Sunday 27 September 2015

Vyasa's Vighnaharta

Much has been written about the Gita but few mention the elephant in the room.
For Hindus- it is Ganesh.
The main obstacle Vyasa faced in composing the Mahabharata was finding a faultless scribe to take down his inspired verses. As 'destroyer of obstacles' our friendly elephant headed God volunteered to be Vyasa's amanuensis.

But Ganesha is also the 'creator of obstacles' and His presence lets us focus on the biggest obstacle that would arise in the composition of a work which shows that the Just King must learn Statistical Game Theory to overcome 'vishaada'- debilitating angst or Moral Uncertainty.

What is that obstacle? Well, in any didactic exercise or gedanken there is always the danger that either the speaker or the auditor, or both, will forget the wholly metaphorical nature of the underlying discourse and begin indulging in 'meta-metaphoricity'- i.e. taking a metaphor for a fact and constructing another metaphor, itself taken as fact, upon this illusory basis. In other words, there is a slippery slope to Alice in Wonderland type nonsense.

Interestingly, Ganesha warns Vyasa that he must not stop the flow of his dictation- in other words, Vyasa has to have a heuristic against facile nonsense- and Vyasa adds the stipulation that Ganesha should pause if he does not understand a couplet- thus always being able to buy time for himself by employing Vedic 'Slehsa' or metonymy.
Thus Vyasa, internalizing a Noether type symmetry conservation heuristic, remains on his guard against facile prolixity while Ganesha, who only pauses for what is deep- i.e. Vedic- is able to remove the obstacle he himself, as Vighnakarta, created so that as a matter of fact, not conjecture, the Mahabharata becomes a truly divine book dispelling all delusion, though only for stupid debased drunkards like me. Savants and people of good character can always study the Vedas which I am too stupid and evil to propound, while my aleatory exposure to the 'fifth Veda' enables me to have a good laugh at the silly things scholars say about it.

In particular, in Game Theory- the dramatic scenarios it invokes- the word 'rational' is used in a wholly metaphorical sense. The elephant in the room is Muth rationality- human beings are social animals and only that is rational which we would all agree - this is called Rawlisan 'overlapping consensus'- is the correct theory all can act upon for the best empirical outcome.

Game theoretic exercises show how 'rational' following a rule leads to irrational catastrophes and this has instrumental value provided we don't forget the motivation of the elephant in the room- viz. the fact that we only created an artificial obstacle so as to improve our insight into how to get rid of a real stumbling block.

In other words, Game theory studies rationality artificially constrained to be irrational so that the actual constraints on Muth Rationality- re. Information aggregation and decisional heuristics- are better understood and circumvented.

The Mahabharata, though showing that Policy Principals need to apply Statistics and Game Theory, also reveals that Moral Agents need something else entirely to escape Vishaada- i.e. existential angst.
The Bhagvad Gita- in which both the incarnation of the Divine and the representation of the human-too-human are merely Agents, not Principals- comes to the conclusion that human life is ontologically dyshoric- even Presentism must turn into Theistic Occassionalism such that this world is devalued- it is rejected as heimat- and ontlological dysphoria is itself celebrated as 'Vishaada Yoga' and becomes foundational to Raja Yoga and Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga- i.e. all the good stuff.

Saturday 26 September 2015

Viktor Orban may be a cat even if no cat is Viktor Orban.

Does 'No cat is Viktor Orban' necessarily imply 'Viktor Orban is not a cat'? No because Viktor Orban may have the property of being a cat only when it is established that no cat does.

What happens when we add the stipulation that there is at least one cat? Can we now deduce from 'No cat is Viktor Orban' that 'Viktor Orban is not a cat.'? No because Viktor Orban may have the property of being promoted to cat status iff only one cat is confirmed in that property. Similarly the existence of n cats who are not Viktor Orban may itself vest the property of being a cat in him.




Tuesday 22 September 2015

The truth about Jivanmuktas

My Seetha was an eight year old Iyengar whose fierce affection
Taught my Iyer alterity its grotesque reflection
Fear is that Demeter mills the World on Belief's lathe
Till, Dis, thy LSEusis graduates Faith

Thursday 17 September 2015

Muth Rational Migration Theory.

When my mother asked if we were hungry, sister would reply 'So hungry, my Capital is Budapest!' which earned her a biscuit. I would get angry and weep bitter tears till my wife intervened and threatened my Mum with prison under India's draconian anti-dowry legislation. Then I too got a biscuit.

What prompts this digression down Memory lane, is the spectacle of Hungry Border Guards beating refugees from Syria because they don't all happen to look like Amal Clooney-
As Ghalib said-
I will swing for you, mate, the way you translate my ghazals all Auto-tuney
Tho' Heaven's Houris, too, could wait were my lawyer Amal Clooney

As so often happens on this blog, mention of Ghalib means I've been drinking and thus the great ethical dilemma of the day will, very quickly, be shown to decompose into a simple case of ignoring Muth Rationality. 

In this case, Merkel's  policy of dithering till Public Perception of a crisis for Liberal values snowballed meant that the 'Ordo'- i.e. rule based- part of Ordoliberalism- became a nullity.

Essentially, Merkel's salience meant Media led, ad captum vulgi, Crises were the 'discovery' process for Social Choice. This was fine if Europe actually had more capacity for Liberal policies than could be acknowledged by the 'Ordo' rule-set because of some cognitive bias or Ambiguity aversion.

However, Merkel's flip flop- saying 'come one, come all' one day and then suspending Schengen a couple of days later- means that Viktor Orban (who is actually my neighbor's cat which ran away back in the Nineties) has suddenly gained salience as the Arrowvian dictator or mimetic leader.

One outcome is that backward induction can now show the Muth Rational solution- viz. Country X, which will take migrant y, even in violation of its rule-set, should arrange the current safety and wait listed transport of that migrant immediately. Otherwise the present value of the cost of treatment for trauma, which will fall upon the final host, will outweigh the current cost of arranging safe warehousing and wait listed transport.

Of course, this way,  avoidable death and suffering to migrants, and profits accruing to people smugglers, would not arise. That's a good thing. The argument could be made that People's Preferences would not change unless these avoidable deaths actually occur- i.e.  bead babies washing up on the beach, or a dad with a bloody face clutching his baby running from the Hungarians- but this is not a moral argument. In any case, Human beings are very good at simulating horrible outcomes so as to awake feelings of pity and terror. A well made film- even a poem by a school kid- would change our preferences without even the depiction of death or suffering. The suggestion of vulnerability is enough.

The concept of Muth Rationality arose more than 50 years ago in response to the War time bureaucratization of Liberal Democracy with more and more decisions being delegated to clerks following rules mechanically. People like Arrow showed that Social Choice can't function democratically if rules are mechanically applied. John Muth explained why economic processes aren't hopelessly hysteresis entangled but quickly return to ergodicity from any perturbation no matter what traits or 'adaptive expectations' type heuristics are attributed to, or indeed affirmed, by people.

The idea is simplicity itself- people will expect the result of the correct economic theory. This expectation will create its own reality iff no current obligatory passage point seeks to capture a rent.

In this case Merkel wanted to capture a reputational rent as St.Angela without running the risk or expending the effort necessary to prepare Germany for the outcome she wanted. But this rent vanished very quickly. Orban became the obligatory passage point.  Expectations are already adjusting. Orban will probably get no more, and no less that the number of migrants his people really want. Suddenly he has salience as the mimetic leader- at least on this issue.

Avoidable suffering was caused by the mixed signal Europe was sending out. Now it will build capacity to receive migrants in a rational manner. More will be saved than under the old 'wait and see' approach because 'ambiguity aversion' means rational agents jump the gun in a collectively irrational way.
There won't be a 'cobweb' type increasing or decreasing oscillation around the Muth rational solution- provided Merkel learns her lesson.

Wednesday 16 September 2015

Hindu Ethics vs Ethical Hinduism.

Hindu Ethics refers to the Norms observed by Hindus. Ethical Hinduism is the critical hermeneutics of Hindu Ethics.
To grasp the distinction, I will permit you a small glimpse of my personal life.

It so happened that a young friend invited me for his son's upanayanam (sacred thread) ceremony. I accepted graciously and mentioned what time he should pick me up. A couple of days later, I was having a drink or two and got to thinking.
My friend was certainly observing Hindu Ethics but was he really practicing Ethical Hinduism? Anyway, I sent him a Skype message to the following effect-
'Chiranjivi Sanjay,
You are a wealthy young man and carry on the philanthropic tradition of your ancestors. No doubt, you will provide us a splendid meal and have given a big donation to the Temple so the Swami is bound to deliver a marvelous sermon. Your son, too, is now sure to follow in your footsteps. It seems you have discharged your debt to the Manes while also benefiting numerous worthwhile charities.
I have no hesitation in saying that you are doing your duty as laid down by Hindu Ethics.  However, it seems to me, something is lacking. Your earning power is such that whatever sum you give away, you will earn more very quickly. Your nature, and that of your family, is so happily constituted that you get more pleasure from contemplating the benefit gained by the recipients of your charity than any you could have purchased for yourself. Where, then, is the sacrifice on your part?

'It is not enough to observe Hindu Ethics. You must practice Ethical Hinduism- which is founded upon sacrifice. Cut off your arms, roast them properly and then set off to feed some hungry cannibals or animals. After that, by all means, proceed with your son's upanayanam.'

I didn't get any answer. Next day I woke up late with a headache. The auspicious muhurath for the upanayanam had already passed. I asked my house-bound neighbor whether my friend had come to ring my bell. He was supposed to pick me up in his car. My neighbor said no one had rung my bell for months except the bailiffs. Anyway, I rang my friend and left some messages but got no answer.
A few days later I saw my friend's wife in the Ambala Sweet Shop. She saw me too but I was able to cut off her escape.
'What, I say, is wrong with your husband? I instructed him to kindly cut off his arms, roast them and find some hungry cannibals or animals to feed them to. Ethical Hinduism demands no less. Seems he is ignoring me completely! Didn't even come to pick me up for your son's upanayanam! Won't even answer when I ring! What sort of behavior is this? How he can still call himself Hindu?'
'Uncleji,' his wife replied, 'he cut off arms just as you advised. That is why he was unable to drive to your house or to pick up phone when you ring. I offered to do it for him, but he said only he can discharge his own duty- by learning to use his legs and prehensile toes- and must incur sin till he is able to do so. Let me give you his new private phone number. Leave as many messages on it as you like. Be sure he will answer you once he has properly trained his legs and toes.'

I must tell you, I felt greatly relieved to hear this. But along with relief, I also felt some remorse. I should not have recklessly accused my young friend of being an acharabrashta and Hindu by name alone.

This remorse was unwarranted. I just bumped into the fellow today. He explained that due to global liquidity trap arising from the Singerian sub-prime catastrophe relating to the currency of deontic Utilitarianism, there is contango in the alms market creating a Parrando's Game type Arbitrage strategy for Effective Altruism applicable to arms chopped off to feed hungry cannibals or animals. Thus his current arms actually belong to his younger self and can't discharge obligations undertaken after they had themselves been given up.
Since, as readers of this blog know, I am an expert on Financial Matters, I was easily able to understand how contango arises in this context.
Yet another reason that, as Varoufakis says, we Ethical Hindus must unite to slay the Global Minatour of Capitalist Humbuggery.
Meanwhile, kindly cut off your arms, roast them nicely and feed them to hungry cannibals or animals.

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Muth Rationality and the Pirate's Game

Rationality has to do with making optimal choices by means of a effectively computable calculus. There are other ways to make optimal choices- e.g. 'expert cognition' which is apophatic- and situations where some wholly intuitionistic or oracular process can be shown to yield a better result than the any effectively computable method.

What happens when you set up a gedanken where you specifically prohibit the rational choice, yet demand that a rational methods be applied?
The answer is- you get nonsense. Take the following example-

The Pirate's Game. (from Wikipedia)
There are 5 rational pirates, A, B, C, D and E. They find 100 gold coins. They must decide how to distribute them.
The pirates have a strict order of seniority: A is superior to B, who is superior to C, who is superior to D, who is superior to E.
The pirate world's rules of distribution are thus: that the most senior pirate should propose a distribution of coins. The pirates, including the proposer, then vote on whether to accept this distribution. In case of a tie vote the proposer has the casting vote. If the distribution is accepted, the coins are disbursed and the game ends. If not, the proposer is thrown overboard from the pirate ship and dies, and the next most senior pirate makes a new proposal to begin the system again.[1]
Pirates base their decisions on three factors. First of all, each pirate wants to survive. Second, given survival, each pirate wants to maximize the number of gold coins each receives. Third, each pirate would prefer to throw another overboard, if all other results would otherwise be equal.[2] The pirates do not trust each other, and will neither make nor honor any promises between pirates apart from a proposed distribution plan that gives a whole number of gold coins to each pirate.

The result
It might be expected intuitively that Pirate A will have to allocate little if any to A for fear of being voted off so that there are fewer pirates to share between. However, this is quite far from the theoretical result.
This is apparent if we work backwards: if all except D and E have been thrown overboard, D proposes 100 for D and 0 for E. D has the casting vote, and so this is the allocation.
If there are three left (C, D and E) C knows that D will offer E 0 in the next round; therefore, C has to offer E 1 coin in this round to win E's vote, and get C's allocation through. Therefore, when only three are left the allocation is C:99, D:0, E:1.
If B, C, D and E remain, B considers being thrown overboard when deciding. To avoid being thrown overboard, B can simply offer 1 to D. Because B has the casting vote, the support only by D is sufficient. Thus B proposes B:99, C:0, D:1, E:0. One might consider proposing B:99, C:0, D:0, E:1, as E knows it won't be possible to get more coins, if any, if E throws B overboard. But, as each pirate is eager to throw each other overboard, E would prefer to kill B, to get the same amount of gold from C.
Assuming A knows all these things, A can count on C and E's support for the following allocation, which is the final solution:
  • A: 98 coins
  • B: 0 coins
  • C: 1 coin
  • D: 0 coins
  • E: 1 coin[2]
Also, A:98, B:0, C:0, D:1, E:1 or other variants are not good enough, as D would rather throw A overboard to get the same amount of gold from B.

Is this solution 'Muth rational'? Does it conform to the prediction of the correct economic theory- viz that the booty will be divided according to fighting ability- i.e. Expected Value of their marginal contribution to any possible victorious coalition?
Clearly not.
This is a contrived paradox demonstrating something everyone already knows.
Induction is useless unless it also applies to the base case.
Here, voting on dividing the booty is irrational- pirates will always gang up to rob and kill any one with a gold coin- so no one is safe if they own gold. Thus Pirate A should offer 0,0,0,0,0 - unless Pirate A's seniority arises by reason of his superior ability to objectively and truthfully estimate each player's marginal product and this is common knowledge. However, in that case, the other rules stipulated are redundant. 
The fact that the Pirates are rankable at all means they must have a Expected Marginal Product based on their contribution to a victorious coalition. This may not be exactly known but it is something the Pirates can thoroughly discuss and, after a few iterations, you have a robust solution because it can incorporate newcomers & deal with deaths or defections.
Not so with the 'official' solution given above. A's proposal is voted down and he is thrown overboard because his solution concept is not robust at all. 

Consider the following scenario-  E is paralyzed completely. Should he vote for the 98/0/1/0/1 solution? No. Because he will be thrown overboard immediately for the sake of his gold.  Suppose D lacks arms and legs but can still roll around biting ankles and causing a minor nuisance . Should he vote for the proposed solution? No. Whoever gets the gold coin won't be him and anyway pirates like throwing each other overboard and there's little resistance he can put up. Suppose C has one leg and thus can deliver one potentially disabling kick but after which he just rolls around uselessly because he has no teeth. Should he vote for the conventional solution? No. He'll be killed for his gold. He votes with D and E and gets the pleasure of seeing A killed. Suppose B has one leg and one arm and can hop around waving a sword but will eventually be bested by A who has all his limbs- though there is a small chance that if D bites A's leg at just the right time and he trips over E, then B can deliver the killing blow.He votes yes, just in case C, D and E defect because only A is strong enough to actually throw anyone off the boat and they like contemplating that spectacle.

Of course, one can change the rules and say 'pirates can only throw people overboard after a vote of this type and are forbidden to steal from each other'. But this is equivalent of saying rationality means people can guess what I want them to do, just from the way I set up a voting game,  without my having to explicitly tell them because I have infinite power over them.' This is silly. Rationality means sometimes rebelling against a tyrant because there is no rule that says you have to follow his rules.

The Pirates' game is not wholly silly. It may have reference to poorly designed computer systems or stupid Indian politicians. But it isn't part of Economics which is about robust ergodic systems based on Muth Rational Expectations- i.e. ordinary people making situational, not trait based, hysteresis led decisions.

One other point, the question of dividing the booty would never be mooted unless it was common knowledge that no hegemonic coalition of a Barbarik type obtained. 

Monday 14 September 2015

Po-Co aposematism

Her waist, like Spivak's of words, weighs nothing yet makes heavy the beholder's head
Her breasts, like Bhaba's books, blind the Mind yet profess Uranian braille
Her receding sashay slays the hale yet revives what dies in bed
 Bhikku, thy agandhan venom at Buddhi's vanishing tail.


Saturday 12 September 2015

Simpson's paradox and Social Impact Bonds.

 Social Impact Bonds have gotten a bad press recently. Currently, they are not tradable and operate as contingent contract- i.e. the Govt. pays out if a target- like reduced recidivism- is met, otherwise the contractor is out of pocket.

Clearly, a bit of Agency Capture can make SIBs profitable.  Targets are manipulable, you can reduce recidvism by training delinquents to be better criminals or hire them better lawyers- but, hopefully, only reputable non profits, unlike Seedco, would be granted such contracts in the first place. As such, assuming good faith and common knowledge, there seems no a priori reason why Contractors should not be paid on a contingency basis for any desired Social Impact. Exogenous factors which wipe out profits might just as well enhance them and, in any case, could be insured against.

However, there are two different amalgamation problems which undercut this view. The first concerns the power law such that a small proportion of a given population produces the bulk of the negative social impact being targeted. This will militate for different treatment, unless this is specifically forbidden (in which case the Govt. may as well perform the service) causing the population to split giving rise to Yule-Simpson type effects which muddy the water re. potential scalability.
The second amalgamation problem has to do with who is currently bearing the risk of Social impact failure and how they are off setting that risk. Once again, a power law arises such that a small proportion of the population bears a higher share of risk and how they off set that risk has to be understood before commissioning a SIB. At the margin, risk may be being offset by median voter behavior or some other effective 'Voice' strategy vital to political health. This may not be scalable- for example, from the District to the State level. Here, again, a Yule-Simpson effect arises such that the success of a pilot SIB scheme provides no guidance as to its scalability.

By contrast, performance of unilateral, not contingent, contracts, don't face such aggregation problems and are eminently scalable, benefiting as they would from reduced uncertainty because of the Law of large numbers.

A more profound objection to this approach has to do with the great plasticity of social, as opposed to individual, morbidity such that Rossi's metallic laws hold true. After all, it's only in Lake Woebegone that all the kids are above average.


Gandhi's Talisman and dressing like a hobo

Since the Mahatma made it a point to look like the poorest and weakest man anyone had ever seen, his advise cashes out as lending credence to stupid ideas peddled by people who portray themselves as emaciated beggars suffering deeply the frightful wrongs inflicted on those they themselves have misled.




Thursday 10 September 2015

Concurrency & Ontological Dysphoria


My every woman a Wendy tho' Great Pan's death my Pentecostal St. Peter
In my Fifties I've turned trendy so Holocaustal Thy Sita's Demeter
& tho' only to say 'Floreat Etona!' Hook's Sankara crocodile talks
Time yet has its Planck which Sorrow continuously walks

Envoi- 
Prince! Confessor or its Parallel Processor's Professor of record
All Concurrency is its own plangent lost chord.



Sunday 6 September 2015

Kala as a Bharadvajiya mutation


If Sorrow's essence is Solitary, Eremite
Only England is & I too am White.
 Not Kala a Bharata murmuration
Upa-nishaad to all Duration.


Notes-
Bharadvaj can be interpreted as he whose flag is the starling.

Schweke's Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism

Schweke is a young German scholar whose recent essay trivializes various Anglophone post-Ayodhya academic availability cascades about how like Hindutva is Hitlerism and Modi must be Adolph coz Adolph was Austrian and Austrians keep attacking Italians, and Soniaji is Italian; what's more, all Austrians yodel except Adolph who gave fiery speeches instead- thus Modi is Hilter because he doesn't yodel.
Schweke's essay is worth skimming because it takes at face value our Careerist Campus Lefties various vainglorious screeds shrilly crying wolf and pretending to battle Nazism in the streets, or the Hindu equivalent of the Taliban in the Temples, while actually holed up in an Ivy League ivory tower.
In doing so, Schweke (who may have a German sense of humor like mine- I was born in Bonn- and thus achieves his best effects by simulating stupidity under a deadpan pedantic style) takes the piss out of our Academics something rotten by pointing out that, no matter what Oxbridge eminence they have attained, they still don't have a sleek Cliodynamic Mercedes, by way of Theory of History, in their intellectual garage but rely on an old fashioned Ambassador car which, since its wheels fell off long ago, now has to be be towed around on a bullock cart.

Thus Schweke says-
Schweke is not lying about the relevant Academic literature- the vast mass of which is written by Hindus. What he isn't mentioning is that the Hindus are lying and don't care if their fellow Hindus know they are lying because it's all in a good cause- viz. the advancement of their own career and the careers of those of their own clique who pretend to criticize them.
Hindu nationalism- apart from that of the Gandhi/Nehru INC 'Syndicate'- has 2 separate roots
1) Bengali Swamis, including Westernised Swamis like Vivekananda and Aurobindo and his younger brother, who helped inspire Jugantar which split after Bagha Jatin's death with people like M.N Roy turning to Moscow while others re-grouped under C.R Das. In general, there was a Leftward movement but both the Ananda Marg and the Bhaktivedanta movement share a common genealogy in this respect. Modi pays lip service to Vivekananda and Shyama Prasad Mookherjee- though the latter was actually avenged on Sheikh Abdullah by Kidwai- but Bengal has been marginalized by stupid Economic policies and no longer counts.
2) Chitpavan reformism. Under the Peshwas, the Chitpavans earned the well merited hatred of other Brahmins- e.g. the Deshasts though the Daivadnya Brahmins were worse treated - as well as other castes.
 Under the Raj, there was a danger that young men from this community would simply turn into village thugs. However to rise up through education- e.g. by taking jobs as teachers etc- rules re. ritual purity had to be dispensed with. Thus Social Reform within the Chitpavan community was directly linked to repairing links with other communities and getting rid of ritualistic thinking. Ultimately, people like Ambedkar found that the R.S.S- which had to turn away from Revolutionary politics because the British could use still smoldering anti-Chitpavan sentiment to their advantage and punish people like Savarkar very severely- was more committed to getting rid of the most obnoxious aspects of caste than people like Nehru who genuinely didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

Savarkar, it must be said, was originally Shyamji Krishna Varma's protege and his first book peddled the standard myth that Hindus and Muslims were always cuddling and kissing till the Brits turned up and made them get jobs- which led to rivalry- boo to you British man! Kindly go away so Hindu Muslim kissing and cuddling can resume.
A long spell in prison- not the cushy sort which M.N Roy preferred to Stalin's Gulag- deranged Savarkar completely. Poor fellow, by the time he died he was praising both Socialism- that 'servile State' which his mentor, a staunch devotee of 'Harbhat Pendse', opposed- as well as the consumption of panchgavya, though he had earlier admitted he was a little squeamish about quaffing cow's urine and chowing down on bovine shit. My own Mimamsa, I should mention, holds that the holy cow's blood (which the Masai drink), not its urine was meant and that beef patties should be substituted for cowpats.

The one good thing about the RSS was that it pariah status after Independence meant that it was less open to careerist entryism and thus gained an enviable salience in the Seventies during the Nav Nirman and anti-Emergency campaigns. Still, had the Communists got their act together- if, for example, Jyoti Basu had been permitted by his politburo to become P.M- and if Atal or Advani had died, the Sangh might have remained marginal. Instead, people like Modi were able to come up by arbitraging the distance between Delhi and Nagpur but this could only happen because of a new tech savvy Managerialist Weltgeist which rendered Gandhi and Marx and Nehru impotent as anything other than Mickey Mouse brands. Modi didn't read Deendayal Upadhyay (a joke name for a silly U.P bhaiyya who hadn't the nous to keep from falling off a train) or anything else for that matter, but paid attention when sent to America to learn about modern P.R techniques. Later he actually bought a cowboy hat!
How could this guy not become P.M when nobody- literally nobody- was saying 'I want to be P.M because I'll be good at the job'? Rahul Baba was saying 'It doesn't matter who becomes P.M. Mummy has already handed over power to the village panchayat. M.P's have nothing to do. Ministers have no power. The P.M's office is wholly ceremonial'  Mulayam was saying 'My people kicked me out and made my son Chief Minister. Give me the job to preserve my honor'. Mamta was saying 'It is all a terrible conspiracy. I will expose it. Who is being raped? They are all loose women. Since I am C.M of Bengal, if anyone should be P.M it must be me. Calcutta used to be the Capital- not Delhi. Who stole the Capital from us? It is all a conspiracy due to loose women who are falsely saying they are raped. I will beat them all with my chappal.' Jayalaitha too asserted Tamil pride. If she had to choose between Jail and being P.M, she was ready to commute to Delhi.
But facts are facts. U.P politicians, like Charan Singh, only want to be P.M when U.P throws them out. Chandrashekhar was so useless, Rajiv recognized that it legitimated his claim to the office he had himself previously held. Narasimha Rao, poor fellow, only got the job because Shankar Dayal Sharma wasn't interested. As P.M, his own diplomats turned him into a laughing stock- as a proverbially verbose Babu- in International circles. Still, one can't deny he was intelligent. Thus his being sentenced to jail was entirely condign, though of course he never actually spent a day behind bars.
The fact is. Politics is trivial. Being P.M doesn't matter- that's why the dynasty which had least competence (Nehru spent only a year or two doing actual politics, running the Allahabad Municipal Corporation) was permitted to reign in New Delhi- which has only began to look like a proper City since about 1987. Under Indira, it turned out C.M's too were just going through the motions. Thus she could appear an autocrat. But an autocrat without power to change the country- the Emergency was just a story about Potemkin villages- and once everybody saw the truth of this, even Rajiv or Sonia or Rahul or Rahul's cat could be P.M. It wouldn't make a difference.

Can Modi make a difference? Yes. Leaders should be good at P.R- both at home and abroad. That's Modi's professional forte. But changing the optics can only take a country so far. Ultimately, Modi will be rendered ineffectual, his P.R coups increasingly trivial, unless those who voted for him show determination to change their own lives. How? They must migrate from a culture of rent-seeking to one of risk-taking. This is the fundamental bifurcation or source of conflict within any class or interest group. When the rent-seekers win, everybody loses because Uncertainty is a fact of life. Risk taking reduces Uncertainty whereas the determination to hang on to rents no matter how the fitness landscape changes increases catastrophic risk. Those old soldiers fighting valiantly for bigger pensions don't realize they are stoking up a Greek style disaster- they themselves may die before the Ponzi scheme collapses but their last senile act will have endangered the country they, in the prime of their manhood, shed their blood to protect.

Wednesday 2 September 2015

Sorrow's Cenacle

By such wind to be winnowed tho' the wheat be lost
Let Grief be the Gospel of Ruth's Pentecost
Tongues of flame all the livelong till at dusk we talk
A murmuration of starlings in sight of the hawk

Envoi-
Under Heaven, where any Two are gathered, Soteriological Resistance is the Third
Prince! Till Six or Seven define topological distance for its Bird.

Sunday 30 August 2015

Odcombe's Urs

Dom Moraes, at the Hungarian border, turning back
Reverses Coryate, in Surat, who drinking sack
Attained, for Odcombe, a Sufi Urs
Indglish the Saqi of stupid hoors.

Envoi- 
Of what's effable in Language- Hlaford hwaet!
No affable manner is a fungible twat.

Wednesday 26 August 2015

Metanormativism is not Muth Rational. Regret Minimization is.

This post arises out of a comment on the previous entry.

The following is excerpted from William MacAlill's dissertation 'Normative Uncertainty'.
Susan and the Medicine - II 
Susan is a doctor, who faces three sick individuals, Greg, Harold and Harry. 
Greg is a human patient, whereas Harold and Harry are chimpanzees. They all suffer from the same condition.
 She has a vial of a drug, D. If she administers all of drug D to Greg, he will be completely cured, and if she administers all of drug to the chimpanzees, they will both be completely cured (health 100%). If she splits the drug between the three, then Greg will be almost completely cured 32 (health 99%), and Harold and Harry will be partially cured (health 50%). She is unsure about the value of the welfare of non-human animals: she thinks it is equally likely that chimpanzees’ welfare has no moral value and that chimpanzees’ welfare has the same moral value as human welfare. And, let us suppose, there is no way that she can improve her epistemic state with respect to the relative value of humans and chimpanzees.
 Using numbers to represent how good each outcome is: Sophie is certain that completely curing Greg is of value 100 and that partially curing Greg is of value 99. If chimpanzee welfare is of moral value, then curing one of the chimpanzees is of value 100, and partially curing one of the chimpanzees is of value 50. Her three options are as follows: A: Give all of the drug to Greg B: Split the drug C: Give all of the drug to Harold and Harry

Finally, suppose that, according to the true moral theory, chimpanzee welfare is of the same moral value as human welfare and that therefore, she should give all of the drug to Harold and Harry. What should she do? According to (some ethical theory) both A and C are appropriate options, but B is inappropriate. But that seems wrong. B seems like the appropriate option, because, in choosing either A or C, Susan is risking grave wrongdoing. B seems like the best hedge between the two theories in which she has credence. But if so, then any metanormative theory according to which what it’s appropriate to do is always what it’s maximally choice-worthy to do according to some theory in which one has credence (including some ethical theory called MFT, MFO, and variants thereof) is false. Moreover, this case shows that one understanding of the central metanormative question that has been given in the literature is wrong. Jacob Ross seems to think that the central metanormative question is “what ethical theories are worthy of acceptance and what ethical theories should be rejected,” where Ross defines acceptance as follows:' to accept a theory is to aim to choose whatever option this theory would recommend, or in other words, to aim to choose the option that one would regard as best on the assumption that this theory is true;. For example, to accept 19 (Ross 2006, 743).  utilitarianism is to aim to act in such a way as to produce as much total welfare as possible, to accept Kantianism is to aim to act only on maxims that one could will as universal laws, and to accept the Mosaic Code is to aim to perform only actions that conform to its Ten Commandments. 

The above case shows that this cannot be the right way of thinking about things. Option B is wrong according to all theories in which Susan has credence: she is certain that it’s wrong. The central metanormative question is therefore not about which firstorder normative theory to accept: indeed, in cases like Susan’s there’s no moral theory that she should accept. Instead, it’s about which option it’s appropriate to choose.

What mistake is the author making here? He thinks people should maximize expected utility under uncertainty even if that uncertainty stretches to catastrophic consequences. This is not the case. What they should do, what portfolio managers do, indeed, what Evolution does, is 'minimize regret'.
The author is aware of this possibility, but dismisses it in a footnote- 'One could say that, in Susan’s case, she should accept a theory that represents a hedge between the two theories in which she has credence. But why should she accept a theory that she knows to be false? This seems to be an unintuitive way of describing the situation, for no additional benefit.' The answer here is that the first order normative theory which fulfills  'regret minimization' is the one which maximizes her welfare given her preferences- be they altruistic or otherwise. It also has a lot of other neat properties- for e.g. it can give rise to a Parrando game- a combination of losing games which is winning- because MUWA regret minimization strategies are higher entropy- as well as more effectively guarding against catastrophic risk.

A normative theory deals with things like guilt, remorse as well as the satisfaction of having done the right thing at high personal cost. Regret minimization is a desirable quality in a first order normative theory and, under the author's scheme, such a theory must always exist though it may not be known. Thus 'normative uncertainty' is a mere artifact. We have normative certainty about the regret minimizing first order normative theory- it represents the best we can do, all things considered- though we don't know its details. We may use some calculus- though not the one MacAskill prescribes, because it isn't Muth Rational- which uses other first order Normative Theories to arrive at an approximation to the true regret-minimizing theory, but this does not make it a second order theory. It is first order simply.
'Metanormativity' is a delusion. It is the sort of hysteresis effect that arises when a theory is not Muth Rational- i.e. when agents are constrained not to do what all would agree would be the best thing to do. It is not 'economic' because it is not ergodic.
In a future post, I hope to put flesh on the bare bones of the following intuition-
Regret minimization by means of the multiplicative weights update algorithm is Muth Rational because it preserves diversity. It can easily be incorporated into a first order theory such that 'overlapping consensus' prescriptivity is, so to speak, built in. There is absolutely no good reason why scarce resources should be diverted from doing good into studying false theories which mischievously claim that some people and organizations with expert knowledge who are doing good aren't as 'effective' as some hare-brained scheme invented by an ignorant academic without any expert knowledge.

Tuesday 25 August 2015

Metanormativism is throwing up in the sink instead of doing the washing up.

This is from William MacAskill's Doctoral dissertation, titled 'Normative Uncertainty'. My comments are in bold.

'Normative uncertainty is a fact of life.
'Suppose that I have £20 to spend. With that money, I could eat out at a delightful Indian restaurant. Or I could pay for four long-lasting insecticide-treated bednets that would protect eight children against malaria. In comparing these two options, let us suppose that I know all the morally relevant facts about what that £20 could do. Even so, I still don’t know whether I’m obligated to donate that money or whether it’s permissible for me to pay for the meal out, because I just don’t know how strong my moral obligations to distant strangers are. So I don’t ultimately know what I ought to do.'

This is a good reason to hold that normative uncertainty can never be a fact of a truly ethical life but merely a fallacy that a self-publicist may strategically cultivate. Why? Well, a person whose life is truly ethical can never have disposable income for indulgence in a luxury while some people lack necessities. Thus, an ethical person never has £20 to spend on a 'delightful' Indian meal at a restaurant because she is already eating at a langar- or Community Soup kitchen-  and handing over her entire earnings to those in need.

'For an example of normative uncertainty on a larger scale, suppose that the members of a government are making a decision about whether to tax carbon emissions. They know, let us suppose, all the relevant facts about what would happen as a result of the tax: it would make presently existing people worse off, as they would consume less oil and coal, and therefore be less economically productive; but it would slow the onset of climate change, thereby increasing the welfare of people living in the future. But the members of the government don’t know how to weigh the interest of future people against the interests of presently existing people. So, again, those in this government don't ultimately know what they ought to do.'

Members of a Government are not principals, thus their own normative preferences are irrelevant, they are agents simply. If they know 'all the relevant facts about what would happen as a result of a tax', their duty is to inform their principal- viz. the citizens on behalf of whom they exercise authority. It is up to the citizens to decide how to allocate resources between generations. Once again, normative uncertainty can't arise unless members of a Government are violating their duty to act as agents, not principals, and thus are not living an ethical life.

'In both of these cases, the uncertainty in question is not uncertainty about what will happen, but rather is fundamental normative uncertainty. Recently, some philosophers have suggested that there are norms that govern how one ought to act that take into account one’s fundamental normative uncertainty. I call this suggestion metanormativism. '
Actually, in both these cases, people who are not living an ethical life are simply pretending that the reason for this is because they haven't yet made up their mind as to what type of ethical life they ought to adopt. Thus 'metanormativism' isn't normative, it is pathological. Indeed MacAskill himself writes 'Metanormativism isn’t about normativity, in the way that meta-ethics is about ethics, or that a meta-language is about a language. Rather, ‘meta’ is used in the sense of ‘over’ or ‘beyond’: that is, in the sense used in the word ‘metacarpal’, where, the metacarpal bones in the hand are located beyond the carpal bones. Regarding metanormativism, there is a clear analogy with the debate about the subjective or objective ought in moral theory (that is, whether moral norms are evidence-relative or belief-relative in some way). However, using the term ‘normative subjectivism’ instead of ‘metanormativism’ would have had misleading associations with subjectivism in meta-ethics. So I went with ‘metanormativism’ – with the caveat that this shouldn’t be confused with the study of normativity'
If you do the cooking, it is normative that I do the washing up.  Meta-normativity is like my claiming I'm actually doing 'meta-washing-up' by getting drunk and vomiting in the sink in which you piled up the dishes.
 If you are intelligent, you will say to me 'fuck off. Meta-normativity' is meaningless cognitivist shite. I'm going to beat you till you sober up and clean that sink.' 
However, if you are stupid- for example if you subscribe to comuptational cognitivism- then you are obliged to take my claim seriously. Following MacAskill's 'Maximal Expected Choiceworthiness' framework, you will be distressed to find that I am ethically superior to you because I have caused you to devote scarce resources to 'Philosophical research' which stupid people like you (i.e. computational cognitivists) consider a very good thing even though sensible people condemn it for 'crowding out' socially beneficial actions.

'There are two main motivations for metanormativism. The first is simply an appeal to intuitions about cases. Consider the following example:
Moral Dominance
'Jane is at dinner, and she can either choose foie gras, or the vegetarian risotto. Let’s suppose that, according to the true moral theory, both of these options are equally choice-worthy: animal welfare is not of moral value so there is no moral reason for choosing one meal over another, and Jane would find either meal  equally tasty, and so she has no prudential reason for preferring one over the other. Let’s suppose that Jane has high credence in that view. But she also finds plausible the view that animal welfare is of moral value, according to which the risotto is the more choice-worthy option. In this situation, choosing the risotto over the foie gras is more choice-worthy according to some moral views in which she has credence, and less choice-worthy according to none. In the language of decision-theory, the risotto dominates the foie gras. So it seems very clear that, in some sense of ‘ought’, Jane ought to choose the risotto, and ought not to buy the foie gras. But, if so, then there must be a sense of ‘ought’ that takes into account Jane’s first-order normative uncertainty.
Jane finds 2 options, which cost the same, equally good. Should she starve, like Buridan's ass or should she makes a choice based on an irrelevant alternative? Obviously, she should make a choice, finish her meal quickly, and get back to work. In this case, choosing the risotto represents compliance with a deontics that isn't 'true' because it includes supererogatory prohibitions of no ethical worth but which may have some signalling or strategic function.
There is no first order normative uncertainty here because we are told that an accessible 'true moral theory' obtains.
Decision theory is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what she eats. What matters is that she finish her meal quickly and get back to work.

'A second motivation for metanormativism is based on the idea of action-guidingness. There has been a debate concerning whether there is a sense of ‘ought’ that is relative to the decision-maker’s beliefs or credences (a ‘subjective’ sense of ought), in addition to a sense of ‘ought’ that is not relative to the decision-maker’s beliefs or credences (an ‘objective’ sense of ought). The principal argument for thinking that there must be a subjective sense of ‘ought’ is because the objective sense of ‘ought’ is not sufficiently action-guiding.
Once again, we find that the claimed motivation for metanormativism arises from the refusal to grant that some actions have no ethical or deontic status- they are 'supererogatory'. This is a good thing if Knightian Uncertainty obtains because the more 'free' choices each agent can make, the faster and more thoroughly the fitness landscape can be investigated. Suppose Knightian Uncertainty is small whereas the risk of a catastrophe is known to be high- e.g. 90 per cent. In this case, it might make sense to require that subjectivity be conditioned to show a preference for 'metanormativity' iff
1) there is always a null option- i.e. a choice which has neglibible effect
2) no scarce resources are used up as a result
In other words, metanormativism is not empty or pathological provided the people to whom it is touted can do no good but, at the margin, might do some harm. In this case, it makes sense to baffle them with bullshit.
However, there is a superior alternative. Tell them they are shite and they have a duty to resign from any responsible office or position of power or authority.

Consider the following case
 Susan, and the Medicine -
Susan is a doctor, who has a sick patient, Greg. Susan is unsure whether Greg has condition X or condition Y: she thinks each possibility is equally likely. And it is impossible for her to gain any evidence that will help her improve her state of knowledge any further. She has a choice of three drugs that she can give Greg: drugs A, B, and C. If she gives him drug A, and he has condition X, then he will be completely cured; but if she gives him drug A, and he has condition Y, then he will die. If she gives him drug C, and he has condition Y, then he will be completely cured; but if she gives him drug C, and he has condition X, then he will die. If she gives him drug B, then he will be almost completely cured, whichever condition he has, but not completely cured. Her decision can be represented in the following table, using numbers to represent how good each outcome would be: Greg has condition X – 50% Greg has condition Y – 50% A 100 0 B 99 99 C 0 100 Finally, suppose that, as a matter of fact, Greg has condition Y. So giving Greg drug C would completely cure him.

What should Susan do? Obviously, she should give him drug B. It's called 'regret minimization' or 'hedging your bets'. But, since you are a Professor of Ethics or some such shite, you aren't gonna say 'D'uh! The answer is B.' because the way you guys get tenure is by staying the stupidest possible thing.  In some sense, it seems that Susan ought to give Greg drug C: doing so is what will actually cure Greg. But given that she doesn’t know that Greg has condition Y, it seems that it would be reckless for Susan to administer drug C. As far as she knows, in doing  so she’d be taking a 50% risk of Greg’s death. And so it also seems that there’s a sense of ‘ought’ according to which she ought to administer drug B. In this case, the objective consequentialist’s recommendation — “do what actually has the best consequences” — is not useful advice for Susan. It is not a piece of advice that the she can act on, because she does not know, and is not able to come to know, what action actually has the best consequences. So one might worry that the objective consequentialist’s recommendation is not sufficiently action-guiding: it’s very rare that a decision-maker will be in a position to know what she ought to do. In contrast, so the argument goes, if there is a subjective sense of ‘ought’ then the decision-maker will very often know what she ought to do. So the thought that there should be at least some sense of ‘ought’ that is sufficiently action-guiding motivates the idea that there is a subjective sense of ‘ought’. Similar considerations motivate metanormativism. Just as one is very often not in a position to know what the consequences of one’s actions are, one is very often not in a position to know which moral norms are true; in which case a sufficiently actionguiding sense of ‘ought’ must take into account normative uncertainty as well.

A Doctor is an agent, not a Principal. The Doctor only gains salience in a Decision situation if there is a 'skill' or information asymmetry- in which case there is a dilemma re. operationalizing informed consent. . In this case, however, nothing of the sort obtains. Since Susan is posited as someone for whom advice from an Ethicist could be 'useful', it must be the case that she is as stupid as shit and thus a shite Doctor. She should resign. Why? Because it is 'impossible for her to gain any evidence that will help her improve her state of knowledge any further.' In other words, she will learn nothing from a failure. Consequently, in obedience to the Hippocratic oath, she has a duty to give the guardian of the Patient all the information quoted above, return any fees she received, and quit the role of Doctor. There is no 'normative uncertainty' here, unless she is living an unethical life and is happy to continue doing so.
Metanormativism, MacAskill tells us, is motivated by wanting to continue acting in an ethical capacity even when one knows one ought not to so act by reason of ignorance or stupidity or lack of competence. But such metanormativism isn't part of Normative Decision making any more than my throwing up in the sink is part of my duty of doing the washing up. However, as a matter of fact, not theory, if you invite me to dinner and I promise to do the washing up, what actually happens is I get drunk and vomit all over the plates you have piled up in the sink. You manage to get me into a taxi and hope you've seen the last of me. I send you an Email the next day showing, using MacAskills' 'Maximal Expected Choice Worthiness' decision framework, how my actions at your dinner party were actually highly commendable from the Ethical p.o.v. After all, you could have left the dishes in the sink for a couple of days without being greatly inconvenienced- in other words, the duty of doing the washing up at the soonest possible time was supererogatory to some degree. By throwing up in your sink, I made the action of cleaning it and the dishes that much more urgent. This tackled a lacuna in MacAskill's theory which neglects supererogatory duties. Another lacuna in his theory arises from the neglect of culpa levis in concreto type implicit delegation of duties such that a required action is better or more thoroughly or more predictably performed. Clearly, my duty of doing the washing up can be delegated to you if I am incapacitated. By throwing up in the sink, the duty of cleaning the dishes and the sink have become more urgent- you had to perform it right away. Furthermore, you are better at cleaning sinks whereas I'm good at making them dirty. Thus, my actions at your dinner party did not result in the dishes not getting washed. They were washed, probably more thoroughly than would otherwise have been the case. However, it remains the case that you may think there was a Normative failure on my part. This is quite untrue. You are actually suffering from Normative Uncertainty. You don't understand that though Metanormativism has nothing to do with Normative Behavior, nevertheless, if MacAskill aint talking utter bollocks, by causing you to devote more resources to a purely philosophical argument- viz. my claim that my behavior at your dinner party was super ethical- I am advancing the cause of Ethical Altruism which is a true Moral Theory.
As MacAskill says 'Moral philosophy provides a bargain in terms of gaining new information: doing just a bit of philosophical study or research can radically alter the value of one’s options. So individuals, philanthropists, and governments should all spend a lot more resources on researching and studying ethics than they currently do.'
By throwing up in your sink, and then sending you this email, I have caused you to devote more resources to 'philosophical study' and thus made you an immeasurably better man. Thus getting drunk at dinner parties and throwing up in the sink instead of doing the dishes is prescriptive for Effective Altruists provided Normative Uncertainty is ubiquitous or computational cognitivism aint shite.

Tuesday 11 August 2015

Verdict on Hymen.


Because, having perfunctorily checked I was dead,
 She robbed and raped me in the grave
The Judge pronounced us wed
So predictably do brides behave

& because Darwin descended 'fore Elijah came
Amidst alien corn let Ruth repine
'Take responsibility for what you tame'
The little foxes that spoil the vine

Tho' Jacob's eyes' nacre Joseph's prison
 & Joseph's seed is Jesus risen
My Canaan's Moon, soured so soon
Wine stints me Death's benison.



Fighani's Ghanimat.

The two Worlds are a net for, not a bird,  but Beauty's deranging scent in the breeze
As, exchanging Love's bitter word, Wine & the Saqi meant but to tease
What boots the Tavern's ghanimat booty Fighani demands?
Tears for our own vintage are all Allah commands!

Envoi-
Prince! Levy Khums on Khayyam's quatrains- so red in tooth and claw
As to chill the amber wine of thy men of straw

Sunday 9 August 2015

In nimborum patriam

Tell both the truth, Meghdooth, you know I wasn't really raped by Bharatnayam.
Connect my Mum and my son, or serve Juno in nimborum patriam
Speak of the soul- since the heart is a muscle & Love its defeat
Of Ind a corpuscle, no Dehli my retreat.

Saturday 8 August 2015

Greek Africanist smackdown- Lapavitsas vs Varoufakis.

Varoufakis is not the only Africanist Economist in Syriza. Lapavitsas, a Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, too is convinced that his country ought to split off from Europe, squeeze through the Suez Canal, sail past the Equator and claim its rightful place between Mugabe's Zimbabwe and a Mozambique ruled by a resurrected Samora Machel.

Is Lapavistas stupider than Varoufakis? Let us weigh up the evidence

1) Lapavistas thinks accepting a bailout will be recessionary- i.e. aggregate demand will fall. This is false. If liquidity is restored, Aggregate Demand will go up. If there is no bail out, Greece loses its export market. Investment dries up. The Greek slump actually began before Govt spending was curtailed because of the poor climate for start-ups. Lapavistas, quite ludicrously, speaks of a mere 3 months of pain before Grexit restores prosperity. External depreciation takes 18 months under the best of circumstances. As for his proposed 1 to 1 conversion to the Drachma, European Law holds that Contracts denominated in Euros have to be paid in Euros. As for Vulture funds suing in U.S courts and grabbing Greek assets, our boy has nothing to say.
By contrast, Varoufakis simply puts his hands down the back of his pants and draws out fistfuls of shit which  he calls chocolate cake.
Advantage Varoufakis.
2) Varoufakis moans that the bailout is Versailles, Lapavistas says it's not Brest Litovsk, it buys no time for the Bolsheviks (i.e. Syriza) to reorganize and rearm so as to kill their own people more plentifully than the Germans.
Advantage Lapavistas.
3) Varoufakis is for Privatisation. Lapavistas invokes Harold Macmillan's 'Selling the family Silver' fallacy. When I sell an asset, I get cash now and nothing later. When the Govt sells an asset, it gets cash now as well as tax revenue on the stream of profits that the asset generates in, more efficient, private hands.
Lapavistas now leads by one point.
4) Lapavitsas says Euro mechanisms are 'reified class practice'. Fiat money always is. Nothing can change this. So you have to get out of the Euro. Also the Drachma. Cowrie shells are the way to go.
Varoufakis is getting desperate. He blurts out, to a bunch of hedge fund managers- i.e. the vultures who profit from the collapse of a monetary union- that he tried to hack the Tax files of every citizen. He gets charged with treason. Suddenly he's all over the news, shoving his hands down the back of his pants and feasting on his own shit.
Sorry, Lapavitsas. Your cowrie shells aint gonna cut it. Go back to SOAS and concentrate on trying to fuck up genuinely black people you worthless gobshite.

Friday 7 August 2015

Naked Greek Aggression against India!- fatwa Stathis Gorgouris!

Pyrrho came to Punjab along with the Macedonian invaders. Instead of drinking lassi and dancing bhangra the fellow got talking to some naked Digambaras, gymonosophists as the Greeks called them, and learnt- if not syadvada- then at least the catuskoti 'trilemma'. Later, Timon- an over the hill lap-dancer refused re-employment as a bouncer at the establishment responsible for his infamy, thus becoming the archetype of the tenure denied Liberal Arts Post Grad- penned Pyrrhonist 'Silloi' (lampoons) to put paid to Phenomenology's Procrustean project with respect to such Platonic Shadows as constitute Psilosophy's pathologies of Thought.

So far so good. The Greeks- not even that Demetrius, defeated by Kalinga's Karevail in Magadha, and whom Modi was recently mocked for mentioning- were not aggressors towards India. They enriched it immeasurably.

Even if Ind, which Wine conquered without Violence, had been unreceptive; Nonnus's Dionysicaca- or its echoes in Camoen's Lusiadas- reminds us that amphorae shipped to Amaravathi via Arikamedu, and for that reason returned unsold, yet earned their vendor a profit- so much richer and more robust had the vintage grown during that round trip.
Wine. 
Not piss.
Soma, of course, was in such short supply that there was a market for my Vedic ancestor's urine.
But no export market.
Credentialised Academia was not yet Globalised.
Ever since it became so, we have exported plenty of Professors who take the piss out of their subject.
Spivak, Sen, the two Guhas, the list is endless.
By contrast, Greece can boast only a solitary Varoufakis.
A hyphenated Greek, true.
But then our biggest clowns are wholly ex-pat and hyphenated in all but name.
Still, India can't rest on its laurels.
Take the case of Stathis Gorgouris- a Literature Prof. at Columbia.
He is openly challenging Spivak's title to be the most illiterate pretend Lefty on Earth!
You don't believe me?
Take a gander at his article in Open Democracy published today. 


Syriza’s extraordinary problem – which would not be faced by any other political party in government – was to alter internal institutional frameworks under conditions of external institutional assault.
So, Stathis is saying, if some other party desiring to alter the internal institutional framework had been elected- Golden Dawn for example- the Troika would not have gone in for 'external institutional assault.' Okay. Maybe the Troika are secret Nazis. Fine. But Greece also has a Communist Party, a Green Party, a Classical Liberal Party and so on, all of whom would want to change the 'internal institutional framework'. Why does Stathis think they would not have faced any problem from the Troika? There is only one possible answer. Other parties might think they want to alter the internal framework, they might even try to alter it, but- because their Political Theory is not correct- it would be a case of impossible attempt. Thus no collision with the Troika would occur.-

Although the history of the Left has produced an extraordinary theoretical legacy, which continues to be the nucleus of almost all radical thinking, it has nonetheless left a trail of extraordinary failures in practice.
A theoretical legacy which continually prompts extraordinary practical failures is either shite ab ovo or has been implemented exclusively by shite people. Either way, 'the nucleus of radical thinking' needs to either stop being shite or so exclusively adversely selective of its exponents.
Fuck me, this Stathis dude might be on to something! I'm not saying he could redeem our own corrupt Kafila caravan of tenured shitheads- they kissed Satan's rectal ring long ago- but maybe he can put our young people on the right path.

I understand the dialectical relation between theory and practice, of course, but we have to admit that in real historical terms this dialectic is terribly uneven, to the degree in fact that it may render questionable a great many of these theoretical achievements, which, if we are going to be rigorously leftist about it, cannot really stand entirely on their own.

Cool! Spivak and Sen never spoke like this coz there was a Left Front Govt. in their home State. Thus, they had to 'extend and pretend' that their indebtedness to RAND's Arrow or that sociopath of Ann Randian proportions, Paul de Man, served some occult 'subversive' purpose.

To this general account, I now add a series of realizations that have arisen from the experience of a government of the left in Greece since Syriza was elected, a complex, circuitous, contradictory, and internally conflictual trajectory that is still unfolding in full force.

Anyone who thinks that Syriza as a left phenomenon has ended, been coopted or defeated, etc., is thinking too much too fast. Too much complexity is being swept carelessly under the rug. For this reason, despite everyone’s intense attention to the recent traumatic developments, it’s worth conducting an assessment of the full trajectory of Syriza in government.

Radicalising democracy

As a prelude to mapping the details, let me confess that the overall course of events has made me aware of the weakness of theoretical predeterminations, and especially of the dangerous tendency, common in left thought, of grasping at schematic theoretical straws in the face of the perplexing circuitry of politics in action – all in some fashion remnants of the history of the left, no matter how dressed up with new terminologies and allegedly new significations.

The field of historical action in the last few months has exceeded the theoretical armory that is presumed to be somehow its strongest signifying capacity, so that in all its turns, sometimes even counter-intended manifestations, historical action needs to be considered in itself, from its own standpoint, as it is happening and in the terms that it sets as it is happening, rather than encountered from the safety of our preexisting theories.


Okay, Stathis has gone overboard with the satire here. Indeed, it was this passage which led me to blow the whistle on this naked Greek incursion into territory upon which Spivak has raised the Triranga- viz. writing meaningless, lefty sounding, shite.

I understand how exasperating this is – indeed as exasperating as it has been to experience this phenomenon of the left in government. My hunch is – because it’s too early to tell – that this exasperation with experience and this theoretical incapacity arise directly out of the radical democratic process that makes the Syriza phenomenon different (perhaps even unique) in the history of the Left. It is, in other words, the very precarious, disorderly, an-archic, unpredictable, groundless, perilous, open-ended and resistant-to-closure ‘nature’ of democracy that has radicalized this already uneven dialectical relation between theory and practice in favor of the second.

Wow! Stathis is saying Syriza is shit. Maybe it wouldn't have been shit if it had come to power by the bullet, not the ballot. Perhaps, if Tsipras could put to death any of his colleagues who fucked up or failed to toe the line, things would have been better. 

Okay, this sounds like standard Stalinist shite. But our Literature Professor adds a twist- he calls attention to the word an-archic (without a leader).  The reference is to Athens in 404 B.C- the year of the Thirty Tyrants- with the Troika taking the place of the victorious Spartans. 

Thus the meaning is 'not only is Syriza shit, it is Thirty Tyrants type shit. The Troika are fucking over  even the embryo of Greek Democracy and replacing it by Globalised Oligarchy pure and simple. Tsipras, or if not him, whichever of his fellow 'Thirty Tyrants' has the biggest balls, is the new Critias- not a meretricious traitor at all, but a literary useful idiot. Plato can now have his Republic & Socrates a belated martyrdom. The damage has been done. Lefty shite is now sillography simply. Varoufakis, the new Demosthenes, rises up to utter his Phillipic but then grins strangely, shoves his hands down the back of his pants and fetching out fistfuls of his own faeces, claims it to be Chocolate Cake and starts eating it. But then, like Marie Antoinette, this peacock is a hyphenated Austrian- a 'Hayekian-Marxist'- so it is just as well that he not just tells the people he has impoverished to eat cake but also demonstrates from whence that confectionery can costlessly be procured.


Left governmentality

My wager here is to investigate a terrain that we can name left governmentality which has emerged as a problematic challenge with the worldwide, even if politically and culturally heterogeneous, phenomenon of the assembly movements since the Arab Spring, to which Syriza’s rise owes a great deal.

Why does Stathis say 'wager'? Is this a, not Pascalian special pleading, but sound Pyrrhonist 'epoche' or bracketing like our own Bhagvad Gita? 
If so, this posh Greek-American Professor is an Ariadne, not a Daedelus, and thus a fitting spouse for Ahimsa's Saqi.

He may be only hyphenated Greek, and teach at Columbia, but-recalling how far Euginides exceeds Rushdie- a stupid Indian like me needs to sit up and take notice.
I started this post in a militant mood. I thought, here is a Prof. with a Greek name trespassing on Ind's indalmoi of imbecility. But, fuck it, turns out even American-Greek Profs. at Columbia can't write utterly worthless shite because they know there are stupid Indians-okay, maybe there's just one really stupid Indian, namely me- who read stuff written by smart people coz they don't want to be a traitor to their own suffering people all their fucking lives.

This guy, though camouflaging himself in Spivakese- the phrase 'Left Governmentality' could be as foolish as 'strategic essentialism'- nevertheless himself points to a way of excising the idiocy of Agamben if not the vocabulary of crisis.

A couple of years ago- Stathis wrote as follows (bear in mind, he was writing for shitheads)
If it is indeed the case that, per Schmitt’s dictum, “the sovereign is he who decides on the exception” then we need to rethink sovereignty. Mere thinking about whether sovereignty is or is not a matter of exception is inadequate. Surely, we are forced to rethink sovereignty in a world where global economic agents, fully deterritorialized and beyond the boundaries of traditionally understood sovereignty, make direct political decisions that determine real territories, the terrains where actual people dwell. The essential sign of the sovereign in societies since the advent of capitalism is not the State (and therefore monarchy and law) but the national economy. The erosion of national economy as prerequisite of national independence is now the case everywhere in the world, no exceptions – another impetus to let go of the discussion of sovereignty as an extension of the monarchical law tradition of imperial Christendom.
In a society fighting against capitalist values – I am not being utopian – sovereignty needs to be located in unexceptional collective political action. Unexceptional because it can only take place every day – not once in so many years at a ballot box ritual – and it must take place by unexceptional people, people who are not in the business of politics.
- See more at: http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-question-is-society-defended-against-whom-or-what-in-the-name-of-what/#sthash.CqXNVRSR.dpuf

Schmitt was schitt. Karl Lueger, as Mayor of Vienna, decided the 'exception'- a Yid was a Yid unless he himself liked the guy, in which case he was a Goy. That's why Lueger wasn't Sovereign. Hitler, on the other hand...fuck it, I'm not drunk enough for a reductio ad Hitlerum yet. Anyway, the Courts did in fact protect one or two Jews from Himmler.
Sovereignty is a concept which can only arise in a repeated game. Otherwise it is Fortuna simply- the transient shadow of Empery cast by the Weltgeist's Vulture. 
Stathis is saying that that 'Left Governmentality' can exist as an Aumann signaller in a repeated game correlated equilibrium. 
He may not be aware of the maths that proves market forces militate for sillier Schelling segregation and more tortuous 'Local Public Good' Tiebout model diversity than would be the case under contested- i.e. mimetic desire type- hegemony. 
Still, Literature, which is what he teaches, has shown him the way. This guy's C.V might sound as shite as one of our own, but the fucker is Greek. What he is saying can help us. Bastard! We gotta fatwa his ass!

What?
I'm being hasty?
Stathis is too a posh pretend-Lefty talking ultracrepidarian Credentialist gobshite?
Evidence?
Here it is.
This strict isonomy (substitutability) of political actors ensures that the “self” in autonomy is unable to ever come to full self-sufficiency, full archē, for the limits of the self are the otherness of the other, who is utterly substitutable in a process of itinerant othering which makes the key element of autonomy to be self-alteration. This is best understood in theatrical terms where I is an other (Rimbaud) achieves meaning in a constitutive way: where the “I” inheres an otherness that makes the identitary utterance of being (“I am”) not quite adequate. Rimbaud’s famous phrase J’est un autre disarticulates the Cartesian cogito (Je suis) but also the Kantian anthropological prerogative that identifies the human being as the animal who can say “I”, for in this case “I” cannot be enacted but by the third person verb form, so that “to be” becomes demonstrably the verb of being an other - See more at: http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-question-is-society-defended-against-whom-or-what-in-the-name-of-what/#sthash.CqXNVRSR.dpuf

Okay. I admit, the above sounds bad- indeed, rotten enough to be tenure-seeking Babu.
But, Stathis has once again instrumentalized oxymoron to preach a sermon from Samuelson.
If isonomy obtains, so does ergodicity.
Politics is empty.
Alterity is Genidentity- deadlocked Concurrency a la Djikstra's starving philosophers.
This is the mystics' Yoga Vasisth cashing out as the metic Vyadh.

Stathis, unlike Yuddhishtra whom God vouchsafed an education in Statistical Decision Theory as well as the 'Song of the Billionaire Butcher', has had a purely American, wholly Credentialist, 'literary' (i.e. shite) education. Nevertheless, he hasn't forgotten how to be Greek. Look at the following-
In democracy, one may say that the “I” is already an other because the utterance I am is already caught in the sharing of archē (metechein tēs archēs is Aristotle’s exact phrase), mediated by lot, by being allotted (nemein) equally the responsibility of political action.  This would be an answer to those who think that substitutability is the weapon of consumer capitalist homogenization. For in that case substitutability takes place entirely in the language of numbers, while in democracy the equivalence is predicated on the recognition of every one’s heterogeneous otherness. Unlike how liberalism promotes and underlies the confusion of equality with social homogenization, I am talking here of political equivalence in a social sphere of ineradicable differentiation and contention. This is an equivalence that cannot be mathematized, since its operating system is not logic (of numbers) but lot (nomos). - See more at: http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-question-is-society-defended-against-whom-or-what-in-the-name-of-what/#sthash.CqXNVRSR.dpuf

Christ says 'ye are as Gods', meaning when it falls to your lot to serve on a Jury, or hold some other Public Office, you must judge not according to your own preferences and prejudices but in a manner that might be apophatic- no question of 'Public Justification' here giving scope for hired sophists (the Paraclete itself began its career as an Athenian ambulance chasing attorney)- but must be Hannan Consistent, i.e. minimise regret according to the Muth rational Mulitplicate Weight Update Algorithm, Evolution itself uses.  This militates for not homogeneity but Nature's infinite variety which Custom can not stale.
Yuddhishtra's Vishada was cured by this knowledge; Arjuna, being an agent, not a principal, had his Depression dispelled by Krishna's Theophany, but Pyrrho actually talked to some naked Indian dudes rather than just getting gay with them and...what? Could Athenian Democracy really have been repaired? Dunno. But its recurrent Alcibiades adventurists would more quickly have despaired.

Christ.
A Greek word.
Triumvirate or Troika, nothing imposed on Greece isn't transubstantiated.
Popular Sovereignty, the Rule of Law, Xenophilia
Greece will make a Holy Trinity of the challenges it faces.
Even this worthless Hindu will benefit.

Fuck are you waiting for?!
Fatwa Stathis immediately!

Thursday 6 August 2015

Varoufakis's flawed Game Theory

Some months ago, Game Theory was getting headlines across the world in connection with Grexit.
Zero Hedge had the best brief analysis but it was beside the point because, as Varoufakis pointed out, Greece was not playing a 'bargaining' game. It knew its own pay-off from Grexit was catastrophic whereas that for the Eurogroup was potentially positive because its credibility might increase by getting rid of a bad apple off its own bat rather than under pressure from the Market.

This being the case, what type of game was Varoufakis playing?

 Look at things from his point of view. He believed he was smart. He knew he was Hayekian (i.e. pro-market) on the crucial question of Greece's bloated, inefficient, feather-bedded Public Sector. He was a Europeanist, not a Nationalist, wishing to strengthen Europe's legitimacy vis a vis Athens by making the former, not the latter, more democratic (i.e. creating a situation where Greece's small population would have less weight in decision making compared to the huge population of the 'core' countries).
Thus, 'subsidiarity' would stop meaning that Greece could be a unique Tiebout model (i.e. choose its own mix of Taxes and Public Goods) and start meaning that Greece would be run by people with Greek names but a completely foreign outlook. In other words, this ex-pat amateur politician wouldn't need to worry about Greece's complicated internal politics because 'Democratic Accountability' would no longer be to the Greek voter but the European voter- in which case, naturally, the abstract language of Economics, in which he had an absolute advantage, gained salience over purely local shibboleths.

If such indeed were Varoufakis's beliefs, what type of game would he have wanted to play? The answer, I think, is he was looking for an Aumann correlated equilibrium- i.e. a situation where all parties can get to a mutually beneficial agreement in a repeated game by the help of 'public signals' from a wiser being above the fray. Just as wily Odysseus still requires some helpful nudges from the Goddess Athena, so too, did Europe. True, the Odyssey is a story of terrible travail but only because the Olympian Gods were at odds with each other. Varoufakis, as a Game Theorist, was however aware that if all agents are rational and their beliefs are unambiguous and common knowledge then conditions for 'Aumann agreement ' obtain- i.e. it would be impossible for them to 'agree to disagree'. Instead, an 'Aumann signaller' will quickly be recognized by all parties and so agreement can be arrived at much more quickly and lower computational cost.

We all know that Varoufakis failed ignominiously. What was his excuse? He is quoted as saying- '“There are elements that want to go back and tell their constituencies, ‘We humiliated the Greek government.’ There are elements that want us to fail, hoping that our government will be replaced. This isn’t constructive. Sometimes I wish they had a skilled game theorist on their side.”

How should we parse this statement? Let us look at 2 radically different interpretations, two extremes that define a hermeneutic spectrum, before weighing the evidence and making up our minds.
1) anti-European- 
'Some voters in Europe are either sadists or harbor animus against Greeks. Thus they will vote for those who say 'we insulted and injured Greece'. 
'Furthermore, some powerful interest groups at the heart of European Politics want new popular Parties like Syriza to fail. They want 'regime change' from which they themselves profit regardless of the will of the local people.
'This type of European voter, this type of vested interest group manipulating things at the center of European decision making, is not interested in constructing a better Europe. They have a 'zero sum' mentality. It is not enough that they get richer, more powerful. No. Someone has to become poorer and weaker, someone has to be insulted and injured for them to feel happy.
'This being the case- Europe is another name for Colonial domination and the arbitrary tyranny of an occulted cabal harboring racist views towards Greeks and motivated by an unappeasable ire against popular democracy, transparent Govt., no matter where it raises its flag.
'This evil Europe, hell bent on 'winner take all' vindictiveness, will destroy itself. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Hate and Envy and the determination to control everything have driven the corrupt cabal, and their Racist voters, pathologically insane.
'Sometimes I feel pity for them- I wish they had at least one intelligent person in their ranks- a skilled Game theorist who could do the necessary complicated calculations and, no matter how hate-filled he might himself be, nevertheless recognize the cold and immutable mathematics that seals the doom of his own side. These evil men may indeed go over the cliff like the Gadarene swine. But let them at least have heard the truth, for they are men not pigs, before going to destruction'.

2) pro-European-
'The Euro, like the ERM it replaced, is vulnerable to Market attacks. What happens is, like a Lion hunting gazelles, the hedge fund managers zero in on the weakest member of the herd. Zahavi, a Zoologist whose handicap principle is extensively studied by Game Theoreticians- showed that if strong gazelles engage in stotting behaviour- i.e. jumping in a showy fashion- they can distract the Lion so that the weak gazelle is saved. All gazelles benefit if Lions go hungry and their cubs starve. It makes sense for strong members of a currency union to take on this type of cost because in saving the weakest member they also benefit themselves.
'However, in Europe there are some stupid and ignorant people who don't understand that the gazelle can triumph over the Lion. They have the ideology of the 'victim' who blames his own weakness for his predicament. Knowing they themselves will sooner or later fall victim to the Lion, their only pleasure in life is hearing that for now some other has met that grizzly fate and so they can live on another anguished day.
'There is one consoling philosophy such 'victims' might cling to. It is the belief that by being bullied, a gazelle can turn into a Lion. They can say 'if Greece is bullied and humiliated, it will decide to become stronger. Thus our strength is increased.
However, this is a delusive philosophy. It keeps the weak weak and denies them even the Gospel of Popular Democracy.
If you try to bring down the elected Govt. of your neighbor, who will speak for you when the cabal running things throws off its democratic disguise in your own home country? Do you really save on your heating bills if your neighbor's house is set on fire by debt-collectors from the Utility company?
What is happening in the Eurogroup is not constructive. Greece has a vision of a better Aumann correlated Equilibrium for us all. The only losers will be the 'vulture funds' and opportunistic Money Market speculators. Democracy's victory is Plutocracy's defeat. This is a mathematical truth. I wish the other side had a good Game Theorist. Then I could sit quietly and not have to attract publicity. After all, I too am European. How will it profit me to gain the fame of a Cassandra?

As I said these are the 2 extremes of the spectrum for the reception of Varoufakis's account of his European negotiations.
I discount (1)- the anti-European interpretation because it is now clear that everyone- except 'useful idiots' like Krugman and Galbraith- knew that Europe won't suffer much, indeed might gain, from Grexit. A Club that weeds out the weakest while starving, not just the lion, but even the vulture needs fear no attack. We human beings dominate the planet, though we are puny compared to our chimpanzee cousins. Homo homini lupus has been the secret of our success.

What about (2)?
Surely, the interpretation I have given does not square with Varoufakis's actual utterances? He has never mentioned Aumann correlated equilibrium or the Zahavi handicap principle or anything of the sort.
To do the former, he would need to present a proper model showing how the ECB could work better and the Euro fulfill a higher economic function than at present envisaged. This has not happened.
To appeal to the latter, he would need to have used emollient words to stroke the ego of the Germans and other Nordics, using flattering, thymotic, arguments to get them to engage in 'stotting' such that the pain is taken by the Money Managers of New York and London and Tokyo and Shanghai. Did he in fact do any such thing? No. This second Demosthenes, rose up to deliver a blistering Phillipic, but suddenly decided to put his hands down the back of his pants and pull out a fistfuls of shit which he called 'chocolate pudding' and which he proceeded to eat. He got very angry when his colleagues in the Eurogroup refused to share his tasty treat. He shouted it was illegal for them to go off and dine on their own far away from the spectacle of his coprophagy. But he couldn't get an injunction from the European Court to force the Eurogroup to allow him to eat his own shit at their dinner table. Still, he mentions this terrible illegality to us all the time. Good for him. This is a Marie Antoinette hasn't just told her people to eat cake but to show from where it can be costlessly procured.

Was Varoufakis's Game theory flawed? My conclusion- no he was stupid and ignorant simply. Most Professors are.