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I agree with your sentiments about force but you were probably downmodded for not having read the article... The socialism line was admittedly a bait and switch

I agree with your sentiments about force but you were probably downmodded for not having read the article... The socialism line was admittedly a bait and switch to get people to read the article. Also, the commenters cited in the article who originally raised the notion were probably trolls and/or being sarcastic.

fexl 17y ago
I skimmed the article, being knee-deep in number crunching and having already read an earlier article about optimal parking. The author threw "socialist" in the title as red meat to bait people into reading. Made me look! It sounds like a ploy but it hints at something real, namely "scientific socialism" where certain individuals claim the power to engineer the lives of others, by force if necessary. As it turns out, force is always necessary, and this turned much of the planet into a bloody abbatoir during the 20th century. Math and science make me humble, not arrogant. Familiarity with distributed systems, computability, chaos, probability, trade, and the subjective theory of value have enhanced my appreciation for purely voluntary action, and my disgust with the top-down application of force.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  You might want to consider that that things like non-computability and so forth are relatively recent mathematical discoveries. At the beginning of the 20th century most educated people still believed in a Newtonian universe and the idea that everything was calculable, cf Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. Einstein, Godel and others demonstrated that things were not so cut and dried, but even Einstein had difficulty with the random-seeming nature of quantum mechanics. The boundaries between linear and nonlinear behavior (in mathematical terms) remain somewhat obscure. I suggest that it wasn't rampant intellectualism that caused the 20th century to be such an abbatoir, but the influence of industrial and technological change on the ancient human practice of warring with ones' enemies, combined with new technologies such as motion pictures and speedy photography which helped to make us more aware of the costs of war. The US civil war was particularly bloody and gruesome, even though there was nothing resembling the 'scientific socialism' you decry; one might also point out that in the Viet Nam war, the opponents of communism had no problem with dropping napalm and various toxic defoliants all over a country to which they had no territorial claim in the first place and seemed perfectly willing to engineer the lives of others by force in the name of freedom.
  - fexl 17y ago
    Great point about the evils done in the name of freedom. I recently spoke at length with an older man who was deeply involved in Vietnam before the Kennedy and Johnson escalations. At the time they focused on killing specific communist leaders and training the South Vietnamese -- pretty much low-key guerilla tactics. But after Diem was assassinated the full military-industrial complex was engaged and they all had a party with Other People's Money. True about the US civil war. Slavery was part of it. A burgeoning abolitionist movement, both in the north and south, threatened the institution of slavery. Many southerners feared slave revolt ("servile insurrection"), and many northerners feared an influx of freed slaves. The advent of mechanized agriculture was also making slavery obsolete. The other part was tariffs. If the south seceded, the north would be hard up for revenue. Even the governor of New York was talking about secession, and battles were fought in downtown Manhattan. The industrial and technological change of which you speak also made the US civil war particularly bloody. They fought battles the old way, facing off in lines, but did it with vastly improved weaponry. That's how you got over 20,000 people killed in a single day at Antietam. I am very happy to see increased awareness of the perils of force. The 21st century is bound to be a happier, freer time. (wink ... gulp)

fexl 17y ago

I skimmed the article, being knee-deep in number crunching and having already read an earlier article about optimal parking. The author threw "socialist" in the title as red meat to bait people into reading. Made me look! It sounds like a ploy but it hints at something real, namely "scientific socialism" where certain individuals claim the power to engineer the lives of others, by force if necessary. As it turns out, force is always necessary, and this turned much of the planet into a bloody abbatoir during the 20th century. Math and science make me humble, not arrogant. Familiarity with distributed systems, computability, chaos, probability, trade, and the subjective theory of value have enhanced my appreciation for purely voluntary action, and my disgust with the top-down application of force.

anigbrowl 17y ago
You might want to consider that that things like non-computability and so forth are relatively recent mathematical discoveries. At the beginning of the 20th century most educated people still believed in a Newtonian universe and the idea that everything was calculable, cf Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. Einstein, Godel and others demonstrated that things were not so cut and dried, but even Einstein had difficulty with the random-seeming nature of quantum mechanics. The boundaries between linear and nonlinear behavior (in mathematical terms) remain somewhat obscure. I suggest that it wasn't rampant intellectualism that caused the 20th century to be such an abbatoir, but the influence of industrial and technological change on the ancient human practice of warring with ones' enemies, combined with new technologies such as motion pictures and speedy photography which helped to make us more aware of the costs of war. The US civil war was particularly bloody and gruesome, even though there was nothing resembling the 'scientific socialism' you decry; one might also point out that in the Viet Nam war, the opponents of communism had no problem with dropping napalm and various toxic defoliants all over a country to which they had no territorial claim in the first place and seemed perfectly willing to engineer the lives of others by force in the name of freedom.
- fexl 17y ago
  Great point about the evils done in the name of freedom. I recently spoke at length with an older man who was deeply involved in Vietnam before the Kennedy and Johnson escalations. At the time they focused on killing specific communist leaders and training the South Vietnamese -- pretty much low-key guerilla tactics. But after Diem was assassinated the full military-industrial complex was engaged and they all had a party with Other People's Money. True about the US civil war. Slavery was part of it. A burgeoning abolitionist movement, both in the north and south, threatened the institution of slavery. Many southerners feared slave revolt ("servile insurrection"), and many northerners feared an influx of freed slaves. The advent of mechanized agriculture was also making slavery obsolete. The other part was tariffs. If the south seceded, the north would be hard up for revenue. Even the governor of New York was talking about secession, and battles were fought in downtown Manhattan. The industrial and technological change of which you speak also made the US civil war particularly bloody. They fought battles the old way, facing off in lines, but did it with vastly improved weaponry. That's how you got over 20,000 people killed in a single day at Antietam. I am very happy to see increased awareness of the perils of force. The 21st century is bound to be a happier, freer time. (wink ... gulp)