Ah, Americans...

Three things amused me about Americans today:

1) This story about US Senators and their musical-chairs/claw my way method of choosing offices:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1887870,00.html

2) The fact that a judge in Pennsylvania got into trouble when he sent a 14 year old kid to jail for year because he stole a bag of chips. The fact that he was taking kickbacks from the owner of the jail probably did not help his case.

3) This comment about the tremendous capital costs of nuclear reactors: "France has 104 kinds of cheese, but only one kind of nuclear reactor. America has only one kind of cheese, but 104 kinds of nuclear reactor." It's too bad, because if nuclear power plants didn't cost an arm and a leg to build, they'd be a pretty good power source. Even people who have them in their backyards are coming around. Sadly, though, huge cost overruns, confusion about where the waste will go, labor and expertise shortages, and the huge lead time to actually building a plant mean that they're probably not going to be a solution to our energy problems. Of wind, "clean" coal (whatever that is), solar, energy conservation, and praying for mysterious aliens to come and solve our problems (like they did for the Mayans and Egyptians, or so I'm told), I think you can guess which one is the cheapest.

You know, I was reading something about economic forecasts recently. I can't remember *which* dour-sounding finance minister prognosticated that, sadly, economic growth just wasn't looking too sharp this year, but predictably, bonehead commenters on the CBC.ca forums found a way to make an insightful comment or two. One idiot in particular commented that if we didn't have such a materialistic society, that if we disabused ourselves of the notion that economic growth must be positive, and if we returned to "humane values," whatever they are, we'd be better off. Obviously, I think he's out to lunch. First of all, populations are growing. Economics may have been my worst grade in undergrad, but it seems to me that if we don't have positive economic growth, then that means we have to feed more people with less. Well, whether you believe that or not, you can still argue about materialism--my second point. What's the proposed solution here? That we put away all of our cars, TVs, computers, supermarkets, etc., and go live in the woods? I hate to break this to you, but the woods would get crowded pretty quickly, and you might not like living there. A few hundred years ago, people didn't have all these things, there were a lot less of them in general, died of horrible diseases much earlier, and in my opinion, were a lot worse off. Turning back the clock is not the answer! Now, maybe we can cut back a little on how many cars we have, increase the amount of public transportation we use, and so forth. I'm all right with that. But the idea that materialism is this immoral gluttonous sin is very puritanical, I think.

Finally, the call to "humane values" sounds a lot like saying "if only Johnny were nicer to Bobby, we'd all be better off." It's nonsense. If I pretended I'm a game theorist (I'm definitely not), then I'd say that if everyone cooperated all the time, then the incentive for a lone individual to cheat would go way up--things would be moving away from equilibrium. I read a fascinating story in Scientific American recently about new thinking about altruists and cheaters. As I mentioned, if a group has to find a way to keep the number of cheaters limited, or the defectors will overwhelm the resources of the group. So how do the altruists keep the selfish cheaters out? It turns out that, actually, cheaters have quite an incentive to punish other cheaters (no matter how hypocritical that sounds). If you're the only cheater in a group, then it's in your best interest to make sure no one else becomes a cheater. As a corollary, altruists actually have an interest in allowing a small number of hypocritical cheaters to exist. Of course, no model is perfect, and this one is no exception. What, for example, happens when the small group of cheaters gets out of control? A mob protection racket can soon escalate into an extortion racket. One answer may be to look at the bigger picture: it's not just individuals competing, but also groups competing; more altruistic groups may fare better than ones rife with cheaters. These ideas don't seem to be mainstream yet, but I find them interesting nonetheless.

http://econ.ucalgary.ca/node/351

On a more climbing-related note, I'm doing slightly less worse in the bouldering gym now. (That was horrible English, but having never taken an English class in university, I have a legitimate excuse.) I'm a little of afraid of going back to Rumney because I'd flail all over, but fortunately, it's kind of cold and definitely very wet at the moment, so I have a month or two to ease back into things.