Angina Monologue 33

His Majesty was in a rather pleasant mood this morning.

I mean, for His Majesty. This usually means he is happy because someone else is not.

It is just delightful to watch the Left going completely off the rails over Trump’s election, while the Far Right begins to realize that Trump might not actually keep his promises of the more burn-it-down variety.

That’s ironic, given that you were predicting Hillary would win, and were looking forward to calling her Virginia for the next eight years. You know: “The Mother of Presidents.”

In fairness, few expected Hillary to lose. And inasmuch as she actually won the popular vote, it was clearly a close race, and no one should be surprised it was difficult to call correctly.

Naturally, the Left is now discovering that the Electoral College is a terrible idea. It may or may not be; but at least we’re finally seeing the transparency Obama promised us.

Of course, if we actually chose Presidents by popular vote, the two candidates would have campaigned rather differently. Trump might still have won.

Just so. Still, I wouldn’t change the current system for anything. It has the merits of motivating the candidates to spread the <fertilizer> more evenly, and of giving the Democrats the opportunity to expend energy and resources on something that cannot possibly be changed. It is always good strategy to provoke your enemy into attacking the most impregnable position possible.

And how did that work for us off Endor?

Given your sprogs’ involvement in that unfortunate episode, I’m astonished you have the temerity to bring it up.

While I am not at all happy Trump won, I’m delighted Hillary lost. One of Trump’s merits is that he offends all the right people. Of course, this comes with the cost that he offends a lot of the wrong ones as well. But now that the political plums are being handed out, there is suddenly renewed interest in working with Trump. Even your Mitt Romney was invited to meet with Trump for conversations. Rumor was that he might be offered the Department of State, though it didn’t turn out that way in the end.

I think this would have put Romney in rather a dilemma. On the one hand, I think he genuinely does not want to be associated with Trump. On the other hand, he genuinely wants what’s best for the country, and he might have told himself that having to work with Trump was just the personal price he’d have to pay to see that foreign relations are conducted competently.

Oh, they’ll all tell themselves things like that. And maybe they’re right. Still, I would feel a strange new respect for Romney if word leaked out that he invited Trump to kiss his <fundaments>.

(His Majesty did not actually use the word “fundaments”, just as he previously did not actually use the word “fertilizer.”)

I don’t know what is upsetting the Left more at the moment: That Trump is Hitler and the Antichrist, or that Trump is not obviously acting like Hitler or the Antichrist. My own suspicion is that Trump will act like Hitler in at least one sense: He will liquidate a large number of his more fanatical supporters in exchange for cementing the support of some of the old elite.

I don’t think we can lay up enough popcorn to last us through the coming show.

I am tempted to snark that the Left would consider Trump being the Antichrist as a positive.

(thoughtfully) You could be right. So strike “Antichrist” from everything I just said, and leave “Hitler.”

But all this is not really what has me in such a splendid mood this morning. No, I have been having some delightful thoughts about the role of religion, theistic or otherwise.

Do tell.*

There is a conceit, popular on the Right, of describing secular humanism as a religion. In my experience, nothing is more infuriating to atheists. I’m tempted to snark that this is because it hits so close to the mark. — Who am I to resist temptation? It infuriates them because it hits so close to the mark (twisted smile). And, of course, this is part of what make the conceit so delightful to many who call themselves religious. (I have heavily qualified that, because most of the genuinely religious people I know have better things to do than bait atheists.)

Close to the mark, but not in the yellow. Oh, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I think it’s obvious that atheists have every intention of making secular humanism a substitute for religion. Atheists love to snark that the man makes God in his own image; but they mean to skip a step and simply make man God. That’s the “humanism” part. The “secular” part is to reassure us that this worship of Man is not actually religious. Since this is transparently false, I suppose I am obligated to declare that “secular humanism” is an oxymoron.

I am myself an unbeliever, though I reject the label “atheist.” “Agnostic” comes much closer, but does not quite capture the correct nuance of my views. Nor am I a secular humanist. I reject self-worship, as I reject all worship.

And, for that matter, self-worship is not quite the same as Man-worship.

But have you not previously suggested that the only thing anyone really knows is the Self, and the Self should therefore be the ultimate focus of all our activities?

But this is not worship; it is pragmatism.

I do not worship myself. In fact, I delight in the absurdity that all I really know is the Self, and yet I hardly know the Self — and what I  know is absurd. The Self is absurdly preoccupied with such trivialities as as eating, or <making love>, or playing with the cats. Speaking of which, have you seen Zoe lately?

I believe she’s hanging out in the Christmas tree.**

And I was not aware that you had any actual experience of making love.

I speak hypothetically, of course.

That’s absurd.

Precisely.

But secular-humanism-as-religion misses the mark, not because that’s not what the secular humanists are actually attempting, but because they’ve been preempted.

The study of economics is the real substitute for religion in our secular culture.

I’m not following you.

Oh, yes you are. You must obey your master.

But think on it. From a purely utilitarian point of view, the function of religion is to provide a moral framework for guiding the believer in his interactions with other people. The theology, the liturgy, all that ritual mumbo-jumbo — it’s a perfect waste of time, and, therefore, like most perfect wastes of time, mostly harmless. Theology really only matters to the extent it informs how the believer treats others. Islamicists beheading infidels is significant, not because it amounts to a religious ritual, but because humans are being sacrificed. Ask any secularist, and he’ll tell you he is utterly indifferent to whatever rituals people engage in, as long as they pay the same taxes as atheists going to a movie and as long as their public behavior reflects the dictates of secular humanism.

I don’t actually believe that. It’s what they say now, but if freedom of religion ceases to be a part of our political culture, then the secularists will certainly not stop with constraining public behavior.

True enough. Every totalitarian, sooner or later, begins to obsess over though crime. But the enlightened despot — who is wise enough not to be a totalitarian — understands that constraining public behavior is sufficient. Once you detach religious worship, or any other philosophy, from public behavior, then the worship becomes empty and withers into folk belief. And folk belief is too weak to pose any threat, unless a Prophet comes along to stir the embers. The enlightened despot will provide Prophets of his own to preempt that possibility.

Which brings us back around to economics.

What is economics, but the study of how people respond to incentives and, in its more pragmatic branches, constructing an incentive structure to elicit the desired human behavior? In this respect, it is no different from religion constructing an incentive structure — do this and God will bless you with prosperity; do that and you’ll burn for eternity in Hell — to elicit the desired behavior.

Except that it’s secular, and it is based on a false model of human behavior, Homo economicus.

That it is secular is irrelevant. You mean, of course, that economics has no element of the transcendent in it; but I’m damned*** if I can see any practical difference between Smith’s invisible hand and the hand of Providence.

You’re right about the false model of human behavior, though. At least, I think you are. Most people make most of their economic decisions in a less than rational manner. There is the famous example of the Bidding Game.

[The Bidding Game is a laboratory experiment in which volunteers, who do not know each other and are unlikely to ever meet again, are paired off. Each pair is offered ten quatloos — but only if the second partner accepts whatever fraction of the ten quatloos is offered to him by the first partner, who is told he is free to bid whatever amount he wishes. If the second partner accepts, the second partner gets that number of quatloos, and the rest go to the first partner. If the second refuses, none get any quatloos. The first partner is allowed only one bid without any input from the second partner.

Homo economicus as second partner will always accept whatever he is bid. After all, it’s free money. Even an offer of just one of the quatloos is better than no quatloos. Yet, with the exception of only one of the demographics that has been tested, this is now how it works with actual Homo sapiens. If the first partner “stiffs” the second partner by only offering one quatloo, the second partner almost always refuses the bid and none get any quatloos. If the first partner offers half the quatloos, the second partner almost invariably accepts. The break point is typically around three quatloos. Conclusion: Real people are perfectly willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

It’s harder to gauge what is rational behavior for the first partner. If he was bidding to Homo economicus, his own rational action would be to offer one quatloo. But he’s bidding to Homo sapiens and the rational bid is that bid which yields the highest expectation value based on his assessment of the probability of acceptance. It turns out people judge each other fairly well; the average bid is around 3 quatloos and it’s accepted about half the time.

One demographic is an exception; in this demographic, the first partners typically make low bids yet the second partners typically accept. That demographic is graduate students in economics.]

One wonders if the behavior is really rational. “Punishing” people who “stiff” us may benefit us in the long run. Of course, in this case, the concentrated benefit of refraining from punishment (you get the quatloo) seems to clearly outweigh the diffuse benefit of punishing (a miniscule tightening of a general norm in favor of generosity). So, yes, it really is irrational, from the perspective of the individual.

But not necessarily irrational as a universal behavior of the group.

And that is where the regard for Self comes in. I have been criticized for perfectly rational behavior, from the perspective of my Self, but then my Self is all I can really know. So who’s being irrational?

But you see my original point. However rational I may be, most people aren’t, and so models of economic behavior that assume rational human conduct are false models.

But they can be adjusted to take into account irrationality. –Mind you, I’m not defending economics as a substitute for religion; just economics as a science of human behavior.

But economics is mostly studied by rational people. And once it becomes the guide for understanding human behavior, it will inevitably change human behavior. People will begin acting like Homo economicus — or, more likely, they will start trying to game human interactions by becoming Homo economicus while assuming others will remain Homo sapiens.

Meaning, they will take advantage of the altruism of others while exercising none themselves.

You have just described our vicious elite.

Well. I really didn’t see that coming.

You surprise me, Lord Vader. Is it not your own religious philosophers who have condemned such economics? Man does not live by bread alone.

But where does that leave you?

Doing whatever amuses my Self. Which includes being kind to cats and, when the fancy strikes me, being kind to people. Just so I don’t mix business and pleasure.

I see a flaw in your argument. You spoke of the person who “punishes” others who “stiff” him as irrational, because the concentrated benefit of refraining from punishment outweighs the diffuse benefit of punishing. But that’s because you only count the miniscule promotion of a general norm in favor of generosity as part of the benefit of “punishing”.

You’ve left out the pleasure of wiping the smile off his face by “stiffing” him back.

[stares, then starts to cackle.]  Muh hah hah! So are you suggesting that the Trumpian “burn it down” people are rational, after all?

Blink blink. I would say the problem there is that the cost of burning it down is not worth the pleasure of watching the hated elite burn.

It really is hard to say what is rational and what is not, isn’t it? Perhaps we should just assume that humans generally act reasonably, even if the reason isn’t obvious?

By those lights, my dog is reasonable.

Not so. Your dog is not particularly good at calculating the likely consequences of a particular course of action. For example, she’s pretty stupid about taking on dogs much larger than herself.

[My dog is a dachshund, and seems to have no awareness of her own smallness.]

Most humans do a reasonable job of calculating the likely consequences of their actions. The portion who cannot may fill our prisons, emergency rooms, and the rolls of the Darwin Award, but they are not typical.

But, as for Trump and calculation: It is becoming increasingly clear that the metric by which Trump will measure his own success is how much adulation he receives. In this respect, he differs from Obama, or, for that matter, from most other politicians, only in whose adulation he gives the greatest weight to. Obama cares what the Democratic elite think; he is unconcerned with either the Republican elite or the bitter clingers (to their guns and religion) who he worked so hard to Other. What we have yet to see is who Trump actually Others.

Oh, I know. The Left will tell you he has Othered women, homosexuals, blacks, Muslims, immigrants, and on and on. His own supporters will tell you that he has Othered Mitt Romney and the rest of the elite, who had it coming. I seriously question whether he is sincere about Othering any of these people, but the strong negative reaction to the Romney trial balloon will certainly be part of Trump’s future calculations. It may explain why, after making some fairly good choices for other Cabinet posts, he chose someone so lackluster for Secretary of State.

But I think the Carrier episode may be a foreshock. Trump will be generous handing out concentrated benefits while ignoring the diffuse costs. In this respect, he will be a perfectly typical politician.

I can’t really argue with that.

*… since you’re going to anyway, you twisted old monster.

** For illustrative purposes only. Not actually His Majesty’s tree or cat.

*** I’m quite certain His Majesty is fully aware of the irony here.