Charles Darwin: Voyaging III

Darwin became enchanted by the tropical jungle that he saw when the Beagle arrived in Bahia in February, 1832. They sailed down the east coast of South America, stopping in Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo. Considerable time was spent in Tierra del Fuego, and there was also a trip to the Falkland Islands. Darwin made several long expeditions inland on the continent, during which he collected plant and animal specimens, along with fossils. He was well-liked by the officers and the crew, and this upset an ambitious naturalist who had come along in a more official capacity than Darwin, and the naturalist left the ship. Darwin accumulated crates of specimens and fossils that were shipped back to Henslow in Cambridge from various ports along the way. Besides this, he became more than ever before a full-scale outdoorsman, and he hunted game to supply the ship with food. He rode with gauchos on the Pampas and was stalked by bloodthirsty natives, reminding me of Blood Meridian. On that occasion, Darwin feared for his life for the first time.

For this voyage, FitzRoy had brought three Fuegians whom he had earlier taken to England, in order to return them home. While in England, they had been taught English, proper table manners, and dressed accordingly. Darwin became interested in them in a way that later affected his views on evolution. They had easily adapted to life in England, and Darwin was inclined to see them as members of his species. At the time, that was not a settled view, and others thought that various indigenous groups comprised separate species. It was a great shock to everyone on the Beagle to see the Fuegians quickly revert to their previous lifestyle, walking naked in that dismal landscape.

From June, 1834 to September, 1835, the Beagle sailed up the west coast of South America, stopping in Valparaiso, Copiapó, Iquique and Callao. On this leg of the trip, Darwin became more interested in geology. He and FitzRoy read recent works by Charles Lyell, who was revolutionizing geology at the time with the concepts of gradual change and the effects of subterranean pressures on the surface. It seems likely that this version of gradualism also influenced Darwin's theory of evolution. As luck would have it, they witnessed both a volcanic eruption and an earthquake. FitzRoy took measurements of a rise in the land following the earthquake and sent the information indirectly to Lyell.

While in Valparaiso, Darwin had an extended illness of uncertain origin and became homesick. At that time, FitzRoy was in a foul mood, because the Admiralty had censured him for overspending, and he threatened to resign his position. FitzRoy, who, according to Browne, showed signs of instability (manic depression?) throughout his life, had a violent row with Darwin then. However, by the time that Darwin had recovered and they had seen the volcanic eruption together, their friendly relationship had resumed.

After Callao, the Beagle set off for the Galápagos Islands, where they stayed from September to October in 1835. Darwin noticed that the species were slightly different from one island to another. They then set off for Tahiti, where they stayed for a few days in November, 1835.

As you can see, the voyage is taking far longer than originally proposed. They're already nearly four years into a trip that was supposed to take two, and they're not even halfway around the world. As noted earlier, Browne's account is quite adequate, but I would prefer a more succinct version with less verbatim use of original source material. For me, the main points could be made with far fewer words. Browne is also a little short on analysis, and I would find it more helpful if she had devoted more space to Darwin's psychological development and how his Beagle period informed his later theories. At least it's obvious that his voyage on the Beagle was a watershed experience that profoundly affected Darwin for the remainder of his life.

Charles Darwin: Voyaging II

The pace of the book is so slow that I find it a little tedious. After more than two hundred pages I'm only up to 1832, when Darwin was 23. So much detail is provided from letters, diaries and other documents that it reads almost like a novel. Part of the problem is that, so far, Darwin hasn't distinguished himself in any way, and it is a little painful to watch him develop into a functional adult. At the moment he is a mediocre student whose father has made futile efforts to start him in a career while showering him with money. Besides showing no vocational talents, Darwin also lacks social skills and is somewhat physically unattractive, in part because of his large nose.

During the 1825-1826 college year in Edinburgh, Charles had simply accompanied his brother, Erasmus, and neither of them mingled with people at the university. In the 1826-1827 year, without Erasmus, though Charles didn't like his medical studies, he socialized a little and made friends. He joined the Plinian Society, a student group which engaged in discussion of a wide range of topics, and he walked with friends along the shore looking for marine specimens. At the close of that school year, his father decided that, since a medical career wasn't in the cards, Charles should become a clergyman. To that end, a tutor was hired to brush up Charles's Latin, Greek and mathematical skills so that he might gain admission to Cambridge. In January, 1828 Charles began studies there at Christ's College, which his brother had attended.

The intellectual atmosphere in Cambridge was far more stimulating than in Edinburgh. Almost immediately, Charles began a friendship with John Stevens Henslow, a professor of botany and a mineralogist. Henslow became his mentor and was subsequently influential with respect to Charles's career advancement. This was a boom period in the natural sciences, and Charles met Adam Sedgwick, one of the founders of modern geology. In the summer of 1831 they traveled together to Wales on a field expedition. Of course, Charles took no interest in studying for the clergy, and he engaged in a lot of outdoor activities while in college. He took a horse with him and liked to hunt. He became proficient at shooting and often went out in search of game birds. He also developed a romantic interest in Fanny Owen, a potential wife who seems as if she came right out of a Jane Austen novel.

Having received his B.A. in 1831, his father's plan was for Charles to return to Cambridge in October for a D.B., or Bachelor of Divinity, which would qualify him for the clergy. Charles hoped instead to travel with friends to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, to study natural history, and his father opposed that idea. As luck would have it, unbeknownst to Charles, Henslow had put him forward for a position on the Beagle, which the Admiralty was preparing to embark on a geographical and hydrographic survey of Tierra del Fuego and then continue around the world on a voyage that would last two years. The position did not have technical responsibilities, and its main purpose seems to have been to provide a suitable companion for the captain, Robert FitzRoy. However, the companion would be permitted to collect specimens and record observations as a naturalist. Although FitzRoy was an aristocrat and a Tory and Darwin was not an aristocrat and came from a Whig family, FitzRoy took a liking to him when they met and he was selected for the position. Browne goes to some length explaining how Darwin benefited from the wide-reaching Cambridge network that was in place to dole out positions for the ruling class. In this case, it was an unpaid position, and Darwin had to pay all of his expenses, which were substantial. Of course, his father disliked the scheme and listed several objections. Fortunately, Charles prevailed upon an uncle to defend him and won the argument.

As far as I've read, the Beagle has made it to South America, Charles has often been seasick, and his potential girlfriend, Fanny, has dumped him by marrying someone else just as soon as the Beagle had departed.

Charles Darwin: Voyaging I

This is the first of two biographical volumes on Charles Darwin written by Janet Browne, who has spent much of her career studying Darwin's life and ideas. There are more than a thousand pages in all, not counting notes, so this may take me longer to finish than usual. It is fairly light reading but also thorough, and Browne covers Darwin's entire social background with perhaps more detail than I would prefer. I'm hoping that her knowledge and insights will keep the reading lively. Darwin was a prototypical naturalist, and I like the way that he developed his theories, but, as is already apparent, he was a product of his time.

Darwin was born into a wealthy family. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a medical doctor who had trained at Cambridge and Edinburgh and was influenced by Scottish enlightenment figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith. Erasmus's first son, Charles (1758-1778), followed in his father's footsteps but died while studying medicine in Edinburgh. It then fell upon his second son, Robert (1766-1848), to study medicine. Robert also trained in Edinburgh and later married Susanna Wedgwood, a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the wealthy potter. Robert and Susanna settled in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, near the Welsh border, and raised a family. Robert was one of three doctors in the town, but he made most of his money through investments and was a shrewd person with good judgment. Although the family wasn't religious or ostentatious, they fit the model that is found in Jane Austen novels and, for example, made trips to Bath, like many families of comparable social rank. Charles had four sisters and one brother and was the fifth child, born in 1809. His mother died when he was eight, but his sisters seem to have made up for her absence, and he hardly remembered her after he grew up. His brother, Erasmus (1804-1881), was five years older and a friend and mentor throughout his childhood.

Charles was initially home-schooled but then accompanied his brother at Shrewsbury School, which was a boarding school only a mile from their house. Boys like Charles spent much of their time outdoors collecting insects, plants, rocks, or whatever they could find. Chemistry was a new and exciting subject in school, and he and Erasmus set up their own makeshift laboratory to conduct experiments. Erasmus was a much better student than Charles, and he left Shrewsbury for Cambridge. Charles was poor at languages and mathematics, and was therefore not well-qualified for the usual college curriculum. When Erasmus finished at Cambridge he moved on to Edinburgh in 1825 for a year-long course in medicine, and Charles left Shrewsbury to accompany him.

Erasmus completed the program in Edinburgh but disliked the university and the city. After Cambridge, he found the students crude. In those days, academic standards were almost nonexistent in medicine. There was no fixed curriculum for most students, and a degree wasn't necessary to practice medicine. The faculty consisted of independent agents who were paid by the number of students who enrolled in their classes, and they designed their classes to attract as many students as possible. Furthermore, they competed with freelance tutors not affiliated with the university. Besides this, the admissions criteria were loose, and the classes were filled with rowdy students as young as fourteen. When Erasmus left in 1826, Charles stayed and pursued a medical course until 1827. However, he disliked blood and, as far as I've read, he is on the verge of dropping out.

So far, the book is notably slow-moving, and I may have to pick up my reading pace to remain interested. By the age of eighteen, Darwin hadn't stood out much. He was introverted, unathletic and not naturally talented in the standard academic curriculum of the time. However, as I'm sure will become apparent later, his relaxed childhood and financial resources helped him develop into the leading scientist of his century.

The Sociology of Philosophy I

I had been hoping to start a new book by now, but it's coming from England and hasn't arrived yet. Therefore, I've decided to write a little about the sociology of philosophy, which falls within the broader topic of the sociology of academia and resembles the sociology of creative writing programs, which I touched upon earlier. I'm not primarily interested in the content of the academic fields discussed, and for me this is a more general analysis of human behavior in academic settings. The reason why I'm writing about philosophy is that I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate and attended graduate school briefly. This is not a topic that I would ordinarily think about much now, but I occasionally look at 3 Quarks Daily in search of new reading materials, and S. Abbas Raza, the editor, has a graduate degree in philosophy and likes to include articles by philosophers. I usually skip them, but occasionally I read ones by Justin E.H. Smith, and this keeps me peripherally aware of the field. I have also occasionally viewed videos or listened to podcasts with Daniel Dennett and Massimo Pigliucci, two other philosophers whom Raza likes.

This subject goes way back for me, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I became interested in philosophy and why I eventually became disillusioned with it. I think many people enter the field of philosophy because they have broad interests stretching from mathematical and scientific areas to literature and the arts, and they don't want to specialize and become scientists, engineers, writers or artists. This is the kind of information that never presents itself directly to you, and you have to sort it out by yourself over many years. After thinking about it for a long time, I decided that my undergraduate philosophy department faculty included a few confused pastors. In the four years that I spent there, no one told me that the only tenured faculty had studied theology at some point in their educations. They were good students who initially thought that they would become clergymen; most of them ended up attending divinity school and subsequently got Ph.D.'s in philosophy. Thus, through a series of unpredictable events, they became philosophy professors at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. I don't think that any of them were talented at philosophy, and it seems that they came to it by accident. Because of this, they were unable to deal with philosophy majors who had no interest in theology.  My own background was quite different, and I simply liked the college environment, wasn't a particularly good student and didn't want to specialize. I certainly had no interest in theology. By the time I arrived in graduate school, philosophy seemed like pointless rote learning centered on the writings of mediocre thinkers. This thought was completely beyond the scope of my undergraduate professors.

Just to give an example, let me repeat what I said earlier about moral philosophy, which, in my experience, is a complete waste of time. If you study it, you may learn about Kant's categorical imperative. I have concluded that it is nothing more than a warmed-over version of the golden rule, which has been around since the Bible. I now think that more headway was made by E.O. Wilson, the entomologist, than moral philosophers were able to make collectively over thousands of years. This was simply the identification of humans as a eusocial species and the establishment of a connection between moral behavior and DNA. A lot of what passes for philosophy is simply an extension of theological reasoning dating from the Middle Ages. In the case of morality and ethics, I think it best to start from scratch and begin with human genetic predispositions, because without them we wouldn't have any moral tendencies. Wilson himself has little interest in this field, and the task is left to others.

Another example of why I dislike philosophy is the case of Daniel Dennett. On the surface you would think that I would find him appealing, because he is very science-oriented and his theories are more empirical than those of most philosophers. However, I attended one of his lectures several years ago and found him to be a windbag. He has an excellent academic background and is extremely knowledgeable, but he hasn't really developed a distinctive worldview that might differentiate him from an ordinary scientist. Unfortunately, Dennett tows the line as an academic philosopher and spouts faddish philosophical terms such as "qualia," which strikes me as slightly idiotic. I find that philosophers habitually obfuscate fairly straightforward scientific ideas, and that it is better to go directly to the science. In this vein, I'm also unhappy with Justin E.H. Smith, who is one of the most elegant philosophical writers you're likely to come across, but whose writings never seem to have any practical applications; I see him more as an entertaining writer than as a substantive one. I am guessing that he drifted into philosophy because he liked to write, but writing alone does not make a good philosopher, and he consistently lacks the depth of a serious thinker.

Perhaps the person whose life best sums up my thoughts on philosophy is Ludwig Wittgenstein. He came from a wealthy Viennese family and had wide cultural exposure. For example, one of his sisters posed for Gustav Klimt. His interests tended to be technical, and first he tried aeronautical engineering and later architecture. Somehow he became interested in mathematical logic and found himself working with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge. By then, Russell was already getting tired of philosophy and was happy to unload his research on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's work was initially an odd combination of logic and mysticism, but after World War I and a stint as a schoolteacher in rural Austria it propelled him to rock-star status at Cambridge. However, as time passed, Wittgenstein increasingly became impatient with his philosophy colleagues, and his focus changed from logic to ordinary language. By the time of his death in 1951 he was recommending other fields, such as medicine, to his students. In my view, Wittgenstein was a frustrated artist, and none of his ideas are likely to be of lasting significance. I think that the same can be said of most philosophical ideas, and that the most durable ideas come from science. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with pursuing most academic fields, but that philosophy as an academic discipline has little to offer anyone.

My conclusion on academic philosophy is therefore much the same as my conclusion on creative writing programs. Yes, students can enroll in these courses and learn something, but they could just as well do something else and might end up happier. I see colleges and universities as economic entities in which the tenured faculty usually get good salaries and favorable working conditions while the students, particularly in fashionable subjects, may come away with nothing. I mean this not in the sense that the students are out a few dollars, but that the actual value of the education, in both technical and personal senses, can be quite low. Given my experience, it surprises me that intelligent people can still think that academic philosophy could be of value to anyone. The convoluted thinking that you have to go through just to make sense of it would drive most people mad.

Diary

I noticed that I haven't made a Diary post for a while and decided to now. Although these posts are sort of fillers, I think that they personalize the blog a little and prevent it from becoming a pure book-review website. As always, I have a hard time coming up with books to read. It seems to me that people who read a book a week must be completely undiscriminating. At this stage, the most satisfying books for me are long biographies of intellectuals written by talented biographers. This combination limits the number of suitable books, because there aren't many intellectuals whose lives interest me, and there aren't many good biographers either. Autobiographies have, in theory at least, a lot of potential, but in my experience they don't compare favorably to thorough biographies. For example, Confessions, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though probably one of the best autobiographies, is not as complete as the biography I read. Rousseau presented a one-sided view of his life without including the reflections of others, and, as a result, the full context of his development into an outcast remained unexplored. One might conclude, after reading beyond Rousseau's account of events, that it was his pigheadedness that got him into trouble and ruined his friendships. I could arrive at this conclusion only after reading lengthy biographies of Rousseau and Diderot. Another example, Stendhal's autobiography, was good for what it was, but it was written very hastily and didn't cover a very long period. I enjoyed reading Simone de Beauvoir's autobiographical writings up to a point but eventually concluded that her take on reality was incomplete. I sensed that her perspective was skewed, and that became a major distraction. If there were a good biography of her, I would prefer that, but I don't think there is one currently. The autobiographer is inevitably tempted to present a sanitized version of his or her life. A skilled biographer, on the other hand, has an opportunity to understand his or her subject better than the subject understands himself or herself. Even in the absence of such understanding, the reader is provided with additional facts that are useful for making such judgments. I find that process interesting, and my next project is to read a lengthy biography of Charles Darwin; in this instance I'm going to skip Darwin's autobiography altogether. As my reading tastes have evolved, I now think that most fiction is too inaccurate and contrived, most historical writing is too tendentious and general, and most scientific writing, though potentially informative, is emotionally unsatisfying. I am open to different approaches, but this is where I am now.

Of course, I have been following the Trump impeachment proceedings. What is surprising at the moment is that he has any Republican support at all. Nothing could be plainer than that he is a narcissist with little talent beyond self-promotion. None of his domestic or foreign policies are well-informed, and any honest economist will tell you that he deserves no credit for any perceived economic strength in the country. In the most recent insider-tell-all book it is revealed that Trump didn't know that India borders China or what Pearl Harbor was all about. The one thing that sticks in my mind is that if he hadn't swallowed the Russian propaganda about Ukraine he would not have been impeached in the first place. As George Conway, a conservative Republican, announced recently, Trump is actually pretty stupid. The cowardice of his supporters in the Senate is therefore striking. Since there are still no definite signs that the impeachment process will result in his removal from office, we can only hope that he won't be reelected if he's cleared. There is still a chance that witnesses such as John Bolton will turn the tables on Trump.

I might add that my latest readings indicate that automation is the primary force behind current economic and political trends in developed countries. It's always hard for me to get excited about politics, because complex issues such as this never make their way into political talking points. The Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular have nothing to offer workers who have been displaced by automation, and Trump's attribution of job losses to unfair trade practices skirts the issue. The automation problem is so severe that the Democrats also seem afraid to address it directly. I think that we are only in the early phase of a development that will leave many more people unemployed in future years, and that the process will gradually move from manufacturing jobs to white collar jobs to professional jobs. Tech-savvy candidates like Andrew Yang are ahead of the curve, because they are promoting UBI now, and I'm sure that it will eventually become a political issue. However, the way things have been going, it seems unlikely that the democratic process will be effective for dealing with this particular problem. Democracy itself may be on the way out, because other systems are simply more efficient and effective.

We are having the dreariest winter since we moved to Vermont in 2011. Usually by mid-December the temperature remains below freezing until April and the snow doesn't melt. This year the temperatures have often been above freezing, there is little snow on the ground and it has rained recently. I have been looking at places to move to in northern Maine, where it still gets cold in the winter, but there are no comparable college towns up there that would balance the population of local people with well-educated ones, as we have here. I think that living in Middlebury would be a different experience if the college wasn't here, so I'm not about to move yet. William has completely adapted to his new cat door and ramp setup. He sleeps all day near the fire and gets locked in the basement at night. Late at night and in the morning he comes from the outside and paws on the porch door if he sees that someone is up. He doesn't seem to be catching much now, though he did catch a junco the other day.

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

I've just finished reading this book (actually, a cheaper advance uncorrected proof) by Stuart Russell, which represents a continuation of my interest in AI as reflected in the books I discussed in 2017 and 2018 by Max Tegmark and Luke Dormehl. Russell is a prominent AI researcher at UC Berkeley, so his perspective is a little different from that of Tegmark, who is a physicist, and Dormehl, who is a journalist. I found Russell more focused on the important issues at hand, but some of the chapters weren't of much interest to me and I consequently spent little time on them. I got the sense that academic specialization has impeded Russell's perspective a little (it usually does), though he did manage to convey some of the urgency more than Tegmark did in his book and much more than Dormehl did in his.

As the title suggests, the ascent of AI poses new problems for humans that are best addressed now rather than later. Russell uses the analogy that if we knew that an asteroid was going to strike the earth in a few years, we wouldn't wait for its arrival to start planning. The main question is how to prevent AI from becoming dangerous to mankind as technology approaches Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or, more loosely, superintelligence. I am not a programmer and don't care about programming, so I didn't pay much attention to those chapters. However, Russell also traces the history of AI and compares it to developments that have taken place in other scientific fields. He mentions a story about the physicists Ernest Rutherford and Leo Slizard. In 1933, Slizard read an article by Rutherford stating that although it was known that matter contains a great deal of energy, there was no practical way to extract it. The same day, Slizard thought of the idea of a nuclear chain reaction, which led directly to the first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in 1942. Russell thinks that although the path to AGI is not immediately clear, a new idea that makes it possible could suddenly emerge at any time. So much AI research is occurring at the moment that it would not be surprising at all to have AGI appear within a few decades. Russell believes that the main pieces for its development are already in place. The necessary hardware exists and the use of probabilistic, self-learning algorithms is currently producing useful results.

Most of the problems related to AGI that are addressed in this book concern control. Sections are devoted to finding ways of incorporating human values into algorithms. Russell casts a wide net, which I think is far wider than necessary. For example, he considered ideas from economics and philosophy that I don't think are relevant. I liked the fact that he disagreed with Stephen Pinker, who thinks that AI doesn't pose a risk. The main risk is that AGI will be far more intelligent than any human ever could be and that if it has goals that do not appropriately value human well-being, the consequences could be disastrous. The problem consists mainly of incorporating the right human-friendly behavior into the algorithms and enforcing such procedures in national and international agreements. From a formal standpoint, the agreements would be similar to current international agreements on potentially dangerous gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR.

Although Russell covers his bases well and discusses what life might be like if a safe AGI arrives, that is not the main theme of the book. I think that by focusing on the risk to human existence, he doesn't devote enough space to changes that might occur in favorable circumstances. Even while stating that this would be the most significant event in human history, he doesn't speculate much on how we would react to it. He mentions Ray Kurzweil's idea of merging human brains with robotic bodies and expresses some skepticism, as I do. He also touches on some of the social changes that would be likely to occur. Perhaps everyone will spend most of their time in advanced virtual realities. More immediately, it would be a dramatic shock if AGI, in short order, stopped climate change, created a source of unlimited clean energy and replaced most human jobs along with all governments. While on the surface these would represent positive changes, they would also be traumatic. New ways would have to be found for people to occupy their time. Up to now, people have been able to distinguish themselves by working harder, having better ideas or being more productive than their peers, and those human-level talents would pale in comparison to AGI. The very idea of "genius" would instantly become obsolete, because all of the most important ideas that were originated by humans could perhaps be discovered and improved upon in seconds by AGI. How would people increase their social status under such circumstances? How would human interactions be affected by the introduction of realistic androids? Russell repeatedly refers to the gorilla analogy, in which gorillas were once a dominant primate species but became endangered when humans came along: the same may apply to us when AGI arrives.

I am also a little surprised that Russell has little to say about the potential abuse of AGI by humans. It is to be expected that individuals will attempt to control it in order to achieve their personal objectives rather than to support the welfare of mankind. What would happen, for example, if Vladimir Putin took control of an AGI developed in Russia? This would probably be just as disastrous an outcome as the rogue AGI to which Russell devotes so much of the book.

Good Economics for Hard Times III

The chapter on climate change, "In Hot Water," focuses primarily on policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and does not address the long-term economic effects. Carbon taxes and exchanges are recommended. Wealthy countries, which are the primary creators of global warming, ought to assist poor nations, which, though not major polluters, continue to use processes that produce carbon dioxide emissions. One of the recurrent themes of the book is that humans tend to engage in "sticky" behavior, which in economics means that they don't like to move or change their habits. In India and other countries, people still cook with wood, which creates both carbon dioxide emissions and poor health. They also burn fields after harvesting, which causes pollution and is not a sound agricultural method. In cases like this, the authors recommend assistance from wealthy countries. Since poor countries are going to take the brunt of climate change, the countries that created it have some responsibility along with the financial resources to help.

The next chapter, "Player Piano," discusses automation, also limiting itself to the near-term effects. Robotics has already taken a toll on employment in manufacturing. The authors believe that this trend will continue and intensify, affecting many other industries and reducing relative wages for all but the tech-savvy. The chapter then abruptly shifts to tax policy, which is continued in the next chapter, "LEGIT.GOV." Banerjee and Duflo spend quite a few pages explaining why the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were ill-conceived and have caused negative consequences right up to the present. One idea, that lower taxation on the rich results in economic growth, has been disproven. Another idea, that welfare makes people lazy and unproductive, is also inaccurate. Reagan and Thatcher apparently were sincere, and at the time there was no research to contradict them. The authors, rather courageously I think, go on to attack the American Dream ideology, in which the country is seen as an open field in which anyone can get ahead with hard work, and in which those who fail simply haven't put in enough effort. What they emphasize is that the Reagan-Thatcher policies are responsible for increased inequality in the U.S. and U.K., in which the rich are under-taxed. The top income tax rates in both countries have dropped considerably, allowing a few people to become extremely wealthy – much wealthier than the wealthy of the early twentieth century. Furthermore, the centers of finance in New York and London have permitted some to become super-rich without any visible talents. Excessive wealth accumulation by a small minority, which is enabled by low top income tax rates and the absence of a wealth tax, results in insufficient funds for necessary social programs. Those whose wages have stagnated or evaporated due to automation and international competition eventually require guidance and sometimes need financial support from the social service arms of government.

Ever since the Reagan-Thatcher era, government has been portrayed as an obstacle to progress. Although governments are often inefficient and corrupt, the same is true of private businesses. However, the authors argue that government involvement is essential when inequality rises to a high level and the government becomes the only source able to help those in need. Many of the social issues that exist in the U.S. and U.K. today are relatively nonexistent in countries such as Denmark, which has higher taxation on the wealthy and more funds available for social programs. In this respect, the authors criticize Emmanuel Macron for eliminating the wealth tax in France and placing a surcharge on fuel. These actions had an instant polarizing effect that resulted in riots. Catering to the rich comes at the cost of social stability.

Banerjee and Duflo also devote quite a few pages to the political polarization in the U.S. Much of it, they say, can be attributed to the low self-esteem and anger of those who are suffering economically now. In the U.S., the Protestant work ethic, as invoked by Reagan, tells them that they are failures if they can't succeed financially. A portion of these people gives up, takes drugs and dies. Another portion gets angry and becomes a pawn for corrupt politicians like Donald Trump. As policy wonks, the authors are well-versed in which policies would defuse this situation if they had political support and the proper funding. It goes without saying that Trump doesn't understand or care about the issues and that his incompetent administration is incapable of addressing the underlying causes. But the blame doesn't lie completely on the Republicans, since the Democrats have also supported welfare "reform" and privatization. Rhetorically, Hillary Clinton contributed to her own political demise by referring to Trump supporters as "deplorables." This angered enough people that it may have cost her the election. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama show all of the symptoms of "elites," and while I share some of their sentiments, displaying them in public can become a prelude to political death. As I've said, this is an anti-intellectual country, and some of the most popular memes in circulation, including the American Dream and American exceptionalism, border on pure fantasy.

The next-to-last chapter, "Cash and Care," discusses practical ways to assist the needy in both wealthy and poor countries. In each case, a form of Universal Basic Income is agreeable to the authors, though they think that it works better in poor countries. There is a lot of detail to wade through here, and I think this chapter would appeal more to someone in the field of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, like Duflo.

On the whole I found the book enlightening, because this kind of information rarely comes up in the news. It is encouraging to know that some real expertise exists in the subjects covered. Reading it is an easy way to rise above the nonsense that one faces on a daily basis. These important issues become drowned in misinformation, lies and bad jokes when encountered at the level of American politics. My only complaint about the book is that it doesn't extend its analysis out very far into the future, at which point both climate change and technological change will render the policy atmosphere quite different from the one we're in now.

Good Economics for Hard Times II

The next chapter, "Likes, Wants, and Needs," covers a wide range of research regarding human behavior. Part of it reflects the behavioral economics of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and Richard Thaler, and there is also a section on how social environments affect individual behavior. From my point of view, the latter is the most interesting part of the book so far, perhaps because I was not aware that this kind of research existed in economics. To sum it up in my preferred language, it is about the negative aspects of group selection in a eusocial species, i.e. ours. Rather than discussing this as a biologically inborn human characteristic, the authors simply look at conflicts that arise from people's tendency to behave in a tribal manner. In the contemporary context, this has resulted in political polarization in the U.S. and other parts of the world. There are also examples from the caste system in India. Populism in the U.S. is now based mainly on group identity, thus, politicians are able to gain support by proposing anti-immigration policies. The underlying ideas espoused by people like Trump don't hold up well to scrutiny and resemble propaganda more than fact. For example, "Nearly half of the residents in states with almost no immigrants – like Wyoming, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas – believe immigrants represent a threat to American culture and values." The authors discuss Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. There used to be discrimination against Jews at Harvard because they were too smart, and now there is discrimination against Asians. It is difficult for Harvard to defend its admissions practices because they seem to contain racist elements and, in the case of Asians who have good academic qualifications but are lacking in personality, Harvard believes they can be rejected. This may look bad from a politically correct standpoint, but I think Harvard has a point, since in their case they want graduates who will be the major leaders in the future, not simply good students, and this makes the definition of merit more complex than plain academic skills. Banerjee and Duflo also cite an interesting study in which Indian cricket players were divided into different teams. Some teams were composed of uniform castes and some were composed of mixed castes. The results indicated that those who played on mixed teams were more likely to befriend players from other castes. The lesson is that diversity need not be seen primarily as a tool for rectifying social injustice, and that it may be more useful as a way of defusing class or group prejudices, with the goal of creating a more coherent and stable society. The more people from different groups mix, the less antagonistic they become toward each other. For similar reasons, I prefer to live in socioeconomically mixed neighborhoods, if only because homogeneous neighborhoods are more likely to produce a pernicious form of social identity.

The following chapter, "The End of Growth," is also quite interesting. It covers economic thought at an abstract level regarding the conditions that allow nations to achieve economic growth and reviews the ideas of optimists and pessimists among leading economists regarding the prospects for future growth. The main idea is that productivity increases cause economic growth. This usually occurs best under conditions in which a large, poor labor force is given access to new capital investments. According to Robert Solow, a pessimist, productivity growth gradually slows in wealthy countries and never recovers, whereas Paul Romer, an optimist, thinks that innovation can maintain high growth indefinitely. The economic growth of various countries is examined. The pattern in recent decades has been for some undeveloped regions to develop and become rich quickly. Usually this occurs when there are the right ingredients in place. Europe had tremendous economic growth after World War II, as did Japan a little later. The same phenomenon is occurring in China and other developing countries now. India is a problematic country for economists, since most of them would predict much more economic growth there than has occurred so far. Economic growth may not always be desirable, but the cumulative effect of it globally does seem to have been to reduce poverty worldwide. What I really admire about Banerjee and Duflo is their willingness to deflate myths. They are the first economists I've heard say that there is no proven way to sustain high economic growth indefinitely, and that the countries that have experienced it have done so in an erratic manner such that it is unpredictable. They specifically deny the validity of the Republican mantra regarding tax cuts for the rich: there is no evidence that they produce measurable economic growth. They also note that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is making a completely unsubstantiated claim when he says that the Internet will provide future economic growth: there is no evidence supporting that claim either. In my view, Facebook and other social media are simply substitutes for the traditional social contact that has been lost in wealthy countries. Even though I am a stockholder in Facebook, and it has been my best investment by far, I don't think that it is of any real value, and people would be better off if they found real friends. Needless to say, I don't have a Facebook account. I think that the main problem of economics is that the phenomena are too complex for people to understand. To put that in context, I would say that it is far more difficult than theoretical physics, and this explains why economics has never been a reliable tool except in highly circumscribed circumstances.

I am nearing the end of the book and should have one more post. The next chapter does, after all, seem to cover climate change.

Good Economics for Hard Times I

This is a recent book by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two (married) economists who won Nobels in 2019. Although economics is not an inspiring subject, I am finding that it is one of the very few academic fields which actually studies human behavior in a manner that could be of some value in matters of policy. This is particularly relevant at the moment, when so many politicians in the U.S. and elsewhere pay little or no attention to findings that are relevant to decisions that will definitely impact millions of people over the long term. I am a little surprised that sociologists don't have comparable publications, but, then, we live in capitalist societies, and economists have clout, whereas sociology professors are perceived as run-of-the-mill academics who produce work with no practical applications. I find books like this informative, because the authors actually know something and rarely appear in the news; they are replaced by ignorant TV personalities who cater to the wishes of politicians and corporations. Although biologists such as E.O. Wilson and Robert Sapolsky have long been writing about our animal natures, economics seems to be the only academic subject that sits at the intersection between science and public policy. Unfortunately, no economics books that I've read have made for exciting reading, and I read them mainly out of a sense of responsibility. Not only is E.O. Wilson a better writer than any economist I've ever read, but he also has a more profound understanding of life on Earth.

As far as I've read, there are chapters on immigration and trade. Donald Trump's name has come up a few times, but he is not really a target of the authors. As far as migration is concerned, generally migrants from poorer countries to wealthier countries do not cause significant disruptions, because they take jobs that people don't want in the wealthy countries. They enrich the local economies by making inexpensive services available to the existing inhabitants. Anecdotally, you can see this in Vermont, where the locals don't want to milk cows or pick apples, and migrants are enabling the survival of those industries. An exception occurs in the case of highly-educated immigrants arriving in wealthy countries. In this instance, they may drive wages down in high-paying industries. I know of one example in which a highly-educated American tech worker feels like a token American in a field that is being taken over by foreigners. Thus, in the case of migration, Trump has got it completely wrong, i.e. poor people should be allowed in and well-educated people should be restricted unless there are no comparable domestic workers. The chapter also examines problems related to migrations within countries. Many examples come from India, while similar circumstances occur in countries like the U.S. For a variety of reasons, some rational and some not, many people don't like to move. Often reduced economic circumstances can be improved significantly simply by retraining or moving to a different location. I noticed something like this when I lived in Dixon, Illinois, which is one hundred miles west of Chicago. Quite a few of the people there were poor because the local economy was a little depressed, and I was surprised to learn that some of them had never even been to Chicago once. They liked Dixon because their families lived there.

The chapter on trade is quite complex but readable. It looks closely at economic dogma that has been present since the early nineteenth century. Specifically, most economists still hold to modern versions of the ideas of comparative advantage and free trade. Comparative advantage and free trade do work in most circumstances, though in the literature at this stage there are many provisos and adjustments that need to be made. Comparative advantage, of course, means that each nation will be able to produce some goods and services at a lower cost than other nations and will therefore be able to compete and trade internationally even if it is weak in some industries. For example, China was poor but had cheap labor which gave the country an economic advantage in some manufacturing industries. The economic rise of China did hurt American workers in rural areas whose jobs were lost due to competition. However, the main point of the chapter is that internal adjustments in the U.S. could compensate for that damage. Overall, there is a slight net gain to the U.S. economy attributable to free trade, and it would make sense to leave free trade intact and allocate internal resources to help those who are hurt by it.  Banerjee and Duflo think that the elimination of tariffs would be fine if the losers to free trade were retrained and moved if necessary. Apparently the U.S. has an underfunded and underused Trade Adjustment Assistance program which has proven to be effective in assisting displaced workers. Increasing the funding and publicizing that program would be a better idea than imposing tariffs, which, under Trump, are helping the steel and aluminum industries but hurting industries associated with agriculture.

Anecdotally, moving has been advantageous to my family. My English ancestors converged on London during the Industrial Revolution and got better jobs. My father's move to the U.S. was not exactly a success story for him, but the rest of the family did eventually attain a higher standard of living. More dramatically, my Armenian ancestors moved from Armenia to what is now western Turkey long ago and became wealthy. When the Armenian genocide was taking shape, they moved to Greece, and later the U.S. and South Africa. In my case, I worked in the printing industry for thirty years, most of which were during its decline. Of the eight unrelated plants where I worked, located in Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois, five have closed. Although the printing industry is hardly affected by foreign competition, the same general rule about being willing to move applies to laid-off employees. For this reason I have very little sympathy for rural Americans who are reluctant to make necessary changes in their lives and vote for incompetent, corrupt politicians just because they would rather hear lies than face the truth.

I still have a long way to go in the book and should have one or two more posts to make on it. So far it hasn't said anything about adapting to the Anthropocene epoch or offered a critique of capitalism, which are probably beyond its scope. Another concern I have, which hasn't been discussed, is that centrally managed countries like China will at some point have tremendous global economic advantages as long as the people in power are competent and not corrupt. By applying research in economics and public policy, China may eventually become a much more functional country than the U.S., which is increasingly burdened by inept voters and efforts to decentralize the government. If Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were able to attain Western-like economies in such short periods, one can expect the same from China, but on a much larger scale.

Diderot IV

As Diderot grew old, he became less active and spent more time alone writing. It seems that he was a little miffed that he had not produced any well-received works, and that he kept plugging away, though the kind of skills he had did not suit him for that task. In Paris, another generation, including Thomas Jefferson and Mozart, began showing up to experience the new cultural mecca firsthand. Diderot's friends, ex-friends and acquaintances began to die off. Rousseau died in 1778. Madame d'Epinay and d'Alembert died in 1783. Sophie Volland died in 1784, and Diderot himself had a stroke shortly thereafter and died later that year. Grimm outlived them all and survived through the French Revolution, but became embittered by the material losses that he faced under the new regime.

Diderot was not particularly famous before, during or immediately after the Revolution. His daughter, Angélique, wrote a memoir, and this, along with the publication of his letters to Sophie Volland, increased his name recognition significantly. Slowly he became an inspiration to other writers when Rameau's Nephew and Jacques the Fatalist were published posthumously. Goethe was an early translator into German, and Stendhal, who was born in 1783, was an early admirer. According to Furbank, Balzac also liked Diderot, and in this sense Diderot can be thought of as the founder of realism in fiction. If that is the case, Diderot deserves a lot of credit.

Furbank writes of Jacques the Fatalist as follows:

I have said that in Jacques the Fatalist Diderot depicted himself as he would like to be and in many ways would lay claim to being. One can hardly miss the point, for Jacques is, among other things, visibly an apologia for many of his own faults, or imputed faults: his talkativeness..., his officiousness, his passion for paradox, his relentless scepticism, his ribaldry and his outrageous outspokenness.

The clue or pointer in all this, biographically speaking, is "fatalism". For it was important in Diderot's mind that, buffeted as he might be by Fortune, he had been favored in his birth. He was one of those who are endowed by Nature or destiny for a whole array of virtues, talents and good qualities. His addiction to self-praise finds its justification here, it being a continual and beautiful surprise to him what precious qualities, what capacities for ardent feeling or original thought, he discovered in himself. This was no occasion for vanity, for he might just as easily have had the misfortune to be born an imbecile or a criminal.

The number of shining virtues attributed to Jacques is, when one comes to count them out, very large; and they are all linked to "fatalism" or respect for the necessary. 

Assuming that this is an accurate description of Diderot's concept of fatalism, I can't say that I'm in complete agreement. Fatalism is simply a statement about the future, with a psychological emphasis in which outcomes are seen to be beyond one's control. For practical purposes, fatalism implies an abdication of responsibility, because the presumption is that the same outcome will occur no matter what you think or do. In a psychological sense, that is incorrect, because we have the perception of free will, which causes us to believe that we can consciously affect outcomes. Fatalism implies a kind of giving up that isn't really part of human nature. We now understand the human brain far better than we did in the eighteenth century and know that it has evolved to solve problems rather than to behave passively. I contrast Diderot's view with modern determinism, in which every event in the universe is seen to be causally predetermined. The difference is that we don't actually know what every outcome will be and are forced to rely on our innate sense that we can influence events. For example, a fatalist might say "Everything is preordained and there is nothing that I can do about it, so I'm just going to stop eating and die," whereas a determinist might say "The sequence of events in the universe may be completely determined, but the process is mostly incomprehensible to me and the outcomes are uncertain." Thus, fatalism is more amenable to giving up outright whereas determinism is more amenable to thinking that even if the whole process is predictable, it is beyond your comprehension and you can still try to figure it out. It is also possible that both fatalism and determinism are false theories, in which case Diderot's theory would be even less appealing. Diderot may have been prescient in noticing that personalities and abilities are inborn, i.e. genetic in origin, but in the context that he wrote about it I don't find it especially illuminating.

To use this as an example, I'm not terribly excited about Diderot as a writer or thinker, though on the whole he probably wasn't much better or worse than Rousseau or Voltaire. Rousseau was more serious and engaging, and Voltaire was wittier. Of course, it's premature of me to say that, since I haven't actually read any of this in his own words and don't intend to. Nevertheless, that is where I stand at the moment, and I'm ready to move on to another book.

Diderot III

Another aspect of the Rousseau-Diderot split should be mentioned. In recounting the complaints that he had about Rousseau, Diderot said that he was always going out of his way to help Rousseau but never received anything in return. He had spent many hours reading and editing Rousseau's works, and in some cases had provided useful suggestions that had improved them substantially, yet Rousseau never reciprocated at all. By the time Rousseau had moved to the Hermitage, Diderot also had to travel out to the country just to see him, because Rousseau had stopped going to Paris. I had wondered about this lack of reciprocity earlier, when reading Cranston, and now I think that there is enough evidence to say that Rousseau used people. He tended to lay it on thick about how much he loved certain people, such as Mme de Warens and Diderot, but if you look closely it becomes apparent that he was taking advantage of them and creating a lot of labor on their part while expending little energy on them. In fact it seems that Mme de Warens tried to get rid of him on several occasions, and that by the time he finally departed her house she was glad to see him go. We have only Rousseau's account of those events, and I think that Mme de Warens's version would differ. In other words, by our standards, Rousseau used flattery and feigned dependence to get his way with the people whom he knew would reliably help him, and he attached himself to them. His only long-term relationship was with his mistress, Thérèse Levasseur, who, as time passed, settled into the role of maid and was never treated as an equal for social or intellectual purposes. Thus, I am seeing that Cranston, who admired Rousseau and wrote the enormous biography, presented a more favorable view of Rousseau than Furbank, who admired Diderot and was less inclined to suppress Rousseau's defects. I am finding Furbank's explanations more palatable, because they provide a better picture of why Rousseau eventually felt ostracized, and in fact was ostracized, by people who had supported him previously. To be fair, in those days before the field of psychology existed, Rousseau was less likely to be aware of his transgressions, and the people around him would not have had the language to point out his weaknesses to him. There was a pathology to Rousseau's behavior that hadn't been explored by science yet. In contrast, as Furbank likes to point out, Diderot behaved more like a modern man and was cognizant of how he fit into his social milieu. To psychologize a little, Rousseau lacked a mother while growing up and was essentially abandoned by his father; without acknowledging his father's abandonment, he proceeded to abandon his own children and clung rather pathetically to people who seemed to offer him genuine help. In the end, Rousseau benefited enormously from the extended adolescence provided to him by Mme de Warens and from the introduction to the intellectual circles in Paris provided to him by Diderot. His effort to attach himself to Sophie d'Houdetot, which precipitated his split with Diderot, backfired when she chose to stay with Saint-Lambert, in effect dumping him. My interpretation is that human foibles were in full evidence during the Enlightenment, and that one ought to be cautious about idealizing its participants.

Diderot's wife, Nanette, was less educated than he was and a nag. He remained married to her but had a long affair with Sophie Volland, beginning in about 1756. Sophie was better-educated, more intellectual and from a wealthier family than Nanette, and Diderot tended to correspond with her whenever they were apart. His father died in 1759, and he received a substantial inheritance, but not one that made him rich. After the Encyclopédie was finished he tried his hand at all kinds of writing, but did not receive much income. Over his life he wrote essays, plays, novels and short stories, none of which turned out to be profitable. However, he was very well connected, and the philosophes of Paris became the envy of intellectuals throughout Europe. In his middle years his friendships continued with d'Holbach, Grimm and Voltaire, though Voltaire was rarely in Paris. He met David Hume while Hume was employed in Paris, and they became friends. He became interested in art and became an early art critic.  His financial fortunes improved substantially when Catherine the Great of Russia bought his library in 1765 and paid him to be its librarian while leaving it in place. He also recommended the sculptor who designed and constructed a statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. Diderot had no interest in travel, but eventually he visited Catherine the Great in Russia, though, apparently, she didn't like him much when they became better acquainted.

I am having a hard time getting enthusiastic about Diderot and should finish the book soon. Furbank was a literary man who was friends with E.M. Forster, so his emphasis is on literature, in this case Diderot's philosophical literature such as Rameau's Nephew, D'Alembert's Dream and Jacques the Fatalist. Since Diderot's primary model for fiction was Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), I'm not excited about reading Diderot's works. I think that the novel as a form of art was a little primitive before the nineteenth century and that it reached a peak in Europe in the second half of that century. Of course, there have been a few notable works outside that time frame, but I don't care enough to hunt them all down or read them at this point. I think it is more interesting just to read accounts of the lives of intelligent people who lived in different time periods. Diderot is a little less interesting than others because in several respects he prefigures later freelance writers who had good reputations but didn't really produce any significant works. Although Diderot had a wider literary and philosophical range than you would generally find today in a writer, I sense that he produced the same sort of writing that you might expect from recent intellectuals; the general intellectual at this stage seems a little useless to me, and writing based on actual research is more likely to capture my attention – perhaps even if it is poorly written.

Diderot II

When Diderot was released from prison in November, 1749, he began a long period of intense work on the Encyclopédie. At that time, he was regularly attending the salon of Baron d'Holbach, a rich German who had moved to Paris and occupied himself as a dilettante in the sciences. The salon was also attended by Rousseau and Herr von Grimm, another German whom Rousseau had befriended. The attendees of d'Holbach's salon were mostly atheists and determinists, with the exception of Rousseau, who retained his own brand of religious faith. For the time, it was an unusually scientific group, perhaps because of German influences. Many of them, along with the French mathematician, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, made early contributions to the Encyclopédie, which was sold serially and published between 1751 and 1761. When finished, it consisted of 17 volumes of text, 11 volumes of plates and 60,660 articles in all. It was challenging to produce, given the censorship that existed in Paris at the time and the large number of contributors who had to be recruited, but eventually it was a great success and was probably Diderot's most significant accomplishment.

Furbank is doing a much better job at describing the personalities of the philosophes than Maurice Cranston did in his biography of Rousseau. Diderot was a talker and a joker, which caused some people to dismiss him as frivolous. He became friends with Grimm, who was given to sarcasm and biting comments. Diderot had a playful spirit that Rousseau didn't share, perhaps because of his Calvinist background. Rousseau came to dislike Grimm, whom he considered a social climber. My impression is that, like many extroverts, Diderot, though intelligent by all accounts, behaved in a scattershot way which may have prevented him from forming deep personal relationship, and his non-scientific writings did not capture the hearts of his readers. It comes as no surprise that the most endearing writers of the period, Rousseau and Voltaire, are resting in the Panthéon, while Diderot is not. Nor did Diderot spur a movement like Rousseau, who was emulated in England and Germany by the Romantic poets.

As far as Diderot's personal life is concerned, he remained estranged from most of his family members until 1754, at which time the feud ended. Nanette had her only surviving child, Marie-Angélique, in 1753. Later, Marie-Angélique provided most of what little is known of Diderot's early life, based on what he told her while she was growing up.

Furbank's account of Rousseau's contentious departure from the Hermitage in 1757 is somewhat more informative than that of Cranston. It seems that Rousseau had handled his affair with Sophie d'Houdetot recklessly, and he resented the prying of Mme d'Epinay and her lover, Grimm. Rousseau had already become alienated from Grimm and had had a run-in with Diderot in his choice of the words "Only the wicked man lives alone" in a play that he had recently written; Rousseau took it personally. He had little in common with most of the other philosophes, in that he did not share their passion for science, and this, along with his dislike of Paris, caused him to gradually withdraw from the group. In turn, they saw his willful avoidance of acquiring a sufficient income as pure pigheadedness. The final straw occurred when Diderot attempted to give Rousseau some friendly advice on the situation with Mme d'Epinay and was rebuffed. Besides his dislike of science, Rousseau had an unusual tendency to reject group consensus and engaged in prickly behavior whenever pressured to conform. Subsequent to this visit, Diderot gave up completely and never saw Rousseau again. Rousseau's "hermit" act was unconvincing to the intellectuals in his circle, and because he was closed to discussion on many of the choices that he had made, thereafter they considered him an eccentric. That view became universal after Rousseau's disastrous visit to England with David Hume.

Because Furbank's favorite topics are at odds with mine, I am reading some chapters more thoroughly than others. I enjoy reading about the intellectual scene in Paris of the mid-eighteenth century, but Diderot's writings less so. The appeal is in the freshness of the intellectual atmosphere, which is striking compared to the present, in which ideas are not widely discussed and the media are engaged in a kind of thought control driven primarily by the profit motive. It is astonishing to witness all the tripe that is being served up these days, when, in theory at least, there are more educated people than ever walking the planet. For example, the majority of U.S. senators at present pale in comparison to the framers of the U.S. Constitution, which has been in effect since 1789; in contrast to the Enlightenment thinkers, they seem to be enthusiastically ushering in a new Dark Age. I'll keep plugging away and may finish sooner than I thought I would.

Diderot I

I am reading the biography of Denis Diderot by P.N. Furbank. As is usually the case when I start a new book, it takes me a while to warm up to the subject and the writing style of the author. In this instance I am finding Furbank to be a good writer, but am a little dismayed that he is making an effort to portray Diderot as a literary figure in addition to an Enlightenment thinker, because, if you've been reading this blog, you will already know that I'm not a great fan of literature at the moment, and in any case I don't think that Diderot has much claim to fame on that front. I have no interest in Diderot's fiction and don't plan to read any of it. On the other hand, Furbank is providing more information on Diderot's ideas than Maurice Cranston did on those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his biography that I discussed earlier. I should also mention that, although Furbank is an engaging writer, there is far less biographical information available on Diderot than there is on Rousseau, so this characterization may neglect certain aspects of Diderot's life. Diderot was not always honest and made expedient statements about himself when necessary, whereas Rousseau, who had an excellent memory, was generally honest in Confessions.

Diderot was born in 1713 in Langres, a town southeast of Paris, between Nancy and Dijon. His father was a successful cutler, and the family was close and supportive up to the point that Diderot became an aimless bohemian. His early schooling was at a local Jesuit college, where he proved to be an unruly but talented student. In the early years he tentatively planned a life in the church. He later attended the University of Paris, where he received a master of arts degree in 1732. Around this time he dropped theology and considered other fields, but he never got serious about any profession, and his father eventually lost patience with him, cut off his funding and told him to come home from Paris. From then on, Diderot became skilled at earning money or obtaining free lodging by everything from tutoring in mathematics to translating to posing as a potential monk. When he desperately needed money, his mother would send him some on the sly.

He met Rousseau in Paris in 1742, while he was still immersed in a bohemian lifestyle, and they immediately hit it off. Diderot had a girlfriend, Anne-Toinette Champion, whom he decided to marry that year, and he returned to Langres to try to get funds from his parents. He didn't tell them his intentions immediately, and they thought that he would be staying in Langres. However, when he did tell them there was an explosive argument, because his parents had already planned a marriage for him. Diderot had the audacity to threaten his father, saying that if he didn't receive payment for his share of the family property he would call the bailiff and have him arrested. His father retaliated by having him arrested and imprisoned in a monastery. After being incarcerated for a few days, Diderot escaped by climbing out of a window and made his way back to Paris on foot, staying off the main roads to avoid being spotted. Upon his return, he was initially estranged from his girlfriend, who was called Nanette, but they eventually reconciled and married in a private ceremony on November 6, 1743 without telling his family.

During these years, Diderot considered himself a philosophe, a class that emphasized reason over Christianity, and was suspect according to Parisian authorities:

...among the orthodox and bien-pensant, the term philosophe carried a sulphurous aroma: one of its meanings was "misanthrope" and another was "freethinker", and as late as 1740 the Dictionnaire of the Académie defined it as "a man who, by libertinism of mind, places himself above the duties and ordinary obligations of civil and Christian existence. It signifies a man who refuses himself nothing and observes no constraint."  In the bookselling trade, the term "philosophical books" was used to include pornography.

Diderot's romance with Nanette didn't last long, and their marriage was soon on the rocks, though it continued. She had several children who did not survive to adulthood. After 1746, Diderot had an affair with Madeleine de Puiesieux, an aspiring writer. Then, in 1749, the following incident occurred:

It so happened that in this summer of 1749 the French Government was in a mood of near panic, the country being thick with rumours of national bankruptcy and sexual scandal in high places. Thus it was decided to make a round-up of anti-government propagandists and of suspicious characters generally – atheists, Jansenists, pornographers or abusers of the King. By now Diderot was an obvious candidate, and on 24 July, at seven-thirty in the morning, he was arrested at his house – to which he and Nanette had lately moved – in the rue de la Vieille Estrapade. The two police officials ransacked his study for documents and led him off to a waiting hackney-coach, to take him to the prison fortress of Vincennes, six miles to the east of Paris.  

Though Diderot expected help from his family, they ignored him. However, Voltaire, with whom he was acquainted, used his connections to arrange for favorable conditions for him while jailed. He was allowed to dine with the Marquis du Châtelet and receive visitors. Mme de Puiesieux visited him, and, becoming suspicious, on her departure he spotted her with a new boyfriend, which caused him to break up with her permanently. More famously, Rousseau read about the essay prize proposed by the Academy of Dijon while walking to visit him. The question was "Whether the progress of the sciences and the arts has contributed to corrupting morals or to purifying them." According to Diderot, he recommended that Rousseau take the least popular position, i.e. that morals were being corrupted. Thus, the main theme of Rousseau's career was launched, and before long he became one of the most famous writers in Europe. As for Diderot, his experience of being locked in the monastery and at Vincennes left him with a deep fear of confinement.

As I proceed through this book my views may change a little. For now, I think that Diderot was a more significant thinker than Rousseau because of his work on the Encyclopédie. Although there were several contributors, it was Diderot who held it together and wrote articles on many topics that his collaborators couldn't handle. For example, Rousseau wrote primarily on topics related to music. The Encyclopédie is at present probably obsolete from a technical standpoint, but when it was written it represented a significant step toward making specialized knowledge widely available and stimulating research and intellectual activity throughout Europe. In comparison, Rousseau's main influence was on the liberté and perhaps the égalité portions of the political slogan liberté, égalité, fraternité, which I think has outlasted its usefulness. If you think about freedom in a practical sense, it immediately becomes apparent that it must be limited. Psychologically, Rousseau resented being assigned lower social status simply because he lacked an aristocratic background, but he also disliked being an employee subject to the whims of his employers. Rousseau influenced a wide range of thinkers, including Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson. In the case of Jefferson, we are left with the idea of liberty as an inalienable right, which now looks rather shortsighted and unexamined. In America, liberty has historically meant that one is free to build large factories and employ workers who roughly resemble slave laborers, and then make millions of dollars while contributing to the destruction of the biosphere. To put it mildly, the state of the modern U.S. would be a nightmare to Rousseau, and Jefferson would likely be shattered to see the disappearance of his ideal: the country gentleman class. I am interested in the shelf lives of popular ideas, which seem to morph over time and eventually become unrecognizable when compared to the original. So little was known in Diderot and Rousseau's day that I don't see much point in closely studying their ideas in the present.

Another aspect of the book that interests me is the differing personalities of Diderot and Rousseau. Diderot was gregarious and extroverted, with wide-ranging interests, while Rousseau was relatively private and introverted, with fewer interests. Aesthetically, I think I prefer Rousseau, whose writing may be of higher quality because he remained focused on fewer topics than Diderot and willfully avoided the distractions of city life.

This book is much shorter than the three volumes I read on Rousseau, but I intend to read it slowly and will probably make several posts on it.

Diary

I've been looking at my copy of History of the Town of Middlebury in the County of Addison, Vermont, which is a reprint of the 1859 edition. There is a separate section on the history of Addison County, which I hadn't read before. In that there is a description of the early use of land here that answers some of the questions I had about why the Severance family moved to this neighborhood and what they did. When Samuel Severance, the eldest Severance son, came to East Middlebury in 1786, the area was mostly wilderness, and when Vermont became a state in 1791, the population of Middlebury was only 395. The rest of the Severance family moved to South Munger Street in the 1790's, and Enos, Samuel's younger brother, built this house in about 1798. The book says that the early settlers grew wheat, which was quite profitable initially, but by the 1820's they had depleted the soil and wheat became unprofitable due to falling yields. For this reason the settlers began to graze cattle in order to produce manure to fertilize the crops, but wheat production came to a halt after a weevil blight in 1829. After that, Merino sheep became popular for several years, making Addison County the largest producer of wool in the country.

As far as the Severances are concerned, I think that they must have depleted their soil in Northfield, Massachusetts prior to moving here, and then grew wheat in Middlebury like everyone else. The land that they bought is flat and for a time was suitable for crop cultivation. However, the Severances eventually abandoned farming, probably because of insufficient profitability. The land is now only good for grasses, and that it what is mostly grown on it today. The grasses are used for cattle feed, and the fields are fertilized with cattle manure. Dairy cows are probably the largest industry locally, and there are also beef cattle. At the moment, local farmers are having a hard time getting by as a result of low dairy prices. They are also facing restrictions, since their agricultural runoff is polluting Lake Champlain.

I've read all that I'm going to in Biological Extinction and am going to move on to other subjects. The news just confirmed my latest point, in that individual countries are not doing enough to stop global warming, i.e., things are going to get much worse before they get better, per the latest U.N. report. As usual, I'm not finding new reading material that looks promising. I think I'm going to give up on biographies of artists, because the two I've looked at (on Manet and Gauguin) aren't very exciting. For lack of anything better, I may read a biography of Denis Diderot, which at least would complement my readings on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I have a hard time with reading material, because at this stage I find practically everything that is written for mass consumption to be a little simple-minded and commercially exploitative, whereas I don't really want to delve into most writing that is exclusively academic or extremely technical. I like writing that is informative but not too abstruse, and that is rarer than you might think. I guess that I'm similar to my readers, who seem to prefer my posts on literary and artistic matters to the more scientific ones. As far as fiction goes, I seem to have evolved into a post-fiction state of mind that may be permanent. Krasznahorkai has a new novel that I may skip.

While in most respects I'm getting really sick of this Trump phenomenon, it is still an extraordinary historical event. As the situation evolves, we are seeing that, not only do we have an incompetent president whose habits are essentially criminal, but that the Republican Party has decided to support him, because they are entirely dependent on the votes of the misguided voters who have been brainwashed for years by Fox News and other perverted news sources. The more Trump's life is exposed, the more he looks like a small-time crook – the kind of person who would normally have been in and out of jail several times by now or locked up permanently. If he hadn't had the financial resources handed to him by his father that allowed him to afford legal fights, he would never have got this far. This has sociological significance, because in previous eras Trump would probably have been taken out of commission by law enforcement well before now. This indicates that free speech and the news media have been ineffective at informing the public and brings into question the ability of people in the digital era to think clearly or recognize how they are being manipulated. Thus, my posts on human limitations and stupidity are not about hypothetical matters and are relevant to events that are playing out in real time.

The mouse situation has improved, as there have been no live mice spotted on the porch recently. William is able to use his new cat door in the basement, but so far he hasn't been using it much. I don't think he is comfortable with the new ramp and has not become accustomed to regular entry and exit through the basement. Although we had a strong blast of winter, with snow and unusually low temperatures, the weather has returned to normal, and most of the snow has melted. I think that once it gets cold again William will be more inclined to use the basement cat door when he's outside freezing and everyone has gone to bed. At the moment he still prefers to paw loudly at doors to get attention to come inside. He hasn't been catching much prey recently; the other day I rescued a live chipmunk that he was trying to bring in, and it got away.

Why We're in the Sixth Great Extinction and What It Means to Humanity

This is another essay in Biological Extinction, and was written by Partha Dasgupta and Paul Ehrlich. Dasgupta, as mentioned earlier, is the chairman of CSER, and Ehrlich is the well-known biologist who published The Population Bomb in 1968. I thought this essay was also worth mentioning, because it recounts the causes of the current reduction in biodiversity along with the likely consequences and mentions the type of economic accounting that may become necessary if technological advances don't come to the rescue soon. A lot of this is familiar ground, such as the effects of land use change, overharvesting, pollution and climate change. Biodiversity is presented as a requirement for human habitation rather than as an arbitrary ideal.

The following passage sums up most of the current situation:

Studying biogeochemical signatures over the last 11,000 years has provided a sketch of the human-induced evolution of soil nitrogen and phosphorus inventories (more specifically of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls and pesticide residues) in sediments and ice (Waters, et al., 2016). The authors report a sharp increase in the middle of the twentieth century in the inventories. Their work shows that the now-famous figure of the 'hockey stick' (Mann, 2012) that characterises time series of atmospheric carbon emission also characterises a broad class of geochemical signatures, and signal a sharp increase in the rate of deterioration of Earth's life-support system. It has been proposed (Waters et al., 2016) that the mid-twentieth century should be regarded as the time we entered the era now widely named the Anthropocene. Not coincidentally, it roughly corresponds with the rapid expansion of the sixth mass extinction event.

These readings are consistent with macroeconomic statistics. World population in 1950 was 2.5 billion and global GDP was a bit over 7.5 trillion international dollars (at 2015 prices). The average person in the world was poor, with an annual income of a bit over 3000 international dollars. Since then the world has prospered materially beyond recognition. Life expectancy at birth has risen from a global average of 49 years to 71 years, population has increased to 7.5 billion and world output of final goods and services (global GDP) is now 110 trillion international dollars, meaning that per capita global income is about 15,000 international dollars. The proportion of the world's population in absolute poverty (regarded by the World Bank to be below 1.9 international dollars per day) has fallen so dramatically (it is now just over 10 per cent of  the world's population, down from about 50 per cent in 1980 but still, disgracefully, some 750 million individuals in a world replete with rich people), that enthusiasts predict that within a generation the blight will have been eliminated (Jamison et. al., 2013). Set against those achievements, however, is that the 15-fold increase in global output  over a 65-year period reflects not only the stresses to the Earth system in general and biodiversity in particular that we have just reviewed, but also that humanity's demands from the biosphere have for some time exceeded its capacity to supply them. 

But demand cannot exceed supply indefinitely. Translated into the language of equity, humanity's enormous success in recent decades is very likely to have been a down payment for future failure. The trade-off is between living standards today and living standards in the future. Our immediate success in raising the average standard of living has created a conflict between us and our descendants.

What I found the most interesting is the economic slant, which draws into question the reliance on GDP statistics, the almost universal measure of the success for any country:

GDP is incapable of saying much about future possibilities because of the qualifier 'gross', which signals that the depreciation of assets, especially degradation of the biosphere, is ignored. Nevertheless, GDP has assumed such a prominence in public discourse today, that if someone mentions 'economic growth', we know that they mean growth in GDP. Governments today regard GDP growth to be above all else on their list of objectives. The mainstream media extol it and the public succumb to it. That could be why it has become customary to regard an economy whose GDP is large as wealthy.

But that is to make a mistake. Because GDP is a flow (so many dollars worth of flow of goods and services in a year), whereas wealth is a stock (so many dollars worth of assets, period), it could be that a country produces lots of goods and services by running down its assets. Lack of depreciation in national accounts of natural resources in general, and of biodiversity in particular reflects this error....GDP could rise over a period of time even as an economy's wealth declines. But that could not go on forever, any more than one can continually write ever larger checks without paying attention to the balance of the account.

The essay also discusses the inequality built into the current state of affairs:

The World Bank in its World Development Indicators 2016 reports that the 1.4 billion people living in its list of high-income countries enjoy a per capita income of 40,700 international dollars. Thus, the richest 19 per cent of the world's population consume over 51 per cent of world income (57 trillion/110 trillion). Continuing to assume that humanity's impact on the biosphere is proportional to income, 51 per cent of that income can be attributed to 19 per cent of world population. If the UN's Sustainable Development Goals are to be met, consumption patterns in these countries have to alter substantially.

Consumption behavior is influenced by our urge to compete with others (Veblen's 'conspicuous consumption') and by our innate desire to conform. Each is a reflection of socially embedded consumption preferences for goods and services. As both drivers give rise to consumption externalities, the psychological cost to a person of a collective reduction in consumption is likely to be far less than what it would be if she were to reduce consumption unilaterally. The aggregate cost could even be negative, especially if the working poor were less poor relative to the working rich, as the former are far greater in number.

The authors' conclusion:

The short-range solutions to the problem of preserving biodiversity are many, and dealt with extensively in the literature of conservation biology (Sodhi and Ehrlich, 2010). But these will all prove to no avail unless the basic drivers of extermination – policies seeking economic growth at any cost – are addressed. Collectively addressing these are possibly the greatest challenges civilization has ever faced.

No mention is made in the essay of how the necessary changes might be made in the real political world, and that is something I find to be of concern. Organizations like CSER rely on world organizations such as the U.N., which have limited authority and are often ignored by wealthy countries. In the U.S. there are elements favoring the ideas of individual freedom and American exceptionalism: Americans in general tend to believe that they deserve everything they have and that there is no reason for them to make any sacrifices, particularly for poor people who live in countries that they couldn't find on a map and will never visit. Any American politician who campaigns by promoting austerity measures and reduced consumption is likely to lose. Dasgupta, in contrast, was born in Bangladesh and probably has a broader view in these matters than most Americans have ever had. If you accept the main ideas in the essay, it is difficult to see how the issues discussed could be resolved peacefully. Although some Americans would not object to sharing the resources of the biosphere, a much larger number would reject the idea vehemently. It would take a world government and the legal restriction of individual rights to enact the kinds of programs that would meaningfully sustain biodiversity, and that seems unlikely to emerge until a much more palpable deterioration of the biosphere has already occurred.

Population: The Current State and Future Prospects

This is one of fourteen essays in Biological Extinction and was written by John Bongaarts. The essay is so comprehensive and succinct that I thought I would at least summarize it, because it presents in clear terms the current status and future trends in global population, and because this perspective is a good one for discussing major policy issues, though it does not extend into related areas such as climate change or geopolitics. Bongaarts is a demographer, and I found it interesting to see how regional population levels are framed by fertility rates related to relative degrees of participation in the Industrial Revolution.

Until modern times, women typically had six or seven children, and, because of diseases, famines, wars and infant mortality, the average life expectancy was thirty. When the Industrial Revolution occurred, life expectancies increased due to improved health and resources, and, with the introduction of women to the workforce, less time became available for childrearing. Eventually, with improved contraception methods, women chose to have fewer children, which allowed them to work and have greater control over their lives. What is interesting is that all regions are following a similar curve in which less-developed regions gradually reduce their fertility rates as their economies come to resemble more-developed regions. In the most-developed regions, the number of children per woman approaches two, and in some countries it has even fallen below that, meaning that, without immigration, their populations will decline.

While the world population increased only from about one billion in 1800 to about 2.3 billion in 1950, most of the world was still undeveloped in 1950, which helps explain why the population has since increased to about 7.7 billion – in just 69 years. Currently, the number of births per woman is slightly below two in Europe, about two in North America, slightly higher in Latin America and Asia and about five in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Thus, although population growth is approaching stability in most of the world, in Sub-Saharan Africa the number of children per woman will still be about three in 2050, which constitutes a continuing population explosion. Current estimates indicate that in 2100, the world population will be 11.21 billion, with 9.94 billion people in less-developed regions and 1.28 billion people in more-developed regions. The population of Sub-Saharan Africa will jump from .96 billion to 4.39 billion.

Bongaarts also mentions changes such as increased urbanization and problems associated with ageing populations. The former will put greater pressures on cities, while rural areas will stabilize. The latter will result in reduced workforces and insufficient resources to support the elderly. Healthcare and retirement systems will increasingly come under pressure, and this is already occurring in countries such as Japan and Italy, which have the lowest fertility rates.

Finally, Bongaarts discusses the importance of family planning from a policy standpoint. Family planning is an effective tool for reducing population increases in less-developed regions, where many women are not aware of their options. He concludes by saying:

Assisting couples to achieve their reproductive preferences is a compassionate act that promotes responsible parenthood and improves the lives of women, their children and their communities, especially among the poor and most vulnerable sections of society. The resulting decline in unplanned births also enhances prospects for poverty reduction and moderates the increasingly harmful impact of human activities on the natural environment.

I appreciated this essay because it concisely states the pertinent facts of population growth and touches on some of the policy measures that can be taken to alleviate increasing pressures. Often, population growth is discussed in far more nebulous terms, and it is less apparent that actions can be taken that affect future outcomes. Perhaps I like the essay because the framework falls within my preferred worldview, which emphasizes the biological aspects of mankind and rejects most ideology. I think there are several equally informative essays in this book, and I intend to discuss them separately.

Diary

I looked over Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminished Planet, by Partha Dasgupta, who is the chairman of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). The main essay is "Birth and Death," which was originally presented as the Kenneth Arrow Lecture at Columbia University in 2011. It has since been revised, and the book includes some responses. Dasgupta occupies an odd position in academia, with a primary interest in economics accompanied by an interest in philosophy, along with other areas such as climate change. I am not going to offer my normal review, because I don't want to take the time to read it carefully. Although Dasgupta's aims seem admirable, my initial reaction was that the subject matter is far more complex than can be handled effectively in economics or philosophy, and, unfortunately, this seems to me like a good example of intellectual overreach. I retain a certain mistrust of the contemporary fields of both economics and philosophy. A better starting point, I think, would be biology, which is scarcely mentioned. Dasgupta's mathematics-centric economics results in a questionable formula for deriving the optimum population for humans on the planet, and the philosophy descends from what I think of as obsolete writings on utilitarianism dating from the late nineteenth century. I wish Dasgupta luck, but this does not seem to me to be a promising avenue for solving actual world problems or, for that matter, developing interesting ideas. I think that the project is so academic and theoretical that it would be dead on arrival in policy circles. At leading universities in England, philosophy still retains a status that vastly exceeds its value, and Dasgupta apparently has been sucked into it. It is unfortunate that CSER is so completely academic in structure, because that drives away original thinkers. England's best thinkers have been scientists such as Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, not philosophers such as Bertrand Russell or economists such as John Maynard Keynes. In the U.S., philosophy is practically a dead subject, and economics is disproportionately important only because it is the academic branch of the well-funded cult of capitalism. I think that sticking to real science can provide the best picture of where the world is headed, and that picture is what is needed to produce appropriate responses. To some extent, the mathematical modeling done by Dasgupta resembles the rationalist oversimplification in the Chicago school of economics, which I discussed recently. As I've noted previously, mathematically precocious researchers tend to become disproportionately rewarded in their fields. I am reminded of the old saying, "When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

The other book I have is a collection of essays, with Partha Dasgupta as one of the three editors. The title is Biological Extinction: New Perspectives. The essays were presented at a workshop on biological extinction in 2017. Several of the contributors have scientific backgrounds, only a few have economics backgrounds and none have philosophy backgrounds, so on the whole the book is more appealing to me. I will probably comment on some of the individual essays as I read them, if that seems warranted. I became aware of both of these books because I am on a CSER email list.

Today we got about six inches of snow, and I just cleared the driveway for the first time since last winter. I am alone in the house at the moment and have been working on a project to allow William to enter and exit the house on his own. That involved installing a cat door in the basement and a wooden ramp for him to climb up to his outdoor cat house, which is located underneath a bay window. Because William is nocturnal, he is usually out during most of the night, but in winter, when it's snowy outside, he spends more time in the house and wakes me up in the middle of the night. Since he doesn't hunt as much in winter, I'm hoping that he won't start bringing live mice or other animals into the house. I am trying to help him, because it's not his fault that he's wild, and I usually get along fine with him. The other house member – the one who wanted a pet – dislikes William and would have got rid of him long ago if I hadn't taken responsibility for him. 

Diary

This morning I hiked up to Abbey Pond, which is on the trail closest to the house, for the second time this year. Although there are no scenic vistas, there is the pond, with beaver lodges and a beaver dam. One benefit is that it isn't popular with hikers, and usually no one else is to be seen. There is a good view of Robert Frost Mountain, which actually consists of two peaks if you count the one that we can see from our house. This time there wasn't a moose around, but I did see a bobcat at fairly close range – about fifty yards – on the way back. I took along a gun for protection for the first time, because there have been a few incidents recently. Over the summer, people were attacked at two different locations by rabid coyotes, and in October, two hikers were attacked by five large bear hounds. The dogs seem to have been interested in the hikers' poodle and injured both the poodle and the woman who was trying to protect it. At times the hikers thought they were going to die. The ordeal ended after about half an hour when one of the hunters showed up. They had been tracking the dogs through their GPS collars and saw that they had something cornered. This is a major news story locally, because state law permits hunting dogs to run freely in packs, and in this case the owner may only receive the equivalent of a ticket. If something were to happen to me while I was up there alone, there would be no help: the nearest person would be miles away, and there is no cell reception.

When we moved to Vermont, I thought that I would be doing much more hiking than I actually have. Unfortunately, I usually go alone, since my only possible hiking companion hates insects, doesn't like to sweat and prefers knitting. I haven't been to any of the major peaks in Vermont, some of which contain entirely different biomes, resembling alpine tundra at their summits. However, I'm not a hiking fanatic, like the people around here who climb all of the 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks or hike the entire length of the Long Trail, which runs from Massachusetts to Canada. I just like to be outdoors, see the scenery and get my heart rate up occasionally. Today I had it up to 180 beats per minute and didn't die! The Abbey Pond trail is fairly steep in places, with a total ascent of 1260 feet. Of course, that is nothing compared to newer ranges that are more than twice as high. At one time, about 450 million years ago, the Green Mountains were much taller, but they've eroded down to 4000 feet.

The mouse saga continues. The mice involved are either white-footed mice or deer mice, which look very similar to each other. Perhaps because of improved growing conditions for oaks and other plants, there is more mouse food available than usual, such as acorns, and there may be a local mouse population explosion. I know this because I find new mouse remains on the porch almost daily. William also continues to bring in live mice, which he releases and chases around the porch. When they climb the screens to escape, he sometimes follows after them, damaging the screens, and I repair them often. My latest solution has been to open small holes next to the screen frames on the porch floor so that the mice can escape without any climbing. This doesn't guarantee their survival, but will probably reduce screen damage. I also hope to spend less time removing live mice from the porch. I appreciate the reader who signed me up for a Stoelting catalog for research equipment involving mice, but I don't need it. That seemed like a highbrow joke.

In Vermont, the change from autumn to winter is usually abrupt. We are still eating fresh tomatoes, carrots and kale from the garden, yet it is snowing tomorrow. In very short order, I had to clear the leaves from the yard, mow the lawn one last time, service the yard equipment for the winter, put away the outdoor furniture and clean up parts of the garden. I will have to put on my snow tires soon. Comparatively, the transitions from winter to spring, spring to summer and summer to fall are slow and indistinct.

It looks as if the world is finally closing in on Donald Trump. Of course, I am delighted by the impeachment proceedings. There is still a chance that he will get through this in one piece, but as time goes on that seems unlikely. The Ukraine quid pro quo event has already been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, and that alone is sufficient to have him removed from office. If Republicans continue to support him in the Senate and he isn't removed, his popularity among the general public has probably already declined enough that he wouldn't be reelected. He would definitely lose the popular vote, and his electoral college vote only needs to decline slightly for him to lose. Many people throughout the country hate him, and he is even unpopular in his hometown, New York City. He has now changed his legal residence to Florida, and apropos of that I really enjoyed this satirical video.

I have a couple of books to read. One is on biological extinction and the other is on population ethics. These are academic books with dense prose, and I'm not sure yet how much time I'll spend on them, though the subjects are definitely important.