inability to grant extraterrestrial property rights). It also ignores (as do almost all such analyses) the Great Northern, which was entirely private. It should also be noted that much of the American West was explored privately (by the mountain men, seeking good trapping grounds for beaver pelts). In fact, the mouth of the Columbia was discovered by a seal-hunting ship.

As for whether or not the burden of proof should be on those who claim that space holds a solution to earthly problems, who would argue? This is another straw man (not to say that there is no one who takes the view that the government should just take our word for it, but again we shouldn’t all be tarred with that brush). Of course, one of the reasons that so-called liberals are less than enamored with the opening of the west as a model is that they view it through their standard prism of rape of the environment and the noble red man. For people with this mind set, it’s hard to get past their instinctive distaste for the whole thing, even when reliably informed that there is neither an ecology or native peoples to exploit and pillage in space. Even when informed that the goal is to create an ecology, and expand humanity to places where it currently does not exist. And that doesn’t even start to get into the extreme eeks who believe that rocks (both terrestrial and extra) have rights.

So, for a modern leftist, there’s a lot not to like about space, and it’s not at all surprising that most of them don’t. What is surprising, in fact, is that some do. I have my own theory about this, which I’ll get to momentarily, that I think cuts through a lot of Elhafnawy’s underbrush.

Now we come to one of the most absurd notions in the essay — that postmodernists are conservative:

Postmodernists are commonly thought of as being leftists, and indeed, the very word seems to conjure up images of campus radicals. This view is rarely questioned, by the left or the right, by postmodernists or their detractors, but it is a profound misperception.

No, it’s exactly right. There is a damned good reason that “the very word seems to conjure up images of campus radicals.” It’s because postmodernism is a hot-house plant — it cannot survive outside the nurturing leftist environment of English and Anthropology Departments. It’s one of those things so absurd that (as Orwell famously put it) only an intellectual could believe it. I would defy the author of the essay to find a postmodernist running a business. Or at a shooting range. Or in church.

And the notion that someone not of the left can survive not only unscathed, but be celebrated in the campus environment is belied by the scarcity on campus of people who are (or at least will profess to be) conservative. Postmodernists, on the other hand, fit the place like a glove, culturally and intellectually.

From there he goes on to demonstrate his profound lack of understanding of the conservative tradition, instead presenting a caricature of conservatives that he finds convenient to his thesis:

Unlike the left, and very much in line with the conservative tradition, postmodernists are very suspicious of the claims made for reason, rationality, and the idea of progress, and by extension, anything founded on them.

If he thinks that John Locke or Edmund Burke were “suspicious of claims made for reason, rationality, and the idea of progress,” he cannot be in any way acquainted with their works. Or rather, if they are so suspicious, it is a healthy skepticism about the claims, rather than reason, rationality or progress in themselves. Conservatives that I know are all for reason and rationality (at least when it comes to economics). What they oppose is false claims made in its name (e.g., we can spend our way out of debt). Postmodernists, on the other hand, don’t even believe in reason as a means to attain knowledge. Really, I find this notion that postmodernists are conservative (as most people understand that word) to be the most misguided part of the whole essay. Not to mention its lack of relevance to the overall thesis.

Now, finally, we come to the cartoon depiction of the “space cadets” on line versus the “elite” “experts” who “actually are involved with space policy.”

[To be continued]

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

“Space Cadet” Politics

8 Comments

Nader Elhefnawy has a sort-of interesting, but ultimately confused and confusing piece about the political inclinations of space activists over at The Space Review today.

I’ll have more to say about this later (it really needs a longer essay than Elhefnawy’s itself), but I’m too busy with a deadline to respond immediately. It’s confusing because he uses the terms “liberal” and “conservative” as though there is some common consensus on what these words mean, despite the fact that he shows examples where they are the opposite of conventional thinking (e.g., post-modernists as pre-modern “conservatives” and “nineteenth-century” (which I would call classical) liberals). Also, as I note in comments over there, there can hardly be more of an oxymoron (excluding the obvious ones like jumbo shrimp and congressional intelligence) than “left-libertarian.”

Also, I wonder if he is aware that it was H. G. Wells himself who coined the phrase “liberal fascism”?

There is also some (perhaps inadvertent, and again, confused) slander of the community as well. But go read for yourself, and I’ll try to tackle it later.

[Update in the afternoon]

At least with regard to the straw men and blatant misrepresentation of the views of the alternate space community, Clark Lindsey has responded:

The broad consensus certainly does not predict anything as ridiculous as “Earth-to-low orbit costs being slashed to $100 a pound by 2012”. The expectation is in fact that low transport costs will be achieved over time via incremental development of reusable systems of increasing robustness and reliability. The incremental approach keeps development costs down while robustness provides for low operations costs. The time scale for this process will depend on the parallel growth of markets like space tourism to pay for the hardware development and to drive flight rates higher.

Elhefnawy implies that all the “experts” hold to his views on these matters. However, I can easily point to people with decades of experience and solid records of accomplishment in the space industry who are now participating in NewSpace companies and who believe that large cuts in the cost of space access are achievable. There are, in fact, a number of examples of projects already, such as the Bigelow habitats, the Surrey Satellite GIOVE-A, the SS1, etc., that were accomplished for costs dramatically below what they would have been if carried out by a government agency or a conventional aerospace industry firm.

Apparently Professor Elhefnawy has a pretty restricted circle of “experts.” Perhaps he should attend Space Access in a couple weeks and broaden both his technical and political horizons.

Philosophy, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Evolutionary Benefits

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…of religion.

I don’t know whether or not I’ve blogged on this subject before, but it’s a common notion that while not everyone requires a supreme lawgiver to be good, most people perhaps do, and that a retributive religion promotes a better society. Similarly (and perhaps it’s a corollary, as pointed out in the link), while dying sucks for an individual, some view it as a good for society and the species, by getting the fogeys out of the way and making room for fresh blood and ideas. At least in the latter case, I think that the cure is worse than the disease, and I’d like to have the problems associated with indefinite lifespan, and look for solutions to them, than die without getting the chance to tackle them. Of course, one of those solutions is space migration.