Truth, Beliefs & Confidence

 

Think about your individual beliefs and views on any given subject. Take a belief and call it x. You believe x is true, but what is your level of confidence in that belief? You might say you know it's true, or you don't know if it's true, or you are unsure of the strength of your conviction. The strongest statement is that you believe x and you know x is true. Think about how many of your beliefs fall into this category.

Now think about the beliefs you hold where you do not know if they are true. Then ask two further questions; 1) Why don't I know if the belief is true? And 2) Why do I still believe it if I don't know it's true? Note; I'm not saying it's always wrong to believe things you do not know are true - I'm just inviting you to think about the meta-questions surrounding your beliefs.

It's quite possible to have a justified belief in x without being sure x is true. It's also possible for x to be true without your knowing why you should know it's true. But for all the beliefs you have where you don't know they are true (for example, if you believe x, and x isn't true, it's impossible for you to know it's true - obviously!), some might be false, and you don't know why they are false. Not knowing a belief is false is primarily the reason why you mistakenly think it's true. But if you think it's true, but can't claim to know it's true, you should start to consider why you feel you don't know it's true.

Of all the beliefs in this category (where you accept P but reject -P without full comprehension of why), we can bring in a philosophical term called defeasibility. Beliefs are said to be defeasible when there is a realistic possibility that they could yet be shown to be false (we could discuss what we mean by 'realistic' but that's too much for this post). For something to defeat your belief x, a proposition would have to be presented that makes you no longer believe x. To be sure that your belief x is true, you'd have to be fully confident that there are no propositions that could be introduced that would change your mind about x.

But this level of confidence requires a kind of meta-level confidence in your ability to know that there are probably no prospective defeaters out there - and that is perhaps the defining wisdom in the confidence in believing x and being confident x is true. Furthermore, if you are in the position where you have no defeaters, you will probably be able to comfortably identify some (if not all) of the defeaters in your opponent's position.

One of the fundamental human problems is this; If someone you think you're allied to says something, you're more likely to believe it; if someone you think you're opposed to says something, you're more likely to reject it. This causes blindness to your own faults and to your opponents' strengths, and it amplifies to the point where you find it prohibitively difficult to see any other perspective or listen to balanced reasoning on particular matters.

Humans are primed to pursue status and reputation, and the status and reputation they prefer most is gaining regard from the people about whose thoughts, opinions and acceptance they care about most (call it group x). But left undisciplined, this creates a feedback loop, in that they look to gain more regard from group x, and care more about what group x thinks, and the more they care, the more regard they need from them, and the more regard they need, the more they care what they think, and so on. 

The trouble with feedback loops like this is that individuals who succumb to them get swallowed up into a cause or ideology or belief system from which it becomes harder and harder to disentangle themselves - and, as a consequence, harder to remain individuated and authentic. The only antidote to this is to look for allies in an honest search for the truth, because that is the alliance most valuable to yourself and to others.

How Likely Are Long Distance Relationships To Work?

 

Everyone knows the potential barriers to the success of long distance relationships, where many result in dissolution. But with strong communication, trust, transparency, frequent meet ups, and clear, mutually established expectations, many of them do turn out to be successful in the long run.

One of the key incentives in long distance relationships might be the increased quality of time spent together in the teeth of lack of frequency. Think of it like this. One of the well known (to economists) effects of trade taxes like import/export tariffs is the Alchian–Allen effect, which says that when a fixed unit price is added to two similar goods of different prices, consumers will sometimes have an incentive to favour the higher priced good. In other words, if the fixed cost is high, the quality will increase too. 

Here's an example of why. Suppose you live in the UK and are looking to buy one of the newly designed music systems on the Japanese market. There are two kinds, and they are the only two of their kind in the world - let's call them Model A and Model B. Let's say that in UK currency, Model A is the £150 model, and Model B is the £300 model. Model B is twice the cost of Model A, except for one additional fact - we'll say all Japanese items shipped to the UK come with a supplementary £100 overseas postage cost.

That is to say, to buy Model A will actually cost you £250 and to buy Model B will actually cost you £400. But notice what's happened when we add on the Alchian–Allen effect; if there were no postage costs then Model B (£300) would be double the cost of Model A (£150) - but with the additional £100 postage cost, Model B (£400) is only 1.6 times the cost of Model A (£250) - meaning that when that fixed unit price (£100) is added to the two goods of different prices, we've more chance of favouring the higher priced good because it becomes more worth our while.

The nature of increased consumption of the higher variable cost good occurring when adding a fixed cost to two independent prospects could be creatively applied to long distance relationships too: they are a bit like an equivalent postage cost, because for some couples, the increased effort required in seeing one another might play out in improved quality of time spent together, deepening the mutual bond and connection. If you've travelled from Brighton to Leicester to see your beloved, you are unlikely to sit in and watch Netflix together all weekend – you are likely to want to make the most of every moment spent together.

What's It Like Being An Eco-Vandal?

 

I recall a quote by computer designer Charles Babbage that has stuck with me over the years, about having an opponent who strikes him as so confused that he is difficult to understand - "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question", Babbage said.

After eco vandals threw soup on great works of art last week, the weekend got me thinking about what it must be like to be one of those Just Stop Oil members who committed such an act. Like Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke an individual to believe they have no future because of climate change - much less, cause misery to innocent people as a result.

Consider the journey you'd have to make to go from ordinary citizen in society, to someone who behaves like that. Just imagine how divorced from reality you'd have to be, to be willing to damage private property and works of art while being filmed, cause misery to holidaymakers, put lives at risk through mass congestion, and rob yourself of your own freedom by being thrown into prison for such acts - all for the distinction of being puppets having your strings pulled by corrupt organisations and self-serving narcissistic cult leaders.

I guess you might point out that they don't know they've been ensnared by a cult, and that most people never do - but if they’re willing to risk prison for their beliefs, then it seems surprising that they haven't up to this point undertaken the relatively simple task of thinking things through with more care and consideration. I actually find it hard to even conceive of the journey downwards one would need to take from sane analysis to the depths of madness we are seeing with climate alarmism and hysteria-driven criminal activity.

What would a sane analysis of climate change reveal? I am almost certain it would reveal that there are problems we are going to have to solve - but that we don't have, and will not have, a climate crisis or a climate catastrophe to deal with. With climate change, we are not talking about a massive change in the short term (which might constitute a crisis), we are talking about gradual changes over a long period of time. Over the course of the next century, we are likely to see climate change necessitating small changes in behaviour, alongside which our technological advancements will be far more substantial. Human ingenuity will enable us to adjust to gradual climate change, where we make tweaks to correct for gradual temperature rises when we need to.

The insistence that we are facing a climate crisis is not one that someone committed to a sane analysis would easily arrive at once they'd factored in the full suite of considerations at play. Consequently, falling for the 'climate crisis' narrative as a bystander is an act of moderate failure. But falling for it to the extent that you are willing to cause harm to others, get yourself locked up in prison, and think that you are a force for good in doing so, is an act of such absurd madness, attention-seeking and selfishness that I really do find it hard to imagine what it's like to arrive at that place, or be such a person.

In Fairness to Trussonomics

 

Liz Truss has said this week: “Things would be better if I was still in charge” – a comment which has elicited ridicule and chagrin with almost equal measure.

I’m not convinced that most of the critics of what’s been pejoratively labelled ‘Trussonomics’ are qualified enough to know better, especially those who looked to reject the whole thing; but I’m equally unconvinced that Liz Truss ever had a proper handle on things either. And although it’s a personal thing, I don’t find her very likeable, which probably makes it harder to warm to her intentions, and give her some benefit of doubt.

But I'll try, because theoretically Trussonomics needn't have been quite as bad as many people made out – it’s a combination of one main fatal flaw in the idea and the practical elements which made it a disaster. The framework of Truss’s proposals are the very thing the UK so badly needs – especially tax cuts, supply-side reforms, deregulation, and stimulating economic growth by removing state-imposed impediments and incentivising investment. Because what Britain needs is long-term economic growth – and that will only happen with deregulation, decreased state spending, increased private sector investment and job creation.

Truss wanted to turn Britain into a much-needed thriving economy, with increased productivity, and as a place where outsiders were willing to invest. Critics who favour free markets said the big problem was the execution, not the idea. But that’s not quite right. The execution was indeed terrible – that’s plain for all to see; it culminated in panic, financial turmoil and lost confidence in the markets, necessitating a quick government u-turn. But the idea was fundamentally flawed too, because it was based on increasing borrowing with a flaky strategy for fiscal discipline. Combined with the high levels of public debt and the unique inflationary pressures around that time, the idea was defective and poorly timed, which made the execution inevitably disastrous.

The upshot is, I think Truss deserves most of her criticism – but it should be borne in mind that many of the fundamental principles of Trussonomics are still exactly what the country badly needs – especially lower taxes, a less burdensome state, supply-side reforms, mass deregulation, increased private sector investment and job creation. It’s just that I honestly can’t think of any politicians in any of the current political parties in whom I’d have enough confidence that they have the combined competence and courage to do what’s required to turn this economy around.

When Simplicity Becomes Over-simplicity

In one of my book’s chapters, I have a section in which I state that a great many of the issues with people’s faulty reasoning, arguments and views are due to the problem of over-simplistic thinking. In fact, if a proposition is defective, you can be fairly sure that over-simplicity is involved somewhere. And just as we know the well-worn truism that it takes more effort to correct a falsehood than state one, the concomitant truth is that the amount of effort needed to redress an overly-simplistic proposition is vastly greater than the effort required to produce it. To correct an over-simplified view, one must reintroduce the complexities, provide detailed explanations, and often counteract the appeal of the simpler narrative – and that’s to say nothing of the investigation of cognitive biases and defectiveness involved in producing the errors.

Consequently, then, a most reliable syllogism is this:

Topic X is complex

A’s position on X is over-simplistic

Therefore, A’s position on X is inadequate and likely to be strewn with error.

Here are a couple of easy examples:

Prices are complex

A’s position on price fixing is overly-simplistic

Therefore, A’s position on price fixing is inadequate and likely to be strewn with error.

And....

Climate change is complex

 A’s position on fixing climate change is overly-simplistic

Therefore, A’s position on climate change is inadequate and likely to be strewn with error.

Here I’m drawing the distinction between being simplistic and over-simplistic. Being simplistic is frequently fine; being over-simplistic is frequently not. The challenge, then, is to try to determine when something simplistic (and is presentable in a succinct argument) becomes over-simplistic and compromises the accuracy, nuance, or essential complexity of the subject. An argument can present the main points clearly, but omit some details for the sake of parsimony (simplistic), whereas an argument that omits essential information or key variables, and significantly undermines the understanding of the issue, is likely to be over-simplistic. An argument that relies on some generalisations for brevity, but where they are generally reasonable and broadly applicable is fine (simplistic), but if it includes unfounded assumptions or cunningly neglects to factor in the true diversity and complexity of the subject matter, then it is over-simplistic.

Consider these two examples:

Free trade is complex

Economists’ position on X is simplistic

Therefore, economists’ position on free trade is inadequate and likely to be strewn with error

And…

Biological evolution is complex

Biologists’ position on biological evolution is simplistic

Therefore, biologists’ position on biological evolution is inadequate and likely to be strewn with error

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong the two sets of premises here, as long as they are simple but not overly-simple. Relative to the collective complexity of free trade and biological evolution, even those who speak best on these subjects do so by shaving off a lot of complexity in order to make succinct but accurate statements about these subjects. So, it isn’t always the case that using simplistic language is a synonym for being in error. It’s certainly possible to write saliently about a complex subject in a simple way – that’s what most good writers do. Economists and biologists who write simply and accessibly are usually not writing this way because they do not understand the complexities: it’s usually to help the reader understand complex subjects in a rudimentary, manageable way. This isn’t true of groups like socialists and climate change alarmists – they frequently over-simplify complex matters because it helps them to justify their actions and gather support for their cause.

It’s fine to write simplistically to make key points or to present short writing pieces, but over-simplistic statements are problematic when the reduction of complexity leads to a loss of essential truth, failure to factor in the full gravitas of the subject, and other inadequacies that undermines your position. And here’s a particularly incisive truth to close with, I think. If you have a viewpoint, and it is overly-simplistic and inadequate, it’s not as though you won’t be aware of it – you will know deep down that you are being disingenuous, and that what you are saying does not do proper justice to the complexity of the considerations that need to be included. If you’re in that camp in any of your views, you’re going to be suppressing emotions that make you feel ashamed and disappointed – and deep down, you’re not going to be feeling good about yourself, and nor are the people supporting you.

Over-simplicity, coupled with a perverse agenda, is the cause of many false, toxic, and damaging belief systems in the world. But I think that’s because over-simplicity is one of the most effective tools for perverting the agenda, attracting followers, and dismissing outside scrutiny - especially if one can attempt to lay claim to moral superiority in doing so.

The Only Way To Heal Society

 

Political issues aside, everything wrong in the UK has multiple, complex causes. But I believe that the primary causes - directly or indirectly - of what’s fundamentally wrong in society are: 

1)    The decline of Christian beliefs and priority of Christian values

2)    A lack of care or desire for the truth

3)    The breakdown of marriage and the family unit

4)    The weakening of church community and engagement

I’d say literally everything that’s wrong with the UK society – the devaluation of human life, the erosion of a robust moral framework, increased anxiety and confusion, false religions and cults, loss of purpose and identity, idolatry, hedonism, excessive consumerism, narcissism, neglect of community and social responsibility, self-serving leadership, rising mental health issues, wokeism, cancel culture, confusion over identity, extreme factions, isolation, the list goes on – is directly or indirectly linked to some or all of the above four things.

A society that became transformed and re-rooted with those four pillars would be thriving, healthier, happier, more truthful, unified, purposeful and fulfilled.

The Economics Of Queuing, Booking & Paying

At the weekend, my wife and I went to a pub restaurant that operated on a first-come, first-served table system. When we arrived, there were no tables available, so we were added to a waiting list. After having a drink, we were seated within 15 minutes. The dining experience was wonderful, and the food was fabulous. I got talking to the manager about their non-booking system, and how they'd made a success of it, maximising turnover in the process. From an economist's perspective, there are pros and cons to both types of system (booking and non-booking) - but to make the latter work, you typically have to offer a top-notch customer experience and have an excellent reputation.

Just as this restaurant made queuing a pleasant experience for its patrons, I predict that with continually advancing technology we will have to queue a lot less than we do now. There'll be far less queuing in shops, in bars, on roads, etc because automated bots will be bringing us our goods, serving our drinks and driving our cars. But until that day comes, let's have a further chat about queues, booking and paying.

We all know what it is like to decide which checkout line to go to in a busy supermarket. The human motivation of all shoppers is to get out of the store as quickly as possible. To do this, one must first do a quick scan at the number of people and the number of goods in each shopping trolley in each checkout line, to get a sense of how long each person in the queue may take. During this time, we'll be on the lookout for potential delays, such as old ladies with vouchers or chequebooks, items that have hard to read barcodes, items like fruit and veg that may need a manual entry from the cashier, single people packing their own bags vs. couples with one of them doing the packing, that sort of thing.

This is the basis of complex systems theory: individual agents trying to maximise their own utility, whereby in just a few seconds the mind executes some rapid computations to ascertain which of a number of possibilities is the optimal one. Because of this, in busy supermarkets, most checkout lines most of the time will appear to involve roughly the same perceived waiting time (and usually the same actual waiting time too).

Queues frustrate many people, but we use queues as a way to deal with short-term fluctuations in demand. Queues are usually a problem of supply meeting demand without any additional costs. But the best way to understand queues is that they are a constraint on the supplier's ability to provide a good or service at the price or speed the consumer (and often the provider) desires. Additionally, it's usually to do with number of personnel, skills of personnel, amount of space, etc - but whenever you have to wait in line, there is a constraint occurring somewhere. 

With the qualities of the free market, you are all but guaranteed (through price theory) to facilitate the most rational, incentive-driven allocation of resources possible. In theory, if the price is set right according to supply and demand, there should be virtually no queuing. If prices are too low, demand exceeds supply, and queues are expected to form. As the price rises, we lose the consumers who are not willing to pay more, so the queue diminishes. We reach equilibrium when the price is high enough to ensure the quantity demanded equals the quantity supplied - which is the point at which we'd expect no queue. In other words, if prices are set correctly, demand will fall until the queue reaches zero.

I don't queue very often because I rarely care enough about any consumable good to wait 20 or 30 minutes in line for it. Because there are many people like me, queues engender lots of opportunity costs for providers and suppliers. Imagine a queue at a Building Society in which one customer arrives every two minutes, and one customer every two minutes is dealt with by a member of staff. All it takes is a hold up somewhere in the Building Society (a customer with a complex problem, one of the team on a lunch break, someone off sick, or an influx of people joining the queue), and you could have a queue of ten people. That means anyone joining the queue has to wait for at least twenty minutes to be served. While a Building Society may not lose much custom this way, a food stall surrounded by lots of competition probably would. Queues allocate resources efficiently, but not optimally, because they do not distinguish between Jack, who wants a good or service really badly, and Jill, who doesn’t care much about the good or service but joined the queue simply because she saw there was only one person waiting in line.

Waiting in line is an example of a sub-optimal event, which has been improved by technology that improves sale experiences for consumers. For example, being able to buy a cinema seat online in advance is a far more useful way of allocating the scarce resources of a popular movie than queuing outside in the hope that the cinema won't sell out of tickets. Improved technology that enables consumers to pay according to how much they value something is superior to waiting in line, where there is no way of telling exactly how much someone values something. To that end, popular restaurants that operate under a table booking system should charge for booking a table at peak times as well as for eating the meal. It's obvious to everyone that the laws of supply and demand factor in to the dining out experience too. A 6pm booking on a Tuesday night at a restaurant that has been open for 10 years is bound to be in much lower demand than a 7:30pm booking on a Saturday night at a popular restaurant that has only been open a few weeks.

That is why it's so easy to distort the true signals of value. A couple that phones up and books a table at random, or a few friends who walk past and grab a table on a whim, may not value their table as much as people that would have paid an extra surcharge to eat in there. Consequently, charging for table bookings at high demand restaurants increases the chances that the people who most value a dining experience have that experience, while at the same time leaving room for less-discerning people to choose other restaurants. Moreover, if non-price sensitive people pay more at peak times, price-sensitive people should find cheaper meals of the same quality at non-peak times. 

So why, then, don't such restaurants charge for booking a table? It could be for the same reason that hugely popular concert tickets don't sell for more. But it's probably also the case that popular individual restaurants that adopted this policy would unilaterally place themselves at a disadvantage against other popular restaurants that chose not to charge a booking fee. In all likelihood, this is why reservations do not have the kind of prices that would allocate diners with restaurants more optimally, and create extra societal value in doing so.

Should We Trust The Anecdotal Or The Statistical?

 

You’ve probably heard of the wisdom of crowds – the notion that, when it comes to decision-making and prediction, large groups of people are often collectively more accurate than individual experts. That is, with 100 people guessing, the average guess of, say, the weight of a cow is likely to be closer than the guess of a single expert (see blog post here). And you probably know that in statistical analyses, individual anecdotal accounts are generally less reliable than statistical data collations. The anecdote “I knew someone who smoked all his life and lived to 95” is a less good way to evaluate the life expectancy of heavy smokers than statistical analysis of a set of heavy smokers against non-smokers. And you’ve probably also worked out that the news and media are not robustly reliable channels for distilling the truth when compared with statistics. The media is biased, but the statistics report more accurately (although not perfectly) on facts.

Given the foregoing, what is the best way to get to the truth of a matter? Statistics are generally more reliable than individual anecdotes and crowd-based opinions, but at one level there is no truth quite as powerful as first-person truth. On the other hand, given that there is no such thing as an average person, and that the first person perspective cannot easily be representative of some hypothetical social mean, some of our first person perspective is bound to mislead us into thinking we reflect wider societal views or preferences. For example, if you’re convinced you live in a patriarchy, or under a right wing government, or in a Christian country, or under oppression, or in a country with great opportunity, then conformation biases might exacerbate those beliefs against wider counter-indicators.

Here’s where I think this leaves us. In some cases, the first-hand experience knows best, but other times it should give way to the wisdom of the wider consensus. And where we defer to the wider consensus, we should first do so through hard statistical data (that can be rigorously demonstrated), not skewed media narratives, which depart further from the full truth with every passing year.

Minds Closed For Business

Tom Gilovich, a social psychologist, has made intriguing discoveries about human beliefs, which go some way to explaining why so many people believe absurd things that are just plain wrong, and are so hard to be convinced otherwise. His research shows a consistent tendency that when we desire to believe something, we internally pose the question, "Can I believe this?" – and then we actively seek out evidence that supports our desired belief, and convince ourself that it is sufficient.

However, when faced with a belief we find undesirable, our internal query shifts to "Must I believe this?" – and then we look for reasons to discredit the claim. If we come across even one piece of pseudo-evidence that casts doubt, we feel justified in rejecting the belief. We use that as a pretext for freeing ourselves from the obligation of belief.

This whole “When we want to believe something, we try our best to justify belief in it, and when we don’t, we try to justify non-belief” is probably the best insight we have in to why people have such strange beliefs, and associate themselves with such nutty groups. They simply want to believe these things – which also explains why it’s so hard to talk people out of wrong thinking, even when most of the rational world continues to show how incorrect they are.

We can, of course, relate this to most of the world’s current mainstream follies. Most people in climate hysteria groups don’t really believe in the doomsday scenarios about which they forewarn – you can see from their behaviour and body language that they don’t really. Being in a climate alarmist group satisfies their need for virtue signalling, it feeds their attention-seeking, it reflects their dislike of successful people, it makes them feel like they have a cause, and it gives them a sense of identity and a sense of moral superiority (similar motivations apply to most socialists, in my experience, as there is so much overlap). All this is easy to figure out once you look carefully enough, and the same applies to many other cults, conspiracy theorists and extremist groups.

Young earth creationism is that other bogey that falls in these same traps, and perhaps the one I’ve challenged most in recent decades. Because of the perceived moral duress in terms of Divine punishment, and a perceived Biblical injunction, young earth creationists are perhaps the most prone of all to seeking out pseudo-evidence that supports their desired belief (Biblical literalism, no transitional fossils, irreducible complexity, unreliability of radiometric data, micro not macro, etc) and convince themselves that it is sufficient. And because they have no desire to accept evolution, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting it, they take the "Must I believe this?" approach, and use their pseudo-science to justify discrediting the evidence, and free themselves from the obligation of the facts.

Because the psychological roots of these cognitive biases lie in the deep-seated need for reinforcement, in-group validation and social cohesion, experience shows that rational persuasion is very rarely effective against anyone who feels they must believe something, and actively seek out evidence that supports what they want to believe. Views that are so entrenched, forming the bedrock of an individual’s perceived moral duty, ego, group identity and social solidarity are not on the table to be corrected. They are minds closed for business. 

If Only Beliefs Were As Efficient As Markets

 

The essence of capitalism is that our market innovations have gone through selection pressure and benefited consumers by cumulative step by step improvements. Co-operation and competition are the main driving mechanisms for this success. Due to competition, and the market punishing inefficiency, bad service and poor quality products, the present day tends to produce the highest quality of goods available rather than any time in the past. It's not true in every sense, of course, but generally speaking, a laptop, mobile phone, washing machine, car, movie player, data storage device, and so on should be better now than previous versions 10, 20 or 50 years ago (perhaps notwithstanding planned obsolesence). Our products and technology get better, as does our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. No one sane would deny that we’ve never been better off materially and that we’ve never had more knowledge than we do right now.

Now, to a great extent, a similar mechanism also ought to exist in the evolution of the competency of the views we hold. And clearly, in many places it does. But….here’s the big but – we’ve also never had so many people alive with so many incorrect and absurd viewpoints. Now, you may say that’s simply because we’ve never had so many people alive - which is true to some degree – but it’s not quite enough.

The kind of selection process I described for goods, services and knowledge doesn't seem to happen with the same rigour in beliefs and viewpoints. In other words, we don’t seem to have refined the quality of our beliefs and viewpoints as successfully as we have in other areas that reflect the gradual slopes of improvement – especially in socio-cultural areas like politics, economics, social commentary and religion.

It's probably because of the vicissitudes of the human mind, or the complex nature of the social environment, or the lack of competing selection pressures on those beliefs, or the subjection to chaotic non-linear feedback effects - or more likely a combination of the four - but the present day state of affairs for political, economic, social and religious discourse doesn't seem to produce the modern day equivalent of the efficiency improvements seen in the free market.

But I think it's also because the stakes are different. In the market, we are heavily penalised if we don’t provide what people want and need – we could lose our job, our business, and even fail to feed our family. Capitalism has quality control that keeps us at the top of our game, otherwise we go bust. But there isn’t the same intense selection pressure on our socio-cultural views. What seems lacking there is the right amount of accountability. In market economics, providers and sellers are accountable to consumers who will shop elsewhere if something better or more desirable comes along. Accountability is a powerful mechanism in society because it acts as a modifying tool in response to performance. 

We shouldn't be surprised it is so effective - we see it happening all the time. The principal mechanism of biological evolution is that natural selection acts on phenotypes to confer survival advantage. In science, experimental testing is accountable to results, which forms a body of evidence for a particular theory. Each of these systems is subject to selection pressure that confers overall improvements. In market economics, unwanted goods or services don't stay around long. In biological evolution, it's rare for an organism that is prohibitively not adapted to its current environment to survive. In science, it's extremely rare for something counterfactual to be classified as a theory after much experimental testing.

There is some accountability in politics when it comes to who is in power. A democratically elected group of MPs are accountable to their constituents, and can be voted out if they perform poorly or behave immorally. In politics it's been historically rare (although sadly not rare enough, and getting less rare by the decade) for a hopelessly incompetent or scandalously unethical politician to last more than a few terms in office. The trouble is, the average member of the electorate isn’t very demanding when it comes to the purveying of good ideas and sound political and economic judgements. In fact, the incompetence of the majority of voters is even weightier than the incompetence of the people they are voting into power, which militates against proper accountability or adequate selection pressure on the statements and ideas of politicians. If only beliefs were as efficient as markets. 

Prohibiting Knowledge of Good Things

In my early days of being a Christian, I was puzzled by God’s instruction that Adam & Eve should not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it seems like having knowledge of good and evil is a good thing. I was puzzled because it seemed like the only text I could find in scripture where God seems to prohibit something that is good and beneficial. Which brought me to the question; if that’s the case, on what grounds might a good and perfect God prohibit something that is good and beneficial to us? And I could think of only one reason why – it was prohibited because we weren’t yet ready for it, but one day might be. And what could that ‘it’ be? To become like God, of course. So that is how I interpret that part of the story in Genesis; the best thing we could possibly have cannot be given to us in one solitary grab – we have to work towards becoming Divine.

A correct interpretation of Genesis reveals it is richly layered with symbolic and archetypal meaning. Given the foregoing, I was pleased recently to hear a like-minded interpretation of Genesis 2:17 from Biblical scholar Jonathan Pageau – who shared his belief that when God says, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” – Pageau contended that, actually, God would have given them permission to eat from it, because ultimately, it’s necessary knowledge, just not yet.

Most Genesis scholars see the tree as representing a kind of profound Divine wisdom over and above our current understanding – so the interpretation that humanity was not yet prepared to fully understand or handle being that much like God, but decided to take it anyway, seems to be a reasonable one. Because that really is what the primary sin is; our fallenness means missing the mark, where our very nature falls short of the glory of God, and the worst response to that is to put self ahead of God. It’s the fundamental error that bootstraps all other aspects of fallenness. And the primary sin has always been trying to put self ahead of God by attempting to become like God through pride and rebellion. When Satan (the serpent) tempts Eve to eat from the tree, claiming that they will not die but become like God, he’s cunningly revisiting his own fall for exactly the same sin, where he was cast out of Heaven for seeking to exalt himself above God.

So, when God said to Adam and Eve “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, perhaps this prohibition is God’s mandate for preserving the order of creation and humanity's place within it, which would be consistent with the framework and writing style of the verses that precede it. That is to say, maybe the allegory really means something like: we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), and we will eventually be transformed to be like God (1 John 3:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Philippians 3:20-21), but our greatest falling is to try to make ourselves like God prematurely or with misguided self-centred motives. With this interpretation, the story of the fall is a deeper story than simple disobedience. It conveys a profound issue that the full suite of human growth and self-understanding is available through a relationship with God, but attempts at premature attainment bring about in self-induced curses rather than Divinely bestowed blessings.

 

On Attraction

 

Several studies have confirmed what we already know; that physical attractiveness plays a significant role in initial attraction and relationship formation, as it often serves as a gatekeeper to pursuing potential partners. But research* also shows that while men generally tend to consciously prioritise looks more, both sexes value attractiveness similarly in dating. 

However, over time, as partners get to know each other, positive personality traits like humour and kindness become more important, and the significance of physical appearance diminishes. 

So, the upshot is, some form of moderate attractiveness is jointly necessary and sufficient** to elicit positive evaluations, but in the long game, for both sexes, other qualities are more valuable on the whole. 

*Notably, Kniffin and Wilson, 2004; David Feingold, 1998; Fugère and colleagues, 2015; and Menelaos Apostolou, 2011,2015 

** In case you’re not familiar with necessary and sufficient conditions, it’s basically this: if X is a necessary condition for Y, then Y cannot happen without X. If X is a sufficient condition for Y, then whenever X happens, Y will definitely happen. So, X being both necessary and sufficient for Y means that Y will happen if and only if X happens. So, for example, having a ticket is a necessary condition to see a film at the cinema, because you can't get in without one. It's also a sufficient condition, because if you have a ticket, you're permitted entry. In the attractiveness case, then - moderate attractiveness is necessary because it is required to get you a date, where without meeting this minimum threshold, you are unlikely to be considered as a potential partner. And it’s also sufficient, because if they fancy you enough, it is enough to elicit positive interest, where further increases in attractiveness aren't required to make someone more desirable.

 

Spacetime As A Canvas For Divine Genius

 

Some Christians struggle with the concept of a universe that spans billions of years, as if it challenges God's sovereignty and precision. I don’t agree. Given time’s highly complex relationship with space (the four dimensions of space-time), I think it’s another opportunity for us created creatures to see God’s genius at work. When you think of how impressed we can be by what humans create - Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Escher’s staircase, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Welles’ Citizen Kane, etc - I think not enough people are highly impressed with the intricacies of God’s spacetime. In fact, they probably just take it for granted - but it’s actually much more majestic than they are willing to consider.

Spacetime is rather like a canvas on which the process of God’s artistic critical path analysis goes to work: the splendour of the cosmos, atoms to molecules, molecules to cells, cells to communities, communities to multi-cellular differentiations, and so forth. If you think about the standard SI unit system, which measures all macroscopic activity (length, time, substances, electricity currents, temperature, mass, etc), it is built on the discrete, grainy substrate of spacetime, and resembles some kind of giant cosmic computational process, which can be measured in critical path operations within a search space in a finite execution time.

So when we get something like Psalm 33:9, which states that “He spoke, and it came to be”, and some Christians get tempted to say “Ah that fits in nicely with Genesis 1, and how God instantaneously brought these things into existence, not over billions of years” - I think, no, it just won’t do. Firstly, even computational commands are merely the apex of a whole host of complex background computations that require billions of critical pathways. And secondly, where in any other area of God’s created nature do we see such fait accompli results that require no prior work or effort? The answer is nowhere. Nothing exists in the whole of nature that provides a free lunch without someone having to plan, prepare and cook it - and that truth is instantiated in the cosmic process, from the macroscopic process of inorganic matter, right down to the discrete interstices of spacetime where the computations are underwritten.

In my submission, the prodigious amount of mathematical wash in the universe, far from exhibiting a God of profligacy, actually shows a Cosmic Genius able to undertake the most intricate sift and select computations, with an upper level of complexity beyond what the entire collaboration of human mathematicians could enumerate. Humans had to spend hundreds of years creating some of the most sophisticated computers in the world just to be able to get a slight handle on the topological mysteries behind God’s creative dispensations - and the vast stretches of time actually give glory to God and some of His creative genius.

Further reading: Why Did God Use So Much Space & Time?

Just Prices

 

Suppose you own a rare first edition book, and a dealer desperately wants to buy it from you. You would sell it for £250, but the dealer offers you £500, not knowing that you would have let it go for half the price. Have you acted immorally in accepting his offer? Most people would say no, and I think they’d probably be right. But what about in the case of Locke’s famous horse owner and traveller, where the horse owner would have sold his horse for £40 yesterday, but when meeting a breathless traveller the next day, uses the situation to his advantage and sells it for £50? Has the horse owner acted unjustly? What about if you encounter a man dying of thirst: is it unjust to sell him a bottle of water for £500? If he’s desperate and about to die, you can be pretty sure he values his life at more than £500, so in that context he’s probably getting a bargain, right? Yet understandably, almost no one thinks this is right. 

In economics, we believe the just price is the market price, based on the complex information signals generated by the busy marketplace of supply and demand. In other words, it is the actions of billons of local decisions across the world which determine the price of bananas, walking sticks, holidays and cars – there is no objective value in any good or service or job – the value is determined by billions of people's revealed preferences.

So how then do we square that with the notion of unjustly charging a desperately thirsty man £500 for a glass of water? Few would deny that’s wrong – we should be encouraged to give him some water for free. The upshot is, ethical judgements are not the same thing as just prices. Consequently, we are dealing with something rather like a sorites paradox-type of scale, where the nearer we remain at the individual consideration (like Locke’s horse owner and traveller), the more a price is subjected to strict ethical judgment, and the more we extend out to the wider economy in an information-generating nexus, the less a price is subjected to strict ethical judgment, because the more it has been shaped by lots of people through the mechanism of supply and demand. Excepting the terrible political policy of state price-fixing (rent controls, minimum wage laws, etc),the price of just about everything in a market economy is what it is because of the activities of billions of individuals over sustained periods of time - it resembles a democracy in that we've all voted for it to be that way.

This leads us to the labour theory of value. Adam Smith and David Ricardo posited views about the labour theory of value (LTV), which argues that the price of a good or service should be determined by the total amount of labour required to produce it. It’s a theory with little mileage, and whereas Smith and Ricardo never felt entirely comfortable with LTV as a broad-brush explanation for the price of labour, Karl Marx was fonder of it, using LVT (or variations of it) to bemoan what he saw as the powerful capitalist classes.

What gave LTV its redundancy notice was the more accurate notion of subjective theory of value, which states that the value of a good or service is not determined by the labour required to produce it, but by the value placed upon it by the consumer. A brick wall built around your garden is not valued by the labour required to build it - it’s the other way around - the labour required to build it is valuable precisely because the builder can produce something that the homeowner finds valuable.

If the anti-capitalist neo-Marxists were better informed, they would understand that far from being an exploitative force for bad, capitalism is a liberating and enriching way of enhancing people’s well-being and improving their standards of living. Labour and capital are what enable producers to provide things of value in society, and price them in line with supply and demand to allocate resources most efficiently. Prices of goods and services are information signals that convey subjective perceptions of value - and it is this information that tells us how much a thing is valued.

This is why we are always banging on about politicians’ inept and uneconomical interferences in the market - their activity so often impedes the highly complex process that most efficiently matches supply with demand at the optimal (or near optimal) prices. The optimal price of any good or service occurs when the most the consumer is willing to pay is equal to the least the supplier is willing to accept.

Wokeism Negatively Affects Mental Wellbeing

Everyone agrees with the dictionary definition of 'woke' - "Being aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)". Just kidding, of course - ironically, you have to be pretty woke to swallow that definition - where woke really means something like; a narcissistic appropriation of post-modern clichés, driven by toxic, leftist, entitled identity politics.

Being woke basically means seeing/looking for offence/injustice/outrage when there's no good reason to perceive things that way, and virtue signalling to court favour with over-sensitive people who might bond with you or buy what you're selling (goods, services, education, political propaganda) if you pander to their whims. We can all hopefully agree that being aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues surrounding justice is a good thing, but only when there are genuine injustices going on. If you're trying to define woke as noble challenges to social injustices, then you're probably in denial about what woke really is. If you see racism, sexism, unfair prejudice, economic injustice, oppression and phobias when there are better explanations on offer, and you're eager to express your offence and outage, then you are what we mean by 'woke'.

I've said before that I believe there is probably a link between wokeness and psychological disorders, and I've recently learned that in their book The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt have arrived at a similar viewpoint. It’s difficult to deny that if you look at the people (especially young people) associated with extreme social justice groups, climate groups, trans-rights groups and other radical identitarian groups, the majority of them appear to have high levels of anxiety, and/or mental health issues that probably haven't yet been diagnosed or addressed sufficiently.

It must have struck you as strange that you can never ever convince a woke person that they are wrong about the grievance they claim to have. It might have struck you as equally strange that there is a dichotomous personality trait attached to wokeness; absolute conviction in the thing they believe, but at the same time, a severe lack of conviction in themselves as individual beings. Perceived certainty without the ability or willingness to partake in rational engagement is one of the most predictable indicators of a disorder of the mind. You can see this by considering in contrast the opposite kind of person; one who willingly partakes in rational engagement while all the time displaying the kind of humility with which openness to correction is apparent in dialogue.

Naturally, mental health is a complex issue, and each individual can only be assessed on a case by case basis. But irrespective of what's driving wokeness, it is easy to observe the symptoms being played out in society - black and white thinking, attention-seeking, proneness to ill-examined outrage, a feelings-over-facts kind of entitlement, an exaggerated sense of foreboding, a victim-mentality, envy towards successful people, that sort of thing. The more of these you can tick off in a game of woke bingo, the more you woke you probably are. 

And this should come with severe warnings, because whereas these traits are all things that those who bring healthy influences in your life will help you eradicate, woke culture actively encourages and celebrates these traits - creating waves of anxiety, insecurity, paranoia and resentment - and as a consequence, almost immeasurable societal harm, of which we haven't even begun to see the peak costs yet. 

And what's worse is that because so many citizens have rolled over and let woke walk all over our nation, the UK is now infected with a top down woke-driven power structure, where we now have political woke, institutional woke, establishment woke, corporate woke, academic woke, media woke and entertainment woke - with most of the population disliking what British society has turned into, but unsure what to do about it. 

An Initial Absurdity That Becomes Interesting

 

Sometimes economist logic takes us to funny places. Here’s an example. Consider this question: Why do we think it’s fine for a couple to choose not to have children, but not fine for them to have children and periodically treat them badly? It’s quite easy to elicit an intuitive response, something along the lines of: “The two situations are very different. If you choose not to have children, that’s your right. But once you have a child, your responsibilities change, and you are compelled to look after that child and treat them well.”

Everyone can relate to that answer, and I do think it’s right. But it doesn’t entirely settle the matter – because, given the astronomically low probability of any individual being born, I assume most children would prefer to be born and be periodically treated badly than not be born at all. Suppose there is a 14 year old boy called Tom, who is quite unhappy at being mistreated by his parents, Jack and Jill, but still glad he has been born, compared with the alternative of never having been born. Given Tom’s preference, it would be worse for him to have never been born, and Jack and Jill remained childless, than it would to be born and treated badly by Jack and Jill. Yet a childless Jack and Jill would receive no criticism, even though not having Tom is worse for potential Tom than having him and mistreating him.

It’s quite easy to elicit a further intuitive response, something along the lines of: “Yes, but a childless Jack and Jill face no moral charge, because they don’t know about the hypothetical Tom that never got born – so no situation where it’s a worse option for Tom actually exists”.

This is also true – Tom’s non-existence isn’t a worse option for him if he’s not alive to recognise it thus. But it’s not a wholly satisfactory closure either, and does show a strange paradoxical nature (although not quite a paradox in this case), whereby a negative moral judgement is conferred upon a less bad outcome for an agent, and a neutral judgement is conferred upon a worse outcome for an agent, even though we can all follow both logical paths very easily.

This isn’t really one of those linguistic peculiarities, such that I covered in this blog How To Make Sense Of Language Paradoxes; I think it’s more in keeping with the kind of economic considerations that are fun to explore in blog posts like The Absurdity Of Quota-Based Discrimination. 

Steer Clear Of Low Rent Atheism

It doesn't take the majority of Christians long to realise that debating faith with most online atheist commentators is an ill-advised use of our time and effort. There's a good reason for this, and it's a subtle one that not everyone might have picked up on. It's to do with the type of atheist that these people are, because experience shows that they are the most difficult kind when it comes to having fruitful dialogue. Here's why I think this.

There are roughly four kinds of atheist - two implicit types and two explicit types. Implicit atheism means those who do not hold a belief in God but also do not actively speak out atheist tropes, and those who simply haven't given much thought to the subject, but would say they do not believe if asked (we'll leave this latter group aside in this article). Explicit atheism means openly rejecting the existence of God, speaking out against God's existence, and in some cases going further in trying to influence the faithful in the world to turn away from God.

Now, there have been some brilliant minds who just happen to be implicit atheists or agnostics; people like Henri Poincaré, Paul Dirac, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Alan Turing and Richard Feynman. They all made prodigious contributions to the world, but they just happened to have professed no belief in God. Then there are explicit atheists who've made impressive contributions in their specialised field, but who've also been overt in their professed atheism; people like Bertrand Russell, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and Douglas Adams. There are also the very vocal explicit atheists with less distinguished CVs, but who've risen to fame and have come to be defined by their atheism more than anything else; people like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, Michael Shermer and Lawrence Krauss.

And then we have the last kind - the explicitly atheist online commentators - who make up the majority of the explicit atheists, and who regularly descend upon Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter to parrot the views of their more well-known secular icons, and try to seek superficial confidence and self-aggrandisement by dismissing all belief in God as foolish, irrational, uneducated, unenlightened nonsense. Scour the comments sections of articles about the Christian faith, or in Facebook groups created to debate God's existence, and you'll get hit with a morass of the rude, the dismissive, the confused, the spiteful and the hateful - thousands of attention-seeking atheist provocateurs, zealots and trolls getting a kick out of being dismissive of religious faith, in a vain attempt to puff up their own egos and make themselves feel better by insulting and deriding believers.

I'm not suggesting that every one of these individuals is deeply unpleasant - but I do think that in virtually all their cases, there is an insuperable barrier that prevents the flourishing of good conversation and honest enquiry. They pay a hidden price for a visible deceit, if only they could realise it. And it remains one of the sad ironies, in my view, that these are many of the people who most urgently need the gospel, yet are doing more than most to push it away.

A more in-depth psychological analysis of why debating with them is a waste of time is beyond the scope of this article. But I think the primary reason is that as much as they show willingness to discuss these matters, they want to do so only to sneer and scoff, not to engage, consider the topics deeply and seek edification. If you like, they call forth the birds of the sky, only to raise their gun and shoot them away again. With such people, the likelihood of heat is greater than the likelihood of light - which is why it's so often wise not to get involved. 

Recently I heard a great line in If Beale Street Could Talk: “Fonny liked me so much that it didn't occur to him that he loved me". Perhaps, for these atheists, the opposite sentiment is being expressed, that they dislike religious faith so much that it doesn't occur to them how much they hate it, and are no longer open to discussing it honestly and giving it the depth of attention it deserves. As D.H. Lawrence once said, “An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer" - and that is the reward of giving things the attention they deserve.

Further reading: New-New-Wave-Atheism: The Rise of Promethean Ego Apostates

How To Know God

 

There are four primary ways that God has made Himself known to His creation: 

1) Through the Incarnation, where Christ came to earth to reveal God's love in human flesh, to spend time with humankind, to suffer and die for us on the cross, and to defeat death with His resurrection. 

2) Through the Holy Spirit, who reveals Himself by living inside all who accept Christ as Lord and Saviour. 

3) Through the texts, revelations and the miracles recorded in the Bible. 

4) Through the testimonies, miracles and experiences of God at work in the lives of other Christians. 

Atheists do not currently find those four ways convincing enough, otherwise they'd be believers. And that is fair enough - each one of those four ways usually requires lots of thought, investigation and experience, and I commend any unbeliever who is courageous and diligent enough to give Christianity the depth of exploration it merits. 

But if you want to know God, you have to take Him on His terms - and His terms are the four ways above. If you won't have Him on those terms, then you're not engaging with the true nature of God's revelation, or evidence for His existence.

Further Reading: See my God Tab

One Day There'll Probably Be Only One World Language

 

I feel fairly confident that most of the world will be speaking the same language at some point in the future. Looking back through time, language evolution is similar to speciation. Just as in speciation, populations diverge until they can no longer interbreed, new words and phrases are adopted to the point that groups can no longer communicate properly (this was allegorised in the Old Testament's Tower of Babel story).

But while it's easy to understand how genetic populations became so diverse, it isn't so obvious with language - after all, there are thousands of languages - and yet, despite the multifarious benefits of a rich diversity of language, we all know the disadvantages of communication breakdown with language barriers. 

I assume languages evolved to suit the needs of the populations, perhaps with groups adopting new ways of communicating in order to assert their established identity. Yet you also find that there is more commonality of language in highly developed areas than lesser developed. In Europe, a great many people can speak English as their second language. In other Asian countries, many can speak Mandarin - and Spanish, Arabic and Hindi are prominent too in various regions across the world. Such diversity is less common in more remote tribal regions, where hundreds of exclusive languages are found in smaller tribes.

My tentative hunch is this. Given that English is the primary languages being pulled in the most directions, and given increased globalisation, enhanced technology and human connectivity, it seems likely that English will continue to proliferate until most of the world speaks it, either as their primary or secondary language. In a world of global trade and increased online communication, such is the advantage of mutual communicability that it's probable that as more and more people find it advantageous to speak a common language. And as smaller languages will slowly begin to die out, I think there’ll come a time when virtually the whole world only speaks one language, and other languages are only used for historical study or perhaps have survived in very remote places in successful attempts to preserve endangered languages.

It's well known that a lot of the conflict in the world is primarily caused by not understanding your neighbour (although not just linguistically, of course). In many of these conflicts and prejudices, the main barrier to concordance is a lack of empathy and appreciation of that person as an individual - and a language barrier can play a big part in that. 

While this might take hundreds or even thousands of years, I predict that one day almost everyone in the world will be speaking the same language, and that that language will be English.