--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 044
+title: When the law does more harm than good, or an exercise in independent thought
+date: March 12, 2016
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+Society, or rather agents of society who get paid in order to ensure the
+continued existence of abstract entities such as "the society", "the
+state" and so on and so forth, have taught us individuals that laws have
+been put in place by our forefathers for morals, ethics, or in other
+words, for normative reasons. This, of all things, ensures that within
+the pale of "society", "state" (and so on and so forth) activities ocur
+deterministically, and thus the continued existence of said entities.
+
+In modern democratic society, a heavy counterbalance to those otherwise
+contemptible pieces of propaganda[^1] is the mechanism of vote. At least
+theoretically, people meet, discuss, debate, and decide based on hard
+numbers whether a given law is worth applying or not. Also
+theoretically, such decisions are taken based primarily on the common
+sense and the common good.
+
+However, given that both common-sense and common-good are vaguely
+defined terms[^2], in practice laws get validated based on group
+interests. When democracy inevitably fails, group interests become the
+norm and are introduced systematically either directly through
+"lobbying", or using plain old doublespeak à la "pro-life/pro-choice",
+"pro/anti global climate change", "animal rights", etc. Thus in the
+rather harsh times our dear old Western civilization is going through,
+it is safe to assume that laws are not only not based on common-sense
+and common-good, but that they may encompass completely opposite
+principles.
+
+Thus, for our exercise in independent thought, let us take two disparate
+and completely non-interesting examples.
+
+**First example**: Parlamentul a stabilit la cati caini au dreptul
+ ciobanii. Legea "3, 2, 1 dulai", criticata de ministrul
+ Agriculturii[^3]:
+
+> O lege adoptata de parlamentari schimba regulile de la stana. In
+> functie de regiune, ciobanii au voie sa tina la turma unul, doi sau
+> trei caini. Daca au mai multi, amenzile ajung pana la 1500 de lei.
+>
+> Crescatorii de animale sunt revoltati pentru ca, spun ei, nu au cum
+> sa-si apere oile de lupi.
+>
+> [...]
+>
+> Ioan Moga, crescator de oi: "Cine a mai pomenit asa ceva. Eu de 50 de
+> ani cresc oi si mereu am avut cate 6, 7 chiar 8 caini la turma. Sa
+> raman cu 2? Ce fac? Au veni lupii chiar aici si mi-au atacat oile. O
+> sa vina sa ne dea si amenzi din alea mari."
+
+Or, in plain English. [Romanian] Parliament regulates the number of dogs
+to which shepherds are entitled. The law "3, 2, 1 hounds", criticized by
+the minister of Agriculture:
+
+> A law passed by congressmen changes sheepfold rules. Depending on the
+> region, shepherds may keep one, two or three dogs to guard their
+> flock. Those who keep more will receive fines up to 1500 lei.
+>
+> Animal breeders are revolted because they claim that they are now
+> unable to defend their sheep from wolves.
+>
+> [...]
+>
+> Ioan Moga, dog breeder: "This is unheard of. For 50 years I've been
+> raising sheep and I always had 6, 7 or even 8 dogs near the herd. To
+> be left with 2? What am I going to do? Wolves came right here and they
+> attacked my sheep. They're going to come and give us those big fines."
+
+In short, the example above is a case of not one, but two mistakes that
+no lawmaker should ever commit[^4].
+
+The first mistake is the choice of "three, two, one, depending on the
+region". This number looks, and most probably is completely
+arbitrary. Why three dogs and not four? Why not two big ones and a
+smaller one? Why not twenty chihuahuas, for that matter? Educated
+persons know that universal constants are mere exceptions, and even
+those are baffling to the extreme.
+
+The second mistake is that the law fails to address the root causes of
+the whole scandal, i.e. that dogs are aggressive, that they kill wild
+animals and attack tourists. Up next, women won't be allowed to have
+more than two babies in a period of ten years, due to the pollution
+caused by baby feces; citizens will not be allowed to breathe more than
+three liters of air per day, to lower the quantity of CO2 emitted by
+humans. There's more but I'm gonna stop here, I'm probably giving these
+nutters ideas.
+
+**Second example**:
+ [La gare de Renens évacuée à cause d'un colis suspect][renens]:
+
+> La gare de Renens (VD) a été évacuée jeudi à 19 heures après la
+> découverte d'une valise abandonnée. A Genève, un sac de sport a été
+> neutralisé vers 20 heures à Rive.
+>
+> [...]
+>
+> A Renens, une autre intervention a eu lieu. Celle du Groupe de
+> spécialistes en dépiégeage (GSD). Elle a pris fin à 21 heures. Aucun
+> objet dangereux n'a finalement été découvert dans la valise. Celle-ci
+> ne contenait que des effets personnels, selon un communiqué de la
+> police.
+
+Or, in short[^5], people in the small municipality of Renens, Vaud,
+Switzerland, get all fussy over a luggage left in the train station[^6],
+by someone who has most probably forgotten it there, the poor fool.
+
+Now, the way things go in civilized countries such as Switzerland,
+someone needs to pay for all this fuss[^7]. Given the incident, both
+executive and judiciary organs will have to establish how the incident
+took place, why it took place, and why did citizen Y leave his luggage
+in the train station in the first place?
+
+On the other hand, if the average educated person were to look at the
+whole thing from a sane, pre-9/11 perspective, they would be completely
+confused, firstly by the authorities' reaction, and secondly by everyone
+else's complete fear and submission to this whole situation. What do you
+mean, we have to look at the context? Have the laws changed so awfully
+radically because of [Charlie Hebdo][charlie-hebdo]? Are today's more
+"civilized people" more quick to "pray for Paris" than to take a moment
+to think about the whole situation[^8]?
+
+So, now that a few idiots finally learned how to make bombs out of
+household items, people can lose their jobs for spitting, and they can
+get fined over leaving a bag in the train station. Up next, policemen
+will arrest another poor fool, unable to determine exactly why. I
+wonder, what would have Kafka thought about this?
+
+It seems that laws don't work anymore. Well. At least
+marketing still does... [or does it][marketing-failure]?
+
+[^1]: Propaganda, education, not much of a difference there. They're
+both for the feeble-minded, both serving the purpose of training
+monkeys, with the notable distinction that the former strives to keep
+adults in their sorry state, while the latter enforces norms in order to
+open up horizons towards humanity. Regardless, they're both useful tools
+for whomever wields them.
+
+[^2]: The problem with applying "common good" on the other is that you
+don't do what the other *wants*, but what *is good for them*. So despite
+what the strangely cognitively dissonant "generation X" would have you
+believe (they're seriously insane anyway, really!), this may or may not
+include beating the hell out of the other. In fact, one of the few
+things in life that can never ever, ever, ever be avoided is pain of all
+kinds.
+
+ The problem with "common sense" is that it's subject to cultural
+ relativism -- see the cognitive dissonance of the previously
+ mentioned "generation X". Remember that back in the day some
+ cultures held in high regards the belief that eating people is
+ ok. Sure, you might think that this can never ever happen in your
+ culture, because your culture is superior. Well, no, it's not; in
+ fact "pop culture" is in our times the standard example of an
+ inferior culture. First and foremost in the light of the fact that
+ it will not stand the test of time.
+
+[^3]: The original story can be found on the
+[ProTV news site][first-example] (warning, it's very JavaScript and
+Flash-heavy).
+
+[^4]: And for which those Romanian guys should be beaten with a short,
+sharp stick, just like in the old times. Yes, it's uncivilized. Yes, the
+guys deserve it. They essentially ate their taxpayers' money with this
+shit, and now-democratic Romanians [stand this][balkans] the way they've
+stood it during communism, [Ottoman rule][aferim], and probably during
+the Dacian times too, since they're so very
+[proud of it][nationalism]. The way things look, they're going to accept
+this state of affairs for the foreseeable future, and the Western world
+will end up finding a model in that, or something.
+
+[^5]: For plain English translations, hire someone. Or, y'know, get a
+book, learn some French, it's not a dead language yet.
+
+[^6]: It's amusing how the original article fails to give any useful
+information about the somewhat similar event in Geneva, probably because
+they weren't given any hints by the authorities, and probably because
+that one was a serious incident. In this case, presspeople just apply
+the classic trick of misdirection, despite the fact that the event in
+Geneva was most likely more serious and the public is worried and all
+that. Journalism, Iknowrite?
+
+[^7]: They had to evacuate a whole train station, mobilize bomb
+specialists, all that mumbo-jumbo. That stuff costs, and yes, someone
+oughta be held responsible and pay for it. I mean, it's not that "it
+just happened", right?
+
+[^8]: Masses' traditional lack of rationality is exactly why people
+"voted for" Lenin, Hitler and Le Pen a while after choosing those other
+guys. You know the ones that history scarcely remembers.
+
+[first-example]: http://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/social/parlamentul-a-stabilit-la-cati-caini-au-dreptul-ciobanii-legea-3-2-1-dulai-criticata-de-ministrul-agriculturii.html
+
+[balkans]: /posts/y02/03d-never-mind-the-balkans-heres-romania.html
+[aferim]: /posts/y01/039-aferim.html
+[nationalism]: /posts/y00/00b-romania-s-dumb-nationalism.html
+[renens]: http://www.lematin.ch/suisse/suisse-romande/gare-renens-evacuee-cause-colis-suspect/story/31660962
+[charlie-hebdo]: /posts/y01/037-charlie-hebdo.html
+[marketing-failure]: /posts/y02/043-on-the-failure-of-marketing.html
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 045
+title: Academic hogwash: an empirical study thereof
+excerpt: In which we analyze the circular motivations behind academic publishing. Probably a rehash of some other essay, but it's ok to do it nowadays.
+date: April 9, 2016
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+Scientia[^1] is brain-wreckingly difficult. What with it being a field
+where people work their asses off to push the boundaries of what we
+know and discover what we don't know and other tar pits.
+
+Since the intellectual demands of said jobs are so high, it's not enough
+to push and discover and so on and so forth. New conceptual horizons are
+muddy, so at least half of the job, if not ninety-nine percent of it,
+involves making them clear, preferably in a language that "the
+scientific community" will easily comprehend[^2]. If you've any doubts
+about that, you may study the historical examples of Einstein, Bohr,
+Pauli and others[^3].
+
+Traditionally, the average "man of knowledge"[^4] does this by sitting
+on his ass somewhere, taking a piece of paper and jotting some ideas
+off, then re-writing them two or ten or a hundred times, in any case,
+until they are refined enough to be presented in front of said
+"scientific community". Once that is done, other "men of knowledge"[^5]
+will spend some of their precious time reviewing the work and deciding
+whether it is worth presenting to the world at large as a fact. Simple,
+right?
+
+The reader will have to excuse me, for I am only a budding youngster on
+this matter, so I don't know the specific historical events that led to
+the current state of affairs, but I can make a pretty good guess that
+the point where everything turned upside down was when someone started
+talking about some nonsense or other, which they decided to call
+"academic standards"[^6].
+
+So, to better illustrate the main point, back in the day getting a PhD
+would involve coming up with a model of relativity, or discovering DNA,
+or reasoning about abstract shit such as computation. In contrast,
+getting a PhD nowadays involves "publishing X papers to Y journals and Z
+conferences rated by Alpha company"[^7]. Because if everything else
+becomes an industry, then so must science. Quite convenient, isn't it?
+
+And thusly nowadays the end goal of youngsters fiddling with Scientia
+isn't to push the boundaries of knowledge anymore. Since "objective
+evaluation"[^8] is now a thing, it's enough for them to attempt to meet
+that criteria. That is all, and everyone's happy, right?
+
+Not really. Now Alpha company will label journal Y and conference Z as
+more-or-less "prestigious", so dumbsters[^9] will pay to get more stuff
+published. Y and Z will only struggle to attract even more materials
+through the so-called "CFPs", in order to keep rejection rates up and
+thus be themselves rated "objectively" by Alpha as
+"prestigious". Meanwhile, dumbsters will jump with joy that one of their
+papers containing this or that -- at this point it's not like anyone
+cares about the actual content anymore -- has been published to
+"prestigious Y"[^10] and they're one more step toward graduation,
+tenure, or whatever else is fashionable in the academia
+nowadays[^11]. Lo and behold, intellectual production has exceeded 200%
+this quinquennium[^12], all praise multilaterally-developed science!
+
+So, [what shall we do now][pink-floyd]? Well, one good idea would be to
+punch an academic in the face[^13].
+
+Oh, you meant, doing that in a
+[politically correct][political-correctness] way? No, I'm afraid there
+isn't much to be done, welcome to the new, glorious age of
+[post-religion][post-religion].
+
+[^1]: That is, the female personification of knowledge, whom everyone
+seems to want to rape nowadays.
+
+ So, you've just started reading this and there I go, not even
+ bothering to leave the reader to get acquainted with the article's
+ tone and such. What, you really thought this was going to be an
+ academic essay? Go read your abstracts somewhere else, this isn't an
+ awful FSM-damned "prestigious journal".
+
+[^2]: Where "language" doesn't necessarily mean English. Oh, I mean,
+sure, everyone speaks it nowadays, but make the simple exercise of
+looking at the frequency of most terms in the average academic paper
+nowadays. In circles where Scientia actually matters, language is much
+more subtle a thing than just taking a basic grammar along with some
+[marketspeak][marketing] and shuffling them around; it most of all
+involves being precise, and this precision cannot be achieved merely by
+speaking "English".
+
+[^3]: Ever wonder why most of them are from mathematics and/or physics?
+One could argue that they're actually from philosophy, but the fact is,
+if I'm not mistaken social sciences and humanities have yet to rock the
+world in this fashion. And I doubt they ever will, I doubt it very much.
+
+[^4]: As opposed to just "man of science".
+
+[^5]: Women of knowledge too, we're not trying to be sexist here.
+
+[^6]: Sciences are not the only fields affected by this. Just look at
+[the media][media]; and look at all these sites claiming to have "unique
+visitors", "apps" claiming to have "millions of downloads", companies
+claiming to be valued at billions of dollars. Oh, and they do, they
+have, they are, but only insane people would believe that these
+so-called "metrics" would have any meaningful
+interpretation. Unfortunately some people are way beyond insane
+nowadays.
+
+[^7]: Seriously now, who the fuck are Thomson Reuters to decide on
+scientific relevance? Since when is the Australian Research Council more
+important than, say, common sense? Or has appeal to authority subtly but
+suddenly stopped being a logical fallacy in the last few decades? What
+do you mean, "we need institutions to"? Who says we do? I for one most
+certainly don't want my brain replaced by any "institution", thank you.
+
+[^8]: "Evaluating performance" of human knowledge is pretty much one of
+the hardest problems of humanity. That is, in case you're wondering why
+[the educational system has failed miserably][grade-inflation]. Also, if
+you're wondering which piece on the Internet this essay is rehashing,
+it's probably TLP's.
+
+[^9]: In the age of Internet and self-publishing and whatnot, how many
+scientists do you know who actually promote sane publishing in favour of
+feeding the machine? The only example in my mind is
+[Bernstein's IEEE boycott][ieee], otherwise everyone's sucking it
+up. Because "we need institutions to", right? Well, joke's on you for
+getting involved with the mafiosos.
+
+[^10]: Fine, we can give names. Take for example an article published in
+ Nature,
+ "[The significant association of Taq1A genotypes in DRD2/ANKK1 with smoking cessation in a large-scale meta-analysis of Caucasian populations][nature]",
+ subsequently pop-scientized (by Nature themselves!) in various
+ journalistic venues under sensationalistic titles. The paper is bad
+ or at most completely irrelevant by sane scientific standards, yet
+ it was published in a so-called prestigious journal, therefore it
+ must be good!
+
+[^11]: In case you're wondering: yes, I am in the academia at the moment
+of writing, and yes, I'm as guilty as all the other people taking, or
+worse, promoting this. If you're "one of my peers" and you're dismissing
+this with a hand wave, then again, joke's on you, don't say I didn't
+tell you. On the other hand, if you're offended, then good, you should
+be. Now read this again, and again and again and again until the offense
+rubs off on you and *maybe* you'll start thinking, like the intellectual
+you are.
+
+[^12]: Harder to get if you didn't live through communism.
+
+[^13]: What do you mean, how to do that, are you a grown up or what?
+Fine, here's a decent example from [Rogaway][rogaway].
+
+[marketing]: /posts/y02/043-on-the-failure-of-marketing.html
+[media]: /posts/y01/02a-online-media-is-feeding-on-your-tears.html
+[grade-inflation]: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/08/grade_inflation.html
+[ieee]: http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html
+[pink-floyd]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_FCbQ-okM
+[rogaway]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1162
+[political-correctness]: /posts/y01/02e-on-the-inherent-harmfulness-of-political-correctness.html
+[post-religion]: /posts/y00/018-on-post-religion.html
+[nature]: http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v5/n12/full/tp2015176a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_TP_1511_TAQ1ASMOKING_OA
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff