A Good Use Of Energy

There’s a lot of confusion in green thinking about how energy use really works - both from greens who don’t adequately grasp the relationship between efficiency and energy saving, and, to be fair, from those at the opposite end who assume that making things more efficient automatically means we’ll use less energy. Thank God there are Blogs like mine to set things straight. 😃

You can think of capitalism's progression-explosion a bit like this, through the lens of the Jevons paradox. We build a steam-powered factory which costs £10 per item made. At £10 an item, we can sell 100 a day, because few customers can afford it. Then we build an electricity plant, and that only costs £1 per item made. At £1 per item, we can now sell 10,000 items per day, because most people can afford it. That's ten times more spend on a hundred times more energy, and a hundred times more consumers of that energy.

But in reality, it’s not as simple as “a hundred times more energy,” because the new technology also makes each item cheaper precisely by using less energy per unit. If production rises a hundredfold while each item uses a tenth as much energy, total energy use still rises about tenfold. In other words, efficiency lowers the energy per item, but growth in production and consumption more than makes up for it. 

But in fact, it’s even more efficient than that, because we said we have ten times more total spending, and roughly ten times more total energy use - because even though each item uses less energy, we’re making vastly more of them - but the “a hundred times more energy” is an understatement, because but in my example, each item became cheaper precisely because it uses less energy per item. In other words, depending on how the technology and demand interact, total energy use might increase tenfold, a hundredfold, or somewhere in between - but it almost never falls. Efficiency doesn’t necessarily reduce total energy use; but it can enable the economy to expand and consume even more, and both consumers and producers are richer, and more is being produced for less effort. When goods and services become cheaper, we generally buy more of them. When production gets more efficient, we produce more. And the energy use increase from the economy getting bigger typically outpaces the energy use reduction from things becoming more efficient.

But there's even more to the story, because per unit of production, energy becomes more efficient (less energy per item). This is why we need to separate efficiency from total energy use. Per person, or per unit of economic output, modern, advanced economies are usually far more efficient than their predecessors (see the Environmental Kuznets Curve, which also factors in positive trade-offs regarding pollution vs. income benefits, and shows how, at higher income levels, pollution declines, as societies can afford cleaner technologies, smarter regulation and more efficient service-based economies.) - we get more GDP per unit of energy than older economies did, especially with the additional structural shifts (to services, outsourcing manufacturing) alongside those efficiency gains.

Energy intensity has been falling for decades in advanced economies, which shows that growth is almost always greener or more energy efficient. Yet at the same time, total global energy use keeps rising, because efficiency makes goods cheaper and accessible to more people, expanding both production and consumption.

This is one of the many matters the environmentalists don't address - though in most cases they don't currently even think in ways that show them this needs addressing. In other words, it's not just that they don't get this; they don't usually know there is anything here that needs getting (ditto the other green blind spots I have blogged about in the past). It's the complex trade-off between the efficiencies above, of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, and the fact that efficiency doesn’t shrink our total energy appetite - it just allows us to fuel a larger, more energy-intensive economy, where growth is not just about using less energy per item; it’s about the huge advancements of more activity overall, where the trade-off is more absolute energy use, but in most cases for the betterment and improved material living standards of the human species.

Beware of Honest, Well-Intentioned Politicians

 

I don’t know if politicians are generally more honest, well-meaning and good-intentioned than in the past. I’d guess, in some ways, yes, in same ways, no. But as per the wisdom from C.S. Lewis that “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive”, I suspect that it’s the so-called honest, well-meaning politicians who want to do good on our behalf who frequently do the most harm (especially indirectly).

It is with this in mind that I refer you to something I discovered called Celine's Third Law (based on a character in The Illuminatus Trilogy), which contends that an honest politician is more dangerous than a corrupt one, because a corrupt politician cares only about lining his own pockets, but an honest, idealistic one seeks to reshape the world - and that’s precisely why he might end up causing the most damage.

Celine contends that the proliferation of laws only breeds more criminals. Every new law chips away at personal liberty, and with the sheer volume of legislation being passed, no ordinary citizen can realistically navigate daily life without inadvertently breaking some rule. It is, paradoxically, the well-intentioned reformers - those earnest politicians seeking to improve society through legislation - who pave the way for true tyranny by overregulating every aspect of existence.

I believe that is true, but I think there is an even more compelling aspect of the same phenomenon - the honest politicians are even more dangerous because they are the ones who see the ever-increasing size of the state as the solution to most problems, and therefore they are the reason the size of government becomes so bloated that it can no longer afford to sustain itself. At this stage, which is what we’ve seen in recent times, performances suffer, politician live in denial, and we end up with crumbling public services.

I suppose all this is to say that the road to political hell is paved by visionaries with some good intentions, but who believe too deeply in their own righteousness and lack the humility to know their limits. Ignoble political con artists are dreadful, but you might like to consider that perhaps it is well-meaning dogma that allows the machinery of control to grow beyond all restraint.

On Not Picking Sides

 

Yesterday’s blog post was about how easy it is to pick the right side (when there are valid sides one ought to pick, that is, based on empiricism, rationality and logic). Straight after publishing it, I decided to compose a follow up, on the matter of not picking sides - that is, when it’s not so easy to justifiably land on one side or the other, or when the mere framing of sides is remiss. This is because there are areas of life, science, philosophy and human experience where “sides” simply don’t exist in any meaningful way - or, if they do, you only see them because you’ve drawn them yourself or been expediently influenced by the whims of others.

Regarding where sides don’t exist in any meaningful way, I think my paper on free will and determinism is a good example (see here). As a result of the ancient and ongoing debate on this subject, I’ve tried to liberate the reader from needing to pick a side. It’s not a ‘picking a side’ kind of matter.

Or take the question of consciousness. Try not to pick a side on the matter of whether it’s spiritual, an emergent property of matter, a fundamental aspect of the universe, or something we’ll never explain - liberate yourself with the comprehension that it’s all four.

Or take the nature of mathematics, and whether it is discovered or invented. Again, no need to pick a side - it is both (see my blog posts on the nature of mathematics here).

Or take the frequently insufferable philosophical debates about consequentialism and deontology. Both are key elements of moral philosophy if your landscape is broad and wide enough. Pitting them against each other is a bit like arguing whether your pet Rover is a dog or a mammal.

Often it takes stepping out of the divisive nature of religious, political, or ideological conflict to see the situation with a broader perspective. Which is why, for example, a historian studying the French Revolution through the lens of retrospection is unlikely to come down firmly on the monarchy’s decadence or the guillotine’s virtue. Or why a competent theoretical physicist wouldn’t even begin to pick a side in considering the apparent tension between quantum mechanics and general relativity, knowing there are many further discoveries to be made. Or why a balanced philosopher studying the Enlightenment is likely to observe the delicate trade-off between the advancement of reason and progress, and the sense that something precious can easily be lost or discarded through overly rigid black and white empiricism.

Those are just a few examples of the other side of the coin from yesterday’s blog post. The upshot is, while as I said yesterday it’s important to seek the truth to land on the correct side of propositions (and avoid the harms of the incorrect sides), it’s also important to understand that the more profound truths often live in a deeper open-endedness (often due to our own limitations as a species), and certainly transcendent of our conveniently invented oppositions. In those cases, there’s a quiet, assured wisdom and discernment in resisting the urge to pick a side.

Picking Sides

People love to pick sides. What's astonishing is how often they choose not just the wrong side - but the one that's completely opposed to what's right. It’s also surprising this happens so often, as picking sides is usually a lot easier than many people make it look. To show how easy it is - and in a way that should be blindingly obvious - let’s identify some of the big topics that flood our news and media, and see how easy it is to pick the right side.

In the battle over free speech, pick the side that authentically champions free speech and cares about individual liberty with responsibility, not the people trying to suppress it for their own perverse agenda. Regarding economics, pick the side that understands why an economy is less efficient when controlled through politically motivated short-sighted central planning, and favour free markets except in cases where a more top-down organisational structure is more effective than bottom-up. At the same time, be sympathetic to a socialistic mindset in terms of community, mutual help and support, and shared social responsibility outside of the market economy. And always pick the side that understands the price system and knows the harmful effects of price fixing.

On climate alarmism, side with reason over hysteria. Acknowledge that climate change needs addressing with intelligence, but reject the doomsday cult that insists we have only ten years left, every decade, forever. Understand that real solutions come from innovation, adaptation, and pragmatic policy - not panic-driven demands to dismantle modern civilisation.

On the issue of biological sex, side with biological reality: men cannot become women. A man identifying as a woman does not make him one, no matter how sincerely he believes it or how loudly others demand agreement. Don’t let men in women’s sports, prisons or toilets - it’s absurd.

Champion equality of opportunity, and reject both overt racism and unfair discrimination, but also reject the modern mutation that sees racism and unfair discrimination in everything. And pick the side that rewards competence and effort, not one that dilutes excellence in the name of equality of outcome. At the same time, be mindful and sympathetic to individuals who genuinely need a helping hand through no fault of their own – and even show grace when it is their fault. Regarding the messy victimhood culture, pick the side that encourages sympathy, compassion, resilience and personal responsibility, not the one that weaponises suffering and compassion, elevates grievance to a virtue and turns fragility into power.

Regarding immigration, be a global citizen - be tolerant, and acknowledge the immense benefits of immigration, but understand that there will be serious problems if it’s uncontrolled or out of control and excessively concentrated in certain socio-economically challenged areas of the UK, especially with groups who have many values we find, at best, challenging and, at worst, abhorrent.

In the debate between evolution and young earth creationism, side with the overwhelming evidence for evolution while retaining your faith in God. Don’t fall in with those who reject science because it threatens their narrow interpretation of scripture. At the same time, see the obvious compatibility between Christianity and science, because it’s easy to understand why we shouldn’t look for scientific truths in the Bible.

And while this last one is more complex (see here, here, here and here), in the Middle Eastern conflict, don’t side with malevolent forces working against God’s chosen people, Israel. If you’re siding with fanatical Islamists who rape and behead women and who proudly want to wipe Israel off the map, consider that you’re going drastically wrong in your analysis somewhere. At the same time, realise that Israel has been under immense existential threat for decades, and because of that (among other factors), it isn’t behaving well in every situation, and have deep sympathy for all the citizens of every nation involved who are the main victims of their government’s military actions.

Here’s what you should know now - it took me just twelve minutes to think of those examples and write that blog post, and I only decided to write it literally ten minutes before that. And while each case is complex, and could be unpacked with more consideration - in my defence, I have done this repeatedly in past articles - the point is, it’s very easy to intuitively know which side is closer to being right then wrong, and it’s remarkably easy to land on the side that aligns with reason, decency, and basic reality - if you care about the right things, and haven't surrendered your intellect to nonsense, and your conscience to tribalism or fear.

On Defining Genius

My wife and I are watching Celebrity Traitors, and we’re frequently amused by how often the other participants refer to Stephen Fry as a ‘genius’. Stephen Fry is not, of course, a genius. He’s very knowledgeable, and quite intelligent, but not a genius. The overuse of the term genius tends to happen when people are too generous about what a genius actually is. It’s a bit like a dwarf claiming a person of slightly above average height is a giant. So, anyway, my sweetheart and I proceeded to pause Celebrity Traitors and discuss what constitutes a genius. “Fear not”, I said, “the Preface in my book The Genius of the Invisible God, and one of my letters in Dear Treasured You, briefly discusses this very thing.” 😊

So, I emailed it to my sweetheart, and thought it might be of interest here too. This is how I view ‘genius’.  

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Excerpt from Dear Treasured You......

I don't think it is the case that a person is a genius. I think genius is a cosmic, metaphysical force - like love, beauty, justice, grace, mercy, joy and fulfilment - it's something greater than us that we tap into. Genius seems to me to be a comment about not just the within, but the without too - it's a term that rightly confers glory on individual accomplishment, but alongside which shines light on qualities that transcend the immediacy of the achievement. You can commend individuals for permanently changing the way that humanity perceives the world, and the high praise and regard is fully deserved. But in doing so, we are also, in a sense, giving them credit for discovering something that appears to be already existent but awaiting discovery. Shakespeare took playwriting to a level never surpassed before or since; Darwin helped revolutionise biology, Einstein did the same with physics; and Mozart did the same with music. But while there's no doubt that these minds, and many like them, have made huge contributions to our world - those contributions seem more like revelations that tap into something more ineffably profound and mysterious than the constituent parts of the contributions themselves.

I believe each of us can pursue our own excellence of self and draw profoundly from the well of potential within us, which involves the gradual bringing out of human qualities that most people believe are reserved for a few hundred special people. That is the scent of genius that we are forever following in the trailing winds of its mysteries. The art of words, numbers, visualisation and music convey deep truths about reality, and form a body of shared experience around which intellects and artists revolve.

Here's an interesting corollary of the above point. Many of the geniuses of yesteryear - in poetry, philosophy, art, literature, music and film - did not acquire the status of 'genius' until years (sometimes centuries) after their work was produced. It's as though humanity had to grow into its own shoes in recognising the wider picture that surrounds the genius of the contributions. We think we have uncovered genius when we come across talents like Shakespeare and Einstein, who can give exhibition to such extraordinary human qualities – either with brilliant use of language, or mathematical formulae in science, or something of that kind. But while it is true that some people are endowed with higher mental acuity and greater vision than others, genius is vast enough and prevalent enough to encourage the greatest exploration of the brilliant potential inside yourself. This might be the strangest paradox about genius; its provenance belongs without, but it can only be personally cultivated from drawing out the greatest potential from within.

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Excerpt from The Genius of the Invisible God.....

One of the ways I define genius is that the average, good and great producers of their craft do what others might be able to do with similar time, effort and creativity - whereas the genius produces craft that nearly all others would never produce with similar time, effort and creativity. In other words, a genius operates not by doing more within a dimension, but by dipping his or her toe into a new one that others didn’t see existed. Given the same tools, time, and imagination, the genius extracts results that the rest of us couldn’t even conceive were possible. When you consider real geniuses – like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Dirac, von Neumann, da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart, etc - you’ll notice that where other intelligent and creative people improve upon what is, the genius taps into a profound landscape that reflects what could be - and makes it real before the world even has conception or language for it.

Engaging with the mind of a genius – if one is encouraged to pursue it to the maximum potential - is rather like sensing the gradual enlightenment as one watches the glistening night sky turn into a beautiful sunlight next morning. For ourselves as we watch the light illuminate the sky, the hours may seem like a long hunting trip; times of fighting the cold wind and steep climbs are interrupted with intoxicating moments of suspense and delight at what one finds when the uniformity of space and time is jolted by a new perspective, as we get more enthralled by the object of our chase.

I believe that the closer we can get to feeding our own genius and developing our potential, the more we will start to see that the world is full of philosophical cheats and deceptions – many of which begin as honest enquiries and steadfast endeavours. I use the term ‘feeding our genius’ because in this book I am going to speak of genius as being more than just a qualitative part of a human’s abilities – for I believe that whatever ‘genius’ we possess internally, either through inspiration or perspiration, is always being fed by a bigger form of genius out there in the conceptual landscape. We are always extrapolating from bigger things than ourselves.

William Burroughs drew a distinction in art between tonal and nagual art. The tonal universe is the more empirically predictable cause-and-effect universe, whereas the nagual is the less foreseeable, intractable elements of reality that burst through unannounced and beyond the radar of prediction. Burroughs saw the nagual as more unpredictable and harder to creatively construct than the more predictable and manageable patterns of the tonal. As he reflected, "For the nagual to gain access, the door of chance must be open".

Whether it be the painter with his formulae of form and colour applied to a canvas, or the writer with the congregation of words to paper, the true ‘genius’ of creativity is not in the person doing it, but it is being continually re-crafted by tapping into something transcendent of the self. This isn't a scientific viewpoint, it is an artistic feeling. Norman Mailer once suggested that William Burroughs was "possessed by genius" as opposed to ‘being’ a genius or even ‘possessing’ genius. The dynamic spontaneity of ‘genius’ is nagual according to Mailer and Burroughs, and to be possessed ‘by’ genius is to tap into something altogether special and grander than ourselves. At first glance, it might seem like something that finds itself located in the collective nature of human minds, in that we share it, and all, in our own way, seek to take possession of it. But even the collective human minds are obtaining the genius from somewhere much grander than themselves - it is too grand to be contained merely within the human species, stupendous as it is, nonetheless.

Normal Distributions Normally Aren't Normal

 

I saw an interesting complaint about distributions in GCSE results, and then a second article, posing the loaded question “Why do some subjects not have bell curves (see here and here)?” The big issue with their line of enquiry is apparent confusion between what they call a ‘normative process’ and a normal distribution. You see, most bell-shaped data you encounter in the real world isn’t actually normal - at least not in the strict mathematical sense. The normal distribution - also known as the Gaussian distribution - follows a precise mathematical form: 

f(x) = 1 / sqrt(2 * pi * sigma^2) * exp(-(x - mu)^2 / (2 * sigma^2))

It’s perfectly symmetric around its mean mu, defined only by its mean and variance sigma^2, and has tidy, well-known proportions, where about 68% of values fall within one standard deviation of the mean, about 95% within two, and about 99.7% within three. That’s the pure Gaussian world - it’s elegant, compact, but rarer than you think, so it’s not really ‘normal’ at all. If it's not perfectly symmetric and unbounded on both sides (that is, with no limits, skews, outliers and mixtures) then it is not technically a normal distribution. 

So, it’s certainly the case that many real-world data sets produce histograms that look like bell curves, yet deviate in subtle but crucial ways. Some such examples would be fat tailed distributions (like in many financial data sets), which have more extreme outliers than a Gaussian predicts; asymmetric processes (like biological weight categories); and combinations of multiple subpopulations (like male and female height) can produce an overall bell shape that’s not truly normal, to name three examples. All that is to say, the bell curve is a shape, but it’s not a guarantee of normality. Anyone who uses the concept of normality when it isn’t really there opens themselves up to errors, like the increased likelihood of underestimating the probability of rare or extreme events, like misapplying statistical tests that rely on Gaussian assumptions, and like drawing misleading inferences from what seems on the surface like ‘tidy’ data.

If I may suggest a better way to think about normal here. The normal distribution is an idealisation - a mathematical lens that sometimes fits reality well, but often only approximately. Real data lives in a messier world. Consequently, while the Schools Week article rightly draws attention to the potential harms of rigidly applying a bell curve to educational outcomes, it implicitly assumes that the bell curve is a natural or unavoidable benchmark for student ability, which is a hasty assumption. Student performance, like many social phenomena, is influenced by a mix of factors - personality profiles, teaching quality, socioeconomic background, learning differences, levels of freedom, etc - which do not necessarily conform neatly to a symmetric Gaussian model.

More broadly, this reflects a deeper issue that has pervaded education for too long: the push toward homogenisation - an obsession with fitting diverse learners into uniform models of “average” performance. This not only misrepresents the true distribution of abilities (especially at the upper end), but also unfairly neglects or distorts those who fall outside the assumed curve.

Instruments of Love

 

I like how Bishop Barron uses the term "instrument of love" to describe a person who has been transformed by God's grace, and how he encourages us to enable all our circumstances to become a force for good and a participation in God’s redemptive work. Let your riches be an instrument of love; let your poverty be an instrument of love; let your celibacy be an instrument of love; let your marriage be an instrument of love; let your desire to find a beloved be an instrument of love; let your good health be an instrument of love; let your ill health be an instrument of love; let your work be an instrument of love; let your rest be an instrument of love; let your failures be an instrument of love; let your successes be an instrument of love, that sort of thing.

To live in grace is to let every circumstance become an instrument of love – and that’s perhaps one of our best prayers; Teach us, Lord, to turn all that we are, and all that we are becoming, into an instrument of love.

Sexual Equality = More Domestic Violence?

I saw on Tyler Cowen's blog that he was a little perplexed by the fact that the Nordic countries are supposed to be the most sex-equal nation in the world (he says "gender-equal nations", but that's the wrong term), but yet alongside this, they also appear to have a disproportionately high rate of domestic violence against women.

Tyler, who from what I've seen doesn't get perplexed about very much, is perplexed because "logically violence against women would be expected to drop as women gained equal status in a society". To me, that expectation is far from obvious - so much so, in fact, that I'd even be inclined to expect the opposite: that as women gain equal status the likelihood of violence against them increases.

Don't get me wrong, I'd really love it not to be the case, and as male attitudes towards women hopefully continue to improve, then that societal betterment may well offset some of the aforementioned increased likelihood of violence. But given that men have equal status with other men and fight all the time, I wouldn't have thought the 'equal status' factor is the thing that reduces incidents of male violence against women.

A study from a few years back explored this contradiction - the so-called Nordic paradox. Why, after all, should it be perplexing? If a boy grows up being told that men are stronger than women, and that a “real man” never hits a woman, he’s learned a kind of protective chivalry rooted in hierarchy. But if that same boy is instead taught that men and women are equal in jut about every way - and that chivalry is patronising or patriarchal - then why wouldn’t we expect some men to treat women as physical equals, including in moments of conflict? That's not a defence of violence, obviously - it’s simply a reminder of the age-old economic wisdom of unintended side effects. Equality changes not just laws and opportunities, but also the cultural scripts that once governed restraint.

There may be other factors at play here, though - like, for example, perhaps people in the Nordic countries are more likely to report abuse. Often a society with lower reported rates have much lower reporting rates, and this may be true in reverse here, especially as Nordic women’s high economic independence might also mean they’re less financially trapped in abusive relationships, so abuse is more likely to be reported or result in prosecution.

There are many unintended consequences in life, and this might be one such case. 

Writer's Update: The Challenge To Be An Important Writer

 

Bound up in one's endeavours to succeed in a particular craft - in my case hoping to be a published Christian author - are several tricky hurdles to overcome to make an author publishable. I think this can be illustrated by referring to Ricardo's well-known distinction in economics between the intensive and extensive margins of cultivation. The extensive margin refers to the process of bringing new, previously uncultivated (and typically less fertile) land into production as demand for agricultural goods increases. The intensive margin, on the other hand, involves increasing output on already cultivated land by applying more labour or capital. At the intensive margin, adding more inputs to the same land leads to diminishing marginal returns. As demand grows, it may become more economical to expand cultivation to new land, even if it is of lower quality. This is Ricardo's rent theory; economic rent arises from differences in land productivity, where more fertile land (closer to markets or naturally more productive) generates a surplus over the least productive land in use - that is, the land at the extensive margin.

In the economics of Christian writing, the extensive margin is like finding entirely new topics or niches where few have written before - akin to cultivating new, less fertile land. For a Christian writer, this means exploring fresh or overlooked subjects where the competition is low, but the audience or interest might be limited. The intensive margin is like writing more articles on well-established, already saturated topics - like adding more effort on already cultivated land - which is a challenge in a crowded market, where fresh and uniquely interesting ideas become harder to find and produce. As with diminishing returns in farming, the marginal cost of originality rises, because anything truly fresh and unique has a higher probability of being either too niche or arcane for public consumption, or not wholly factual, because the field is already crowded with smart people's work over centuries, and surely if it's truly fresh and unique in a good way, someone will have written it already.

Consequently, just as in agriculture, breaking into the Christian writers' market and making a significant difference involves the key balance between exploring new, less trodden ground (extensive margin) and deepening effort in saturated topics with high barriers to originality (intensive margin).

I think some of my books are at the extensive margin, bringing fresh and unique perspectives but risking limited readership. I'd say The Genius of the Invisible God is at the most extensive margin, where there nothing quite like it out there - and as so much of it came from (I believe) direct Divine revelation, I'm not sure anyone else could or would ever write it.

And I think Benevolent Libertarianism and The Ecstasy of Divine Goodness are slightly at the extensive margin too - even though the topics (economics and morality), are well-trodden. I think those works stand out in their field as being comprehensive and compellingly fresh enough to make a splash - they each take a well-trodden subject and flesh it out to its deepest, most expansive treatment, expression and dimensions.

The Divine Truths of Love is similarly on the borderline; it is at the intensive margin, because love is a very well covered topic in writing history, and it's hard to break new ground; but it's also at the extensive margin in its uniquely comprehensive writing style, and the breadth of elements contained within one book.

Dear Treasured You and my as yet untitled Christian apologetics book both occupy the intensive margin - they are the ones most surrounded by existing literature - and probably require the most exceptional creative distinctions in order to stand out.

This is the challenge ahead – but it’s always a pleasure and privilege to be on such a journey.

If you're one who prays, then all prayers for this next stage of my journey are appreciated. 

An Interesting But Flawed Idea About Free Will

 

Many popular formulations of propositions about free will don’t strike me as being very compelling, often because they rest on either category errors or definitional errors (sometimes both). But there’s one that posits that God’s foreknowledge of our actions doesn’t take away our freedom to act otherwise – which is problematic from a Christian perspective, but isn’t uninteresting (if you’ll excuse the double negative). The upshot of the proposition is this; even if God knows that I will do A, that doesn’t mean I’m compelled to do A. I remain capable of choosing differently. If I were instead to do B, then God’s knowledge would simply encompass that choice rather than A. In other words, it’s my decision that grounds what God knows, not God’s knowledge that determines my decision. I am therefore genuinely free in what I do, though whatever I freely choose is perfectly known by God.

There’s a problem with this idea, though - it amounts to the proposition that my action explains God’s knowledge, not the other way around. Even in His timeless realm, God’s knowledge can’t be dependent on the actual choices I make, because He sees them in an eternal present as part of His omniscient atemporal knowledge suite.

Knowledge depends on truth, and my future free action cannot metaphysically ground God’s eternal knowledge, since God’s knowing is not temporally or causally posterior to human action. Just because the action hasn’t yet occurred (from my perspective) it doesn’t negate the omniscience of the action from God’s perspective. There is too much modal tension in any alternative theory, because even if God’s knowledge depends on my choice, the truth that “God knows I will do A” is already necessary for God to be omniscient, meaning it’s not metaphysically possible that I do otherwise and God’s belief remain true. In other words, it’s epistemically impossible for God to be mistaken, yet metaphysically impossible for me to do otherwise without altering that necessary truth, so the argument comes to grief.

On Love of Country

 

Alongside the Christian love, in which we are called to love all people (Matthew 22:37-39, John 13:3-35), we tend to love people in two ways; we love some because they are wonderful people and we enjoy what they bring to our lives, and we try to love the less wonderful people because it is better for them (and us, of course) that they are loved. To that end, love of country is really love of people - like one tries to love friends, work colleagues and acquaintances - because the official nature of a country (governments, politics, institutions, media, culture, business, etc) are more like transactions between systems than connections between individuals.

Consequently, I think love for country really means love for people who we’d ordinarily choose to love, because there are plenty of people in every country who we find it harder to love and are not naturally inclined towards them. But then the opposite to the first kind of love is the failure to love those who are not like us, and that is the less Divine kind, and goes against the Christian virtues of God’s love. And once that has set in, it becomes more likely that people will develop a dislike of ‘otherness’ - those who are not like them, which is when patriotism can easily descend into nationalism, and even racism, bigotry and intolerance.

But it won’t do to just write off everyone concerned about immigration as being of the latter kind, because it is quite possible to love everyone in the first sense and the second sense, but still remember that a country is very much like a sort of business transaction where it is not always prudent to have uncontrolled immigration, or let in people who values are opposed to and dangerous towards our own. Therefore, love of country in the healthy kind can also mean, and sometimes should mean, that the best way to love individuals in one’s own country is to have a sensible immigration policy, not a reckless open-door policy under the dubious and insincere pretext of being merely seen to be virtuous, tolerant and welcoming.

Your Friend’s Folly Is Your Foe

 

You’ve probably heard it said that your enemy’s enemy is your friend (which mostly isn’t true). But what is mostly true is that your friend’s folly is often your biggest foe.

In my economics book Benevolent Libertarianism, I talked about how the biggest competition for the job for which you are applying is not a rich entrepreneur, but someone with similar skills and experiences who’d be more likely to express an interest. I offered an analogy that, when on the pull in a nightclub, average looking Graham’s biggest competition is not gorgeous George, it is average looking Gary and average looking Gordon.

This can be summarised as a reliable rule of thumb, that our fiercest competition usually comes from those most like us, not those far away from us, because they overlap with us in skills, goals, and audiences, and compete for the same space.

I feel this most acutely in a different way about my Christian faith. The biggest impediments to the tenability and credibility of the gospel are frequently not atheists, agnostics or members of other religions – they are the science-distorting fundies, crackpots, hucksters, snake-handlers, weaponisers of scripture, ill-mannered congregation members, charlatan prosperity-gospel peddlers, whooping self-appointed prophet grifters, and cultish sectarians – who are, basically, all fellow Christians who purport to be on the same team.

We’ve seen that in politics too. We saw how the biggest threat to the Blair brand of centre-left Labour became Corbyn’s hard left. We’ve seen how the biggest threat to the Conservative Party have been those who’ve actually taken their place as being conservative while the party has drifted off to the centre left.

It’s definitely something to watch out for - it’s often not the opponent across the trench who undoes you, but the fool recklessly waving your own flag.

Should We Love or Hate the Devil?

 

This is somewhat tongue in cheek and a bit whimsical, but it got me wondering. If the Devil is one of our enemies, and we are called to love our enemies, then are we called to love the Devil, despite hating what he does and who he is? Some humans are awful, but we are encouraged to hate the sins but love the sinner. Should we, then, hate the sins of the Devil but love him? I don’t know. We are told in scripture to resist the Devil, to hate what is evil, but does that mean we should hate the Devil, even though we are told not to hate other humans who are our enemies and persecute us? If we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and the Devil is our enemy and persecutes us, then should we pray for him? And if we pray for him, wouldn’t we pray for him out of love? Or do we not bother praying for the Devil because we think he is beyond saving (and, therefore, note the opportunity costs with regard to the other prayers we could be offering up instead), and because we already know in scripture that the Devil will be judged and cast into eternal punishment (Revelation 20:10)? I suppose if we must ‘resist the Devil’, then we probably shouldn’t give him the time of the day in our thought processes. But we should be mindful of his influence to be alert to his schemes.

Just a few off-the-peg thoughts to consider. 

The Future Of Meat Consumption

 

It seems likely that killing animals for meat consumption is one of those admittedly very long transitional periods in the human story, and some people feel it will probably be an improvement when we can produce our own meat in the lab, artificially synthesising the protein, fat and carbohydrates that make up the meat’s constituents.

But what we mustn't overlook is that the reason tens of millions of animals are used in livestock production each year, and the reason they occupy a lot of the Earth’s land and require a lot of resources themselves, is not because we are all clumsily disregarding the climate, it’s because there are no viable, affordable alternatives that can presently improve upon the resources that meat-eating on a global scale requires.

Activism like vegetarianism and veganism increases demand for different products and changes behaviour, to which the market has responded. For the meat eaters, when lab-produced meat becomes cheaper to provide than farmland meat, many suppliers will switch to it. Given that livestock animals are bred for human consumption, then if it takes off, a switch to lab-based meat will reduce the number of livestock animals, thereby reducing resources required to feed animals and land required for their habitat.

This pattern isn’t unique to meat production, of course - it reflects a broader principle in technological progress, where social pressure can raise awareness but rarely substitutes for scalable efficiency. I explained the underlying mechanism in a paper on power laws and parsimony, and this casts lots of doubt on the success of trying to edge these things along before we are scientifically, technologically and economically ready to do so.

This also follows another rule of thumb in economics - that if it’s beneficial for suppliers to do something that reduces their own costs, resources and labour, they are already incentivised to do so, because suppliers generally respond to cost incentives (though factors like taxation, subsidies, consumer preferences, and regulation can delay technological shifts even when more efficient options exist). 

Britain is struggling a lot right now from lack of growth, and much of this is to do with the present systemic misallocation of resources that artificially raises the price of energy, and drives policies that have serious negative unintended consequence. Alas, the situation will only worsen if we don't elect politicians who have the will and competence to reverse it.

Sleight of Hand Costs

 

I get frustrated on your behalf with politicians (frequently egged on by voters) when they sell a bad policy that will cause net harm to everyday citizens but make them sound virtuous and progressive. Foolish impositions of obviously inefficient policies always takes me back to my fundamental political trilemma; are they being dumb, deliberately misleading, or cowardly in refusing to tell voters the truth? It must be one or a combination of the three, because this really is basic econ 101: the fact that someone physically hands over money does not tell us who ultimately bears the cost of a tax or regulation.

Take minimum wage laws, for instance. While employers appear to “pay” higher wages, the burden is not primarily felt by them. Raising wages above the market equilibrium unnecessarily increases the cost of employing workers - so if it’s plainly obvious that to pass on those costs you have to either reduce hours, hire fewer workers, or raise prices for goods and services, the inefficiencies should be just as obvious. To avoid reduced profits, employers pass the costs in part onto workers in the form of lost employment or reduced hours, and in the largest part onto consumers in higher prices. What the government mandates as higher wages is borne at the shelf with reduced consumer purchasing power, giving citizens a bum deal overall.

It's the same with carbon taxes - politicians make energy and carbon-intensive goods more expensive to produce. And while producers might initially write the cheque to the government, the ultimate burden is passed onto consumers through higher prices, where the reduced demand for taxed goods also lowers production, which also hurts employment and wages, also giving citizens a bum deal overall.

Rent controls are no different. While landlords are legally constrained in the rent they can charge, the “cost” is borne in landlords reducing maintenance, not renting out places they could otherwise, converting rental units to other uses, or investing less in new housing. Every time rent controls have been tried anywhere in the world, they have always been a predictable disaster - especially through shortages, longer waiting lists, lower-quality housing, and lack of investment in houses, once again giving citizens a bum deal overall.

The upshot is, because he or she who physically pays the tax or the cost of regulation is usually not the one who bears its economic burden, this means that the actual costs are thinly (often intangibly) spread in ways to which the average citizen never pays much attention. But they see its effect every time they read about unaffordable prices of goods and services, businesses closing, sectors being short-staffed, shops or pubs shutting down, rising food and energy costs, jobs disappearing, and wages stagnating. Yet rarely do they hold politicians to account for it - so politicians carry on giving citizens more of these bum deals year in, year out.

The Biggest Failing Of The Christian Church

Looking through some of my old Word files, I came across some jottings from the 2000-2001 period, when I was first being introduced to Christians and what they believe. Here is part of an email I wrote to a friend in 2001:

“I am starting to sense that there might be something in these Christian claims of God’s existence, after all. On Thursday, a friend of whom I’ve become rather fond asked to pray for Divine revelation for me before I left. I felt apprehensive, as though I was being offered the chance to open the floodgates, but I wasn’t yet ready for the water that is promised to come out. And that feeling brought about a slight sense of alarm; how could there be any apprehension towards my being prayed for without the mustard seed of belief that could engender such a feeling? After all, the prince only begins to become enchanted by the princess when he senses there is such a thing called love.

But at the risk of misusing a quote from your own holy book, I’m struggling to discern from the Christian folk how the wheat and chaff sit so comfortably together in their belief system. Many Christians seem to have some unpleasant attitudes and poor manners, and they seem to believe some crazy things – about the age of the earth, about how apparently evolution is unscientific, and several other odd beliefs about the world. It disturbs me that people who claim, in one hand, to be in a relationship with the Creator of the universe, can, with the other hand, showcase such intellectual and epistemological ineptitude that even atheists of average intelligence would comprehend as being ridiculous. Being naturally more feline than canine, I have a feeling that any faith that swills through my veins is likely to involve a more solitary pursuit than one that cleaves to the mainstream denominations.”

Reading those thoughts twenty five years later, I was considering why it is that Christians don’t make as much of a positive impact on unbelievers as one might expect, given the church comprises people who know the Creator of the universe. Now, I don’t want to be harsh on the church - it’s full of humans, and we humans are all flawed and sinful. So it’s not as though we didn’t have difficult machines to manage as we tried to plough the land to make fertile ground. But if pressed, I think the biggest failing of the Christian church (of all denominations) is in not using a relationship with God as the inspiration to fall in love with all truth, in failing to seek enough of the truth, and in neglecting to treat the truth as a quest for advancement and exhilaration.

When I was first exploring the faith, and learned that Christ equates Himself with the truth, I was surprised at how many false things Christians believe. It became clear that it’s easier to believe in God than it is to tell the truth – which ought to strike us as strange, given that Christ is the truth. It felt like the church resembled a catering college full of people who loved food but didn’t like cooking all that much. It’s not that we should expect a believer to suddenly rid themselves overnight of all the false things they believe. But if Christ is the truth, and Christians love Christ, I was surprised that generally believers didn’t exhibit a repertoire of beliefs and views that suggest they love the truth with any kind of tangible quest for advancement and exhilaration.

A profound thing about truth and God is this. If we seek all truth, we will find God, but if we find God, we won’t necessarily seek all truth. To seek all truth means we unremittingly demand of the world that it reveals more and more truths that we can store in our arsenal - on what is factual, on how to behave, on how to treat others - and that when we acquire them, we love them rather like family members. But it’s possible to find God by recognising Christ as Lord, yet still not fall in love with the truth in a way that stops us believing false things. If Christ is the truth, then this means that even Christians are guilty of failing to love God in some ways, because when they cleave to falsehood, they are failing to love truth, and therefore failing to love God in some aspects of their walk. If Christ is the truth, then to love Christ means to love truth, because truth points to God - and every time we love truth, we are acting in a way that pleases God and draws us closer to Him. To love God without treating the truth as a quest for advancement and exhilaration means dishonouring God in aspects of life by not loving the full truth.