Uncertain Uncertainty - Postmodernism Unravels
msoja
April 4, 2002 8:30 a.m.
Uncertain Uncertainty
Postmodernism unravels.
by Dave Kopel
When Michael Frayn's award-winning play, Copenhagen, came out, it
seemed too good to be true. Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist
who identified the "Uncertainty Principle" in quantum physics (in
which full knowledge is under some circumstances impossible to attain)
might or might not have tried to subvert Nazi Germany's
nuclear-weapons program. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the most
famous idea of modern physics, had become a cornerstone of postmodern
thinking, in which the possibility of objective truth is denied; so it
was very fitting to see a postmodern play in which even the moral
principles of the Uncertainty Principle's creator are themselves
uncertain.
Truth, however, turns out to be more stubborn than the postmodernists
wish. New evidence has emerged that Heisenberg was not opposed to the
Nazis. Moreover, new research suggests that much of what Heisenberg
taught about physics may be wrong, and that reality is not so
indefinite as the postmodernists want to believe.
Along with Heisenberg, the great founder of quantum mechanics was the
Danish physicist Niels Bohr, was also a leading character in the play
Copenhagen; Bohr died in 1962, Heisenberg in 1976. Recently revealed
letters from Bohr's archive show that Heisenberg didn't sabotage the
German nuclear effort at all, despite his post-war claims to have done
so. According to one letter, which Bohr wrote after the war, but never
sent to Heisenberg: "you…expressed your definite conviction that
Germany would win and that it was therefore quite foolish for us to
maintain the hope of a different outcome of the war and to be reticent
as regards all German offers of cooperation…you spoke in a manner that
could only give me the firm impression that, under your leadership,
everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons…."
According to Bohr, Heisenberg had a "certain conviction of a German
victory and confidence in what it would bring."
Heisenberg's accommodating relationship with Nazism is hardly unique
among the great thinkers of postmodernism. Martin Heidegger, the most
influential philosopher of the 20th century and the founder of
postmodernism, adored Nazism. He lavished praise on Hitler in
Heidegger's inaugural speech as Rektorat at the University of
Frieburg, explaining that the Fuhrer offered Germany the opportunity
to reject modern industrial capitalism, and to recover its true,
authentic culture.
Heidegger called human existence Dasein ("being-there"), meaning that
existence was controlled by one's culture. Since an individual had no
control over "thrown-ness" (geworfen — what culture he was born into),
there is nothing fundamentally unique about an individual, nor is
there anything which all humans have in common. This turned out to be
a powerful philosophical foundation for Nazism: Individual Germans had
no existence outside their German culture and, having no common traits
with humanity, Germans should have no qualms about subjugating other
people. National Socialism, Heidegger explained, was true Being.
Likewise reinforcing Nazism was Heidegger's insistence that authentic
living was impossible unless one had rejected the hope of an immortal
soul (and thus rejected the possibility of facing a Final Judgment),
and instead grappled with inevitability of "Being-toward-Death."
Among Heidegger's admirers was literary critic Paul de Man, who
collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation of Belgium, penning
literary essays for a pro-Nazi newspaper in which he condemned Jews
for their supposed vulgarity, and proposed deportation as a solution
to the "Jewish problem." After the war, de Man moved to Yale, where he
founded the "Yale School" of deconstructionist literary criticism;
beginning at Yale, de Man's theories spread throughout American
universities, thereby politicizing humanities and literature
departments with radical anti-Westernism and anti-rationalism.
A litany of the stars of post-modernism is mostly a litany for
admirers of some form of totalitarianism. Although the Marxist
Jean-Paul Sartre participated in the French Underground during World
War II, he defended Stalinism and Maoism, even the Cultural
Revolution. Sartre wrote the introduction to Marxist psychiatrist
Frantz Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth (published in 1961, but
still enormously influential on campuses today). The book describes
the Algerian anti-colonial war against France, and extols the
purifying force of violence, especially racial terrorism of natives
against the distinct "species" of whites and their native allies.
Fanon inspired murderous racists and hatemongers around the world,
including the Black Panthers.
The intellectual founder of the 1979 Iranian revolution was Ali
Shariat, who studied at the Sorbonne, and liked Fanon and Sartre so
much that he translated them into Farsi. Another deconstructionist
disciple of Heidegger's, Michel Foucault, swooned that Ayotollah
Khomeini was "a kind of mystic saint." Foucault welcomed the
Ayatollah's "political spirituality" which would take Iran back to its
natural roots, overthrowing the modernizing forces of global
capitalism. In this regard, the Ayatollah's program for Iran was quite
similar to Hitler's program for Germany.
Indeed, postmodernism has been the intellectual Axis of Evil of many
mass killers. As Walter Newell writes in The Weekly Standard:
Just as Heidegger wanted the German people to return to a foggy,
medieval, blood and soil collectivism purged of the corruptions of
modernity, and just as Pol Pot [who, like Shariat, studied at the
Sorbonne] wanted Cambodia to return to the Year Zero, so does Osama
dream of returning his world to the imagined purity of seventh century
Islam. And just as Fanon argued that revolution can never accomplish
its goals through negotiation or peaceful reform, so does Osama regard
terror as good in itself, a therapeutic act, quite apart from any
concrete aim. The willingness to kill is proof of one's purity.
If you don't believe The Weekly Standard, try The Hindustan Times,
which explains that "Osama bin Laden is not a medieval but a
post-modern phenomenon."
The enmity between postmodernism and capitalism is not accidental.
Capitalism believes that individuals are unique, and should be able to
act in a free market to fulfill their unique desires. Rather than
being prisoners of their culture, individuals are free to pursue their
own dreams. Rather than seeking a reversion to the primitive,
supposedly authentic past, capitalism looks forward to a dynamic,
ever-changing future, in which authenticity is created by the
individual, rather than imposed by an omnipotent Hitler or Khomeni.
What does all this have to do with Werner Heisenberg? The answer is
that Heisenberg provided what was seen as the scientific foundation
for postmodernism.
Architect Philip Johnson notes that a core value of postmodernism is
"a loathing for 'bourgeois values' (a.k.a. truth, beauty, and
goodness)." Yet, preferring Rigoberta Menchu (communist author of a
fraudulent autobiography about her nonexistent "peasant" childhood in
Guatemala) to Jane Austen (an advocate of truth, beauty, and goodness)
is itself nothing more than a literary taste. Why should students be
taught that a taste for totalitarian untruths is superior to a taste
for literature founded on eternal values?
The dominant approach has been to attack language itself. Great
emphasis is placed on the contingency of language, the difficulties of
being sure what another person really means, the inseparability of any
text from its cultural context, barriers to genuine communication, and
so on. This is been the project of, most famously, Heidegger's
disciple Jacques Derrida and, in a very different way, another
disciple, German Marxist Jürgen Habermas.
For some people, though, undermining language is insufficient. A
person can understand the contingency of knowledge and communication,
and still come away believing in Western democracy, in rational
science, and in eternal values. This is precisely what the great
Protestant philosopher Reinhold Neibuhr did at the middle of the 20th
century. Political thinkers who were influenced by Neibuhr, such as
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., confidently proclaimed that American
democracy was morally superior to Stalinism. Similarly, James
Madison's Federalist 37 explained how the limitations of human
language created "unavoidable inaccuracy" in the communication of
ideas. Yet Madison did not view this problem as proving that truth did
not exist, or that preferring freedom to tyranny was merely an
arbitrary taste.
Heisenberg's great contribution was to provide a scientific foundation
for the attack on the very existence of truth, and hence on the
existence of moral values. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle began
with Heisenberg's experiments in subatomic physics. He found that you
could know an electron's position, or you could know an electron's
momentum, but you couldn't know both at the same time; by measuring
one, you would change the other. Taken to a much broader level,
because one is always part of the system that one is observing, it is
impossible to know anything about the system with certainty.
Some extensions of the Uncertainty Principle can be thought provoking
and benign. For example, in 1979, Gary Zukav and David Finkelstein
authored The Dancing Wu Li Masters : An Overview of the New Physics,
which used the Uncertainty Principle, as well as many other elements
of quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and other (then) cutting-edge
physics to introduce the reader to Eastern mysticism.
But as Marxist sociology professor Stanley Aronowitz (City University
of New York) has argued in his book Science as Power: Discourse and
Ideology in Modern Society, Heisenberg's work also seems to legitimize
the whole postmodern project. Because of physics' reputation as the
most rigorous and neutral of all the sciences, the work of Heisenberg
and his colleague Niels Bohr seem to supply the definitive proof for
postmodernism's skepticism about truth and universal values. If, as
Aronowitz and other postmodernists argue, Heisenberg showed that even
science didn't have objective truth, then literature and the
humanities certainly could not.
The modern academy's use of physics in the service of postmodernism
was criticized in several books: The Flight from Science and Reason; A
House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science; and
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science.
This latter book so enraged the postmodern academy that an entire 1996
issue of the journal Social Text was devoted to attacking it. That
special issue of Social Text, long a cutting-edge pomo journal,
included a counter-essays by the journal's cofounder Stanley Aronowitz
and other postmodernists. The concluding article was "Transgressing
Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
by New York University physicist Alan D. Sokal.
Sokal began by affirming postmodern principles: "it has become
increasingly apparent that physical 'reality,' no less than social
'reality,' is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." Thus,
"scientific 'knowledge,' far form being objective, reflects and
encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture
that produced it." Sokal went on to link various scientific or
mathematical subjects (such as Paul Joseph Cohen's work on the
mathematical Axiom of Choice) with social concepts with which they had
no relation (such as radical feminism).
In most cases, Sokal simply asserted that the scientific theory
supported the (always-leftist) social result for which was arguing.
The meat of the article was an argument that quantum gravity (a
genuine field of study, involving attempts to reconcile quantum
mechanics with the theory of relativity) proved the case for
"progressive" politics. Sokal concluded by urging that science,
especially mathematics and physics, be conducted with the intent of
supporting radical feminist and other "progressive" causes. He even
argued that the value of pi was socially constructed.
A short while later, Sokal announced in the magazine Lingua Franca
that the whole thing was a hoax. Although Sokal is Marxist who had
worked with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, he objected to
postmodernism's misuse of hard science. He wrote of that his essay was
a parody of how postmodernism had combined 1930s physics, linguistics
theory, and political correctness to produce an academic literature
that meant absolutely nothing. The Bohr/Heisenberg denial of reality
had reached its culmination; one could write articles using Bohr and
Heisenberg to describe things having nothing to do with physics. And,
like the subatomic world described by Bohr and Heisenberg, the article
could be incomprehensible, lacking any fixed reality. Later, Sokal
coedited a follow-up book, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern
Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.
Aronowitz and the rest of the postmodernists were not acting contrary
to the intentions of Heisenberg, who hoped that his theories of
physics "will exert their influence upon the wider fields of the world
of ideas [just as] the changes at the end of the Renaissance
transformed the cultural life of the succeeding epochs." Max Born,
another founder of quantum physics, wrote that "epistemological
lessons" from physics could answer questions such as the relationship
between capitalism and socialism. Niels Bohr was even more aggressive
in promoting the Uncertainty Principle into a general statement of the
nature of reality, and insisting that principles from quantum
mechanics were not just interesting metaphors with which to discuss
society, but scientific facts about human culture.
Yet it turns out that much of Heisenberg wrote (and hence, the
scientific basis of postmodernism) may be losing its "privileged
position" of indisputable scientific truth.
The physicist Carver Mead, of the California Institute of Technology,
is the author of Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of
Electromagnetism (MIT Press, 2000) which suggests that much of what
Bohr and Heisenberg claimed was wrong. (Bohr, by the way, was always
anti-Nazi, was spirited out of Denmark in 1943 by the Danish
resistance, and went on to collaborate with Einstein in the Manhattan
Project.)
At a famous debate in Copenhagen, Albert Einstein uttered his famous
line "God doesn't play dice with the universe" — as Einstein objected
to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and to Bohr's vision of the
randomness and incomprehensibility of reality.
Carver is attempting to topple Bohr/Heisenberg from their current
roles as the ultimate geniuses of physics, just as previous
intellectuals shattered the auras of authority and infallibility which
once, wrongly, surrounded Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
According to Carver, Bohr beat Einstein in the Copenhagen debates,
held in 1927 and 1930, simply through the force of Bohr's
intimidating, dictatorial personality. What Bohr and Heisenberg
pronounced as true for all time turns out simply to be the product of
their limited understanding, Carver argues.
The conflicts that Bohr/Heisenberg claimed between their own quantum
mechanics and Einstein's theories of relativity turn out to be
resolvable into a single unified theory, says Carver. Carver argues
that Bohr and Heisenberg were wrong in claiming that the laws of logic
do not apply at the subatomic level, and also wrong in claiming that
the subatomic world is fundamentally random.
Only time will tell if Mead's theories to reconceptualize quantum
physics will gain wide acceptance. But the very existence of Mead's
book suggests that Heisenberg and Bohr are just as subject to
"contestation" as any other idea; the Bohr/Heisenberg view is not an
unarguable scientific fact upon which to found a philosophy of human
existence.
If Heisenberg and Bohr were wrong that quantum events (e.g., where an
electron is) are fundamentally random, then the use of their theory to
label traditional literature as politically incorrect may also be
wrong:
The other postmodern defining notion: the end of narrative or
overarching themes or missions or purposes. Nothing was as it seemed.
We were all atoms that occasionally bumped randomly against each
other.
Postmoderism's hostility to big narratives isn't just a function of
particle physics, however. The underlying rationale is ideological, as
explained by the newsletter of the Association of Muslim Social
Scientists:
It is difficult, however, to imagine how one could be suspicious of
meta-narratives without a de-centring of the West, since the most
powerful narrative of the last 200 years has been the one that told
the tale of the West's destiny. With this in mind then, I would
suggest that it is more useful for Muslims to understand
post-modernism as the de-centring of the West. . ..
The author goes on to describe the demonization of "Bin Laden's
'terrrorism'" and the rejection of postmodernism as two forms of false
consciousness which impede Muslim political action.
Yet the political consequence of the September 11 attacks is the
recentering of the West (more precisely, the United States) more
powerfully than ever before. The United States is indeed the world's
hegemon, capable of toppling a regime on the other side of the world
in a few weeks, while suffering very low casualties itself.
Notwithstanding the objections of Syrian diplomats or Belgian
Eurocrats, the United States and its simplisme can conquer at will,
with little need for multilateral approval.
And literature? Well, destroy-American-society-first is still doing
pretty well in university bookstores. Duke literature professor
Michael Hardt has teamed up with Antonio Negri, an Italian terrorist
and poet currently in prison for his role as a leader of the murderous
Red Brigades. Negri later became good friends with Michel Foucault and
Jacques Derrida. Hardt and Negri have produced Empire, a 500-page
combination of postmodernism, Marxism, and antiglobalism. It is one of
the hottest university bestsellers in many a year.
But far more Americans have been reading Lord of the Rings, which
retells "the tale of the West's destiny" to vindicate freedom and
destroy evil.
The meta-narrative of the last several years — astride the best-seller
list like a colossus — has been the Harry Potter series. Neither LOTR
nor Potter is a direct Christian allegory, but both narratives are
infused with The Greatest Story Ever Told. They promote the
brotherhood of man, the capacity of an individual to change the world,
the possibilities of hope rather than the limits of our current
condition — and they pronounce that our actions are to be judged
according to eternal moral standards. The heroes in LOTR and in Harry
Potter are offered ultimate power, and they refuse it, because the
power would be in the service of evil.
At the end of Harry Potter's book one, Harry confronts the Hitlerian
Lord Voldemort and the Quislingish Professor Quirrel. Voldemort orders
Harry to cooperate with him, and Quirrel claims: "There is no good and
evil, only power." Harry refuses, risking his life.
Heisenberg was offered the same choice by Hitler. The newly revealed
Bohr letters explain that Heisenberg's justification for building the
A-bomb for the Nazis was that Heisenberg was certain they would win.
Heisenberg obviously did not believe that it would be morally better
to be killed by the SS than to help the Nazis build a weapon of mass
destruction with which be used to murder millions of innocents.
Heisenberg's collaborationist rationale fit precisely with the
Hitler/Voldemort philosophy that power is the only reality. Indeed,
"there is no truth, only power," summarizes Heisenberg's theory of
physics and its application to moral philosophy.
We didn't really need J. K. Rowling or new discoveries in subatomic
physics to remember that freedom is good and tyranny is evil. But we
did need to recover our nation's moral compass.
A few years ago Americans were willing to listen to a president
discuss the meaning of "is" as he were at a Modern Language
Association meeting. September 11 showed us the face of pure evil. Our
nation has seen the enemy plainly, and that vision may be the
beginning of the end of postmodernism in America. It is no coincidence
that the places in America which have been the most reluctant to call
al Qaeda evil have been the places where postmodernism is strongest.
The rest of America has, happily, finally mustered the self-confidence
to stand up to this form of radical nihilism.
We will continue to debate the nature of language and of the
subatomic, and we will continue to tolerate and celebrate diverse
cultures. We can do all of these things without teaching college
students (including foreign students who may one day rule their
homeland) that living as a serf under the tyranny of Wahhabis, Nazis,
or Stalinists is more authentically human than living as a free
American.
George Bush is our first post-postmodern president. He can't tell
Heisenberg from Heidegger but, unlike them, he can tell right from
wrong:
It is always and everywhere wrong to target and kill the innocent. It
is always and everywhere wrong to be cruel and hateful, to enslave and
oppress. It is always and everywhere right to be kind and just, to
protect the lives of others, and to lay down your life for a friend.
Postmodernism is on its way to the ash heap of history.
Aozotorp
>April 4, 2002 8:30 a.m.
>Uncertain Uncertainty
>Postmodernism unravels.
>by Dave Kopel
The only thing that has unraveled is Kopel's Brain. I see him on TV in Denver
all the time = A looned ideologue who makes up arguments that strain the very
fabric they are written on!
Billy Beck
msoja <mso...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel040402.asp
>
>April 4, 2002 8:30 a.m.
>Uncertain Uncertainty
>Postmodernism unravels.
>by Dave Kopel
[...]
<random bite>
>Architect Philip Johnson notes that a core value of postmodernism is
>"a loathing for 'bourgeois values' (a.k.a. truth, beauty, and
>goodness)."
That would certainly explain his ghastly AT&T Building in New
York, which has been hailed as "the first major monument of
Post-Modernism." What a hideous joke: a sixty-storey Colonial china
cabinet, scratched out for a corporation apologizing for and then
dismembered for its "bourgeois" existence. Who says there's no
justice?
Pretty good article, Mike.
I would briefly note that Ayn Rand observed that nothing in
Heisenberg ever refuted *causality*, a very fine point that almost
always goes neglected by the reality-dodgers.
Billy
VRWC Fronteer
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/
John T. Kennedy
Beck) wrote:
> I would briefly note that Ayn Rand observed that nothing in
>Heisenberg ever refuted *causality*, a very fine point that almost
>always goes neglected by the reality-dodgers.
Nor did it in any way contradict objectivity. The connection of
post-modernism to his physics is a fallacy (though one he might have
embraced for all I know).
The writer seems to want to use his politics to dispute his physics,
which doesn't work.
-
John T. Kennedy III
No Treason - A Journal of Liberty
http://www.no-treason.com/
burgerk...@scumbag.com
wrote like a right wing nut;
> Who says there's no
>justice?
Until you were outed as the little screwball you are, I didn't think
so either.
But given your complete breakdown of character, and the really stupid
things you've resorted to in the past months, I believe it now
> Pretty good article, Mike.
And what would a braggart, usenet coward like you know about "good",
burgerking
How anyone can keep a straight face after doing what you did with your
moronic narc job, is mind boggling.
> I would briefly note ............
You would briefly note, what, BURGERKING?
That you're an insignificant usenet thug and moron.
Make us laugh
Threaten someone with death today.
=================================================================
Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>Maybe he wants to blow up the planet. Its his property.
>> Don't come around here anymore talking about "demonizing",
>>Emma.
>
>Billy, you must first realize the person you are addressing.
Yo, Smith: "Emma" had a chance to sort out her ethics and give
up a life of Tit-Sucking at my expense.
*You* are in line for the smokey end of a 7.62.
Keep pushing it, pal. You have no idea what you're fooling
around with, and I'm not talking about *me*.
Billy
Billy Beck
Gary Roselles, 4215 Cedar Ridge Pl. #4242 Rapid City, South
>On Thu, 04 Apr 2002 22:17:07 GMT, wj...@mindspring.com (Billy Beck)
>wrote like a right wing nut;
>> Who says there's no
>>justice?
>
>Until you were outed as the little screwball you are, I didn't think
>so either.
>
>But given your complete breakdown of character, and the really stupid
>things you've resorted to in the past months, I believe it now
For someone with all the "character" necessary to endorsing the
retard Yeadon's despicable lie, you really blubber too much, Gary.
You should stick to shooting orange-juice out your ass.
righ...@scumbag.com
wrote like a right wing nut;
>
>Dakota 57702, (605) 341-2445 <righ...@scumbag.com> wrote:
> You should stick to shooting orange-juice out your ass.
And feed you?
No thanks.
Chickenshit, braggarts and Usenet cowards don't deserve anything good.
=====================================================
*Try* it, you crappy little faggot bitch. Don't just sit there:
come try it.
I'll take your fuckin' life, instantly, and sleep like a baby.
Billy Beck
righ...@scumbag.com wrote:
>On Fri, 05 Apr 2002 00:40:21 GMT, wj...@mindspring.com (Billy Beck)
>wrote like a right wing nut;
>>
>>Gary Roselles, 4215 Cedar Ridge Pl. #4242 Rapid City, South
>>Dakota 57702, (605) 341-2445 <righ...@scumbag.com> wrote:
>
>> You should stick to shooting orange-juice out your ass.
>
>And feed you?
http://vatican.rotten.com/fecaljapan/fecaljapan.jpg
<snicker> If they could fit your performance for the past five years
on a Web page, Gary, it wouldn't be worth your portrait.
righ...@scumbag.com
wrote like a right wing nut;
>
>righ...@scumbag.com wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 05 Apr 2002 00:40:21 GMT, wj...@mindspring.com (Billy Beck)
>>wrote like a right wing nut;
>>>
>>>Gary Roselles, 4215 Cedar Ridge Pl. #4242 Rapid City, South
>>>Dakota 57702, (605) 341-2445 <righ...@scumbag.com> wrote:
>>
>>> You should stick to shooting orange-juice out your ass.
>>
>>And feed you?
>
> http://vatican.rotten.com/fecaljapan/fecaljapan.jpg
>
><snicker> If they could fit your performance for the past five years
>on a Web page, Gary, it wouldn't be worth your portrait.
I'm not the one exhibiting the sleazebag character, Batshit.
It's your dumb ass that's been outed as a Thug, a moron, death threat
coward. You make Dana look halfway intellectual
Come on, Burgerking
Threaten to kill someone
That's your speed.
===========================================================
Billy Beck wrote:
>I not only know exactly what I'm doing and how to do it, I am
> also completely aware of the risks of dancing with the devil.
>And before I'm through with you, you'll be dragging yourself
> around the floor on bloody stumps.
Again threats of violence. Billy, you claim you have principles and value
freedom. But when people insult you, you're willing to threaten violence.
That shows something about the kind of ideological mindset you convey. You
claim to support freedom and liberty, but its clear that it has to be your way
or else you'll feel justified engaged in physical violence against those whose
ideas or criticisms you dislike.
That's why we need rule of law.
Isle of the Dead
news:3caccc59...@news.mindspring.com...
>
> I would briefly note that Ayn Rand observed that nothing in
> Heisenberg ever refuted *causality*, a very fine point that almost
> always goes neglected by the reality-dodgers.
_Bee Beck The Reality Dodger_, denying the success
of the causality of the "Third Way".
I love it. You can't fool me, Beck. That posting about
"indirect messages" gave you away. You've seen it,
haven't you, pal?
You've *seen* it. The problem is, you're relying on a
mythical construct. There's no such thing as "indirect"
messages. Any message eats a FINITE slice of time
and resources during transmission.
Any message.
All messages.
But it's not even that. I think where Coase's model breaks
down is that he was focused on defining TYPES of
messages that distort free markets. But really, the
defining characteristic between message TYPES is their
relative complexity and how they're processed.
I think he missed the infrastructure and metadata/
syncing issue. Like, dang, you're probably have to
WORK on physical manifestations of that stuff to
understand the criticality of it, I think.
John T. Kennedy
the Dead" <isleof...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> But it's not even that. I think where Coase's model breaks
> down is that he was focused on defining TYPES of
> messages that distort free markets. But really, the
> defining characteristic between message TYPES is their
> relative complexity and how they're processed.
I think when your mind broke down was when they probed your ass.
Isle of the Dead
>
> <snicker> If they could fit your performance for the past five years
> on a Web page, Gary, it wouldn't be worth your portrait.
I used to look for answers, Billy.
But I realized this morning that, these days, I
look for *questions*. I look for the right question to ask.
Here's this morning's question.... If transactions are a defining
factor in organizational structure, might they be a defining factor
in something more abstract? Something more global?
Then it hit me. Christopher Alexander. Alexander and
design patterns. Alexander does architecture, right? Well,
now my question becomes...
"Can I redefine "design patterns" as an aspect of transaction costs?"
"Can I redefine architecture as some function of transaction costs?"
Can I? Let me think. What are the boundaries? Let's try to
redefine the original definition. What the fundamental goals
of today's economic system vis a vis transactions?
a) To organize transactions into a manageable structure
b) To minimize transaction costs.
Right? Those are reasonable assumptions. Now, can I fit them
into today's definition. At first I thought "yes".
But focus on b). Is it reasonable to assume that the ultimate goal
of architecture is minimize transaction costs? I don't think so, man.
The ultimate reduction of transaction is NULL. Nothing. Nothing
happens, nobody does anything. That's a bad assumption. Does
ideal architecture = nothing?
Okay, let's rework assumption b).
b) To OPTIMIZE transaction costs.
Wow. It sounds meaningless, doesn't it? But once you focus
on optimization, you now assume that there's some IDEAL
division and number of transaction costs. More over there,
that's bad. But *less* for that, that's bad, too.
But the goal of today's system IS zero transactions.
Egad, do you realize how nihilistic that is?
No, no, no. There has to exist some mythical optimum #
of transactions, structured in such a way that it maximizes
happiness and minimizes woe. Some ideal situation for
the idealized human being.
Look, you could even re-interpret this to encompass Feng Shui!
Look at that, dude. Feng Shui is really a subclass of a top-level
structure which has two directives -
a) Optimimze the # transaction costs
b) Optimize the structure of transaction costs
Tell me that's not kewl. I wonder if you could expand this out,
create a philosophical CLASS structure based on transactions.
That rocks.
John T. Kennedy
the Dead" <isleof...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Wow. It sounds meaningless, doesn't it?
Yeah. And not just sounds.
Isle of the Dead
"Isle of the Dead" <isleof...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Zscr8.18404$ml2.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>
> No, no, no. There has to exist some mythical optimum #
> of transactions, structured in such a way that it maximizes
> happiness and minimizes woe. Some ideal situation for
> the idealized human being.
Ah, I couldn't remember it. Really, when you break
it down, the "optimized transactions" is what
E.F. Schmaucher is talking about -
http://pears2.lib.ohio-state.edu/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/schumaa.htm
Yeah, I read this..... I guess about ten years ago.
Optimized transactions versus minimized. Interesting.
msoja
I see. No petit deconstruction for *you.* Straight to the ad hominem
- Zing!
I thought maybe you and the 'tard Yeadon would get all foamy over the
parts about the Nazis, but maybe you morons couldn't read that far.
LOL.
Mike Soja
msoja
>msoja <mso...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>>http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel040402.asp
>>April 4, 2002 8:30 a.m.
>>Uncertain Uncertainty
>>Postmodernism unravels.
>>by Dave Kopel
> [...]
><random bite>
>>Architect Philip Johnson notes that a core value of postmodernism is
>>"a loathing for 'bourgeois values' (a.k.a. truth, beauty, and
>>goodness)."
> That would certainly explain his ghastly AT&T Building in New
>York, which has been hailed as "the first major monument of
>Post-Modernism." What a hideous joke: a sixty-storey Colonial china
>cabinet, scratched out for a corporation apologizing for and then
>dismembered for its "bourgeois" existence. Who says there's no
>justice?
Without that top on there, the place could pass for any average
Federal building. In fact, a lot of Johnson's work looks like prison
architecture to me.
> Pretty good article, Mike.
> I would briefly note that Ayn Rand observed that nothing in
>Heisenberg ever refuted *causality*, a very fine point that almost
>always goes neglected by the reality-dodgers.
They'd be trying to reinvent the wheel so it doesn't roll anymore, if
the work was properly subsidized.
Or trying to redefine what is is. Or monkeying with the politics of
meaning. Or legislating more ecstatic modes of living.
I only hope people in the future have a chance to laugh uproariously
at these morons.
Take care,
Mike Soja
Aozotorp
>>>April 4, 2002 8:30 a.m.
>>>Uncertain Uncertainty
>>>Postmodernism unravels.
>>>by Dave Kopel
>
>>The only thing that has unraveled is Kopel's Brain. I see him on TV in
>Denver
>>all the time = A looned ideologue who makes up arguments that strain the
>very
>>fabric they are written on!
>
>I see. No petit deconstruction for *you.* Straight to the ad hominem
>- Zing!
>
That is all Kopel ever does = have you ever watched him on say Colorao Inside
Out???
John H. McCloskey
--Internet Critic
Rob Robertson
"John H. McCloskey" <elchipod...@aol.com2600> wrote in message
news:20020405111810...@mb-fx.aol.com...
>
> "A hilarious send-up"
> --Internet Critic
From http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel040402.asp;
"The enmity between postmodernism and capitalism is not accidental.
Capitalism believes that individuals are unique, and should be able to
act in a free market to fulfill their unique desires. Rather than being
prisoners of their culture, individuals are free to pursue their own
dreams. Rather than seeking a reversion to the primitive, supposedly
authentic past, capitalism looks forward to a dynamic, ever-changing
future, in which authenticity is created by the individual, rather than
imposed by an omnipotent Hitler or Khomeni."
For a fishbowl view of the above, just take a look at the cookie-cutter
sock puppet collectivists who argue for greater and greater control of
every facet of people's lives, Jack. Surely you've noticed the dynamic
interaction of individualists in the newsgroup and the relative lack of
any serious disagreement (or even substantive discussion) between the
members of the chattering horde of weezils/liberals/collectivists. Keep
an eye out for Gary Roselles' seething envy, or the Bagboy's need to
ridicule his betters (a fulltime job, that) and reduce all discussion to
rank absurdity.
On the one hand you have Billy declaring that his individuality, his
possessions and his life are worth defending, and on the other you
have the cheez-muncher from Rapid City, SD, chuckling over the
deaths of children at Waco (when he's not calling for the murder of
government officials of the 'wrong' party).
I think that, deep-down, the collectivists are deathly afraid of the
future, which is why they choose regressive, feudalistic social orders
that rely on a powerful central authority. Their deep-seated fear may
also be why they yield to the social pathology that is socialism. They
prefer the illusion even in the face of the record of death and misery
that attaches to their discredited beliefs. They want to commit social
suicide, and they don't care if they take millions of innocents with them.
"Meek and obedient they follow the leader
down well-trodden corridors into the Valley of Steel,..."
-- Pink Floyd, _Sheep_
But you don't care, and choose not to hear. Such is life, and history.
_
Rob Robertson
John H. McCloskey
sentence, although this paragraph isn't from the really _fun_ part of the
scrible.
> The enmity between postmodernism and capitalism is not accidental.
That is, oddly enough, correct.
> Capitalism believes that individuals are unique, and should be able to act
in a free market to fulfill their unique desires.
This, on the other hand.... So much wrong with it! ....
(1) Where do we go to learn authoritatively What Capitalism Believes, as
opposed to only what certain particular defenders of it have said? There used
to be Marx _per contra_, but nowadays there is ... who? Anyway, is Capitalism
belief-based at all? Isn't it rather a _praxis_?
(2) Capitalism == individuality-as-fact == free trade. For Ms. Deepthink,
these are evidently all the same thing. But in fact they are three different
things.
(3) Backhandedly PoMo is accused of being against individuality-as-fact and
against free trade. Why think so?
> Rather than being prisoners of their culture, individuals are free to pursue
their own dreams.
Free-will vs. determinism, no less! We're a long way from
Chamber-of-Commerceland, Toto.
As a mere half-hearted fellow-traveler, I hesitate to pronounce on this point.
It is easy to see why vulgar despisers of PoMo account it deterministic, but
hard to find signs of the serious practitioners laying stress on the matter one
way or the other. Their usual behavior seems to be based on an unarticulated
notion that _everybody else_ is a prisoner of her culture, whereas they
themselves .... That really _is_ nonsense if it ever gets articulated -- an
attempt to make antifoundationalism a foundation, as it were.
On the other side, Capitalism is no more committed to theological or
anthropological Free Will than it was to the gold standard. The affinity is
"not accidental," like Comrade Deepthink said above, in the sense that there
are historical reasons for the same modern people being both Capitalists and
Arminians, but a Spinozan or Calvinist or positivist could hold the economic
doctrines without contradiction to his general system.
> Rather than seeking a reversion to the primitive, supposedly
authentic past, capitalism looks forward to a dynamic, ever-changing future, in
which authenticity is created by the individual, rather than imposed by an
omnipotent Hitler or Khomeni.
I beg your pardon, Ms. Deepthink is clearly not talking about the same
"postmodernism" I am. These gurus of hers who want us to return to noble
savagery and "authenticity" with Hitler and Khomeini presiding (apparently
indifferently) over the process -- well, I can't say anything about their views
because I've never yet come across them. The plan attributed to them sounds
pretty awful, but Ms. Deepthink may not be _quite_ doing justice to it.
The "capitalism looks forward to a dynamic, ever-changing future" gurus I do
know, Catoholics and such. They undoubtedly exist, but there are lots of other
kinds of capitalists too, as for instance those who work towards a static,
monopoly-stabilized kind of future. Upper-case-C Capitalism, the whole
historical pageant of it, had been around a long time before it began often to
be praised for creative destructiveness.
On the positive side, Ms. Deepthink's main mental problem is explained at
<< http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html >>.
The negative side, as I said, is beyond my ken altogether. She's obviously not
talking about, say, Foucault, Derrida, Fish, Rorty -- the kind of people I'd
naďvely take to be celebrated proponents of PoMo.
>
>
> For a fishbowl view of the above, just take a look at the cookie-cutter
>sock puppet collectivists who argue for greater and greater control of
>every facet of people's lives, Jack. Surely you've noticed the dynamic
>interaction of individualists in the newsgroup and the relative lack of
>any serious disagreement (or even substantive discussion) between the
>members of the chattering horde of weezils/liberals/collectivists. Keep
>an eye out for Gary Roselles' seething envy, or the Bagboy's need to
>ridicule his betters (a fulltime job, that) and reduce all discussion to
>rank absurdity.
You think Ms. Deepthink means Erb and Roselles when she says "postmodernists"?
Kind of unlikely, I'd say. We Whitewaterites are not yet _that_ famous in the
larger world.
> On the one hand you have Billy declaring that his individuality, his
>possessions and his life are worth defending, and on the other you
>have the cheez-muncher from Rapid City, SD, chuckling over the
>deaths of children at Waco (when he's not calling for the murder of
>government officials of the 'wrong' party).
Beck Minor as the Paradigm Capitalist isn't all that plausible either.
>
> I think that, deep-down, the collectivists are deathly afraid of the
>future, which is why they choose regressive, feudalistic social orders
>that rely on a powerful central authority.
Your "feudalism" is in a class with Ms. Deepthink's "postmodernism" -- I know
the word, or thought I did, but you're applying it in a way all your own.
However in this case I can at least guess what you're pasting the label on,
i.e. Colbert and Louis XIV. We prisoners of our culture usually call it
"mercantilism," doncha know?
Fear of the future? "Mellontophobia," I presume? The notion is promising, but
you'll have to work a lot of bugs out of it. And also make sure it doesn't
turn out to be only a backhanded rewriting of all those tedious whiggish books
on the history of the Idea of Progress.
What is less innovatively but more frequently called the Age of Feudalism would
make a sound place to start, those good old days of about Century XIII when the
future above all meant Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.
"Who's afraid of the Big Bad Future?"
"Not I," said cocky Robin.
Their deep-seated fear may
>also be why they yield to the social pathology that is socialism. They
>prefer the illusion even in the face of the record of death and misery
>that attaches to their discredited beliefs. They want to commit social
>suicide, and they don't care if they take millions of innocents with them.
The mellontophobologist of the future probably shouldn't _start_ right off with
Capitalism, Socialism and Libertarianism. She should lay out a proper context
first by working through Latin Catholicism, Protestantism, absolutism,
mercantilism, Enlightenment, Liberalism and all the conventional textbook jazz
that happened back before the Fearsome Future was actually invented.
If she wants to get on the _Times_ bestseller list, the mellontophobologist
should probably single out one particular villain as _the_ inventor of the
Fearsome Future. (Some passage in an endnote or an introduction can explain
for the expensively educated that this personalizing of the affair is only a
pedagogic or emblematic approach &c. &c.)
Whom shall she choose? Ten minutes of preliminary reflection is hardly
adequate, I admit, but why not the Rev. Thomas Malthus? His dates (1766-1834)
certainly cover the period of the invention, and which of his contemporaries
has a stronger claim?[*]
>
>
> "Meek and obedient they follow the leader
> down well-trodden corridors into the Valley of Steel,..."
>
> -- Pink Floyd, _Sheep_
>
>
> But you don't care, and choose not to hear. Such is life, and history.
I beg your pardon, did you say something just now?
Happy days.
--JHM
[*] It's always OK to kick Hegel for anything conceptually bad, but going on
about _him_ at any length would have a very bad impact on sales. The only
comparable guy who gets kicked around worse is poor Jean-Jacques, but
unfortunately he died a bit too soon. Clearly whoever is proclaimed as _the_
inventor of the Fearsome Future must have been a responder to the French
Revolution.
Martin McPhillips
"A Real Horse's Ass."
--Internet Paddock Watcher
Isle of the Dead
news:3CB07FB8...@hotmail.com...
>
> I'd prefer a wider field of perspectives, if you don't mind, Fraud..
I'm sure that many folks would prefer competent teaching
staff, too, but hey..... you take what you can get.
> Yup, and we don't need your "religion" nor your faux economics
> and "conspiracy theories" in order to see what's happening to
> our nation, much less the UselessNet, Fraud..
I tried to warn you, Kurt. But you wouldn't listen.
You elected Clinton in '92 and kicked off The Big Party.
Lying, cheating ,scamming, whooo hoooo! Bubble City!
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/020405/enterasys_outlook_2.html
"scrutiny by the SEC for its accounting practices"
http://biz.yahoo.com/fo/020404/0404facepm_1.html
"schemes to manipulate the prices of initial public offerings"
http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=9726
"watered stock fraud"
http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO69909,00.html
"misleading shareholders"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020407/bs_nm/markets_bon
ds_goldman_dc_1
"iinvestigation by U.S. regulators into Treasury bond trading"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020405/bs_usatoday
/4002170
"has launched a formal investigation of telecommunications firm Qwest"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020405/bs_nm/media_adelp
hia_dc_10
"The SEC is investigating off-the-book loans"
Everybody's a Clinton these days. "Oooops it was just a mistake".
Let's do it! <clap>
Let's dance! <clap>
Let's dance across the floor! <clap>
Yeah, let's do it! <clap>
Let's dance! <clap>
Let's do it some more!!!!
> You just keep on projecting your insecurities, Fraud..
Speaking of in-securities, how's your TIAA-CREF? :)
righ...@scumbag.com
<isleof...@earthlink.net> wrote like a right wing nut;
>> Yup, and we don't need your "religion" nor your faux economics
>> and "conspiracy theories" in order to see what's happening to
>> our nation, much less the UselessNet, Fraud..
>
>
> I tried to warn you, Kurt. But you wouldn't listen.
>
> You elected Clinton in '92 and kicked off The Big Party.
> Lying, cheating ,scamming, whooo hoooo! Bubble City!
Yeah, "big party"
The Only "big party" was that of ass-kicked conservatives deliberately
promoting the "big lies" as part of the "concerted effort" to get
clinton.
How anyone has the balls to claim that "lying, cheating, scamming"
were legitimate issues against clinton with IRAN-CONTRA and WaterGate
so fresh, is pretty stupid.
It's comical to hear someone complain about Clintons' lies (a fib
about sex) compared to the LIES that Ronnie mcreagan told us.
> Everybody's a Clinton these days. "Oooops it was just a mistake".
====================================================
Poor, pathetic, DIMWIT DANA, blusterers thusly:
IT PROVES YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE.
Hey ASSHOLE no one but you cares about this,
but it does show you are a hypocritical LOON.
Come on Roseasshole tell us what town you live in,
or are you to chicken to fight.
I am in Phoenix, and my number is listed,
come on chicken man, make your hat.