The unhappy Kant

I'm sure I've read before that he was considered good dinner table company, but according to this interesting article, Kant did suffer from depression:

That Kant suffered from depression may come as a surprise, especially given the ambition of his philosophical books and the enthusiasm of his wide-ranging intellectual interests (his lecture courses cover everything from philosophical logic to anthropology to chemistry to predictions about the end of the world). But in 1798, in a letter to a colleague on the topic of “the art of prolonging human life,” Kant commented on his own struggle with depression. The comments are rare for Kant, both in the sense of being personal and in the way they serve as a confession of weakness. In typical fashion, Kant first defines depression as “the weakness of abandoning oneself despondently to general morbid feelings that have no definite object (and so making no attempt to master them by reason).” A thought without an object is a troubling thing in Kant’s philosophy; it can lead to endless train of fickle thoughts without any ground, similar to the speculative debates in Kant’s time over the existence of God, the origin of the universe, or the existence of a soul. Reason becomes employed for no reason – or at least, for no good reason. At issue for Kant is not just the employment of reason over faith or imagination, but the instrumental use of reason – reason mastering itself, including its own limitations. This was as much the case for everyday thought as it was for philosophical thinking: “The opposite of the mind’s self-mastery… is fainthearted brooding about the ills that could befall one, and that one would not be able to withstand if they should come.”

And as for my nearly forgotten plan to write a movie in which the apparently virginal, intellectual, reserved deep thinker was actually a proto James Bond by night:  well, I may have to be careful with casting:

A little later on, Kant offers this strange confession: “I myself have a natural disposition to hypochrondria because of my flat and narrow chest, which leaves little room for the movement of the heart and lungs; and in my earlier years this disposition made me almost weary of life.”

A trilogy without a face

I hadn't heard before that Iran was making a serious movie trilogy about Mohammad.  

Sounds like the first one is finished*, but don't expect it to look like a Hollywood "Jesus" movie:

The movie focuses on Prophet Mohammad’s childhood. His face is not shown on screen, and the camera shows the boy actor playing him only from behind, or only his shadow.

Seems that a lot of Sunnis from other countries still think it should be banned:

Raza Academy’s joint secretary Mohammad Arif Rizvi said that the movie hurts the “sentiments of Indian Muslims” by showing a person playing the Prophet.

Perhaps use a robot, or puppet, then?

Given that Saudi Arabia barely has movie screenings at all, there's little risk it can cause much public outrage there.

But it would be a odd bit of history if Sunni/Shite fighting escalated over a film that doesn't even show the face of Mo.

* it is, and here's a recent, actually positive, review from The Guardian.

Don't try to point score on such a mess

I'm finding it very distasteful, the way Andrew Bolt is acting as if the humanitarian immigration crisis in Europe is somehow the fault of the Left being soft.   I would have thought that anyone on the Right should be  reticent to make any political mileage out of it, given that it's:

a.  hardly a long bow to draw between instability in Iraq post invasion with the eventual rise of ISIS; and

b.  an appalling multinational problem for which no side of politics could possibly claim to have simple solutions.

Glum about the candidates

The Joe Biden Delusion - The New York Times

I see that Frank Bruni is also glum about the lack of Democrat choice for the candidates for the Presidential election.   Of course, it's not as dire as the Republican situation, but still...

Sounds about right...

Economics Has a Math Problem - Bloomberg View

Noah Smith writes:

Personally, I think that what’s odd about econ isn’t that it uses lots of math -- it’s the way
it uses math. In most applied math disciplines -- computational biology, fluid dynamics, quantitative finance -- mathematical theories are always tied to the evidence. If a theory hasn’t been tested, it’s treated as pure conjecture.

Not so in econ. Traditionally, economists have put the facts in a subordinate role and theory in the driver’s seat. Plausible-sounding theories are believed to be true unless proven false, while empirical facts are often dismissed if they don’t make sense in the context of leading theories. This isn’t a problem with math -- it was just as true back when economics theories were written out in long literary volumes. Econ developed as a form of philosophy and then added math later, becoming basically a form of mathematical philosophy.

I also recently mentioned this problem in economics - there is always "something else going on":

 Basically, Athey and Imbens look at the problem of how to identify treatment effects. A treatment effect is the difference between what would happen if you administer some “treatment” -- say, raising the minimum wage -- and what would happen without the treatment. This can be very complicated, because there are lots of other factors that affect the outcome, besides just the treatment. It is also complicated by the fact that the treatment may work differently on different people at different times and places. A final problem is that the data economists have to answer the question is usually very limited -- a big impediment for traditional econometrics, which generally assumes that the amount of data is comfortably large. Athey and Imbens deal with these issues by importing a method from data science, called a regression tree. Statistically literate readers can peruse their slides here. 

 So my previous guess, that it's the "there's always something else going on" aspect that lets the ideologically motivated economist get away with never having to revise their prescriptions, even when they haven't worked*, seems about right.

* See Laffer and Kansas;  as well as Noah Smith's other recent column Growth Fantasy of Tax Cuts and Small Government.

Future oceans a worry

Climate Change Plus Irreversible Evolution Will Force Key Ocean Bacteria into Overdrive – Greg Laden's Blog

Read about this paper, showing the great uncertainty (and great potential problem) that increasing ocean acidification represents to the ecology of the future oceans.

Decent money for good quality

One man's poop is another's medicine - CNN.com

Amusing to read that poo donors in the US make can make some decent money (well, decent pocket money, I guess):

To donate, Eric had to pass a 109-point clinical assessment. There is a laundry list of factors that would disqualify a donor: obesity, illicit drug use, antibiotic use, travel to regions with high risk of contracting diseases, even recent tattoos. His stools and blood also had to clear a battery of laboratory screenings to make sure he didn't have any infections.

After all that screening, only 3% of prospective donors are healthy enough to give. "I had no idea," he says about his poop. "It turns out that it's fairly close to perfect."

And that, unlike most people's poop, makes Eric's worth money. OpenBiome pays its 22 active donors $40 per sample. They're encouraged to donate often, every day if they can. Eric has earned about $1,000.

More "What? Our base are idiots?"

The Coming Conservative Crackup? | The Daily Caller

As I wrote last month, the shock caused by Trump to many of those on the American Right is the realisation that many of their "base" must be idiots.

More along that line can be read at the above link, which concludes that if Trump really succeeds, it could be the end of the "reasonable" Republicans :

Over at The Federalist, Ben Domenech penned a terrific post the other week, asking “Are Republicans For Freedom Or White Identity Politics?” When I asked him how this might personally impact us, he responded: “Sometimes parties die. Not there yet.”

Maybe not — but it’s probably not too soon to have our exit strategy mapped out. Will we be forced to make a binary choice between belonging to a political philosophy on the Right that is openly nationalistic and xenophobic — or one on the Left that supports (among other evils)
infanticide?

It’s been a trope forever, but we could really have a “stupid” party and an “evil” party on our hands.

Last night's Foreign Correspondent on the Trump campaign was good viewing, too.

Music observations

*  I was playing parental chauffeur all weekend, it seemed (though, thankfully, not to anything sporting - that would be beyond the pale) and after tiring of channel surfing FM Radio, deliberately tried 4KQ, the "anything except from the last 25 years" classic hits AM station for Brisbane.   Which led me to hearing "Bus Stop" by the Hollies for the first time in (probably) several decades. 

Has there been a song with a greater disparity between melancholic melody and happy lyric?   It's a "love found" song that sounds exactly like a "love lost" song.   Or did I miss something before the end where she leaves him for a man with a raincoat instead?   Then again, perhaps I'm the only person in the world who finds the melody depressing?  Weird. 

* I heard Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 for the first time in a while on Saturday night, too.  (Not on 4KQ, but at my daughter's concert.)   The way it has two very disparate bits merged into one made me think of Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime.  Probably someone else somewhere has compared these two bits of music.  Or maybe this is a first. 

*  The choral version of Let the River Run by Carly Simon (the theme from Working Girl) is very good.  (Heard this at son's concert.)   In fact, I think I should compile a list of songs that work better in choral version than the original.   On it so far:  that song from Wicked "For Good";  "Every Step you Take" is great sung by a choir too, but the original remains terribly catchy;  I also have a bit of a soft spot for the kid's version of Flame Trees, but I haven't heard it for a while.

As you were....

Movie biz talk

'Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation' Should Gross Massive $250 Million In China - Forbes

I was curious as to how MI5 has been doing at the box office.  $479 million I see (total world wide).  Good but not fantastic.  (Four years ago, MI4 made nearly $700 million in total.)

Then I checked whether it had opened in China.  It hasn't yet.  But this article shows how important the Chinese movie market has become. 

Krugman on "tech types"

Fear of Asymmetry - The New York Times

Sounds about right to me,  although perhaps he should have mentioned that nerdy types are sometimes unduly attracted to libertarianism, too, and that can be poison to good public policy.

The hard to understand world of quantum computing

Quantum computer that 'computes without running' sets efficiency record

Of course, everyone loves the idea of a computer that works without turning it on.  (It would make some good science fiction comedy in a Douglas Adams novel, one assumes.)  But it's not that easy to follow the theory.

Clueless

Judith Sloan being profoundly dumb to her favourite audience of the wilfully ignorant*, again, all because her local winter was colder than recent ones.  Not even record breakingly cold; just a bit colder.

You'd think she sharpen up on the fence sitting skills, just in case, you know, people who she would like to influence notice that on climate she's the equivalent of an anti-vaxxer - impervious to facts, ideologically committed to an extreme minority view, and a nuisance to good public policy.

And economics is bit math-y and a bit science-y (sort of), so you'd like to think she has a clue on those subjects.

But no, because she has a self selecting audience of the dumb-as-she-is on climate, she flaunts it for all to see.

* Not Q&A, it's just that this was the best photo in which to make her sing.

Heydon explains...

Update:  many amusing tweets to be seen about the Commissioner's techno fail.  Such as this:

Update 2:

It all puts me in mind of this Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch, too:

McDonalds and the Power of the Wood Platter

I had been making the observation to my family for about 8 months now:   this idea of serving food on wood platters actually works by making everything taste better.  I don't know how - it seems like some form of culinary Deep Magic - but it works at home as well as at eating establishments.  (We bought a large one for those Saturday nights where we make a meal of a large antipasto style platter.  I swear they taste better since we stopped using the ceramic platter.)

So I have been interested to test this out at McDonalds, where even half alert viewers of commercial television may have realised that they are serving their "Your Creation" burgers on wooden platters - brought right to your table, no less.

I was cynical about this idea - suddenly the joint known for compiling a burger in about 12 seconds flat is going to carefully produce a particularly tasty and attractive one?   Would people go for the extra price (which remains very unclear in all advertising)?

Well, I'm happy to report that yesterday I had my first creation, and it was delicious.   (Cost $10.55 for the burger alone - I stole the kids' chips to make it more economical.)  

The ingredients, for those who are still reading:  brioche bun, one beef patty, swiss cheese, crispy bacon, grilled mushrooms,  caramelised onion, tomato, lettuce, chipotle mayo.    What's more, it was fairly late at night, and I could see the guy compiling my burger.  He really did seem to take care.

During the meal, I mentioned the power of the wood platter several times, as well as the fact that it now simplifies where to eat out for wedding anniversaries. 

I do hope this works out for the company....



    

New kid in town

You know, once you reach your mid fifties, there's a really good way to depress yourself about your advancing years:  work out how old you'll be if the new pup you've just brought home lives as long as the previous dog you had since a pup who died a few months ago. 

Anyway, here she is:

Neat. Fits right in with the "proto-fascist government" meme I've been using...

Border Force to check people's visas on Melbourne's streets this weekend - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

How can anyone think this is going to look like a "positive" to the public?

And why did Lefties over-use "fascist" as an insult to the Howard government, but have under-used it (til now, I'm guessing) against the actual proto-fascist actions of the Abbott government?

Update:

Tony Abbott joins with Border Force, being helpful in Melbourne:

Update 2:  this is, quite possibly, the most spectacularly inept and amusing PR disaster ever orchestrated by a government body.  (The summary misses the instantaneous street protests in Melbourne, but still):


 

Bruni's right...

...it is disconcerting that the American evangelicals are liking Trump:

Let me get this straight. If I want the admiration and blessings of the most flamboyant, judgmental Christians in America, I should marry three times, do a queasy-making amount of sexual boasting, verbally degrade women, talk trash about pretty much everyone else while I’m at it, encourage gamblers to hemorrhage their savings in casinos bearing my name and crow incessantly about how much money I’ve amassed?

Seems to work for Donald Trump.

Polls show him to be the preferred candidate among not just all Republican voters but also the party’s vocal evangelical subset.

He’s more beloved than Mike Huckabee, a former evangelical pastor, or Ted Cruz, an evangelical pastor’s son, or Scott Walker, who said during the recent Republican debate: “It’s only by the blood of Jesus Christ that I’ve been redeemed.”

When Trump mentions blood, it’s less biblical, as Megyn Kelly can well attest.

No matter. The holy rollers are smiling upon the high roller. And they’re proving, yet again, how selective and incoherent the religiosity of many in the party’s God squad is.

Not sure if this is just a little bit scary...

How a Computer Predicts Schizophrenia and Psychosis - The Atlantic

Most of the time, people don’t actively track the way one thought
flows into the next. But in psychiatry, much attention is paid to such
intricacies of thinking. For instance, disorganized thought, evidenced
by disjointed patterns in speech, is considered a hallmark
characteristic of schizophrenia. Several studies of at-risk youths have
found that doctors are able to guess with impressive accuracy—the best
predictive models hover around 79 percent—whether a person will develop
psychosis based on tracking that person’s speech patterns in interviews.

A computer, it seems, can do better.

 That’s according to a study published Wednesday
by researchers at Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric
Institute, and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in the Nature
Publishing Group journal Schizophrenia. They used an automated
speech-analysis program to correctly differentiate—with 100-percent
accuracy—between at-risk young people who developed psychosis over a
two-and-a-half year period and those who did not. The computer model
also outperformed other advanced screening technologies, like biomarkers
from neuroimaging and EEG recordings of brain activity.

Actually, having recently re-watched the first part of it, this also puts me in mind of the interview technique with the replicants in Blade Runner.

Quantum spookiness confirmed, again?

Spotted in Sabine Hossenfelder's tweets, an article about a new, loophole closing (so it seems) test of quantum spookiness.

Sabine also has a lengthy go at explaining what the physicists are getting at when they talk about the universe being hologram.  I haven't read it carefully, yet, but it seems more-or-less comprehensible.