Russia collusion

I gather that evidence is coming to light that the Russia Collusion claim was known to be a hoax even before the old FBI probe.

That surprises me--I'd have expected more thorough document destruction. That it was a hoax was a no-brainer.

Finding money spent by Russia to stir up mischief seems pretty trivial--on two fronts. Trying to make trouble for the US has been a foreign policy objective for the Russian/Soviets for a century. And the sums announced were trivial too, compared to the amount the parties and supporters were already putting in.

And the notion that the Russians would prefer Trump to Hillary didn't pass the smell test. Governments run on money, and the bulk of Russian hard currency money came and comes from hydrocarbon sales, with arms sales coming up distant second. Hillary was committed to ending and preventing fracking, which would have boosted hydrocarbon prices and Russian revenue and Putin's power. She was predictable.

Making up stories about political opponents has a long history, though getting government collusion in the project seems innovative. Though, on consideration, it sounds like some of what I've been listening to in Byzantine history.

Starlink

I plead as my excuse that I was quite busy, and not speaking Portuguese or Spanish makes checking sources hard. But the story about a remote tribe getting addicted to social media when Starlink arrived didn't pass the smell test, and I didn't get around to properly vetting it. Social media are text-based/driven; is a remote tribe going to have the literacy rate to get so many caught up in it?

Is somebody playing pranks?

At Rice University: AfroChemistry

When I was in high school I remember reading of Russian course on Soviet Mathematics, where the focus was on the victory of the proletariat and not on theorems. I thought the notion obscene. I still do. I hope somebody with a sense of the absurd is playing pranks. If not, I have to question the integrity of those running their chemistry department. A scientist needs some smarts, but without integrity that's worthless.

Price of lies

I don't watch movies alone much anymore, so it took a while to get around to the HBO Chernobyl miniseries youngest son loaned me. It is well made and moving, but is not for someone who'd be too horrified at depictions of radiation poisoning. It made a few concessions to drama that klunked for me: I don't know how reactor workers in the USSR were trained, but to work in much less dangerous environments we were told to plan our work and get it done briskly, not hang around for dramatic effect. And an impossibly supercompetent woman was created to stand in for a large team of scientists and engineers--no single human being has that many details at his fingertips. But all in all, a good depiction.

The overdue safety test (signed off on at the reactor's commissioning but not yet done) was designed without a critical bit of information about a design flaw in the control rods. Because the state could not make mistakes, the control rods had no flaw, right?

We go a bundle on lies in this country too. Article XIII Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution: "Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired."

They promised that pensions would be paid, but never set aside money for it. They lied.

Is there any difference in nature between claiming that the soviet control rods are good because they represent the People's Will, and saying that "indigenous ways of knowledge are as good as colonialist science?"

Many fashionable claims seem like ventures in "How far can we go before they stop believing us?"

Politics is awash with lies--it is harder to find someone telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" than the reverse. And since, as usual, the media are involved in politics...

And ever since "You will be like gods" it has been deadly, in the end, to believe them.

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“It is not within the power of practitioners of demonstrative sciences to change opinion at will, choosing now this and now that one; there is a great difference between giving orders to a mathematician or a philosopher and giving them to a merchant or a lawyer; and demonstrated conclusions about natural and celestial phenomena cannot be changed with the same ease as opinions about what is or is not legitimate in a contract, in a rental, or in commerce.” — Galileo Galilei

"reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” — Richard Feynman, in the report on the Challenger disaster.

Lying by omission

The abstract of the paper says "We find that SROs do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents. We also find that SROs intensify the use of suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and arrests of students. These effects are consistently over two times larger for Black students than White students."

Liz King, the senior program director for education at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said: "She thinks the guidance should reflect recent research showing police in schools don’t reduce gun violence but do increase suspensions, expulsion and arrests of students — especially for Black students."

Lying. I hoped that maybe I'd learn something, maybe even something counterintuitive. But no.

A revealing choice of words

“the question of whether we have allowed Western mathematicians to dominate in our discipline is no less relevant than whether we have allowed western authors to dominate the field of literature”

'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.'

I gather the "decolonizers" believe Winston (Orwell) was right, and want to strike at the root.

"Believe this; not because it's true, but for some other reason"

Some big names in research agree that politics is more important than truth. I'll be retiring this spring. Just as well, I suppose--the cancer seems to be spreading. It hasn't hit our group yet.

Revolutionaries?

Iconoclasts, if one may dignify them with such an idealistic label, have been taking down statues and trying to erase history.

It has seemed, though I haven't done statistics on the matter, that these are preferentially of great figures of the War of Independence and the Civil War. True, those are the most common, so perhaps there's nothing to see here, but one commonality of both the Confederate and early American figures is that they were both revolutionaries. One set won and the other lost (thankfully), but both believed it was legitimate to rebel against what they saw as usurpation.

I'd have thought that a revolutionary movement would try to claim the honor of their revolutionary predecessors for their own: "We're just like them!" Not this time. Whether as enforcers, or as brownshirts in internal power struggles, it smells as though they represent the elites. Do BLM's gender goals reflect average black american concerns? Hint: not that I've ever heard

BBC and "La Consulaire"

The BBC reports on the possible repatriation of "La Consulaire" to Algeria. That's a 7 meter long cannon the French captured back in 1830. (It got the name from the French consul who was shot out of it by the Algerians back in 1683.) "It was in fact Hassan Pasha, the Ottoman ruler of Algiers in the 16th Century, who commissioned the giant cannon in order to protect the city from repeated attacks by the Spanish, French and Dutch." Hassan Pasha sounds very put upon, doesn't he? The BBC ignored a little bit of context.

Is that enough of an omission to make the story a lie? If not, it comes very close.

Politicians and mortal sin

I'm not Catholic, so there may be some subtlety I'm missing.

I gather there is some dispute in Catholic circles about giving communion to pro-abortion politicians. Some distinguish between those who vote for abortion and those who make it part of their platform, but I'm not convinced that this distinguishes much. At any rate, the argument against is that they are complicit in mortal sin and not in a state to receive communion, and the argument in favor seems to be that even though the politician might be (is) complicit in mortal sin, for pastoral reasons it is better to give them communion to keep them in the church.

I've heard darker suspicions--the kindest being that some bishops are happy enough with the other programs their politicians support that they look the other way about abortion.

There's another of the mortal sins that gets overlooked a lot: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I don't know that going to confession is all that useful if you fully intend to go back out and keep lying about your political opponents. (I'm told that actually repenting is part of the process.)

And if I understand the moral calculus used, since the lies are intended to do serious harm to another's reputation, they're mortal and not venial.

Especially around election time, it would seem that a priest could assume, until proven otherwise, that politicians are "in a state of mortal sin" and should not recieve communion. This would apply to the partisans as well, but they're not as easy to name as the elect.

One section of that catechism, number 2477, seems to be talking of Facebook use. Or perhaps of the newspaper. Certainly of politicos...

Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

• of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;
• of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them;
• of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them

Interesting: 2284 and 2285 "The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter." We hear the most scandalous lies this time of year, and the temptation to rash judgment and sharing them.

Why do politicians get communion?

Yes, I know you can find some who try to keep on the straight and narrow. I wish we had more of them.

Patron saint

He's not exactly a saint, but Matthew Hopkins seems a good choice for patron of the AntiRacism™ investigators.

Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear

An excellent example is the BBC story on an Arizona protest and shooting: "The paper says a man was pushed to the ground and started shooting when protesters moved towards him, "some threatening him"." "Police later said in a statement that one man arrested in connection with the shooting, 31-year-old Stephen Ray Baca, had been detained on suspicion of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon."

Sounds like a hair-trigger kind of guy. But perhaps you want to see for yourself.

The video shows a man remonstrating with the demonstrators, who is attacked, who runs away, who is chased down and attacked again--and at that point he shoots.

Figure it out for yourself.

Lysenkoism

Trofim Lysenko was a deadly protege of Stalin's, with widespread influence. (I'd guess that his impact on the Great Leap Forward was minor compared to the other insanities, though.)

He believed in nurture above nature. Newly acquired traits would be passed on to offspring. His supporters claimed to be able to transform rye into wheat.

Stalin liked him. "Criticism of Lysenko was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist"." Scientific evidence was not a defense. Critics were considered elitist opponents of the wisdom of the peasants. Many opponents were fired, some imprisoned, some executed. Wikipedia says the ban on criticism of Lysenkoism was only lifted in the 60's.

I am informed that apparently substantive differences between people can be made to vanish if the right words and role models are invoked. I am informed that punishment causes crime. I am informed that math is racist and that the experiences of the disadvantaged should play a role in math. I am informed that speech is impermissible violence and violence is protected speech. I am informed that a man is not a man and a woman is not a woman. I am informed that people are harassed and fired and fined for denying these things.

So far no executions, though.

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After Lysenko's rise, a similar attack was made on the "idealist" and "bourgeois" theories of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Luckily for the physicists, Stalin wanted a nuclear bomb very badly. Kurchatov warned that the bomb could not be made without scientists who knew these theories, and when Stalin was appraised of a meeting of Lysenko-types to challenge the scientists, he famously said "Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later." For some reason the meeting never happened. (Lee Pondrom, The Soviet Atomic Project)

Class enemy

Have you noticed the exact parallel between the phrases "white privilege" and "class enemy?" They're used for the same ends, by the same kinds of people--just in different eras.

BTW, Grim recommended a New Criterion essay about Solzhenitsyn; I second the suggestion.

Demands

I hold no brief for Biden--he seems the very model of a glad-hander with no intelligence or convictions. But I understood what he was saying about dealing with people he didn't agree with. His job was to deal with the world as it was rather than as his modern accusers want it to be.

Cory Booker claimed "in a time of racism, it is not enough to say that 'I'm not a racist'; you need to be anti-racist."

Who died and made Cory Booker God?

No human being has the right to tell me, or anybody else, "If you're not with me, you're against me." I have my own problems to deal with, and so does my neighbor down the hill. Cory Booker did not make us, and we don't answer to him.

Sure there's racism. There's also greed, and a whole list of other deadly sins. If you're called to work on addressing one, feel free, but don't try to play God and demand that the rest of us drop what we're called to do and toe your line.

Witch hunts

Last year there was a little flap about Strumia. I read his slides, though I haven't heard his talk. He shot himself in the foot when he insinuated that a woman with fewer citations had gotten a job he was angling for, simply because she was a woman. If he'd left that off, he'd have had a fairly bullet-proof talk--albeit clumsily done and seriously politically incorrect. Probably we'd have gotten the same "Particle for Justice" sign-up anyway, because even in physics we have a lot of PC-ism. I looked at the sign-up, and concluded that it didn't accurately reflect either Strumia's statements or reality.

Rule of Thumb 17

If the product claims to be compost-able or flush-able, carefully return it to the shelf and back away slowly.

"Embracing My Inner Ent"

Have a look at this medieval scholar's post "On not taking sides." "After all, if my goal had been to impress anybody, I would do much better (numerically speaking) trying to impress the friends whose views I already knew I disagreed with, at least to judge from the jokes that they tell."

Or a more recent post of hers: "Get thee to a library!"

I wrote earlier this week about how senior colleagues keep urging me to get back to my proper work, the scholarship for which I have been trained and on the basis of which I hold the professional position which I do, the implication being that I should not be allowing myself to be distracted with ephemera like, I don’t know, being slandered by colleagues in my field, but rather that I should be concentrating on the work that will last for eternity, or at the very least beyond my own lifetime.

I can hear Hamlet now: "Get thee to a library, why wouldst thou be a feeder of liars?"

But that, of course, is exactly what I did thirty years ago at the beginning of my training as a scholar—get to a library.

That is where I found all the lies!

Or look at the importance of the Scots in the world.

Logic

When I was in high school I learned a little about Soviet education, and heard of "socialist science." That struck me as an utter obscenity--and still does. "Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason."

It is surely true that technology should serve good ends, but the first end it must serve is to be real. A free energy machine would do wonders for the impoverished of the world and so would a magic elixir that cured all diseases. The first end science and mathematics must work toward is to be true--not to be socially relevant or uplifting.

I get it that some statements may be true, but not good to say, because they mislead the careless--especially when taken in isolation. We've all heard lies told using nothing but true statements. But that doesn't change the fundamental question--is the statement true? (A statement may need clarification: it's a basic rule in science that you don't have a measurement if all you have is a number. You need the contents and the uncertainty too.)

The more dramatic stories make the news because they're not normal, but you don't have to look far to find plenty of similar attacks. Solipsistic claims that logical analysis is "oppressive" or "a tool of the patriarchy" or enabled by "white privilege" suggest a hunger for madness, and tell of an obscene idolatry of the tribe.

Math as seen through a glass, darkly

A professor of education and mathematics education (but not, I notice, of mathematics) announces that "mathematics can be decolonized." Oh joy. She can't see any obvious ways of changing the content, so she looks for the "human aspect:" how do students see themselves.

"what mathematics actually is... Mathematician and academic Jo Boaler points out that mathematics is the only subject where students and mathematicians give very different answers to this question."

Mathematicians view the subject as an exciting, creative endeavour in which problem solving, curiosity, excitement, intuition and perseverance play important roles - albeit in relation to abstract objects of study.

For school and even undergraduate mathematics students, these aspects of mathematics are often not experienced and remain opaque. Students tend to believe that mathematics is a set of procedures to be followed. They think only particularly gifted people can do and understand these procedures.

Not true. IIRC Latin was another subject that the skilled and the students had wildly different opinions about. PE is another: humiliating agony for some of us, fun for others. I saw premeds struggling with physics.

One reason for this is given by a study in the US, which showed that the more a field attributes success to giftedness rather than effort, the fewer female and black academics are in that field. This is because the field perpetuates stereotypes about who belongs in the field. The same study found that mathematics professors hold the most fixed ideas about giftedness.

But this view of giftedness versus effort is not borne out by research. A number of scholars have argued that all people are capable of learning mathematics, to high levels.

Go ahead, follow that link. It's a 2-page PDF book review, and it doesn't say what Prof Brodie says it says. The book discusses human mathematical ability in general, not in degree. Nearly everybody can abstract to 1+2=3. Most of us can master the times tables and get some feel for fractions (not always taught well). Somewhat fewer, but still a lot, can learn algebra and proofs. Fewer of those are skilled at it, but that's not a problem--they've been trained in the rudiments of a new language and way of knowing things. I didn't use high school French much for years afterwards either.

If Prof Brodie actually did a little math, instead of math education, she'd know that accomplishment is about giftedness. I've a BS in math, and my only solo paper is in mathematical physics. John Baez is a mathematical physicist. I'm not in his league. He's not in Erdos' league, and would be the first to say so.

Whether stereotypes have any significant effect is open to question. For this or that individual, perhaps. I've seen nothing convincing that shows any causal link of the right order of magnitude. On the contrary, elementary textbooks (perhaps not in South Africa) are drenched in "diversity." The problem-solving children in the explanations are carefully mixed in race and sex. Side-bars extol the accomplishments of 2nd tier mathematicians in order to achieve the right sex ratio. The way is made as friendly as possible--but it turns out there's no royal road to math after all.

That's not to say that we can't do better in math education. There are plenty of subfields. Some kids do fine in algebra but bomb proof-based geometry; some do the reverse. At least the rudiments of algebra are very widely used, but some aspects of topology or knot theory might be accessible in place of more "advanced" algebra (e.g polynomials) or geometry. I tried to teach some TAG 3rd graders a little bit about abstract groups, and I think some of it stuck for at least a week.

But "decolonization" of something as thoroughly abstract as math? There's no ethnic culture associated with it, no economic culture--there are a few mathematical cultures, if you like, but nothing that screams "dead white men."

No, I'm afraid that her real goal is in the tail:

Everybody deserves access to its beauty and its power - and everybody should be able to push back when the discipline is used to destroy and oppress.

That sounds very much like "if the numbers mean something I don't like, I get to reject them." And reject them in good conscience, because labels like decolonization and liberation automatically put you on the side of the angels. Perhaps she means she doesn't like certain technologies, but she puts the blame squarely on math, and I assume she means what she says.