Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Readers of Ricochet will be satisfied to learn that for obscure reasons of personal incompetence, I was unable to post my comments to the site yesterday. I am sending these remarks to what are still, I hope, a few interested readers through my daughter, who is not at all surprised by the way things have turned out. Pop, pop, you entered your e-mail address, right? You sure?
[Editor's note: The log-on information we sent you seems to work when I use it, Pop. Maybe it would help if I shot a saboteur?]
Lemme see. Where was I? Ah, yes, command economies and Goedel's theorem. If the connection is there, it is rather like a thread drawn across the Sahara: Too small to be seen, too fine to make a difference. I question as well the assumption that command economies are bad things and sure to fail. The principles of attack spending by which I have regulated my life, seem recently to have been less successful than I might have hoped. The Soviet command economy performed brilliantly during the second world war, defying every German expectation. Just how did that happen? Some of the dull drab dimwitted dinosaurs who represented the Soviet Union during the later post-war years were men of outstanding accomplishment; they had performed prodigies rescuing and then transporting Soviet heavy industry to secure bases behind the Ural mountains.
Command all the way, and nothing to sneeze at either.
[Editor's note: Command economies, Pop? Well, first we deal with the log-on issue. One thing at a time.]
For Peter Robinson
Many thanks for a most interesting letter.
First, a disclaimer. I am not one of intelligent design's defenders. On the contrary. In my Commentary essay, 'Has Darwin met his Match,' I have been one of its critics. My attitude toward intelligent design is warm but distant. In some measure, I agree with Peter Robinson: A theory? Show me. This is a reasonable way to treat any claim in the sciences. Or anywhere else, I suppose. It is the standards imposed on the showing that are apt to prompt a disagreement between us. I've never been persuaded that a rejection of the supernatural is a good thing because I've never been persuaded that an acceptance of the natural makes the slightest sense. There is no distinction to be drawn between the supernatural and the natural. Both categories are empty. The universe is everything that is. To say there is nothing beyond everything is to content oneself with a logical truism. Of course there isn't. How could there be?
To insist, on the other hand, that the universe is necessarily both spatial and temporal seems to me a pointless amputation, like identifying an apple with its core. There are many things that are in some sense neither. The natural numbers are an example. A legal contract is another. The tendency among physicists is increasingly to view space and time as derived properties of some still obscure mathematical structure acting -- how can that be? -- in some still obscure way.
If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.
Does science make progress by strictly observing certain strictures? Mr. Robinson thinks so; I think not. As soon as any strictures pop up, up pops a counter-example. The idea that science limits itself to human sense perceptions is an example. I gather that by 'sense perceptions' Mr. Robinson means that in doing science, we had better take a look. This is good advice, but a methodological stricture? What else might we do? And not only in science. A stricture might appear were we able to say what taking a look comes to, but this is in general just what we cannot say. Does closely reading the opening lines of Genesis count as taking a look? If not, why not? What counts as taking a look is entirely determined by why one is looking in the first place. And inevitably, what one sees after one has taken a look will be only a tiny fraction of the things that might be seen. How many times has Galileo's experiment -- two canon balls dropped from the same height, a simultaneous clunk -- been repeated? A dozen or so? How many things have dropped since the beginning of creation? Very many more.
Testable hypotheses? I am with Mr. Robinson. Let us test them when we can. But it is in the nature of testing that we cannot test everything. No science, as Aristotle dryly remarks, can demonstrate its own principles. So if anything is to be tested, some things cannot be tested.
And there any easy invocation of a test, no matter how refined, simply breaks down. In science, as in so many other areas of life, we are ultimately on our own.
When it comes to Darwin, I am enthusiastic about Mr. Robinson's proposal to clear out the junk. There is a lot to clear away.
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Comments :
May '11
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
The Soviet economy makes the point. It functioned for 3 1/2 years out of 70. It was tightly constrained for the war and was somewhat manageable. What happened after WWII? The economy became a shell propped up by secretly liquidating its gold reserves.
Aug '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Aren't war economies the classic exception to almost every economic rule?
In a world of self-interested nation states, the highest economic good within a state is its own survival. When facing an existential threat, it makes sense that the "best" economy would be one geared towards war... and here the sole positive feature of a command economy comes into play: it can be turned around and directed very quickly. Market economies are slower because they rely on the pricing mechanism and suppliers' feedback loops.
In peacetime, a minimal level of national defense must still be maintained, but the important function of the economy becomes accuracy, not turnaround speed. Command economies ignore prices and thus are structured to fail in producing non-war goods.
Dec '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
War economies have very limited metrics of success. People suffer greatly under war economies, and not just from the war itself.
The only question about a war economy is: Is it producing enough men and materials to fight? If the country is in the mode of existential survival, you also have a bit of loaning from the future going on. That is, people are willing to suffer and sacrifice for the immediate good with the expectation that life will return to normal in the future. If it doesn't, they're quickly worn down from the stresses of wartime pressures.
But the progressives loved war economies. They wanted civilian life to be on a perpetual war footing. It's chronicled in Jonah's book under the notion of the "moral equivalent of war".
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
David Berlinski:
I've never been persuaded that a rejection of the supernatural is a good thing because I've never been persuaded that an acceptance of the natural makes the slightest sense. There is no distinction to be drawn between the supernatural and the natural. Both categories are empty. The universe is everything that is. To say there is nothing beyond everything is to content oneself with a logical truism. Of course there isn't. How could there be?
David, isn't the commonly accepted science that there is supernatural beyond the natural?
I speak of Plank Time, the first 1-43 seconds of the Big Bang. During that measured unit nature did not exist, meaning the 4 forces of nature plus time did not exist. Yet something existed, because the singularity was expanding, by a force that was making it expand.
Whatever it was that was expanding, and whatever was forcing it, was "supernatural." I use that word scientifically, not spiritually. Nature is the 4 forces + time. Whatever is outside of that, outside of nature, is "supernatural."
Doesn't this settle that there is both a natural and supernatural, regardless of universe or multiverse?
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
In several hundred brilliant words, you have dissolved everything about science as a proper, delimited subject or discipline that I thought I knew. Discussions of ID or Popper will have to wait. I need to go right back to the beginning.
Dr. Berlinski, what is science?
You would distinguish science, I feel certain, from, say, music. But how would you distinguish science from philosophy? Where do you draw the lines?
Edited on Jun 28, 2011 at 12:15pmJul '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but this is hogwash.
Up pops the counter-example to the First Law of Thermodynamics!
Um, no.
Nov '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Peter Robinson: Discussions of ID or Popper will have to wait.
Dr. Berlinski, what is science?
Peter -- have you come across the writings of one David Stove*, philosopher of science? You're saying discussion of Popper will have to wait, but I just wanted to say that the recent discussion of Popper at Ricochet has had me dipping into Stove's Against the Idols of the Age, posthumously published/edited by Roger Kimball. Although I perfectly accept that Popper's falsifiability criterion served an eminently useful purpose in dislocating Marxists of their scientific pretensions (as you correctly pointed out), Stove nonetheless brings what seems devastation to Popper's whole approach.
In any even, I think your very good question as to what science really is might be elucidated somewhat more via Stove, in addition to Berlinski's always fascinating insights.
And if I may, I'd also very much love to hear whatever Berlinski might have to say about Stove.
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* Kimball's essay "Who Was David Stove?" -- available in its entirety at The New Criterion for free -- is probably the best intro to his work.
Stove's Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists has also been made available on Scribd.
Edited on Jun 28, 2011 at 2:25pmAug '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
The argument against the ability of a command economy to function efficiently is not based in Godel's incompleteness theorem, but rather in complexity theory and information theory.
An economy is an adaptive complex system, and the information required to efficiently manage it is not available to central planners: it is locked up in the heads of all the actors in the marketplace and does not manifest itself until those actors are forced to make choices between options available to them in the context of the value of those options to everyone else.
Take away the choices inherent in the marketplace, and the information required to determine optimum allocation simply doesn't exist. Take away the free movement of prices, and you destroy the 'information bus' that transmits the information about relative supply and demand that allows actors in the marketplace to make efficient choices.
The best explanation of this is contained in Hayek's brilliant essay, "The Use of Knowledge In Society."
You can read it here: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
Aug '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
It should also be pointed out that the U.S. largely retained free markets during WWII, allowing defense contractors to bid on contracts and compete amongst themselves rather than nationalizing the means of production as many other nations did. By the end of the war the U.S. military production capacity dwarfed every other nation. The sheer scale of U.S. wartime production was astounding - and even so, the U.S. never had a single quarter of recession during the entire war.
And let's not forget that the U.S. supplied massive quanties of arms to other allied nations, including the Soviet Union.
Sep '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
I don't think we're going to have to wait too long for the inevitable crash of the Fed's current "command economy."
Jun '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
"The idea that science limits itself to human sense perceptions is an example."
Our definition/understanding of science has served us well though the years. What you are suggesting is quite interesting, but it's not science. I'd like to see you call it something else and not try to change the "standards imposed on the showing" that we hold for scientific inquiry to include standarda that are.......not scientific.
"What counts as taking a look is entirely determined by why one is looking in the first place."
In the case of ID, their claim to be science is shot down because they proceed with a predetermined end point in mind. They shut down further inquiry by claiming incomprehensible complexity that can only be attributed to a designer. A true scientist accepting the role of a Creator would tip his hat to the brilliance of the designer & forge onward seeking answers to the question of how it all works.
Feb '11
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Command economies: Arthur Koestler, who traveled widely in the Soviet Union back when he was still a Communist, wrote much later that the only thing that made the system function at all was the efforts of a relatively small number of very dedicated individuals, who "created around themselves little islands of order and dignity in an ocean of chaos and absurdity." He was reminded of the Talmudic legend of the Thirty-Six Just Men, without whom mankind wouldn't last a day.
He noted that such men are generally the first victims of every new purge. Although Koestler said that men of this type "do not die out," it seems clear to me that the operation of Communism, or indeed of any totalitarian system, inevitably if slowly destroys the breed.
Jun '10
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
As to clearing out the Darwin junk, here's a post from Mark Wilson on the ID thread:
"Darwin, Darwin, Darwin. This obsession with Darwin is really annoying. The science has advanced so much beyond the 19th century at this point."
Exactly. I think scientists have been steadily clearing out the junk and adding new discoveries. Hopefully this is done honestly without any agenda. But it's silly to see how many people want to discount a theory that was presented a long time ago to show others the way & encouraged future scientists to keep looking & challenging.
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
david foster: Command economies: Arthur Koestler, who traveled widely in the Soviet Union back when he was still a Communist, wrote much later that the only thing that made the system function at all was the efforts of a relatively small number of very dedicated individuals, who "created around themselves little islands of order and dignity in an ocean of chaos and absurdity." He was reminded of the Talmudic legend of the Thirty-Six Just Men, without whom mankind wouldn't last a day.
· Jun 29 at 5:23am
That Koestler quotation is just superb. Could you give us the reference?
Feb '11
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Peter--the Koestler quote appears in his essay A Blinkered Traveller. I found it in a collection of essays titled Bricks to Babel; it also appears in Koestler's autobiography The Invisible Writing.
If you are a Koestler fan, you might "enjoy" his important but little-read novel of ideas The Age of Longing, which deals with the West's loss of civilizational self-confidence. I reviewed it at length here: sleeping with the enemy.
Feb '11
Re: Command Economies, Goedel's Theorem, and Intelligent Design
Also: a very interesting account of the activities of a couple of Soviet managers, who were surely worthy to be counted among Koestler's unheralded elite, can be found in the book Bitter Waters by Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov. A vivid description of the struggle of the author and his boss to keep a sawmill in productive operation during the Stalin era.