Kevin Drum

Apparently the idea that we don't have free will is so scandalous that the LA Times decided it needed an opposing opinion. So they recruited John Martin Fischer, a philosopher at UC Riverside, who says "of course we do."

Well. I guess that's that. Argument over.

But maybe not quite. I wouldn't bring this up again except for this paragraph from Fischer's piece:

Some neurobiologists, including Sapolsky, hold that neurobiology supports determinism — that the brain activity science has uncovered reveals essentially mechanical procedures that cause human decisions. Other neuroscientists believe that at a fundamental level the brain works indeterministically, perhaps in accordance with quantum mechanics, which allows for randomness and unpredictability. In other words, whether the past and laws of nature dictate my choices and actions remains scientifically controversial.

I got a bunch of similar comments that brought up quantum mechanics. The suggestion is that since indeterminacy is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, this means the future is not perfectly predictable and therefore there's room for free will.

But determinacy has nothing to do with free will, and it's remarkable that an experienced philosopher like Fischer would bring it up. Free will is solely a question of whether human beings can somehow interfere with the laws of physics. The human brain, at its deepest level, is of course based on quantum mechanics. This is not controversial. Everything, at its deepest level, is based on quantum mechanics.

So sure, we might not know how any particular particle in our brains is going to behave at any given femtosecond, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether the particle's fate is determined by the mathematical laws of quantum mechanics or whether a human being can somehow affect the outcome.

Unless you're religious or otherwise dedicated to metaphysical spiritualism, there's no evidence that humans have the ability to interfere with either quantum mechanics or any other law of physics. Particles do what they do, and when you add them all up they amount to human actions. End of story.

POSTSCRIPT: Fischer's biggest problem is the notion that if free will doesn't exist, then we can't hold people responsible for their actions. There's no point in punishing a murderer who's little more than a robot, but just letting people do whatever they want seems both intolerable and absurd.

That's a problem! But the solution is to simply ignore it. Intellectually, I'm a pure materialist. But emotionally I believe that I control my actions and so do other people. So what? Just go with it.

Jason Furman draws our attention to a new paper that analyzes the effect of the 2017 business tax cut. Long story short, the authors find that cutting taxes increased investment.

I'm skeptical of this, and I'll show you why in three charts. First up is a chart from the paper itself showing, as promised, that corporations with bigger tax cuts also invested more:

But take a closer look. Every single company got a tax cut. However, aside from four outliers on the upper right, not a single company increased investment by any significant amount. Most of them reduced investment. The trendline may indeed be up and to the right, but the overall amount of increased investment is negative.

Next up is business investment since the end of the Great Recession:

This is a broad look, so you might not expect to see a big impact from the tax cut. But in fact you see no impact from the tax cut. Surely there ought to be something, even if it's small?

Finally, here's a long-term chart showing business investment since 1947:

The amount of business investment varies enormously from year to year, and this plainly has nothing to do with taxes. Even if tax cuts do have an effect, they are surely minimal compared to the normal ebb and flow of investment.

To summarize: (a) most companies reduced investment following the 2017 tax cut, (b) overall business investment didn't budge from its trendline following the cut, and (c) business investment varies so strongly from year-to-year that a small tax effect would be unnoticeable even if there were one.

It may be that, technically, the 2017 tax cuts increased investment compared to a baseline of some kind. But even if that's so, the effect is tiny and completely washed out by normal noise.¹ Anyway you cut it, we gave up $1.5 trillion in tax revenue and increased the federal deficit by $1.8 trillion for nothing.

¹This is what the CBO projected five years ago: total increased business investment would be on the order of $20-50 billion per year, an amount too small to measure.

I have been obstinately refusing to call Twitter by its new name, X, but I know that can't go on forever. The question is, How long can it go on?

My problem isn't that I hate X, it's that I'm not sure most people know what X is yet. So far, mainstream outlets are still largely using the formulation "X, formerly known as Twitter," which suggests they agree with me that the public at large isn't yet familiar with just a freestanding X.

Of course, you are not the public at large. So what say you? Is it time to start referring to the Musk abyss as X, full stop, or should I stick with Twitter for a while longer?

Here's what's happening in London:

London police said on Friday they had recorded a 1,353% increase in antisemitic offences this month compared to the same period last year, while Islamophobic offences were up 140% in the wake of the attack by Hamas on Israel.

....Police in the British capital ramped up patrols amid growing tensions, but said there had been 218 antisemitic offences between Oct. 1 and 18, compared to 15 in the same period in 2022. Islamophobic offences were up to 101, from 42.

And Berlin:

Modern Germany is an advanced liberal democracy: tolerant, decent, and generous. The German state is a friend to Israel and a vigilant protector of its Jewish citizens. And yet it is dangerous to wear Jewish symbols in many parts of Berlin. https://t.co/1UGigQRK4q pic.twitter.com/wSUiZMF31y

— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 22, 2023

And Paris and New York City:

An unprecedented 1,200% escalation in online calls for violence against Israel, Zionists, and Jews in the chilling aftermath of the IDF Swords of Iron operation against Hamas was seen in a new report. The statistics were collected between October 7-10, 2023....This period saw 157,000 recorded antisemitic posts, indicating a 450% increase from the prior four days.

...A geographical dive into the data reveals Paris as the most active hub for the dissemination of antisemitic hate speech from October 7-10. Following Paris, cities like New York, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Los Angeles also show significant activity in this regard.

The world is awash in hatred and tribalism. I don't think anyone can consider this surprising, but neither is it something we can ignore.

This was all over social media last night:

Michigan State apologized Saturday night for playing a pregame trivia video that showed an image of Adolf Hitler on the Spartan Stadium scoreboard before its game against Michigan, which the Spartans lost 49-0. The image of Hitler’s face flashed on the screen alongside a trivia question asking about his home country.

For those of you who aren't history buffs, Hitler was born and raised in Austria. Surprise!

But I have a question. Was this supposed to be offensive in general? Or only because it popped up while Hamas terrorists are killing Israelis?

Because I honestly don't quite get the outrage. Are games of trivia no longer allowed to have questions about Hitler? That seems excessive. Or is it just that Michigan State should have had the good sense to know the timing was bad?

Any help here?

POSTSCRIPT: Huh. Twitter wouldn't allow me to post the picture of Hitler.

The US government, the Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal have all now concluded that the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza was hit not by an Israeli bomb but by an errant Hamas rocket meant for Israel. It also turns out that the hospital building itself is largely intact and the death toll is in the range of 100-300, not "over 500." The rocket exploded in an outdoor courtyard where refugees were huddled.

The lesson here is obvious: don't jump to conclusions and don't believe everything that combatants in wartime tell you. Not everything in the real world moves at internet speed, and it's hardly overtaxing your patience to wait two or three days before forming outraged opinions.

Armond White, National Review's culture critic, doesn't like the movie version of Taylor Swift's Eras tour. In fact, he doesn't like Taylor Swift. That's fair enough. She's not everyone's cup of tea, especially if you aren't part of her young-white-women demographic—which White decidedly isn't.

But what on earth is this supposed to mean?

The Eras Tour is the most calamitous movie event since Barbie. It’s in the mode of post-Madonna, post-Obama mind control. The Taylor Swift industry would like us to believe that the world is not crumbling and that Swift’s prominence comes from her being a great artist. Yet girls who don’t know Jane Austen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, or Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” fall for Swift’s narcissistic display. It prevents them from realizing their desperation — the loneliness at the scary heart of Kardashian peer pressure and FOMO.

"Since Barbie" means "since July," so one might wonder just how calamitous Eras really is. But at least that sentence is comprehensible. I genuinely have no idea what the other sentences mean.

The rest of the piece is largely the same. White's real gripe is a common one among professional conservatives: They just can't stand art that has progressive themes of any kind—in this case the fact that Swift supports the Equal Rights Amendment. White is also inexplicably furious that teenage girls don't generally have sophisticated taste in music. Go figure.

I myself don't much care for Taylor Swift's music, but I admire her work ethic. Every review I've read of her Eras show gushes about how fans get their money's worth: the show is long, the staging is extravagant, there are great guests, and lots of costume changes. Whatever else you can say about her, she seems to respect her audience.

I keep hearing demands for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, mainly from the pro-Palestinian left. Generally speaking there's nothing wrong with this. As Churchill said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

But is there any reason at all to think that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire? I mean, neither would Israel, but the demand implies that only Israel is standing in the way of jaw-jaw. Does anybody have the slightest evidence for this?

From New Scientist:

A radio wave has hit Earth after travelling through space for 8 billion years. @AlexWilkins22 says it's the oldest fast radio burst ever detected, with enough energy to microwave a bowl of popcorn twice the size of our Sun ????☀️

I'm fascinated by the analogies science writers use. You know, the moon is four million football fields away or a volcano is equal to a thousand H-bombs or whatnot. And I always wonder: does the analogy help? Is four million football fields any more understandable than 240,000 miles?

But this one is truly spectacular. I mean, first of all, how did they figure out how much energy it would take to pop a sun-sized bowl of popcorn? Linear extrapolation from a one ounce bag? And by "twice the size" of the sun do they mean twice the diameter? Twice the volume? These things matter. How long would it take? And are we talking about a sun-sized bowl of raw popcorn or is this the size of the finished product? How much salt and butter would it require? And how long would it take to eat if every human on earth helped out?

There are more questions than answers here. On a helpfulness scale of 1-10, I judge this analogy a zero.

What with the House in chaos, there hasn't been much action on the "Biden crime family" front these days. But today the House Oversight Committee released BOMBSHELL evidence that Joe Biden received $200,000 from his brother James in 2018. This came ON THE SAME DAY that James Biden received $200,000 from a hospital company he had partnered with:

???? BREAKING ????

We have found a $200,000 DIRECT payment to Joe Biden.
@RepJamesComer lays out the money trail. ???? pic.twitter.com/0vq3lqhRHz

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 20, 2023

I guess that does it. Shady Joe Biden is part of the crime syndicate after all.

Except.......it turns out that Joe had loaned his brother $200,000 a few weeks earlier. When his brother got the money he needed to repay him, he did. That's, um, about all there is to this. There's no special reason to think that the money James Biden got was illegal, nor any reason to suppose that Joe knew where the money came from anyway. He just helped his brother out and then got repaid six weeks later.

These guys are such clowns.