Grace Notes

While not exclusive to one side or the other, there seems to be a much greater tendency on the left to engage in ad hominem attacks, while mainstream commenters on the right tend to refrain from such. Two examples illustrate: the smears, and now attempts to have her removed, of Miss California, and the calls for prosecution, or at least disbarment, of the lawyers who provided guidance on the enhanced interrogation methods. It seems that there are two sets of rules here, and the conservative side has agreed to be more constrained.

That doesn’t seem right. There are important principles at stake here. Trying to destroy or publicly humiliate someone with whom the you have a policy disagreement is to change the game. The would be destroyers ought to at least risk consequences proportionate to what they are attempting to do. Seek to disbar an attorney as a way to shut down debate is maybe to risk a significant financial or other judgment. Attempt to publicly disgrace someone; risk your own public disgrace. The issues matter and need to be debated on the merits, and not have things decided by who is the nastier name caller.

By playing by a set of Marquess of Queensberry rules we are unnecessarily handicapping ourselves. Those who engage in personal destruction and public humiliation cannot be accorded the status of those whom we simply disagree with and with whom we can reason together. They’ve already demonstrated that reasoning together is just a tactic to gain advantage at some later time. It’s time to realize that they are not opponents, but rather enemies.

[Update]

As I think about this, I do not believe that direct turnabout is right. For example, pusillanimous bullies who descend to school yard smears, that bear no relation to the truth, or who try to expose potentially embarrassing details, should not then likewise be villified and investigated with an eye to unearthing their embarrassing histories. Rather, I believe that such behavior should be confronted directly.

Also, there should be a way to mitigate harm. One example is that scurrilous claims are sometimes made to intimidate or tie someone up in legal proceeding and costs (e.g. Sarah Palin). When baseless charges are made, the target should be made whole. His legal fees should be reimbursed, and he should be compensated for time and trouble.

Or diminishing returns. Assistant Village Idiot has a great post about capitalism. One of his points really caught my attention, and seems obvious in retrospect. In a relatively free market, government intervention can focus on items which offer a relatively high return for a relatively low cost. Comparing a state of nature (nasty, brutish, and short) to a civilized society, we can see that the initial actions of the state have a very high payoff indeed.

However, diminishing returns applies here as well. Increasing interventions come at, usually, increasing costs and have, usually, decreasing benefits. So just as we rightly limit (well, up until recently anyway, but that’s another story) the amount of leverage a bank is allowed to have, it would make sense to limit the amount of intervention the government was allowed.

The idea would be to set down some rules to say that even if some program or policy might have some benefit that certain things were just not the state’s business. This is not a new idea. James Madison thought of it over 200 years ago. Unfortunately, this and other reasons for supporting this idea of a government of limited and enumerated powers have been lost or forgotten by a great many. We may see a time when government action crosses over the line where the costs exceed the benefits.

One of the main principles is conservation. Conservation of mass,  of energy, of charge, of lots of things. In games like bridge, cards in one place can’t be somewhere else. Generally, start with some stuff, process it, total up the result and the waste, you have what you began with, or maybe just a little less.

Only very rarely do we see genuine creation. Start with some stuff, process it, and end up with more than you began with. Sometimes a lot more. For example, paint and canvas are relatively cheap, but with the right painter, the value of the painting far exceeds the value of the input materials and the painters time valued by ordinary standards. New businesses come along and create value.

Yet unless we pay close attention, it is easier to think of value as being conserved. One man’s gain must be offset by loses to others. It’s not true, at least not always, because wealth is not fixed. Some things increase it, others decrease it. It’s the same with policy. Some policies serve to increase wealth and well being, others to reduce both.

With toxins, dose matters. Within a certain dosage range, to add 10% to the dose is to increase the effect by about 10%. Of course, above a limit, adding dosage doesn’t have much effect. After all, dead is dead. This could be summarized as more dose, more bad, less dose, less bad. So even a tiny dose causes a tiny bit of bad.

It turns out that this is not quite true. For many items, a very small dose actually strengthens the organism. The term J-curve comes from plotting the relation of harm against dosage.

None of this is new, but it occurs to me that it is important, as it becomes very hard to predict the behavior of nonlinear systems.