Original

Content

by Marc Ahrens

ALEC, Big Pharma and the
Medicalisation of Poverty

A Mathematical argument
for the existence of
climate change

Language, Jargon
Pantomimes and
Questions of Real Rigour
OCCUPY SYDNEY
Marc Ahrens
Issue
OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com

OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com
Page12
ALEC, Big Pharma, and the Medicalisaon of Poverty
D
/
Z , , Tv D, u
, v & , v
ju f ff T
^ zu 'u , v u
f v u
u
Hfvu?/qu,
f
Wu <u < u N
1, Tu u, <u u ^ zu
'u v >, 'u D

T E u
()xffuu>EC
>vExCu<u>ECv
, f
v / u,
, f v f

<u >EC u vv, fu uu u

^,O^

,v
u f T, H x
>EC v , u
Huufv
ffu
?zu,WZDWuZDufuf,
uuCu,H
u T , O , 8 l

/ u f 0 f
^^Z/, u u u v
W Z f u u, u , f
U^&D(&Du)f,&O/quu
^^Z/ u ; u v x
f f f u ; ^^Z/ uj
ufquuuuf
v,u;u
fu; u ufu;
fTfv
uU^&Dvf^^Z/

Wu<u,>,'uD,00,N 1,
:///0/0/6//uu

H,CZ>ECWvE^W,
O5 00,:////0/0/
Issue1 20/4/2012
Page13
T>ECv: uuu
^^Z/U^&DTufu/
xU^,U<^,uuvu
: u u u u, v
uv,vuu&u,
qu uqu U< u ^^Z/, u
^u:vU^ uv
, u
f
/ uu f u v x
^^Z/ v ? zu / 00 N I M
,JvfWDuU&

TWDU&,
v ' u ^, u , u
u v; f
&D x u T , v v,
WDU&uu/D^vuv
xH/su
uu fWDU&,u,fv
, luA 8 l 8 l
W , v
uvDv,v00
WDU&ufv,WZDu
'v,u>EC ,W>EC,>EC
uWDU&,/D^vvxvT
, ju j f
v
<u u >EC v Cv ^
fv,,>ECv>
^uf, u DHD u N I M,
v u u f v,
Du v , ,
Ev x ,

& EEJD D x

Ufu,uu&,
f D^D/s, f u W D', f fu
,uu
uvufv
,Tuuu
6

T f f x
uv,Wfv,
, u f f u
u

Jv,W&DuvWUW?, N I M
>^uf,Z'W,N 1
D,TEfD/:W?,1 N k 8
6&,^vQufWfWD',l1,00
A mathematical argument for the existence climate change.
Marc Ahrens
Mathematics is special among sciences because indeed it is not truly a science
because it is the only science in which assertions can actually be proven. As the
the most famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper
1
, made explicit, true sciences cannot
assert things to be true, only not yet disproved, where disproving takes the form of
a physical prediction from the scientic theory which does not agree with the real world.
Ultimately the value of mathematics in sciences derives from the remarkable propensity
for nature to follow mathematics so consistently. Considering that the universe existed
and its clockwork ticked long before any kind of maths to describe it, though, it becomes
much less surprising that mathematics emerge to describe a particular set of rules followed
by nature. All nature need do is follow them consistently, and someone will try to char-
acterise this consistency. When a theory breaks down its not because statements within
the particular mathematical framework have broken, but rather the wrong mathematical
model was chosen. The failure of Newtonian mechanics at speeds near lights was not a
sign that the mathematics of Newton was broken, but that the correspondence between
the physical world and Newtons mathematics was less ideal than the correspondence of
Einstein. The natural applicability of mathematics to natures rules, as long as it enacts
them consistently, means that science often becomes the process of guring out what the
underlying mathematics are.
This sycophancy for mathematics is here to try and convince the unconvinced of the
value of a mathematical argument supporting the existence of global warming. What
follows is not too hard to understand, so please be brave and bear with some maths.
The measurements
Each year the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology publish a State of the Climate
report. State of the Climate 2012
2
says quite clearly, on page 10 beneath the heading
Australia in the context of global warming, that the
worlds 13 warmest years have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997.
How likely is this sequence of record-breaking hottest years? Meteorologists have taken
physical measurements, which we take at face value and try to connect to mathematics.
The mathematics of breaking records
The mathematics of record-breaking is well understood, and in fact it is linked to some
of mathematicians most glorious work. In considering the likelihood of an event, we
can explore what an expected outcome is. Expected values can be arrived at pre-
cisely, though the precision hangs on that of of the physical assumptions from which the
mathematicians start their work. Expected values are the most likely values of some
phenomenon. The expected measured value of a phenomenon, and the changing likelihood
1
Anon. Wikipedia page on Karl Popper. In: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl
P
opper ().
2
CSIRO. State of the Climate. In: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/State-
of-the-Climate-2012.aspx (2012).
OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com
Page 14
of particular measurements as one moves away from the expected ones is encapsulated by
the phenomenons statistical distribution.
What is the most likely expected number of record hottest years after one year of
record keeping? This we can say exactly is 1; as the only year on record, it is guaranteed
to be the hottest. After one year there is always exactly one hottest year on record.
In the second year, the temperature can be either hotter or colder than the rst, so
there is a 50% chance, a probability of
1
2
, that the year is hotter than the rst, a new
record. Thus, half the time there will be another hottest year to add to to the rst, so the
expected number of hottest years is 1+
1
2
. In other words, if you do lots of record-keeping
experiments, or more simply, if you go through lots of dierent types of pre-existing data
looking for record-breaking measurements hottest years, wettest years, etc, etc and
from every experiment you note how many record years thered been by the second year,
and then you averaged these numbers, the gure youd get is one and a half.
The third year will produce a temperature, c. Calling the previous two temperatures
a & b (year 1 and 2 resp.), then consider all the possible orderings, where temperatures
are order by size: a < b < c, b < a < c, a < c < b, b < c < a, c < a < b,
and c < b < a.
There are six possible orderings, two of which have c as the highest temperature. Thus,
there is a
2
6
, ie
1
3
, chance that the third year is hotter than the other two, making it a
new record. Thus, after 3 years, the expected number of hottest years is 1 +
1
2
+
1
3
=
11
6
one and ve sixths.
Extrapolating, after n years, the expected number of record years is 1+
1
2
+
1
3
+. . . +
1
n
.
Taking this series to be innitely long (ie n ) gives the famous Harmonic Series,
named as such because each term in the series corresponds to another overtone on the
string of a musical instrument, say, or a pipe in an organ. The partial sums are denoted
for convenience as H
n
, with H
1
= 1, H
2
= 1 +
1
2
, H
3
= 1 +
1
2
+
1
3
, etc. These sums add
to numbers that are known as the Harmonic Numbers, and notice: the nth Harmonic
number H
n
is the expected number of hottest years after n years.
Asides: First note that the full harmonic series is not actually a number; it does not
converge, as mathematicians say. Instead, adding more and more terms just makes the
sum bigger and bigger, so that with innitely many terms, the sum is innitely large.
This might sound obvious, but there are innite series whose sum is less than innity, ie
they sum to numbers, such as any sum r
0
+ r
1
+ r
2
+ r
3
+ ... where r < 1, which equals
1
1r
. Note also that the harmonic series is a special case of the Riemman Zeta Function:
its
(r) 1 +
1
2
r
+
1
3
r
+
1
4
r
+ . . . (1)
with r = 1. This function is famous among mathematicians because of its role in link-
ing complex analysis, which is a system of mathematics so general it can understand
square-roots of negative numbers, to number theory, the mathematics of the natural
numbers, {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, . . .}. The connection aorded by the Zeta function allows proofs
in number theory, such as that of Fermats (famous) Last Theorem, to be constructed in
terms of results from complex analysis.
For more details of the Harmonic Series, Riemmans Zeta Function, the ner points
of logarithms and exponential functions, a historiography of post-Enlightenment mathe-
Issue 11 29/06/2012
Continued... Page 15
matics, and so much more, see the excellent recreational maths book by Havil
3
. It was
there that I was rst alerted to the the record-breaking argument for climate change.
Values of H
n
Using a tiny bit of program code, one can generate the Harmonic Numbers, all but the
rst of which are fractions. The decimal approximations are also given below:
n
H
n
, expected number of
record hottest years after n
years of record keeping
1 1
2 3/2 (1.5)
3 11/6 (approx. 1.833333)
4 25/12 (approx. 2.083333)
5 137/60 (approx. 2.283333)
6 49/20 (2.45)
7 363/140 (approx. 2.592857)
8 761/280 (approx. 2.717857)
9 7129/2520 (approx. 2.828968)
10 7381/2520 (approx. 2.928968)
11 83711/27720 (approx. 3.019877)
12 86021/27720 (approx. 3.103211)
13 1145993/360360 (approx. 3.180134)
A related sequence of numbers can be obtained, call it I
n
, where I
n
is the number of
years of record keeping required until the expected number of records exceeds n. Looking
at the above values of H
n
, we can see that I
1
= 1, I
2
= 4 & I
3
= 11. Furthermore:
n
I
n
, expected number of
years of record-keeping in
order to observe your nth
record-breaking year
1 1
2 4
3 11
4 31
5 83
6 227
7 616
8 1674
9 4550
10 12367
11 33617
12 91380
13 248397
3
J Havil. Gamma: Exploring Eulers Constant. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com
Page 16
These gures can be produced with a small program, or by consulting a resource such
as N. J. A. Sloans The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
4
, where this sequence
is indexed as A004080.
Note that the last line says that the expected number of years it should take to see 13
record-breaking years is 248,397.
Hottest years an anomaly
With the above in mind, we can probe the likelihood of having 13 of the last 15 years as
hottest years on record. By this stage, you mightve already spotted a disagreement
between the mathematics of record-breaking and the CSIRO claims. It is this: the CSIRO
claims that 13 of the last 15 years have each been record-breakers, whereas the sequence
I
n
(Sloans A004080
5
) tells us that the expected number of years to wait to see 13 record-
breaking years is 248397. It should take about 250 thousand years to experience 13
record-hottest years, yet it has taken only 15.
How does the discrepancy occur? While introducing the mathematics of record break-
ing and the Harmonic Numbers, one vital fact was omitted: this mathematics only applies
when the underlying process is not changing its nature, so that its statistical qualities are
not changing over time. More technically, these mathematics of record breaking have been
proven to work only for statistical processes whose distribution remain xed
6
. In such
cases, as the sequence I
n
suggests, records should become harder and harder to break,
as each new record becomes more unattainable for challengers unless, of course, the
underlying process is changing in such a way that new records are more likely.
In the case of the 100m sprint records, if nothing changed about the human body
and the nature of the competition then new records would be very rare by now. Instead,
sports science, the professionalisation of sport endowing it with more money to pursue
new advantages, better shoes, more aerodynamic clothes, and perhaps more sophisticated
drug cheating continue to enable new records.
Conclusion
In our case, it appears the correspondence between the real world an our mathematical
model has broken down. But! This is actually useful in this case, for as Ned Glick has
suggested
7
, we can infer something from this breakdown about the source of our data:
that, unlike the mathematical model expects, its statistics are indeed changing over time.
In other words, the fact that the mathematics of record years suggests 13 record-breaking
years occur in about 250,000, whereas the climate has taken only 15 years to produce 13
record-breakers, is extremely unlikely to occur for any reason other than an upward trend
in the underlying statistics. Assuming the initial measurements are correct, its very likely
the climate is warming.
4
N.J.A. Sloan. The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. In: http://oeis.org/A004080/list ().
5
Ibid.
6
For the more mathematically inclined, the measurements must come from an independent and iden-
tically distributed (IID) process. The remarkable fact is that the Harmonic Numbers give the expected
number of record years, independently of the underlying distribution.
7
N. Glick. Breaking records and breaking boards. In: Am. Math. Mon. 85, 2, 26. (1978).
Issue 11 29/06/2012
Submitted by Marc Page 17
Language, 3argon Pantomimes, and Questions of Real Rigour
Marc Ahrens
"Investors welcome Spain rescue", read the title of an article by Gareth Hutchens in the
SyJney Morninq HerolJ.
1
It gave me pause for thought. Firstly it connoted ust how
precarious our economy is that it fears a growth in Chinese retailing of ust 13.8. Yet there
was another interesting aspect to the article. It had one of those large-font uotes that stands
out amid the body of the text that says "It will enable Spain... to have some liuidity in its
financial system.", attributed to "David iu, an analyst". Im no expert on finance, but to me
this ust means "Spain is getting cash". Given that this is the point of the article, as conveyed
by the title, David ius input is entirely superfluous, its a tautology.
For one thing, I wouldnt be very impressed with an "analyst" who merely states the bleeding
obvious. More generally, its a reminder that what passes for expertise in the finance sector
might be a lot of stating of the bleeding obvious, albeit couched in industry argon.
More generally still, its a reminder that this might be the tendency of people calling
themselves "experts" in all sorts of industries. It highlights the need to apply critical thinking
when confronted with argon, for so much "expertise", in my experience, is about little more
than phrasing some given circumstance in industry argon and then acting as though this is an
explonorion of the circumstance, of course, it is not. I observed this many times in a hospital
stay a few years ago. For example,
"ook, my leg is swollen."
"Yes.... hmmm.... [Its very important to make the hmmm noise it connotes deep
thought.| It looks like oedema."
"What does that mean?! Whats wrong!?"
"Well.... errrr.... Its kind of a build up of fluid."
"A bulid up of fluid? You mean swelling, dont you?"
"Yes."
"Ive ust told you my leg is swollen, and you went hmmmmm, only to tell me your
verdict: my leg is swollen. How long did you have to study for you degree again?"
OK, evidently I wasnt the nicest patient. But and you might say Im biased I dont think
hard sciences have this problem, like physics and chemistry. There, argon exists to clarify
meaning, not to obfuscate it. If physicists use argon, they do so because no appropriate word
previously existed for the concept, the concept was discovered through the work of
physicists. If anything, physics uses roo lirrle argon, using words in very precise ways that
have much broader general use, such as "energy", which tends to lead to confusion between
physicists and lay people. But physicists certainly dont use words like "anterior" and
"posterior": "front" and "back" will do ust fine, thank you.
Not only is industry-speak supposed to connote authority and expertise, it possibly is also
supposed to convince the speaker and his industry colleagues that, "Yes, this is a real area of
expertise. We have special words and everything". The fads of absurd language in the finance
industry attest to this: think of the phrase "Dead cat bounce" that was going around a year or
so ago, or "Kicking the can down the street" that is the latest finance clich. These are
1 G Hutchens , "Investors welcome Spain rescue", SyJney Morninq HerolJ, 2012-06-11.
Issue 13 13/07/2012
Page 3
gratuitously cryptic ways of conveying simple concepts. "Dead cat bounce" referred to the
possibility that an apparent recovery from the GFC might be but brief, and "Kicking the can
down the street" seems to be fashionable lingo for suggesting that current economic solutions,
especially in urope, are ust temporarily avoiding calamity by continuing to invest in its root
cause. Australias continued investment in a property bubble, by which it has thus far
avoided the GFC that hit everywhere else, might be described this way.
2
This "can-kicking"
phrase is very popular now, including among financial sceptics. The great problem with such
language is that it creates a false sense of security. Its potentially a confidence trick, though
not necessarily one in which the speaker is aware of the limitations of his own expertise.
Sure, it proects to people outside the industry that "This is a formidable discipline, replete
with argon", but more dangerous is the possibility that it creates a false sense of security
within the industry itself, so that it becomes dangerously overconfident of its own expertise.
Its very clear that by 2012 we can say this of the finance and economics industries.
One thing that sticks out of the finance news like a sore thumb is the amount of
anthropomorphising of The Market that takes place. "Anthropomorphising" is the process of
treating an inanimate thing as though it were a person. In almost any financial news bulletin
in the mainstream press, one will hear terms like "The Market feels ", "The Market is
ittery", "The Market fears Y", "The Market is responding to ". This is complete nonsense.
At a basic level, its wrong: The Market maybe we should call it "Marty" for short obviously
doesnt feel anything. More importantly, though, it is the language of herd behaviour, rather
than of rational, investment decision-making.
ven more irrational is the relentless abductive reasoning that is perpetuated by financial
experts alongside this anthropomorphising: "The Market did becouse of Y". This is
textbook fallacious reasoning, taking a correlation and asserting a causal relationship without
evidence. Worse, it is "abductive" reasoning insofar as it usually picks one cause, without
basis, from one of many, many possible causes. This is fallacious reasoning of the worst kind.
The difference between a mere ournalist and a financial expert seems to be the purported
"expertise" in divining the causes of market events, invariably without evidence. In the
absence of any evidence for causal claims, the real difference between the ournalist and the
financial "expert" is the latters willingness to make more precise but commensurately more
unfounded claims, couched in argon that is supposed to make up for a lack of evidence
wittingly or otherwise, on the part of the expert. Such regular claims of experts, applying
insufficient critical thinking to their work, are potentially little more than argon used as a
confidence trick, and amounts to the expert conning not ust the media consuming public, but
the expert himself. The fact that, for all the financial and economic expertise in the world, we
still appear to be doing little more than riding economic bubbles, attests to this self-deluding
confidence trick interpretation of these dynamics.
There is a result from experimental psychology called the Dunning-Kruger ffect DK
3
.
The DK explains a source of cognitive bias, one of many that experimental psychology
concerns itself with, and it is the bias that one has in ones own favour arising from ones lack
of knowledge. This is a formalisation of the old saying, The more I learn, the less I know.
2 g see S Keen, Why the Debt to GD adio Matters,
http:www.incrediblecharts.comeconomykeendebtgdp.php
3 Dunning, Kruger, "nskilled and naware of it". ournal of ersonality and Social sychology 6: 11213
http:citeseerx.ist.psu.eduviewdocdownload?doi10.1.1.6.26reprep1typepdf . See also
http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiDunning2803Krugereffect
OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com
Page 4
The DK captures the idea that, in a field of expertise, those who know the least are least
euipped to accurately udge their own expertise, and are thus the most likely to overestimate
their ability. At least in the field of expertise that Dunning Krugers experiment used,
formal logic, they showed that the least competent three uarters of the group overestimated
both their ability and rank, while the most adept uarter assessed their ability uite accurately,
though they underestimated their rank they didnt realise how incompetent the average
person was compared to themselves. The DK result suggests most people overestimate their
ability for a lack of understanding, poor sel[-insiqnr in a field of expertise follows from a poor
understanding of it.
Now, its worth trying to extend the DK to whole disciplines. The uestion is, ust as with
the DK spectrum of self-insight that inJiviJuols exhibit in a particular field, does the self-
insight of different sciences vary across a spectrum also due to a lack of self-insight? It stands
to reason that it does. Firstly, surely not all sciences are created eual, as Karl opper spent
some time pointing out. Doubtless I will be accused of bias here, but physics is the Je[inirive
science, as rnest utherford said, All science is either physics or stamp collecting. If
tomorrow morning, someone put forward a compelling argument for why physics is not a
science but rather a foobar whatever that means, then management scientists would be
calling themselves management foobars by the time theyd finished their three hour lunch.
The spectrum definitely exists, but how much awareness is there among lesser sciences of
their own lesser rigour?
Again, it stands to reason there is not much. There is scarcely a practitioner of any discipline
calling itself a science that does not believe his field exemplifies a scientific gold
standard, and those who dont are generally few and resented as iconoclasts within their
fields. Gold standard itself is a popular phrase used to characterise the double-blind drug-
placebo trial design. It is the goldenness of this gold standard that is supposed to support
the outcomes of such a trials, yet it now looks that it has been monipuloreJ by drug
companies to establish the efficacy of their antidepressants

. As per this gold standard,

drugs with side-effects were compared against sugar pills with none, an arrangement that
probably meant those experiments were never double-blind in the first place.

This kind of
lack of self-awareness regarding a disciplines rigour could be expected to arise because so
infreuently do people move between disparate scientific fields. ractitioners of lesser
sciences are trained in a field in such a way that their working Je[inirion of science comes
from the experience of their own field, it is propagated from teacher to student. It is only in
the unlikely event that they move from their lesser science to a more rigorous one that they
will start to get a sense that sciences lie on a spectrum, and that their original expertise was
not so rigorous after all. Sciences do lie on a spectrum, and the self-insight of their own
rigour probably varies along with it, ust as individuals lie on a spectrum of self-insight of
their own expertise.
Steve Keen has described a culture of absent self-insight the partially sighted leading the
partially sighted
6
as being propagated in economics education, one of his great concerns.
nlike other mathematical sciences which send their students to their campus School of
Maths, most economists learn their mathematics by attending courses given by other
I Kirsch, Tne Lmperor's New Druqs, Basic Books, 2010
Such doubts could be answered directly with improved more golden standards, but conspicuously those trial
designs are never used.
6 S Keen, Debun|inq Lconomics 2
nJ
eJ , 2011, en Books, Ch. 2, No more Mr Nice Guyducated in to Ignorance
Issue 13 13/07/2012
Page 5
economists
6
. As a result, errors exist in basic economics that have been propagated from one
generation of economists tot he next, so that they effectively have their own working
definition of mathematics. To be sure, it looks like maths, and mostly is, but occasionally it
diverts from mathematical rigour. To wit, Keen has noted a spurious mathematics in
neoclassicisms foundation. The intersection of the demand and supply curves, the
euilibrium point, is supposed to be the price at which goods should be sold at to maximise
profit. Because of laisse faire capitalisms definition of price, this point is also supposed to
maximise the benefit to society. This is neoclassical economics [unJomenrol morol
jusri[icorion. It is, supposedly, supported by a mathematical proof reuiring only first year
calculus for any other science, anyway, but following the proof in full detail leads to a
contradiction, meaning that not all of neoclassicisms reuisite assumptions can logically
hold. Thus, we have an example of an interdisciplinary Dunning Kruger ffect among
sciences lying on a spectrum of mathematical rigour, with economics demonstrably erroneous
at its most basic level, and erroneous in a way that undermines its moral roison J'erre
7
. Yet,
mainstream economics remains sufficiently ignorant of how and why this is the case, so that
it takes a renegade economist like Keen to proselytise basic truth.
nfortunately, there is an inbuilt limitation to the Dunning-Kruger ffects practicality in any
given instance: ust as two parties might disagree on a statement of fact, with one of them
wrong and the other right such as is possible in formal logic, for exactly the same reason they
might also disagree on which of them is falling in to the DK trap. Through a kind of irony,
invoking the DK does not progress the dispute. In the same way, two different experts might
disagree on the disparity of rigour between their respective fields because the one from the
less rigorous field does not comprehend now much less rigorous his field is, and he cannot
comprehend wny this is so precisely becouse hes known no other field.
Such an interdisciplinary disagreement famously arose when physicist Alan Sokal submitted
a spoof paper to a postmodern ournal, Sociol Texr.
8
Among the many criticisms that the likes
of Sokal have of postmodern academia is that it is, they say, obscurantist deliberately
obscure in its language rather than earnestly enlightening. After having his wilfully
nonsensical but sufficiently obscure paper published, Sokal then published another one
elsewhere, revealing the spoof and what its success implied. In defence against Sokals
obscurantism accusations, some postmodernists insisted they werent being obscure, its ust
that Sokal was not sufficiently educated in their expertise to understand their expert writing.
One thing Sokal had in his favour, though, was the propensity his postmodern opponents had
developed for writing uninformed extrapolations of scientific topics. By sticking only to such
postmodern publications, Sokal was able to critiue them as a physicist. This he did with ean
Bricmont in nrellecruol mposrures
9
. A sample of this book is offered by ichard Dawkins
review of it in Norure
1
. Of acans
11
use of mathematics, for example, Sokal Bricmont say:
ne uses quire o [ew |ey worJs [rom rne mornemoricol rneory o[ compocrness, ne mixes
rnem up orbirrorily onJ wirnour rne sliqnresr reqorJ [or rneir meoninq His Je[inirion`
For details of this argument, see Debun|inq Lconomics 2
nJ
eJ, 2011, en Books, Ch , Sie Does Matter, or see
S Keen, Standish, Debunking the Theory of the Firm a Chronology, Reol WorlJ Lconomics Review, No. 3,
available here: http:www.paecon.netAeviewissue3KeenStandish3.pdf . Or perhaps I will do a presentation
of the argument in a later ine.
8 http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiSokalaffair
A Sokal, Bricmont, nrellecruol mposrures, rofile Books, 18
10 Dawkins, ostmodernism Disrobed, Norure 3, pp 11-13, 18 http:richarddawkins.netarticles82-
postmodernism-disrobed
11 Yes iek fans, the acan who influenced Slavo.
OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com
Page 6
o[ compocrness is nor jusr [olse: ir is qibberisn
For instance, acan has said of the erect male member, that it
is equivolenr ro rne sqrr-1 o[ rne siqni[icorion proJuceJ obove, o[ rne jouissonce rnor
ir resrores by rne coe[[icienr o[ irs sroremenr ro rne [uncrion o[ loc| o[ siqni[ier -1
Well... err... obviously. A mathematician would probably make no sense of this, though.
12
Was
acan being deliberately misleading, or was he unaware of the fact that his exposition of
mathematical compactness was gibberish?
Such disputes, with each side accusing the other of ust not comprehending the opposing
argument, might represent a situation in which there is no right or wrong answer, or where
both parties are right, or indeed where both a wrong. But it might also represent a case
described by the Dunning-Kruger ffect: both parties are arguing, one is right and the other is
wrong, and for the very same reason that the wrong party is wrong lack of knowledge he
also cannot see his error.
How can someone become so assured of expertise that he hasnt got? If one were to take Alan
Sokals side in the above debate, one answer would be that people feel theyre experts when
they participate in the occourremenrs, but not necessarily the essence, of expertise: becoming
reliant on argon to the point that it obscures rather than clarifies your work, uncritically
referring to ones own practice in terms like The Gold Standard, being secluded from the
experience of more rigorous expertise, even Jenyinq onesel[ exposure it this is commonly
done with the excuse I dont have the time You dont have the time as a professional to be
correct!?, deploying a smattering of ill-conceived mathematics, having disparate, disointed
havens of expertise populated by fat, naked emperors who share a culture of mutual apparel
appreciation
13
.
Of course, it cannot be overlooked that what is written in this paper might itself be the
product of some bias, a self-delusion of expertise. The same is true of the Dunning-Kruger
ffect per se. erhaps the only permanent solution is to accept an endless burden of critical
thinking there really are no shortcuts, if we are to avoid being duped by others. More
importantly, it is a responsibility that ought to be employed so that we dont dupe ourselves,
and thereby mislead others.
When it comes to finance, things like the argon pantomime which creates a false sense of
expertise of an industry to outsiders is worrying, when it creates a false sense of security
within it, and when that industry has so much potential impact on everyone else, we should
all be terrified.
12 Against Sokals presentation of the problem, scandals have erupted from time-to-time in physics, such as ons
Fleischmanns famous Cold Fusion confusion http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiColdfusion, Schns outright fraud
http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiSchC3B6nscandal from which he published one paper every eight days in 2001,
and the reverse Sokal affair: the Bogdanov Affair http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiBogdanovAffair. This latter
scandal was two brothers deliberate attempt to obfuscate their way to physics and maths hDs. While all these cases
reveal problems with the peer-review system, it must be said that they were all eventually caught out by their own
peers. In the case of the experimentalists ons, Fleischmann, and Schn, their errors or frauds were revealed when
no-one else could replicated their claims. You cant con nature. In the case of the Bogdanov theorists, until theory
concurs with observation, theories are only theories, and it behoves the rest of us to bear that in mind.
Aside: I actually knew some physicists who obtained a grant to pursue Schns work which once seemed like a
goldmine, the basis for the funding was revealed as a fraud, but they kept the grant.
13 On this latter point, the culture of mutual congratulation, Alex areene depicted the TD Talk subculture as little
more than this in the Solon article, Dont mention income ineuality please, were entrepreneurs: 2012-0-21.
Issue 13 13/07/2012
Page 7
Appendix: Keens problem with the mathematics of
competition
1
Consider a rm producing in a marketplace, the ith among many. Neoclassical economics
requires for its claims here Perfect Competition, namely that (1) there are many rms
so that none of have a large market share, lest their production quantity inuence the
market price, and (2) rms produce identical products (commodities), so consumers
have no reason not to follow the cheapest price
2
.
Under such conditions, there will be a market-wide price, P.
The ith rm will have a prot
i
which depends on the quantity produced and sold
by the rm (q
i
), the market price, and the cost of manufacturing q
i
items, C
i
, which is
particular to the processes of rm i.
By denition, prot for rm i is the revenue P q
i
minus the cost of production C
i
:

i
(q
i
) Pq
i
C
i
As per high school maths, the quantity q
i
that maximizes prot
i
(q
i
) is the one that
makes its derivative with respect to q
i
zero.
0 =
i
(q
i
) =
d(Pq
i
)
dq
i
C
i
(q
i
) (1)
Now, at this point neoclassical economists use the Perfect Competition conditions
to assert that P is independent of q
i
the ith rm is too small to inuence the market
with its quantity q
i
, so that
d(Pq
i
)
dq
i
= P
dq
i
dq
i
= P. This gives them the result that prots
are maximised when
0 =
i
(q
i
)
?
= P C
i
(q
i
) (Standard result contestded by Keen)
(2)
In other words, Prots are maximum when the C
i
(q
i
), the marginal cost, equals
the price. This is the optimum output rule for a rm in perfect competition
3
.
Instead of settling there, lets continue expanding the mathematics from equation (1).
0 = P
dq
i
dq
i
+ q
i
dP
dq
i
C
i
(q
i
) (Product rule)
= P + q
i
dP
dq
i
C
i
(q
i
)
Compare this with equation (2) and note that the two are the same exactly when
q
i
dP
dq
i
= 0. Again, neoclassical economists evoke perfect competition to assert this as
true in order to get their standard result, since P is independent of q
i
if no rm has
an inuential market share, meaning
dP
dq
i
, and hence the whole term, is zero. But lets
continue expanding the maths...
0 = P + q
i
dP
dQ
dQ
dq
i
C
i
(q
i
) (Chain rule)
1
S Keen and R Standish. Debunking the theory of the rm. In: Real World Economics Review, Iss.
53 (2010). url: http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue53/KeenStandish53.pdf.
2
Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, and Kathryn Graddy. Essentials of Economics. 2nd. Worth Publishers,
NY, 2010.
3
Ibid.
OccupySydneyZine@gmail.com
Page 8
where Q is the total output of the commodity in question of all rms, ie Q =

j
q
j
. Thus,
0 = P + q
i
dP
dQ
d
(

j
q
j)
dq
i
C
i
(q
i
) (Def of Q)
= P + q
i
dP
dQ

j
dq
j
dq
i

C
i
(q
i
)
= P + q
i
dP
dQ

j

i,j

C
i
(q
i
) (Def of Kronekcer Delta)
= P + q
i
dP
dQ
C
i
(q
i
) (
i,j
= 1 when i = j and 0 otherwise)
The last equation above is mathematically equivalent to the equation whose zeros give the
maximum of the very rst one (ie to eq. (1)). Comparing again with eq. (2) suggests that,
if the two are to be equivalent if the standard result stated for a competitive rm is to
be derivable from the above equation, which is equivalent to eq. (1) then it requires
that q
i
dP
dQ
= 0. Now, it cannot be that q
i
is naught: manufacturers must manufacturer
something. Thus, the only way the standard result can be true is if
dP
dQ
= 0.
And here we arrive at a contradiction, for
dP
dQ
is the slope of the demand curve for the
whole market place, and another central tenet of neoclassical economics is that this must
always be negative, that is, always downward sloping. It cannot be zero. For neoclassicists,
dP
dq
i
can certainly be zero indeed, they insist it is, as a result of perfect competition, but
not
dP
dQ
. What the derivation above has demonstrated is that these two expressions are
mathematically equivalent. It is a failure of the mathematics of neoclassical economists
insight they have dierent values.
In dierent arguments elsewhere
4
, Keen relays other reasons for the failure of the
Optimum Output Rule, which was rst demonstrated by William Gorman in 1953
5
who completely failed to recognise what he had proven, and was then rediscovered and
publicised in the 70s as the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu Theorem
67
. SMD says that the
demand curve for a whole marketplace cannot be downward sloping at all points except
when there is only one consumer and one commodity; the market-wide demand curve cant
mathematically exist as traditionally conceived. But even the worrisome SMD result is
compatible with a market-wide demand curve that is mostly downward sloping; the above
derivation suggests that, for neoclassical economists Optimum Output Rule in perfect
competition, the market-wide demand curve must be never downward sloping, nor indeed
ever upward sloping.
The failure of the Optimum Output Rule presents a moral problem for economics,
for whom price is related to utility the benet derived from a good. Jeremy Bentham
founded economics with his work on utilitarianism, the ethical principle that the most
ethical course is one that maximises benet (utility) across society The greatest
good for the greatest number. This hinges on a measure of utility. Bentham decided
that a suitable measure of the utility of a product is what people are willing to pay for
it; when people spend money on an item, they arm their belief that the item is worth
at least that much. Thus, the promise of the Optimum Output Rule is that it doesnt
merely maximise prots, but that it maximises the benet to society. With that rule
gone, so is the moral justication for the basis of laissez faire capitalism.
4
Steve Keen. Debunking Economics, 2nd. London: Zen Books, 2010.
5
W M Gorman. Community preference elds. In: Econometrica (1953).
6
Wikipedia. The Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu Theorem. url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sonnenschein%E2%80%93Mantel%E2%80%93Debreu_theorem.
7
Frank Ackerman. Still dead after all these years: interpreting the failure of general equilibrium
theory. In: Journal of Economic Methodology 9:2, 119139 (2002). url: http://www.ase.tufts.edu/
gdae/Pubs/rp/StillDead02.pdf.
Issue 13 13/07/2012
Page 9
ImagebyMaloCadic