Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Excellent politique, administrateur exécrable. En tant qu'homme politique, notre président est hors pair. Et c'est exactement pourquoi en tant qu'administrateur, il prolongera et accentuera l'oppression pesant sur les créateurs et la ruine du pays.

Sarkozy est un excellent homme politique. Il sait placer ses amis et ses ennemis, créer de la popularité, du consensus, former des alliances, concilier des opposants, récompenser ceux qui lui apportent un soutien, punir ceux qui le lui ont refusé. Il maîtrise la politique, cet art du possible. Du politiquement possible, s'entend...

Here's my (late) answer to Bryan Caplan's challenge can you write an economically sound answer to the question "When Did Life For the Poor Get Better?" that a five-year-old could understand? 150 words or less!

At no point in time did life "start" to get better for the poor. At most any point in space and time, those who were "poor" were much better off than the poor of two centuries before -- the earlier society could not have fed them all, and would have treated survivors more harshly. Since the dawn of man, tremendous progress has come from inventions, be them technical or social. Techniques that seem primitive today, like heavily salting food so it doesn't rot, once transformed the life of generations. So did trading routes across regions with different resources: salt, game, wood, metal. Or money as a universal intermediate for barter between remote strangers. Or techniques and social mores that ensured increased hygiene. Countless innovations have always served to improve life for everyone. Even slavery was once progress for the poor victims -- over anthropophagy. Obstacles to progress are political oppression and superstition.

Take Swiss Cheese, the variety that comes with holes (technically known as eyes). There is a clear correlation between holes and cheese: the more cheese there is, the more holes there are. If you purchase twice as much cheese, you'll get a volume of holes twice as big. Since correlations are symmetrical, this also means the more holes there are, the more cheese there is. If you purchase enough cheese to double the volume of holes, then you have purchased twice as much cheese. Thus, a static mind satisfied with correlations may conclude that a good way to increase the total quantity of cheese is to increase the total volume of holes -- which may be achieved quite simply by drilling holes in the given supply of cheese. Of course, this means fails, because it changes the proportion of holes to cheese, whereas the measured correlation upon which the reasoning stands crucially depends on this proportion being a constant. Yet that's exactly how macroeconomic regulation by government works: find some existing correlation between some kind of wasteful government spending and a measure of general welfare, and then forcefully increase the spending in the hope to increase welfare...

Il y a effectivement un équivalent du principe de moindre action en économie, ce que les économistes appellent les lois d'équilibre. Le principe général en est l'équilibre de Pareto, et mon corollaire préféré en est la loi de Bitur-Camember.

Toutefois, il y a aussi une incompréhension générale de la notion d'équilibre chez les économistes néoclassiques et keynésiens, qui voient l'équilibre comme un phénomène statique ou cinématique qui apparaît magiquement malgré l'action humaine et peut être manipulé arbitrairement par ces êtres supérieurs que sont les hommes de l'état tels que suppléés par les statisticiens officiels armés de leurs modèles économétriques magiques.

La blague connue est celle des deux économistes néoclassiques qui trouvent un billet de 500 euros par terre dans la rue, et qui devisent que ce billet est un faux ou une illusion, parce que l'économie est de façon permanente en équilibre (magik!), et qu'à l'équilibre, il n'y a pas de billet dans la rue car quelqu'un l'aurait déjà ramassé... et ils passent donc leur chemin, sans ramasser le billet et fiers de leur raisonnement.

Un corollaire intéressant de la Loi de Bitur-Camember est de donner raison à la morale traditionnelle contre les geignements des bienpensants misérabilistes et tiers-mondistes quand elle condamne la charité aveugle faite aux mendiants ou aux pauvres non-méritant, et n'encourage la charité qu'au conditionnel, sous forme de parrainage accompagné de stricte et paternaliste surveillance.

Voici en avant-première le tout dernier article de François Guillaumat et Georges Lane sur la fameuse Loi de Bitur-Camember.

Pour rappel, La loi de Bitur-Camember fut originellement publiée dans le Tocqueville Magazine du 21 mai 2002. J'en ai fait l'exposé dans le billet de mon blog: Redistribution = Dissipation. La BD de Christophe d'où provient le nom est aussi disponible sur mon blog: On ne pense pas à tout.

Pourquoi la loi de Bitur-Camember

François Guillaumat et Georges Lane

A random correspondant argues against picking the least of two evils. Quote: you don't have to align yourself toward fighting the worst evil to be morally correct. if you're fighting evil you're fine Yeah sure. So you can help the greater evil prevail and feel morally justified. And he even acquiesces to this conclusion. That's moral bankruptcy. And I'm sorry to tell that this and the rest of his discourse sounded terribly like LRC to me: the very libertarian economists who should know better are not exempt from this failing.

Morality is about making choices between available opportunities; it is the very same as the Human Action of austrian economists. Thus, there is no good but the best available choice. Comparing outcomes to a pipe dream utopia, finding none to be good, calling everything evil, and then feeling justified in doing anything whatsoever, because whatever you do, you can construe one evil that you're fighting -- that's but a rationalization for abandoning any and all sense of morality. It's a trick to evade the necessity of examining moral options actually available in the context of the real world, instead of mere general abstract approximations thereof that are wantonly oblivious of the specific constraints of reality.

I repeat, morality is about making choices and directing behaviour in a world of actual choices and real phenomena. Anything that denies the nature of morality is anti-moral. A good choice is one that leads to a better world, as compared to other available choices. A bad choice is one that leads to a worse world, as compared to other available choices. This is why morality is based on economic reasoning, and why people who deny that morality is rooted in actual choices are doing accounting fallacies.

In a previous post, I told you of a door hack one of my colleagues did, and what social concepts it illustrated. Mind you, when I was younger, I also did my own door hacks. My former clubmates from the Club Informatique of Lycée Louis-le-Grand may remember one that I did long ago, back in High-School. In retrospect, I realize this anecdote too may illustrate a number of interesting social concepts.

Oui, la responsabilité individuelle est une "fiction". Tandis, que "la société", "l'utilité publiique", "l'intérêt nazional" (socialiiiste), le "paradiis communiste", c'est quelque chose de tout-à-fait concret, de parfaitement défini, et de merveilleusement incarné par notre glorieux État et sa bienveillante Administrazion, -- sous condition toutefois que ce soit mon parti, ma faction, mes opinions, mon autorité, qui y prédomine -- sinon, ce même État est un instrument d'oppression aux mains de l'ÉnemydeklaSS. Bon, il y a malheureusement peu de chance que mon avis personnel soit pris en considérazion -- c'est pourquoi je soutiens pleinement la candidature de X..., chef que je me suis désigné, qui est un homme parfaitement droit et honnête, compétent et intellligent, bon et courageux, et surtout, qui ne possède aucun préjugé (différent des miens) (à ce que je sache) (d'après ce qu'il ressort de sa campagne) (du moins en comparaison de toute autre personne) (si l'on restreint le choix aux candidats engagés) (voire à ceux qui ont une chance de passer) (oops, ça ne fait plus grand monde) (merde alors, il ne reste plus qu'à voter Chirac).

One of the first thing that any so-called "macro-economist" does when studying a phenomenon, is to postulate a deterministic model in which there is no choice and all economic costs are thus zero. That is, whenever they introduce mathematical tools, which they do so as to pose as physics-like hard scientists, they begin by negating the very essence of economics: the notion of economic cost. They are actually based upon an epistemology that explicitly denies individuals the essence of their human nature: the ability to make relevant choices. This is true of all economists from all schools of economics, save the few libertarians from the austrian school and its direct relatives. And the crooks include the neo-classical schools (that dictates the economic orthodoxy in most rich countries), and the keynesian and marxist schools (that dictate the economic orthodoxy in France and other socialist countries). No wonder why all these schools of economics produce only lies, in the form of deceitful statistics and bogus assumptions smuggled under the veil of meaningless mathematics.

If mathematical models were to be used at all in economic science, we would need non-deterministic models, replacing (neo)classical economics with quantum economics. And then we'd find that we're not able to even imagine the Feynman diagrams of all possible interactions over which to integrate our economic functions, because the relevant interactions that will take place between agents are precisely those based upon information that others don't have, including the person trying to build the model.

PS: Oh yes, one particular crook from the top of the Establishment just called me ridiculous for rejecting the results of so many scientific studies based on empiricism. You may find more about the fraud that is empiricism in social sciences by reading e.g. Hoppe, whom you may hear in this course.

My officemate, a very fine hacker if there ever were one, did a nice door hack last week. The RFID reader pad that controls the electronic door lock for the suit we're in was too high by a few inches (centimeters? wazzat?), so he removed it from the wall and put it back a few inches below; the result isn't quite as nice and clean as it used to be, but it is much more functional: if you carry your electronic key in your pocket, as every one does, a proper twist of your hip (depending on said pocket being front or back, left or right), and there the door opens -- just like it is with other doors in the company. Everyone involved is happy, and no administrative sanction is taken, sought or even considered. Correction: Everyone involved is happy, thus no administrative sanction is taken, sought or even considered. Incidentally, what the competent administrator did decide when he became aware of the change, and after seeking explanations, was to set straight the pad that had been left slightly crooked, acknowledging the enhancement, rather than putting things back with sanctions as could have been his reflex, into which a bureaucrat would have gleefully indulged. That's the power of capitalism: all consensual transactions are legitimate.

In the "public" sector, failing administrations demand more money to do more of the failing things they do. In the "private" sector, successful companies are proposed more money to do more of the successful things they do. Guess which system works better. Of course, if you've read my paper on economic reasoning, you know that the real distinction is not between "public" and "private" but between "based on coercive compulsion" and "based on voluntary cooperation".

Since I've been discussing the Law of Bitur-Camember by email, I translated to English the comic strip from which it got its name. I appreciate your remarks to improve the translation.

So you think there is nothing interesting to say at the intersection of Computer Science and Political Economics? Well, Feynman said that Everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough. And going deeply into it is precisely what I've been doing for ten years now. So there below are some things I have to say about Computer Science and Political Economics.

That is, things beyond the fact that both Computer Science and Political Economics are completely fallacious albeit traditional names: indeed, the former is not a Science (it is an Art, or an Engineering Enterprise, which is one and the same) and to quote Dijkstra it is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, whereas the other is both against Politics and beyond Economics (in either the original Aristotelian meaning of husbandry, or the modern statist meaning of taxable monetary transactions). Good Computer Science is actually Lisp Lore and Craft; good Political Economics is Libertarian Human Action.

Note that if you're not too much into computing, you may skip directly to the paragraph that mention Political Economics and Education. Yes, this is also about Education.

The Evil of Academic Curricula in Computer Science
Chapter I
Parsing Considered Harmful

In a bus to NYC early in January 2005, I met this gorgeous girl who was reading a course in Economics. The textbook was open on a praise of the Fed and its role in regulating the National Economy, with an opposing page in a special color denoting higher science, that justified this role based on one macroeconomic equation by Keynes. It was too tempting, so I started a conversation.

À la tête de Paris, l'embrayage (la pédale de gauche) a fait passer le socialisme municipal à la vitesse supérieure. Dépenses somptuaires en fêtes pour les amis, en art comptant pour rien mais rapportant gros aux courtisans propageant l'idéologie officielle, en amusements publics donnés en patûre à la couche oisive de la populace, etc. Nous revoilà au temps de l'empire romain: clientélisme, panem et circenses et moeurs dépravées pour couronner le tout. Contrairement au régime municipal précédent, nous n'aurons sans doute pas droit à un enrichissement personnel scandaleux de la part des officiels; à la place, les richesses prélevées de force partiront en fumée dans une pure destruction de richesse à court terme; et ceux qui s'enrichiront le feront avec davantage de mesure ou de discrétion -- ou tout simplement auront une justification légale à leur captation de richesse, comme une commande artistique étatique. La différence entre un voleur efficace et un vulgaire vandale, c'est que le voleur efficace s'approprie beaucoup de richesses avec peu de pertes, tandis que le vulgaire vandale détruit beaucoup de richesses pour peu de profit, si tant est qu'il lui reste quelque chose après son coup. Prédation contre déprédations. Le socialisme aura - peut-être - réduit un peu la prédation municipale, et - sûrement - augmenté énormément les déprédations. Qui paie la facture? Les habitants. Les entreprises. Ceux qui créent encore des richesses à Paris. Mais ceux qui le peuvent quittent Paris et la France, ou ne s'y installent pas. À quoi bon venir subventionner les canailles qui s'encanaillent de la république fromagère?

I quite liked the initial movie Spiderman, which was a didactic story about a geek whiz kid who discovers his moral choices make a difference (and other people's too). But this sequel is more than disappointing: where the first issue was an original ode to morality, this second issue is a boring cliché that instead that promotes a form of moral lunacy, of inversion of values, of philosophical absurdity -- the seed of madness, which leads its individual or collective victims to self-destruction.

J'interromps vos programmes habituels pour vous rappeler qu'aujourd'hui, nous commémorons la façon dont l'Etat nous protège de la mort violente par des criminels. Dieu-L'Etat notre sauveur. C'est clair, sans l'Etat, ce serait l'anarchie.

An entrepreneur is a nose. In a world of uncertainty, he makes decisions, and assumes responsibility for his decisions. Where he sees opportunities that other people don't see or don't dare act upon, he commits his resources -- that begin with his own time --, and takes a risk.

Since several friends did recommend this movie, including David Madore, and despite the gripes of Lew Rockwell, I went to watch I, Robot this weekend with my cousin. As was expected, it is quite far from being an immortal chef d'œuvre, but it's indeed a rather well-realized action flick. However, it is only in the very end, and with a twist, that it turns out to be somewhat faithful to the claimed inspiration from Isaac Asimov, and not at all with the original Robot series. Beware: big spoilers ahead.

I am relieved to announce the release of Economic Reasoning vs Accounting Fallacies -- The Case of "Public" Research. This is the translation to English of my 2003 article Raisonnement économique contre sophismes comptables -- Le cas de la recherche « publique ». Many thanks to Bruno and Johan for their help in translating. Please feel free to comment on the expression as well as on the ideas.

Last wednesday, I met Mr. Libertarianism @ Japan, one of the happy few japanese libertarians. Quite a nice fellow.

Ces bâtons lumineux omniprésents -- sont-ce des sabres laser, armes des samouraïs d'aujourd'hui? Non, ce sont des outils de signalisation, rendant bien visibles les travailleurs opérant sur la voie publique: bétonneurs et tireurs de ricksaw aussi bien que portiers et agents de la circulation. Et ces moines mendiants, qui se tiennent immobiles des heures durant, psalmodiant sans cesse les mantras maintenant leur esprit dans un abrutissement permanent, leur grand chapeau rond porté bas, cachant leurs yeux, protégeant ainsi leur superstition mystique d'une confrontation avec le monde réel -- ces bonzes, donc, dont le doigt invite d'un mouvement peu ample mais ostensible à remplir leur sébille, suscitent-ils les dons considérables qui furent nécessaire à l'érection de ces temples omniprésents rivalisant en gigantisme? Non, ils récoltent surtout les flashs des touristes amusés.

Quel spectacle réjouissant! quel progrès! les samouraïs, bonzes et autres scélérats armés d'épées et de mensonges sont devenus obsolètes, des reliques du passé, des curiosités, tout juste bons à être exhibés aux touristes aussi bien domestiques qu'étrangers. Des éléments allogènes dans cette nation même qu'ils dominaient autrefois par la terreur et son inséparable abrutissement. Les prédateurs déphasés et remplacés par les producteurs -- là réside la source nécessaire et suffisante du miracle nippon.

I'll start exercising as soon as I'm in shape.

One of the most frequent fallacies amongst statists as well as other neurotic people is the fallacy of dynamic contradiction: a kind of flawed reasoning that leads to self-defeating behaviour (or lack of behaviour), the consequences of which is the worsening of the problem that it was meant to solve or avoid.