Inexplicable. Seriously?

Lordy, the stupid things that come out of mouths attached to religion-addled brains.

Too hash? Consider. The Trump-supporting Dallas pastor, Robert Jeffress, preached this to his congregation the day after the failed assassination attempt: "What happened yesterday is also a demonstration of the power of almighty God. I mean, what happened was inexplicable apart from God. God spared him for the purpose of calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation."

Seriously, inexplicable? As in, can't be explained?

That's just dumb. The kid missed the shot. It happens. Perhaps he wasn't a good marksman. Or maybe he felt rushed. He'd just chased a police officer off the roof, so he knew he'd been discovered, and had to work fast. Or the steeply pitched roof affected his aim.

Or this. Trump turned his head at an opportune moment. Trump himself acknowledged that he was turning to look at a chart that he was using in his speech.

Did God make him turn? Don't be absurd. Do you think that, but for God, he'd not have turned to look at that chart?

Trump's movement is completely explicable in terms not just of what he was doing in that moment, but, in a broader existential sense, of the stochastic happenings that carom off each other continually as reality plays out at each point of space and time. Existence is a dice roll. A shooter's intention and a speaker's movement line up, or they don't, without apparent reason. Because of how our brains are wired, we typically only notice when some seemingly momentous coincidence occurs. But make no mistake: coincidences occur constantly.

Which presents a golden opportunity for mush-minded thinking. Because coincidences are happening continually, there are always some available to take the believer wherever he wants to go. Constructing meaning from randomness is utterly commonplace in the belief buffet. It's a trademark feature of religious practice by denizens of pews and pulpits to align notable coincidence with divine providence—at least when when events conform to some desired narrative that the believer wants to advance. With religion, the stupidity (sorry, that word again) never ends.

Sometimes it gushes forth. "If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now!" bellowed Republican Senator Tim Scott at the Republican National Convention. "Thank God Almighty that we live in a country that still believes in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega. Our God still saves."

Tim Scott's standard for what qualifies as miraculous is clearly quite low, but it's entirely consistent with what I've observed in a lifetime of watching persons captive to religion. Heck, I used to be one myself. But I must admit I always had a hard time with miracles and other bizarre claims. I made the best of it, but was often secretly embarrassed by the stuff I heard in church. Even as a kid I knew deep down that a lot of it was crazy. What's fascinating to me is that the Tim Scotts and Robert Jeffresses are never embarrassed as they spew nonsense. Nor are many other grownups I observe with dismay.

Genuine miracles don't happen, because the only things that ever do happen are things that can possibly happen. Occurrences that are rare but possible and thus explicable don't count as miracles. Sorry, they don't.

Rare outcomes happen in nature. Rarity means uncommon, not impossible. Everything unfolds on a probability curve. Such rarities include the vast majority of miracles recognized by the Catholic Church, which overwhelmingly tend to be unexplained recoveries from dire disease processes that ought (probabilistically speaking) to be fatal. But we know that in principle such recoveries can occur as a result of entirely natural processes, such as the body's sudden spectacular marshaling of its immune system, for reasons that aren't presently understood.

Just because the doctors you consult don't know why someone got better doesn't make it a miracle that they did. There are monumental examples of this, and utterly banal ones. I got better. Did the antibiotic help or hurt? Don't know. Doctors don't understand the placebo effect, either, but it's undeniably real, and has to be accounted for in medical studies of drugs and procedures. And so on.

For many decades, certain authors and medical practitioners have been exploring the body's own innate capacity for self-healing. Bernie Siegel, for example. Or Andrew Weil.

Interestingly, none of the Catholic miracles involve outcomes that we know in principle can't happen in nature, such as the spontaneous regeneration of an amputated limb. Because humans absolutely can't regrow missing limbs, such regeneration would qualify as a genuine miracle if it ever happened. It never has, and never will. Maybe that should tell you something.

Long ago, some Catholic friends were having a hard time understanding why I claim their "miracles" don't count. What would? they asked. I pointed out the window at the municipal water tower across the field. Having that tower suddenly move several hundred feet would be a miracle, I said. At least once we ruled out David Copperfield-type illusions operating from our perspective in the living room where we were sitting. We could walk over to the tower's new location and kick at its base. Yup, a miracle.

A lot of miracle claims are mush-minded motivated reasoning, as with the Jeffress and Scott quotes above. It's a game religious types seemingly don't realize they're playing, but they do it all the time. The failed assassination attempt lets them tell themselves that Trump has been chosen by God, which is exactly what they wanted to believe anyway. Indeed, there's even been a messianic aspect to this among some Christians, which is bizarre and disturbing.

Thus religious practice often involves exercises in motivated tea leaf reading. Maybe God is trying to tell us this. Or that. Maybe. God never speaks clearly, so the possibilities are endless. The maybes slot effortlessly into worldviews. We get to play out scenarios in our head and choose the ones we like, and then incorporate them into our personal realities. God communicates through "signs," suggested Marjorie Taylor Green, with her really dumb mention of earthquakes and eclipses. Christians thus find themselves in the business of interpreting what earthquakes and eclipses mean. (Apparently they don't mean fault slippage or orbital mechanics.) Robert Jeffress said the failed assassination attempt was God's way of  "calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation." Sure it was.

But as I wrote elsewhere, there is only one reality, and it's our job to discern it. Not only will religion not help, but it will rot the thinking brains we need to discover and act upon what's real. It will train us how to not think. It will cause us to eschew empirical processes in favor of deeply irrational ones. We can do better than that. And if we're to survive as a civilization, we must.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Way to go Joe

A good pun, huh?

Making Trump a martyr

Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, wrote this on social media about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump: "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination."

That is false: three essential words that need to be repeated continually in this age of unreality in which we live.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at the ballot box.

You save democracy by voting.

Expect a tsunami of MAGA Republicans to echo Vance's despicable slur and blame Biden. This horrible moment is too good a political opportunity, especially for a movement that, taking its guidance from the top, has never had much decency to begin with.

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana said: "Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop."

Incendiary rhetoric? Violent rhetoric? What a stupendous feat of projection—itself an enduring hallmark of the deranged right. There is only one side—only one candidate—with an actual record of incendiary and even violent rhetoric, over and over and over, and it isn't Biden.

Let's be clear. The searing magnitude of Trump's manifest unfitness for office, and threat to democracy and the Constitution, is the greatest danger our national polity has faced since the Civil War. That reality needs to be hammered continually. Doing so isn't an incitement to violence; it's an incitement for the American electorate to rise up and ensure by voting that such an unfit human being never gets close to the Oval Office again.

This tragic incident makes the job even harder, but we mustn't let up. Not for a moment. Every time you hear a MAGA apologist blame Biden for violence, use it as a reminder of what we're up against.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The Perplexity dialogues: Dielectric grease

This is my second installment of "dialogues" I've had with Perplexity, an AI based search engine. If you didn't see my previous introductory post, you might want to read it first.

Dielectric grease is a (usually) silicone grease that's applied to certain electrical fittings where you want to seal out water or prevent corrosion, such as under a spark plug boot. Because the grease is itself an insulator, I've always wondered why having it on the contacting surfaces doesn't interfere with the flow of electricity. I decided to ask Perplexity. As you can see, it took a few tries to get the answer I was after. The fact that you can proceed iteratively, with followups, is a powerful feature.

Perplexity's initial responses were quite unsatisfying. For example, it said: "The key is that dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it." Which is exactly what I was confused about in the first place; the thing that needed to be explained. How can putting an insulating substance on both parts of connection not impede the flow of electricity?

I tried a third time: "You're not answering my question," I said. "In fact, you're making my point. You say that 'dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it.' Since it's an insulator, why can electricity nevertheless flow between contacts that both have a film of dielectric grease?"

Perplexity responded with "You're absolutely right, I should have explained this more clearly," and then it proceeded to do so. Which makes this an interesting dialogue. I reproduce it below.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the stunningly rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in search and much else that's underway right now. Enormous new data centers are being built at a furious pace by all the big players, and many you haven't heard of, to support the mad rush into AI. They all use enormous amounts of electricity. It's been reported that an AI search uses many times more electrical power compared to a regular Google search. So my Perplexity dialogues are burning copious amounts of electricity. Way to go, Mike.

Another big offender is cryptocurrency mining, which is a batshit crazy waste of electricity.

The impact of AI on a rapidly warming climate is no small concern. Already we have a stressed electrical grid and power generation that's struggling to keep up. We badly need to retire old fossil fuel electrical generation facilities and replace them with carbon-free renewables such as solar and wind. We need clean electrical generation to power our new electric vehicles, heat pumps, and much else.

A striking example of how things have suddenly careened off track is Google itself, which is failing miserably in its previous commitment to be "net zero" on carbon emissions by 2030. Far from reducing its carbon footprint, Google is now growing it rapidly. "Google cited artificial intelligence and the demand it puts on data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity, for last year’s growth," said an AP article.

In addition to the energy problem, there are huge questions about the societal implications of this brave new AI world we're rushing into headlong. Will the good outweigh the bad? Ever the pessimist, I have my doubts.

Be that as it all may, here is my latest Perplexity dialogue. As before, the largest bold headings are my actual questions; all the rest is Perplexity's answers. And as before, if you want you can view the actual Perplexity session from which this dialogue was constructed by downloading the session's html, here. Ignore all the gobbledygook that appears, and click on the Download button in the upper right part of the page. Then open the downloaded file with your browser.

---

Why doesn't dielectric grease interfere with electrical connections?

Answer

Dielectric grease does not interfere with electrical connections because it is a non-conductive lubricant that is designed to protect electrical components from moisture, corrosion, and contamination without disrupting the flow of electricity. The key points are:

• Dielectric grease is an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it.
• When applied properly to tight, well-fitting electrical connections, dielectric grease seals out moisture and contaminants that could otherwise cause corrosion and deterioration of the connection.
• While dielectric grease should not be used to fill loose or poorly fitting connectors, as that could impede the electrical connection, a thin coating on the connection helps protect it without interfering.
• Dielectric grease has its own drawbacks, such as attracting dust and potentially melting in high heat, so it is not recommended for all electrical connections, only those that need protection from harsh environments.

In summary, dielectric grease is specifically formulated to protect electrical components without compromising conductivity when used properly on tight, well-sealed connections.

But why doesn't the thin layer on the fittings impede electrical conductivity?

Answer

The thin layer of dielectric grease on electrical connections does not impede electrical conductivity because:  

 

Dielectric grease is a non-conductive lubricant. It is specifically formulated to protect electrical components without disrupting the flow of electricity through the connection.

 

When applied properly to tight, well-fitting electrical connections, the dielectric grease seals out moisture and contaminants that could otherwise cause corrosion and deterioration of the connection.This helps maintain the conductivity of the connection. 

 

However, dielectric grease should not be used to fill loose or poorly fitting connectors, as that could impede the electrical connection. A thin coating on the connection helps protect it without interfering. 

 

The key is that dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it. When used correctly on well-sealed connections, it enhances conductivity by preventing corrosion, without disrupting the flow of current.

You're not answering my question. In fact, you're making my point. You say that "dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it." Since it's an insulator, why can electricity nevertheless flow between contacts that both have a film of dielectric grease?

Answer

You're absolutely right, I should have explained this more clearly. The reason why a thin layer of dielectric grease does not impede electrical conductivity is due to the concept of electrical tunneling.

Electrical Tunneling

Even though dielectric grease is an insulator, when applied in a very thin layer between two conductive surfaces, it allows electrons to "tunnel" through the insulating layer, enabling electrical current to flow.

How Electrical Tunneling Works:

• When the conductive surfaces are in very close proximity (on the order of nanometers), the electrons can quantum mechanically "tunnel" through the thin insulating layer of dielectric grease.
• This occurs because the insulating layer is so thin that the electron wave functions can overlap between the two conductive surfaces, allowing the electrons to pass through.
• As long as the dielectric grease layer is sufficiently thin (typically less than 10 nanometers), the tunneling effect dominates, and the grease does not significantly impede the electrical conductivity.

So in summary, the thin layer of dielectric grease acts as an insulator, but the electrical tunneling phenomenon allows current to flow between the conductive surfaces it separates, without being impeded. This is why dielectric grease can protect electrical connections without disrupting conductivity.

That helps. Quantum mechanics to the rescue.

Answer

Based on the search results provided, here is the key information to answer your question: The reason a thin layer of dielectric grease does not impede electrical conductivity is due to the quantum mechanical phenomenon of electrical tunneling.

Electrical Tunneling Explanation

• Even though dielectric grease is an insulator, when applied in a very thin layer between two conductive surfaces, it allows electrons to "tunnel" through the insulating layer.
• This occurs because the insulating layer is so thin (typically less than 10 nanometers) that the electron wave functions can overlap between the two conductive surfaces, allowing the electrons to pass through.
• The tunneling effect dominates when the dielectric grease layer is sufficiently thin, enabling current to flow between the conductive surfaces without being significantly impeded by the insulating properties of the grease.

So in summary, the thin layer of dielectric grease acts as an insulator, but the quantum mechanical tunneling phenomenon allows electrons to pass through without disrupting the electrical conductivity of the connection. This is why dielectric grease can protect electrical connections without interfering with the flow of current.

Yes, you already told me that. I was making a humorous quip about "quantum mechanics to the rescue."

Answer

Ah I see, my apologies. I should have picked up on your humorous quip about quantum mechanics coming to the rescue in explaining why dielectric grease doesn't interfere with electrical connections.

 

You're absolutely right, I had already explained the concept of electrical tunneling through the thin dielectric grease layer, and your comment about quantum mechanics solving the puzzle was a clever and insightful remark on my previous explanation. 

 

Thank you for the feedback - it will help me better recognize and respond appropriately to subtle humor and wit in future conversations. I appreciate you taking the time to engage with me and help improve my conversational abilities.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The Perplexity dialogues

Are you familiar with Perplexity? It's one of the new AI-based search engines.

What's remarkable is that you can ask it very detailed questions, which it parses, understands, and responds to with striking specificity. If the answer isn't clear, or you want more information, you can ask follow-up questions, which it will respond to in the context of what's already been said. In this manner you can, if you wish, engage in long-running "dialogues" on a topic, poking and prodding, following tangents, going deeper. It's actually quite amazing.

I've been increasingly using Perplexity to quickly zero in on information I'm looking for, where I wouldn't have bothered with the tedium of a Google search. I still catch myself wondering about some obscure thing or another, and it dawns on me: Just ask Perplexity.

The contrast with Google is stark. For one thing, Perplexity understands your question, even a complicated one, in considerable detail. (I've heard that Google is working to increase the amount of AI in its own query processing.)

For another, it constructs a detailed response that, if all goes well, gets exactly to what you asked. Google responses, by comparison, are still largely a collection of links. It's your job to plow through those links, process the source documents, and (hopefully) find what you're looking for. By contrast, Perplexity pulls the relevant information out of the source documents and constructs a customized response, and that response is very well organized.

Of course, Perplexity isn't infallible. As with all things you encounter on the internet, it's still your job to ascertain your confidence in its answers. I've had situations where I wasn't happy with how it formulated an answer or explained a concept, so I drilled in with follow-ups until it seemed to be making sense. I'll share some of those in later posts. Perplexity does show you its sources, and you might want to consult them on subjects that are very important, or at least verify that they're sufficiently authoritative for your particular needs.

I said you can ask Perplexity complicated questions. Here's an example:

"Suppose I discharge a fully charged battery by n Amp-hours at a very high rate relative to the battery's capacity. The very high discharge rate will reduce the battery's capacity. Can we say anything about how many Amp-hours of charge will be required to bring the battery back to full charge?"

I thought Perplexity's answer to this one was more convoluted than it needed to be, with extraneous detail. After a couple of iterations of follow-up we both agreed that the discharge rate doesn't matter: Amp-hours in equals Amp-hours out. That, too, for another post.

What follows below is one of my first Perplexity dialogues. I've reproduced the questions and answers, but it would have been too tedious to include the linked sources and all the rest that were part of the original session. If you want to see and read it in its original form, which I recommend, click on this. Ignore all the gobbledygook that appears, and click on the Download button in the upper right part of the page. This downloads the source html file. You will then need to open it using whatever mechanism your browser provides for viewing downloaded files. (Firefox, Edge, and Chrome all pop up download dialogues. You'll need to click on the appropriate document when the download completes.)

Here then, the dialogue. And yes, I changed the subject after two questions. I was doing some initial experimentation with Perplexity. The largest bold headings are my actual questions; all the rest is Perplexity's answers:

---

Is conjecture a verb?

Answer

Yes, "conjecture" can be used as a verb. It means to form an opinion or reach a conclusion on the basis of information that is not certain or complete. For example, "He conjectured that the population might double in ten years" or "She conjectured the existence of a completely new species".

 

Yes, but you changed it to "conjectured." Can I say: "If we were to conjecture..." ?

Answer

Yes, you can say "If we were to conjecture..." The word "conjecture" can be used in conditional sentences to express hypothetical situations, as in "If we were to conjecture the outcome, it might lead to a..."

 

Was the author of the Gospel of Matthew the apostle of the same name?

Answer

The authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is a topic of scholarly debate. While the gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew, most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of Judaism. The claim of his gospel authorship is rejected by most biblical scholars, and the author is not named within the text. The attribution "according to Matthew" was added possibly as early as the second century, but the actual authorship remains uncertain. Therefore, it is not definitively established that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was the apostle of the same name.

 

You say "most modern scholars." Can you characterize "most"?

Answer

The term "most modern scholars" generally refers to the majority or a significant number of scholars in a particular field. In the case of the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, the majority of modern scholars, including biblical experts, hold that the gospel was written anonymously by an unknown Jewish author in the late first century. While the gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew, this attribution is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and the actual authorship remains uncertain. Therefore, "most modern scholars" indicates a prevailing consensus among experts in the field.

 

How strong is that consensus?

Answer

The consensus among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is generally strong in favor of it being written by an anonymous Jewish author in the late first century, rather than the apostle of the same name. This consensus is based on a variety of evidence, including the lack of direct attribution within the text and the presence of technical legal aspects of Judaism in the gospel, which suggests that the author was a Jewish individual familiar with such matters. While there may be some minority views or debates on this issue, the prevailing scholarly opinion supports the conclusion that the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is not attributed to the apostle of the same name.

 

You didn't mention that much of Matthew's gospel comes from Mark.

Answer

The Gospel of Matthew is believed to have been composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The relationship between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark is a topic of scholarly discussion. It is widely recognized that much of the content in Matthew's gospel comes from Mark, with Matthew incorporating about 600 of Mark’s 649 verses into his Gospel, and Luke retaining about 360 verses of Markan material. All told, 97% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew and/or Luke. This dependence on Mark's Gospel is one of the factors that contribute to the scholarly consensus that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was not the apostle of the same name, but rather an anonymous Jewish Christian writing for Christians of a similar background. Therefore, the strong consensus among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is based on various textual and historical evidence, including its relationship to the Gospel According to Mark.

 

Matthew's gospel also doesn't seem to be an eye witness account, does it?

Answer

The Gospel of Matthew is not generally considered an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus. While some early church tradition holds that the Apostle Matthew wrote the book, modern scholars question this attribution. The gospel itself does not explicitly claim to have been written by the apostle, and it is widely believed to have been composed in Greek, possibly by an anonymous Jewish Christian, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The relationship between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as the lack of direct attribution within the text, has led to the majority of scholars believing that the Gospel of Matthew was not written by the apostle of the same name and does not represent an eyewitness account. Therefore, the prevailing scholarly opinion is that the Gospel of Matthew is not an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus.

 

You also didn't mention that Matthew also used Q.

Answer

Yes, you are correct. The Gospel of Matthew is also believed to have used Q, which is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings, and is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to the Q source hypothesis, both Matthew and Luke used the Q document as a source for the sayings of Jesus, and this is one of the factors that contribute to the scholarly consensus that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was not the apostle of the same name, but rather an anonymous Jewish Christian writing for Christians of a similar background.

 

And the apostle Matthew wouldn't have written in Greek, correct?

Answer

The language in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written is a topic of scholarly debate. While some early church tradition and certain scholars have suggested that the gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, the prevailing view among most modern scholars is that it was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The claim that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel in Aramaic and later translated it into Greek is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and there is no extant manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic or Hebrew that predates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, while the issue is not definitively settled, the consensus among most modern scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and its original language remains a topic of ongoing scholarly discussion.

 

But if the apostle did write it, he would have written in a Semitic language, right?

Answer

The question of whether the apostle Matthew would have written in a Semitic language is a matter of scholarly debate. While some early church tradition and certain scholars have suggested that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, the prevailing view among most modern scholars is that it was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The claim that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew and later translated it into Greek is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and there is no extant manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic or Hebrew that predates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, while the issue is not definitively settled, the consensus among most modern scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and its original language remains a topic of ongoing scholarly discussion.

 

So Brant Pitre's contention that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle is outside the mainstream of scholarly opinion.

Answer

Yes, the contention that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew is outside the mainstream of scholarly opinion. Most modern scholars hold that the gospel was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of Judaism. The claim of his gospel authorship is rejected by most biblical scholars, and the author is not named within the text. Therefore, the view that the apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew is not supported by the prevailing scholarly consensus.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

We all know

House Speaker Mike Johnson wants new legislation to make sure illegal immigrants can't vote in U.S. elections—something that of course is already against the law.

"We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections," Johnson said.

 

Johnson makes the fundamental mistake of combining two words that are utterly incompatible in this context: "know" and "intuitively."

 

Johnson also said that noncitizen voting poses a "clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system."

That is false on both counts. The danger is neither clear nor present. (By contrast, one danger to our election system that is both clear and present is a president who attempts to remain in office after losing an election. Johnson was very much involved in that attempt.)

Experts who have studied the question have long said that illegal immigrant voting in the U.S. is vanishingly rare. Which makes sense: If you're illegal, you want to fly below the radar and remain in the country. Keep your head down. Don't do anything to raise attention or get yourself in trouble. That, by the way, is a reason immigrants commit less crime overall than native born Americans. Thus can intuition help explain observed fact, but it's the fact that matters.

 

Indeed, election fraud of every sort is extremely rare, and not for want of looking. Which provides a useful contrast between "know" and "intuitively." Experts who know have done the actual work of finding out. Persons who just know operate from a collection of prejudices. They somehow think we should credit their fact-free intuition. It's that way with lots of things. It's how alternative realities are constructed and inhabited.

Voter fraud has been a Republican bogeyman almost forever. Early in the Trump administration Mike Pence chaired a commission to look for fraud—how else could Trump have lost the popular vote by 3 million? But the effort quickly folded, which is itself telling, and somewhat amusing. Meanwhile, the experts who have studied the matter extensively kept saying there is no meaningful fraud. Every time we make a serious effort to look for it, there's none to be found. (The Republican-controlled Arizona senate went looking in its 2020 election "audit" and ended up finding a few hundred additional votes on net for Biden, which is worth a few chortles.) Yet Mike Johnson knows intuitively the fraud is there.

Another thing Johnson knows intuitively is that burning fossil fuels doesn't cause the global warming we're experiencing right now. This has to be an intuitive belief, because if Johnson had bothered to learn anything factual about climate science, he'd not hold it.

"The climate is changing," Johnson acknowledges. "But the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver."

As I wrote here, the problem is that Johnson doesn't "think" at all. Johnson's "belief" is entirely uninformed by any learned facts. His handwave at "natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history" is stupendously facile. Which is not to say that the cycles aren't real or important. They absolutely are. If Johnson would learn about what drives them, he'd gain an important understanding about the climate, and how humanity has taken absolute control over it.

But it seems Mike Johnson isn't wired to learn things. By now we've seen plenty of examples.

 

And his ways of knowing are all wrong. Early in his tenure he said that if you want to know what he thinks, you should read the Bible. Seriously? What does the Bible say about election fraud? About climate change? About any of Johnson's particular responsibilities to the nation as speaker of the House? He has a crucially important job to do, but, as an intellectual matter, he's exceedingly ill-equipped to do it.

But he does convey something real and frightening. The "we" in his "we all know" are actual multitudes, who with Johnson occupy their own reality different from the actual one. They have their own way of knowing that has nothing to do with learning demonstrable facts about the reality that is. And that should scare the bejesus out of the rest of us. It does me.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The reality that is

"God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent," Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted on Friday. "Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens."

Practitioners of religion everywhere nod in solemn agreement, which is a good reason to steer clear of religion. Earthquakes and eclipses have been recurrent natural features of the earth for its four billion year existence. For the vast majority of that time there were no humans to receive God's geological and astronomical signs.

I've asked this before: Does religion makes people stupid, or are stupid people drawn to religion? I suspect cause and effect goes in both directions.

There are many ways to be stupid. One noteworthy way is believing the 2020 election was stolen—a belief held for years by solid majorities of Republicans.

The reason belief in a rigged election is such a strong indicator of stupidity is that the lines of evidence that it was not rigged are so numerous, unambiguous, and irrefutable. You really do have to live in your own special reality, seeped in both ignorance and irrationality, to hold such a belief.

And that's the point. It was Kellyanne Conway who, in defending Sean Spicer's utterly false statement about the attendance numbers of Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017, coined the term "alternative facts." Alternative facts, an oxymoron, readily shade into alternative realities, and the strong belief in a stolen election is just one example among many.

My thesis, repeated frequently, is that there is only one reality, and our job is to discern it. Much depends on how well we do so.

Was God sending a sign with Friday's smallish earthquake in New York? How about the previous, larger one, in 2011? Or the magnitude 5.0 quake in 1884?

Consider a mind at a fork in the road, where one way involves signs from God, and another involves acknowledging geology, faults, tectonic plates, and such.

Likewise, is there a sign to be inferred from the soon to happen solar eclipse? Depends on what you mean by "sign." Scientists, as is their wont, eagerly look forward to using the eclipse to learn more about the sun's corona, which can only be directly observed during total eclipses.

In the case of eclipses, God's signs occur on a precise schedule that can be computed as far into the future as you'd like. A total solar eclipse will cross Alaska on March 30, 2033. The next total eclipse in the lower 48 will be on August 12, 2044. But that's just the U.S. Worldwide, the number of such signs over the next half century are too numerous to itemize here, but Time has mapped all of them for you to ponder.

Tragically, inhabiting alternative realities severely impedes our ability to deal with the actual one. All manner of bad things happen when we don't know what's real. Election denialism is a serious threat to the democratic process and the constitutionally mandated transfer of power. Climate denialism ensures we'll suffer far more from the consequences of global warming than if we'd taken timely action informed by reality—a reality that scientists, at least, have known about for at least a century, with ever increasing certainty and understanding over that time.

As a general matter, inhabiting alternative realities entrains a pernicious, self-reinforcing cycle of irrationality that becomes an ingrained pathology of the intellect. I'm increasingly convinced that it evinces a way of thinking that consumes not just one part of reality but, indeed, most or all of them. Dip your toe into this fetid pool and you might soon enough find yourself believing that jet airplane "contrails" (condensation trails) are evidence that the government is chemically seeding the atmosphere with nefarious intent, or constructing concentration camps pursuant to rounding up the populace. Some brains become too broken to grasp the trivially simple and correct fact that airplane contrails are just condensing, and thus visible, water vapor—a normal component of engine exhaust akin to what you can see coming from a car's tailpipe on a cold day. If enough brains operate this way, the entire societal project can break down.

Which is all to say that alternative realities can't be isolated. Your willingness to entertain one affects your willingness to entertain many. Mental discipline can help hold off this tendency, but I've come to believe that many peoples' brains are wired to be irrational. There might be an evolutionary basis for this, but in the modern world the harm vastly exceeds the vestigial evolutionary benefit.

I used to think that maybe religion could be fenced off, as a special case, from all the rest. Now I have serious doubts. The willingness to credit the possibility of divine intervention as an explanation for physical reality is both noxious and insidious, if for no other reason than it metastasizes and then destroys the ability of the thinking brain to function properly in other domains. After all, if you think an eclipse that you've known about decades in advance is somehow a sign from God, then clearly your brain isn't firing on all cylinders.

As an example of how this works, one believer told me emphatically that God determines when we die. But later that very day, upon hearing about a fatal car accident nearby, that person told me "you can't be too careful" when driving. So which is it? Some minds contradict themselves obliviously, and thus effortlessly, without a moment's reflection or any sense of irony.

The shocks of being hit by alternative realities keep coming, sometimes with jaw dropping, inexplicable suddenness. Aileen Cannon, the judge in Donald Trump's Mar a Lago documents case, seems to be entertaining the notion that the Presidential Records Act might constitute a legitimate defense for Trump taking classified national security documents with him when he left the White House. This is bonkers backwards. As experts have been explaining for years, the Act severely circumscribes what an ex-president may take by deeming it to be "personal."

In point of fact, very little of a president's documents qualify as personal. The point of the Act, which was a post-Watergate reform, was to make this explicit. Almost every document under the purview of a presidential administration is assumed to belong to the American people, and is required to be turned over to the National Archives when a president leaves office. It isn't left to presidential whims or discretion to exempt whatever documents he wants.

According to the National Archives, "The Presidential Records Act (PRA) changed the legal status of Presidential and Vice Presidential materials. Under the PRA, the official records of the President and his staff are owned by the United States, not by the President. The Archivist is required to take custody of these records when the President leaves office, and to maintain them in a Federal depository." [bold in the original]

Any citizen can easily read about what the Act is and why it was passed. There's a Wikipedia page on it, if you prefer. Now it appears that a federal district court judge, who is required to make rulings of law, doesn't have a rudimentary understanding, available to anybody, of what the law is. The Presidential Records Act is absolutely not relevant to Trump's documents case, except that prosecutors could have (they didn't) charged Trump with violating it. Wrongly introducing it to a jury could easily torpedo the prosecution's case. And once a jury is empaneled, the prosecution cannot appeal any ruling by the trial judge to a higher court, or commence a new trial to correct the judge's mistake.

It can seem that the intellectual touchstones by which we manage our affairs and understand the world are being upended continually. The few of us who insist on living in the reality that is can sometimes have a sense of drowning under waves of irrationality and ignorance. Nothing makes sense. Your best factual arguments fall on deaf, careless ears. Everybody reserves the right to define their own reality, seemingly unable to recognize why that cannot be as an organizing principle for society. Irrationality has always been a feature of humanity, but I wonder if we're at some kind of inflection point where its expression at massive scale is causing immense harm.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

In poll, voters blame Biden for pandemic

In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, voters say across the board that they prefer Donald Trump's policies to Joe Biden's.

One likely voter, Henry Perez, 50, who lives in California’s Central Valley, put it this way: "Just go to the pump and go to the store — that will tell you everything you need to know about how Biden’s policies have hurt me."

Everything you need to know.

Mr. Perez is complaining about high prices resulting from inflation, which was a worldwide consequence of supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic. He's complaining about high energy costs, which are a consequence of pandemic disruptions, oil producers deliberately restraining production increases to maximize profits, and the upheaval in energy markets caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (I know persons who blame Biden for Russia's invasion, too.)

For many voters, everything you need to know is that prices are higher after the pandemic—a pandemic that began a full year before Biden took office—than before it. That's despite the fact that under Biden, inflation has been lower in the U.S. than many advanced countries, and the U.S. economy has led the world, through and out of the once-in-a-century pandemic. (Both Europe and China have been in economic doldrums.)

It's despite the fact that wage growth in the U.S. has actually outpaced inflation, meaning workers are better off on net.

It's despite the fact that Trump lost 9.1 million jobs in his final 12 months in office, and lost 2.7 million over four years, whereas Biden created 7.1 million jobs in his first 12 months, and almost 15 million jobs in his first three years. That latter accomplishment is unprecedented in U.S. history, and Biden still has another 12 months to increase it further before his first (and only?) term ends.

Of course, Mr. Perez could not tell you anything factual about Biden's "policies," or Trump's. That's the problem with everything you need to know reasoning. It isn't reasoning and it isn't everything you need to know.

Some voters won't vote for Biden because he hasn't delivered on promised student loan debt relief. That's despite the fact that Biden issued an order that would have provided relief to 43 million borrowers, but the Supreme Court invalidated it. All three justices appointed by Trump voted to smack down the Biden move. Elections really do have consequences. (Biden, doing what he can by executive action, has responded with more targeted student loan debt forgiveness, taking multiple smaller bites at the problem.) But what many everything you need to know voters care about is that Biden didn't give them what he promised, so they're mad at him.

Welcome to democracy which, as Winston Churchill put it, "is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."

Democracy gave us the first Trump presidency. Back then, one acquaintance told me he'd vote for Trump because Trump would run the country "like a business." That's despite the fact that countries aren't businesses, and shouldn't be "run" like them. And for whatever it may have been worth, Trump's own actual business record at the time of the election included four bankruptcies. Now it's been recently adjudicated in court that Trump's business model employs financial fraud, to the tune of $355 million in the single case just concluded, plus $95 million in interest. Trump is on the hook for $450 million.

Although we might wish for better informed voters, we won't be getting them. In some ways it's amazing the thing holds together at all. Maybe this time it won't.

By the way, this post's title is sarcasm. But you knew that.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Somebody's gotta say it. Why not me?

I'm not an expert on constitutional law, but I'm occasionally good at basic reasoning. Something that seems noteworthy, but not mentioned in any analysis I've heard, jumped out at me while reading Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the one that specifies that an insurrectionist can't hold office in the U.S. Here's the relevant paragraph:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Discussions of this much-debated section include the question of who must make the finding of insurrection and disqualification. Some observers insist the determination must be made by Congress.

But a simple reading of the text suggests that's not what Section 3 intends, or at least anticipates. The final sentence of the paragraph quoted above is: "But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

That is, Congress has the power by super-majority vote to waive a finding of disqualification. It would be odd for Section 3 to specify the mechanism by which Congress could waive its own finding of disqualification.

Thus Section 3 seems to anticipate some other entity than Congress making the determination. Who would that be? It seems the only possibilities are the various states, through their own individual procedures, laws, and courts, or the federal judiciary.

By that reasoning the federal judiciary—ultimately the Supreme Court—is the only entity that could impose a uniform finding of disqualification across all the states. Some observers believe such uniformity is crucial.

I mention this because no analysis I've heard argues against the finding being made by Congress, which would be another way to achieve national uniformity. And as I said, some observers insist that it must be Congress that makes the determination. But it seems to me that the text of Section 3 strongly implies that Congress would not have that role.

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments regarding Donald Trump's disqualification by the state of Colorado. The Court could punt this question in multiple ways, and probably will. It seems unlikely that it would simply uphold the Colorado finding.

Is there a chance it would it go further? Would it say Colorado's finding of Trump engaging in insurrection is correct, and that Trump is therefore ineligible to hold office? That Trump can't be on the ballot in any state?

Probably not this court, even if that would be the most logical result. But stay tuned. This will surely get interesting.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Mike Johnson: "I don't think..."

The new Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said this at a town hall in 2017: "The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver."

Johnson doesn't think burning fossil fuels (for which driving SUVs is his dismissive proxy) is the "primary driver" of present-day climate change. I would suggest that he doesn't think at all.

Which sums up the problem in a nutshell. Does he have an opinion? Yes. Does he think? No.

There are several important "drivers" of "natural" climactic variation (to which Johnson offers a handwave) over geologic time. One is periodic changes to the axis-tilt of the earth, plus changes in the shape of its orbit. These give us ice ages, when prevailing geological processes permit. The science of ice age formation is very well understood.

Another long term driver of "natural" climactic variation is the interplay between geological processes that emit carbon into the atmosphere, and those that remove it, typically playing out over millions of years. I wrote about this recently.

Whatever climate process we consider, carbon dioxide is always in the thick of it, either as a primary driver of change, or as (in the case of ice ages) part of a feedback mechanism. Carbon dioxide is itself the earth's most important greenhouse gas, and is the fundamental determinant of the planet's temperature. Earth would be far colder without an atmosphere containing CO2.

The correspondence between changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration and changes in the temperature of the earth is well understood. The mechanism of that relationship is rather elementary physics, involving how greenhouse gas concentrations make the atmosphere more or less opaque to outgoing infrared radiation. I touched on that here.

The actual atmospheric CO2 concentration has been precisely measured since 1957. The upward march of CO2 concentration over that period is shown graphically by the Keeling Curve. The sawtooth shape of the curve even demonstrates atmospheric CO2 fluctuations between northern hemisphere summers and winters. (The northern hemisphere has far greater land area than the southern hemisphere; CO2 is absorbed by plants during its growing season, which biannually modulates global CO2 concentrations.)

We know that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was around 280 parts per million (ppm) at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The measured concentration in 1957 was 315 ppm. The measured CO2 concentration today is 416 ppm, an increase of almost 50 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: a breathtaking increase in so short a time. We know that increase is due to the burning of fossil fuels, as a consequence of industrialization. Because fossil fuels are a global commodity, we can calculate how much CO2 we emit by burning them, and we can confirm how that correlates with the atmospheric concentrations we measure. We also know there are no natural sources of CO2 emissions happening that could explain the rapid increase now occurring. And we know that the rate of increase right now is far more rapid—stupendously more rapid—than any that has occurred under natural conditions in the geologic past.

Everything I've said here is well understood. Much of it is rather elementary at, say, the level of a first-year physics undergrad. And while we might not expect everybody to have mastered all these details, we can expect everybody—especially policy makers and legislators (and you!)—to at least grasp that scientists understand the science, and in broad strokes that understanding is not controversial among those with the relevant subject matter expertise. In fact, there's enormous scientific consensus that anthropogenic (human caused) climate change is real.

We could also add that over the past several decades the science has been highly predictive of conditions as they have unfolded—so much so that the likes of Mike Johnson, the new speaker, acknowledge that the climate really is changing. It's just that he doesn't think it's for the reason scientists say.

Which is tantamount to him saying I don't think at all. By what authority does he form his beliefs on a question that is fundamentally scientific?

If Johnson is going to offer a contrary opinion, oughtn't he be obliged to at least say why he thinks the climate is changing? Don't hold your breath. All he offers is a handwave, one you can expect to hear a lot more of as the changes now manifesting, this year rather dramatically, become increasingly undeniable. As we saw above, Johnson's handwave is this: Presently-observed climate change is "caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history." None of which Mike Johnson understands. Nor will he make any effort to understand.

It's important to realize that waving at natural variation itself explains nothing. You still need to elucidate the physical mechanisms underlying natural variation, and contrast those mechanisms with what's happening now.

Science does understand those natural variations, some of which I've mentioned here, and explained in the links above. Science very much understands how atmospheric CO2 concentrations are involved in Johnson's "natural cycles." And it understands how the very rapid increase in CO2 concentrations occurring right now are a result, pure and simple, of human emissions. Science explains the why and the how. And thus it understands that humans are rapidly warming the planet. This time there's nothing "natural" about it.

Copyright (C) 2023 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

WaPo likewise botches Social Security and debt

The first obligation of every thinking person is to discern what's real. The first obligation of the news media is to inform its readers, listeners, and viewers about what's real. (Which, by the way, is why one ought never append the word "News" to the word "Fox.")

The news media, even at its best, has egregiously failed Americans regarding Social Security. When it comes to that most essential of programs, most of us literally don't know what's real. (Eighteen years ago an acquaintance of mine, who thinks he's very wise, proclaimed that Social Security is broke, period. It wasn't then, and it isn't now.) Even our best news sources advance a narrative of never-explained assertions that everybody just knows (where just knowing is different from actually knowing), always skipping over crucial detail in a seeming desire to simplify the situation for a populace that can never understand it. Or maybe, as I sometimes think, the reporters themselves don't understand it either. Not that it's all that difficult.

Maybe it's just that the media wants to shoehorn Social Security into some other narrative currently commanding the public's attention, even if it doesn't really fit, and in any case stripped of necessary nuance. I complained about how NPR got it wrong during the debt ceiling debate earlier in the summer. More recently the Washington Post did it too, in a piece on the government shutdown crisis. The Post claimed that "the uncomfortable fiscal reality is that most of what is driving federal borrowing to record levels isn’t even up for discussion this week."

"The government’s biggest annual expense," said the Post, "and the main drivers of U.S. debt, are the retirement programs Medicare and Social Security."

The Post got it half right: the part about the "biggest annual expense." But half right isn't nearly good enough. I will have nothing to say here about Medicare, but it is entirely false that Social Security is a "main driver" of the debt. Social Security hasn't driven the debt at all.

Equating expense with debt is unforgivably misleading. As I wrote recently, Social Security has never added a penny to the national debt. Whether or not it ever does depends on choices we must make about its continuing finances. Those choices can't be properly considered if we don't even know what's real. In promoting an enduring mythology about Social Security and debt, the mainstream media has preempted that crucial discussion. And it has empowered political actors—some of whom are nefarious, and some of whom, who like most Americans, including reporters, are merely ignorant—who would like to severely curtail all our major social programs. Social Security is too important to be treated so mindlessly.

You can certainly imagine the roots of the false narrative. When the Treasury Department lists the top ten U.S. budgetary spending categories, Social Security tops the list. It accounts for a whopping 23 percent of all government spending. (Medicare is fourth, at 13 percent.) Although it's never explicitly laid out in the media's breezy assertions, the idea seems to be this: Social Security accounts for a huge amount of federal spending, and total federal spending is in substantial budgetary deficit, so, ergo, Social Security is a large driver of the debt.

But it just ain't so. Always omitted is the crucial point that Social Security has its own dedicated funding stream: the payroll tax. Also omitted is that the government long ago took explicit and enormously consequential steps to ensure the long term solvency of Social Security, by increasing the payroll tax to levels that were higher than was needed to cover benefit payments at the time. The intention was to grow a large Trust Fund that would contain assets sufficient to supplement the payroll tax when baby boomers eventually retired in large numbers, decades later. And it worked. It's working right now.

This was a shining example of deliberate, intelligent, foresightful government action that's hard to fathom in our present time of extreme dysfunction.

Thus, as a consequence of decisions made in the 1980s to anticipate and prepare for the retirement of the baby boomers, Social Security has actually run a very long term fiscal surplus, which accumulated year after year and decade after decade in the Trust Fund. Almost $3 trillion exists in the Trust Fund today, duly reported in the country's official accounts, as an undeniable testimony to that fiscal surplus. Driver of the debt? Don't be ridiculous.

It is true that over many years Social Security's surplus has had the effect of masking deficits in other parts of the budget. Maybe that helped create some confusion in the mainstream media and elsewhere, because there's a sense in which Social Security's finances were always lumped together, conceptually if not legally, with other government spending. Maybe the media knows full well what's going on, but doesn't want to take the trouble to explain it. Could it just be a matter of inconvenience, or even sloth?

But the citizenry needs to know: Even today, payroll tax receipts plus Trust Fund withdrawals are used to pay Social Security benefits without any borrowing whatsoever. I repeat emphatically: Social Security has never added a penny to the debt.

Social Security does indeed face future fiscal challenges that ought to be discussed and dealt with now, while we have time and space to work out a longer term strategy. One approach to ensuring Social Security is adequately funded into the future would be to increase the payroll tax, and also to increase the amount of income that's subject to it. The other approach, usually advanced from the right, would be to reduce Social Security benefits paid to retirees, but that approach is not at all inevitable, which is why we need to have the debate. We can choose to pay for what we value, and Americans generally value Social Security enormously. America's youth perhaps value it less, not least because they've been told over and over that the program will go bust before they themselves reach retirement. In that sense the myth of insolvency is insidious and noxious.

None of this can be intelligently debated if most of us, including our politicians, don't even understand how the program is financed, and what options are available to us. The media has done us all a great disservice in that regard, by framing the program as a debt problem when it isn't.

Copyright (C) 2023 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.