4 Comments

John Presnall
December 10th, 2012 | 9:54 pm

Here’s the link from Ceaser’s post to his article in the new CRB.

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.2018/article_detail.asp

John Presnall
December 10th, 2012 | 10:21 pm

I like Ceaser’s prelude to his counterfactual history of the 2012 election where Obama narrowly loses:

“Yet by the second day after the election, readers of the American press might be excused for believing that the campaign had nothing to do with the result. Analysis had shifted to visible, measurable indicators gleaned from exit polls, which purported to provide data-based accounts explaining the result. A few days later, it became axiomatic that the election could never have turned out otherwise than it did.

This understanding is supported by a massive explanation industry in America today. Specify an outcome, and this industry works backwards to manufacture an iron-clad account, squeezing all contingency from human affairs. The attraction of the industry’s product depends in turn on the appeal of a deeper myth, perpetuated by modern science, that everything is regular and under control. This myth underlies the standard that is used for judging the different predictive models. If matters are fully knowable in advance, then it follows that the best model is the one that comes closest to predicting the actual outcome. Its creators become the envy of the industry, reaping the appropriate acclaim and rewards.”

John Lewis
December 11th, 2012 | 3:01 am

So I decided to carry forward my insomiac perogative, to lament a topic different than Cantelope in France (albeit it is a rich trademark story…or rather a geographic indicator one.) Who really cares about the Alexander Dumas inspired exceptionalism of French Cuisine?

Obviously…It was the standard of judgement first articulated by Churchill and Keynes. Albeit i would hasten to add that the mechanics at least at the time of Keynes, left plenty of room open for the operation of “Animal Spirits”, that is contingency born of manly exertions.

“This understanding is supported by a massive explanation industry in America today.” You mean the Copyright Industrial Complex. A mere penumbra of Article I section 8, clause 8. Albeit Churchill may have had Anglo-American prior art.

So it is not quite as guided by “Zombie Spirits”, or analytical legal parameters (But in truth it sort of is… That is Nate Silver is applying statistics to a legal framework…it is not exactly rocket science that the best model is the one that is narrowly tailored to predict the 50 states, and treat everything else as noise, or mere copyright, i.e. Andrew Sullivan.)

If you prefer more contingency, i have no problems writting: My Zombie spirit being sufficiently strong in the force, I predicted that Nate Silver would win, or at least the “Just” direction of PP’s Stella Artois. (and perhaps John Presnal would think it fitting that Nate Silver drink such swill, instead of a true Frenchfied Belgian ale made by trappist monks… but I digress.)

In fact Nate Silver’s newest copyright is called the ‘signal and the noise”…or to be progressive about it…this is “mere” copyright (noise)….this is patent/mechanics (the signal)!

So without a doubt the mandate of this election, didn’t go to Obama, but rather to the New York Times…to Nate Silver, to Krugman, and to the folks at Freakonomics who suggested we can dable in words or we can end hurricanes… via a Salters Sink. (a policy which comporting with what my sense of wealth is, I support.)

In broad brush at least the election presents a hirearchy in the Article I section 8 clause 8, pantheon. Loosely speaking a cosmic game of rock paper sissors we can say that in the long run sissors wins. Rock=rhetoric, throwing rocks at the opponent, i.e. copyright. Paper=trademark, authentication, reputation,and probably in the end the science of lawyers. But Sissors=tools, the domain and triumph of Homo Faber, patent, mechanics.

Silly conservative boys, can’t you see that Sissors wins! In the short run of course ROCK wins… as Churchill said: A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on… Keynes estimation that in the long run we are all dead, was born in part from his view that Malthus was only wrong by virtue of patent.. (transhumanism is false, we don’t conquer nature fast enough). For Keynes and myself at least taxes are governed by the short run, death a certainty in the long run.

But after enough words of wisdom from Carter, the humble peanut farmer… we see a clear trend towards Paper… (broken in part by the VP nomination of Sarah Palin)…but in general since Carter… Paper has been winning, Indeed 2012 culimates with the theory that if the other guy has a Harvard JD, the way to beat him is with a Harvard JD and a Harvard MBA!

Indeed suddenly now conservatives are awoken to the idea that maybe they were blinded by hatred of France and trademark and branding matters….Oh dear GOD branding matters…lets panic and shut up Akin! (my question…but isn’t akin pro-life patent/mechanics?…only PP dares to field that one.)

But I keep saying to no avail… if instead of rolling around chillaxing to the blues in da Big Easy (which was omniously foreclosed by a Hurricane)…if instead of lamenting some damn statue to Lenin in Seattle conservative members of the APSA had instead looked to solid Lockeian questions such as imminent domain and real property and combined these with an appreciation for the existance of progressive property in Seatte (namely the exertions of former Microsoft founders, ambitiously trying to end hurricanes…)

I mean look, only historians even know that the damn TVA was “progressive”…if Republicans like Newt Gingrich (as he wants to do with his moon colony) get out in front with sissors, this is about the only way you can fight the Progressive Paper of Record! (pun intended).

And guess who said it long before the fact? This guy(and the New York Times)!

In the cosmic game of Rock, Paper, Sissors, you really need Sissors to fight “bad” paper.

All you need to do is end Hurricanes, build a moon colony and it probably wouldn’t hurt to get to $2.50 gasoline. (which is slightly possible given what patent does to U.S. reserves…i.e, once again the long run that saves us from the Anglican prophet of virtuous doom, St. Malthus=Patent.)

Kate Pitrone
December 11th, 2012 | 6:23 am

I think would prefer living in the counterfactual history of the last election, but I am not sure. Contemplating the “what if” of the sequestration cliff — I can’t help myself, I wonder, what the explainers would have said, if Romney had won — about spending cuts and fiscal cliffs or what the Obama Administration would have been doing to tie up spending cuts and how messy it would have been in that alternate reality. I can’t think the republicans among Republicans really would have been allowed to win in fact. Anyway, the great pundits must have had articles in the works for such a contingency. I’d like to read them and that would be novel, or like a novel — “here’s where we would have taken the public discourse”. Inquiring minds would like to know what the deeper myth of control would have looked like then. Mysteries — my favorite.