Everyday Epistemology # 1

How do you know what you know?

If you don’t know what you know, can you trust anybody else to know it for you?



Be very suspicious.

Everybody is biased - coming down on one side or the other of various issues. For instance there is the freedom -vs- fairness divide . Liberals want everything to be fair - treatment of the planet, treatment of poor people, treatment of threatened species, treatment of rats if you belong to PETA, etc. Conservatives want to be free to do whatever they want to do. They don’t want anybody telling them anything. They don't care if the world goes to hell in a hand basket so long as they get to own the basket.

Everybody is scripted - unwitting players in the family and class dramas by which we view the world and organize our biases.

“I worked hard for my money and now YOU want to give it to THOSE people.”

“Hey man, you know THEY will always keep a brother down.”

Everybody hates - something or somebody. If opposing sides didn’t exist we’d invent them based on our biases and scripts. Although we are a cooperative species we are also a combative species (can’t have one without the other). We need villains.

So, who can you trust?

Not those with biases, not those with scripts, not those with hatreds. Their opinions and ideas are tainted.

(And as I have noted in a previous post, you also can't trust passionate people, people who seek credibility by citing lone-wolf PhD's from MIT, people who place too much faith in single subsets of data, and conservatives with ties to the fossil fuel industry.)

Who does that leave?

Something seems wrong here.

(More to come.)

Getting Ready For The Great Climate Change Debate



A Lincolnesque Moment?

The debate over climate change legislation is coming this summer to a congress, cubicle, bar, and blog near you.

You don't hear a lot now, but it could be pretty big stuff. After all, if the global warming people are right, the fate of the planet could be at stake. (I like to think of the debate as a little black swan being trailed by bigger, nastier swans.)

Given that this might be a Lincolnesque moment (but probably without a Lincoln) it behooves us to get ready - to figure out what we believe so that we can send emails to congresspeople, argue with friends, etc.

Who Not To Trust

Because the subject is so complicated, for me it is mostly a matter of figuring out who to trust and not to trust. Should I trust liberal Paul Krugman, conservative George Will, somewhat conservative David Brooks - or the sincere lady down the hall who says she gets her answers from an MIT PhD?

I have come up this personal checklist regarding who not to trust.

I tell myself to:
  • Watch out for really passionate people. As the poem says, "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity". They often confuse certitude with rectitude, and like the guests on Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer are inclined to drama.
  • Be especially wary of passionate people with distinct conservative or liberal biases. As argued in my Freedom -vs- Fairness blog, both sides can be tainted. Conservatives, who value economic freedom above all else, resist restricting anyone's freedom to make money - even if that freedom does damage to others. They cannot even admit the need for restrictions. Liberals, having extended the notion of fairness to include equal treatment of the planet itself (not a bad thing) can also be suspect. Even if it were proven that there is nothing we can do to counter climate change, I expect that some liberals would want to enact punitive legislation just for the damage already done.
  • Be alert to those who seek credibility by citing lone-wolf scientists from MIT (or Harvard, Yale, Cal Tech - wherever). They can be very seductive. Enough PhD's have been produced by prestigious schools to support any position imaginable. Because these people are crazy does not mean that they aren't smart or smart sounding. Even legitimate scientists are not to be trusted individually. That's not how the process of public prediction and confirmation works.
  • Try not to place too much faith in any single subset of data. In a field as huge and complex as climate change it is possible to find observations to support any position. Those crazy PhDs noted above are not without their empirical evidence.
  • Be very very dubious of conservatives - passionate or otherwise - with ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Who To Trust

So, who do you trust?

Some people argue that you should study the subject and become sufficiently well versed to have your own legitimate opinions.

I don't think that's possible, even if you have a PhD from MIT. As proposed in the SECULAR FAITH IN A SANE UNIVERSE post in this blog, I think that complex issues are best answered collectively by the largest creditable community you can find. That's how science works. The weirdness gets averaged out and what's left is the best opinion at the time.

Based on my web browsing (if you trust me), the best consensus on climate change comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cited on EPA's Climate Change web site.

State Of Knowledge

So, what do we know?

Quoting the State of Knowledge, from the EPA and the IPCC:

Scientists know with virtual certainty that:
  • Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
  • The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
  • An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007).
  • The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
  • Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

What's very likely...

  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations" (IPCC, 2007). In short, a growing number of scientific analyses indicate, but cannot prove, that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are contributing to climate change (as theory predicts). In the coming decades, scientists anticipate that as atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise, average global temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise as a result and precipitation patterns will change.

What's not certain...

Important scientific questions remain about how much warming will occur, how fast it will occur, and how the warming will affect the rest of the climate system including precipitation patterns and storms. Answering these questions will require advances in scientific knowledge in a number of areas:

  • Improving understanding of natural climatic variations, changes in the sun's energy, land-use changes, the warming or cooling effects of pollutant aerosols, and the impacts of changing humidity and cloud cover.
  • Determining the relative contribution to climate change of human activities and natural causes.
  • Projecting future greenhouse emissions and how the climate system will respond within a narrow range.
  • Improving understanding of the potential for rapid or abrupt climate change.
What Next?

Given the State of Knowledge quoted above, doomsday seems possible but not inevitable - at least not yet. Therefore, when I write my emails and present my arguments, I'm going to propose that we do something but not everything - holding out the possibility of doing more should accepted science indicate that the doomsday scenario is more likely.

A cap and trade system seems fine, or maybe a straight carbon tax. Because there is no doomsday consensus yet, there is probably not the political will for really effective action. But a public policy tipping point might be possible. And regardless, "going green" seems like a good thing. Although nobody knows for sure (that's how black swans work) it seems reasonable to believe that the various green initiatives might develop new technologies that could actually spur the economy rather than drag it down.

Link Summary

Affirming Taleb-Style Skepticism in Scientific American


(Michael Shermer's , author of "Skeptic" column in Scientific American)

Although Nassim Taleb would be the first to point out that he did not invent the principles of skeptical empiricism described in his Black Swan book, it is interesting to see some (but not all) of those ideas affirmed in the Scientific American (July 2009 issue). It makes me think that those "ah hah!" moments I had when reading the book were legitimate.

One affirmation occurs in Michael Shermer's "Skeptic" column. Arguing that science is the best avenue to the truth, he describes the "null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until proven otherwise." Basically this means that in science (unlike law) a statement is presumed to be wrong (guilty) until it proven right - and even then you can never really be sure.

This is akin to Taleb's notion of negative empiricism (as taught by Karl Popper). Quoting my Black Swan Book Report... although you can never be absolutely sure that your theory or proposition is true, just one negative result can prove it wrong. That's where truth comes from. Evidence is asymmetrical. One piece of negative evidence can offset a lot of positive evidence. We should regard all theories as provisional. Don't look for what will prove you right but what will prove you wrong; it's a faster more certain process and you'll learn more.

The other affirmation is in "The Science of Bubbles and Busts" article by Gary Stix. He describes built-in biases which lead humans to make financial mistakes that in aggregate result in economic bubbles and busts. He says that we have...
  • A confirmation bias which prompts us look for evidence that confirms ideas we already have.
  • A herding bias which leads us to agree with everybody else.
  • An availability bias which leads us evaluate information based on context rather than merit.
  • A bias toward overrating our own abilities.
  • A bias to engage in heuristic-based intuition when we should be trying to think rationally.
These are the same biases and tendencies cited by Taleb as reasons for our inability to properly understand black swans. Taleb also notes our tendency to prefer a good narrative to the facts.

I think Taleb would disagree with the premise of the article that once these biases are understood that tools can be devised to predict economic bubbles. He would probably say that insofar as these events are true black swans (not gray swans) they are inherently unpredictable.

Ain't That Some Shit, Nassim Taleb? (Video)

Another attempt at this video...

Phase Space in Extremistan?

A series of accidents ...
  • A recent Black Swan presentation where I tried to make a connection between Nassim Taleb's Mediocristan/Extremistan idea and several other attempts to categorize the known/unknowable - Kant's phenomena/noumena thing, Castaneda's tonal/nagual concept, etc.
  • A slide in that presentation noting that "gray swans" are products of non-linear chaos.
  • A dusty clipping from the June 1994 issue of The Economist offering the best explanation I've ever read of the term "phase space".
...leading me to wonder if phase space is part of Extremistan.

Aside 1 - Is synergy a black swan? Maybe.

Aside 2 - What is phase space? It is a mathematical view of action in the "real" world. Consider the example of the pendulum described in the Economist article. The pendulum swings back and forth; its position and velocity constantly changing. In the real world the action of the pendulum is an arc. In phase space, the action is represented by a two-dimensional chart showing changes in position and velocity. An ideal pendulum with no friction would appear as a circle in phase space.

Non-linear chaos refers to fluctuating phenomena that appear disorderly in the real world but display order in phase space. As the article notes, "populations of animals, bubbling pots on a stove or measles epidemics" are all examples of non-linear chaos.

Patterns traversed in phase space are sometimes called "strange attractors" (one assumes because the behavior of systems is strangely attracted to these patterns). The picture below is a two dimensional view of the three-dimensional Lorenz attractor.

It describes the chaotic behavior of weather patterns - leading to the so-called butterfly effect meaning (more or less) that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a hurricane in Florida. There is order here - constrained by the strange attractor. But within that order is infinite disorder.

Strange.

So, returning to my original question - Is phase space in Extremistan?

Extremistan is supposed to be the real reality underlying the man-made view of Mediocristan.

So, where does phase space belong?

Which is more real - the confused real world, or phase space which reveals the underlying order in the real world?

Is phase space real?

Does one peer through/past the behavior of the world of appearance to the underlying truth of phase space?

I suppose Taleb might say it doesn't matter. In the real world, the swans are definitely black. In phase space, they are gray. In the real world, you don't know the swans are coming. In phase space, you might know they are coming but you can't know when or where.

Orgasms and Black Swans

The other night the Group discussed Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book. I furnished the pizza and beer and moderated (?) the discussion because it is a known fact that I am a little obsessed with the whole Black Swan business. I printed out a Power Point that I prepared for the occasion and we managed to get through maybe 10 of the 25 slides - which was probably eight more than I thought we would do.

The digressions stayed pretty much on the subject. Descartes only got brought up because I tried to squeeze in Kant's phenomena/noumena thing (which I likened to Taleb's Mediocristan/Extremistan idea). Several wondered if an event (like Pearl Harbor) that was anticipated by some but a surprise to most everybody else was really a black swan. The general consensus was yes.

The most interesting digression was when somebody wondered if his first orgasm (at age 12 I think he said) was a black swan. Interrupting the guffaws that ensued, he insisted, no, he was serious. At that point in his life the event was an outlier - unexpected and unprecedented. It was significant and life altering. And, after the fact it was inevitable.

Given his explanation, we all had to agree that he was right.

Black Swan Summary


Posts relating to Black Swans and Nassim Taleb...
(They tell me I am a little obsessed with this.)

Faster Than Light With the Point-Of-View Drive


Einstein's prohibition in his Special Theory of Relativity is not exactly against exceeding the speed of light, but being measured exceeding the speed of light - or, more specifically, against conveying information at faster than light speeds. As explained in this video narrated by Professor Ennui Pidawee, it's possible to exceed the speed of light so long as you use your own clock and your own subjective point-of-view.

Aside 1 (First Law of Universal Sanity) - Having a fixed speed of light keeps our universe sane. For example, if a spaceship approaching Earth at a speed faster than light sent a message, the spaceship would arrive before the message. Effect could precede cause. From the perspective of our hunter gatherer-derived nervous system, it seems weird that yardsticks shrink and clocks slow down the faster a thing goes. From the perspective of the universe, it is the price we pay for preserving causality. It is as if Einstein really discovered The First Law Of Universal Sanity - e.g., that the messenger shall not precede the message.

Aside 2 (other faster-than-light examples) - There are other examples of exceeding the speed of light. For instance, beyond the observable horizon of our ever expanding universe, bodies recede from each other at faster-than-light speeds. Here on Earth we are moving faster than light relative to unseen planets in distant parts of the universe. However, that's OK. Not only are those planets unseen, they are unseeable. Because the universe is expanding faster than light there is no possibility of messages being exchanged.

Another example of "superluminal" speed happens when "entangled" quantum particles, such as the particles produced when when radioative elements decay, are separated. These particles remain connected in some weird way, no matter how far apart they are. Measuring the property (say spin) of one particle instantly (and opositely) affects the corresponding property of the other particle according to the Heisenberg Uncertainy Principle. The distance between the particles has no affect. However, Special Relativity (and the sanity of the universe) is supposed to be preserved because (it is claimed) that no information can be conveyed in this manner.

Aside 2a (EPR Paradox) - The entanglement phenomenon prompted Einstein to join with scientists Podolsky and Rosen to propose the EPR Paradox. They said that because faster-than-light speeds were involved, the underlying Heisenberg Uncertainy Theory was wrong. This is in keeping with Einstein's statement "God does not play dice with the universe." Unfortunately, tests have demonstrated that the entanglement phenomenon is real. I don't know what this says about God - maybe that He has a mean sense of humor.

1 - Is order necessary?


Seems to be necessary - on personal and universal levels.

We’ve always needed order to make sense of stuff. Where does the tiger hide? Which berries are edible? What causes this and that? Because information never stops, we’ve had to organize it into manageable chunks - to reduce it to categories, collections, rules, laws, theories, algorithms, etc.. We had to invent the forest to avoid being overwhelmed by the trees.

As creatures who contemplate death, we also try to make sense out of that.

At the universal level, the constituent stuff of the external world (assuming a sane world exists outside of our heads) requires rules in order to get along. Unregulated stuff would bump into other stuff and make a mess. It would be chaotic, whimsical stuff.

Assumptions
Some question whether order is real, or an artifact, imposed on physical reality by human need. This series (although perhaps an example of imposed order) assumes that order is a necessary quality of a sane universe existing outside our heads. Others ask the opposite question - is order something more real than physical reality? (It’s the question asked by Plato when he talked about perfect forms - the “trees” vs “treeness” thing.) This article doesn’t truck with such semantic nonsense - but the notion of system-level order might come close.

2 - Where does order come from - from inside stuff or outside?


That is the question.

Does order come from the outside or the inside? Do rules emerge from the bottom or pour/trickle down from the top. Conservatives say one thing, liberals another. Capitalists and socialists are conflicted. So are popes and mystics. Scientists have issues. Philosophers and pundits argue endlessly.

The question has started wars, including the one that founded this country and the one that four score and seven years later threatened to tear the country apart. In 1917, the question did tear Russia apart. In 1546 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg church because he really disagreed with the pope about whose rules were right.

In the movie Braveheart, Mel Gibson, full of righteous defiance, shouts, “Freedom!”. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Gregory Peck, full of passionate reasonableness argues, “All men are created equal.” These are two views of order.

The list could go on and on but we won’t do that.

3 - Stuff-level order


The properties of subatomic particles determine the behavior of atoms which determines the behavior of molecules which determines the behavior of mixtures, aggregates, etc. Order seems to come from within, except for the weird extremes.

At the quantum extreme, looking at stuff makes it a wave or a particle. Measuring one property (say, spin) precludes an observer’s ability to know other properties (say, position). Does that mean the order comes from the observer or the observed?

At the cosmic extreme (and the middle too), there are fields - gravitational, magnetic, electrical. Although existing because of stuff, fields affect stuff. Do the fields cause order?

4 - System-level order (emergence)


Complex collections of stuff become organized into systems - weather systems, climate systems, geological systems, ecological systems, evolutionary systems, etc.. The stock market is a system. So is the economy.

Systems exhibit order (otherwise, they wouldn’t be systems). Where does this order come from - from the stuff which make up a system or from the system itself?

The organized behavior of local weather patterns can be traced to atmospheric conditions which can be traced to the properties of gaseous stuff. This order seems to come from within. The behavior of global weather patterns is trickier - seeming to be controlled by semi-random, Mandelbrotian chaos (a butterfly in Africa causes a windstorm in Kansas). Do these rules of non-linear dynamics derive from the gaseous stuff or the system?

The science of complex systems (of which my understanding is not complex) says that some system-level order comes from the system itself. The system is self-organizing. It makes its own rules. From the standpoint of the stuff which makes up the system the order comes from the outside.

A characteristic of these complex systems is “emergence”. Among other things, this is defined as order that arises spontaneously from a system. It is unexpected, novel.

Evolutionary Aside
In particular cases, the validity of the order might be questioned. Is it real or imagined? Is a system really present? Is emergence real?

For example, evolution produces changes in animals and plants in response to changes in the environment. The result is an ordered system of life, neatly divisible in various taxonomies and categories. Is this order the product of an external evolutionary system (maybe even a Higher Power), or is it an ordered inner response to random external changes?

Some say that the general thrust of evolution is from the simple to the complex, from lower order creatures (like bugs) to higher order beings (like us). It is a progression of order. This suggests that a system (or Higher Power) imposes rules from the outside.

Some, like Jay Gould (evolutionary biologist, author of Full House), say that such a progression is illusory. Gould says it is a statistical artifact based on the fact that the only direction available for evolution to proceed is from the simple to the complex.

Some say that the orderly nature of the living products of evolution could not be due to random processes. Religious people claim this is the result of a Higher Power (upper case). Scientists of complex systems also say it is a result of a higher power - but this one is lower case. These scientists say that evolution is a complex system whose inner rules dictate the occurrence of non-incremental changes (new species, types of organs - the emergence of life itself).

5 - Social order (animal)


Some animals exist primarily as individuals, never interacting with other individuals except maybe for reproduction or food. Other animals exist not only as individuals but as members of social groups.

Individual behavior is managed by internal controls, instinctual and/or learned.

Group behavior is managed by internal controls operating within the individuals doing the behavior, and by external controls imposed by other individuals (leaders) - or by the group itself (when the group is a complex system).

In invertebrate groups (insect colonies, etc) individuals relate to other individuals according to built-in rules. No leader directs the activities. The group itself does not exercise control over individuals.

Lower-order vertebrate groups also operate according to built-in rules. A school of fish swims this way or that, a flock of birds flies one way or another in response to internal controls possessed by all members of the group. There is no head fish or head bird.

Control is imposed from the outside when relationships between individuals become more complex. Typically in animal groups this control is exercised by a dominant individual. The leader might determine who has sex, who eats when, who grooms whom, etc.

Even a herd/pack/mob/tribe of higher order vertebrates might respond collectively to individual impulses under certain circumstances (wildebeests flee when the lion is spotted; humans run when someone yells, “fire!” )

It does not appear that animal societies rise to level of complex systems, where order emerges from the system itself.

6 - Social order (human)


Human social order begins where animal social order leaves off. The difference is complexity.

Large complex groups whose members interact in complex ways cannot always be controlled by a single leader. Some control must be delegated (which some animals also do). Power must be shared.

Various arrangements exist…
  • Rigid leadership hierarchies are imposed (for example by the Catholic Church and the military).
  • Teams tried
  • Committees coerced
  • Congresses convened
  • Collectives conceived
  • Councils elected
  • Matrix-style organizations attempted
  • Democracies born
  • Republics seized
  • Constitutional monarchies grudgingly allowed
And so on.

Sometimes the power sharing arrangements are reduced to formal rules. These rules are called laws, bylaws, regulations, constitutions, covenants, protocols, contracts, etc. The constituent parts of the society (individuals) establish an order which exists independently of individuals. There is a rule of law, not of men.

The arrival of formal rules might signal the existence of a complex system in the sense defined previously. The society, through its rules, has a life of its own. However, it is not clear whether such rules are “emergent” - arriving spontaneously out of the system. The Declaration of Independence might be emergent, but probably not Roberts Rules of Order.

7 - Political order


Politics is the art and practice of power sharing in (human?) social groups.

Progression
At the tribal level, human societies tend toward the strong leader model (although a hunter gatherer group might have both a hunting leader and a religious leader). As societies become larger and more complex, groups arise within groups - each subgroup with its own leader. Collections of groups become systems. The strong leader (king, queen, emperor, etc) can longer manage everything. Power sharing arrangements emerge.

In recent centuries, there has been a progression toward representative democracies of elected leaders. Power is pushed further down in the system, moving closer to the individuals. Does this progression represent an emergent response to increasing complexity? Did the United States come into being because its people demanded to be free? Or was it because a self-governing federation of states could manage things better?

Which Power Sharing System Is Best?
Most modern political systems (other than strictly authoritarian regimes) try to strike a balance between the need for control at the upper levels and the need for autonomy and flexibility at the lower levels. Lower levels need freedom to act - but their actions must be balanced against the needs and actions of other groups.

Politicians ask where does (or should) control come from - from the top, or from somewhere lower down? Who tells whom what to do? Who knows best, the government or the citizen?

Answers come from the liberal-left and the conservative-right with infinite shades of opinion in the middle.

There are several ways to categorize these groups. Some of the categories seem to work better than other - all might be examples of bogus order invented by humans looking for organization.

Notes: In the following, I present differences and positions as being obvious and self-evident - in keeping with the approach mentioned at the first of this series. But, maybe I’m wrong. Also, I thought I invented the freedom-vs-fairness thing mentioned below. But now I remember how the conservative columnist George Will sneers at liberal’s love of fairness. And I found this piece on the web by libertarian Charles Barr - http://libertyunbound.com/article.php?id=100.

Big Government -vs- Little Government
Government size is often used to categorize the liberal-left and the conservative-right. According to conventional wisdom, the liberal-left favors centralized control, the conservative-right decentralized control. However, when examined more closely, this division yields inconsistent and confusing results. For example:
  • The liberal-left favors a stronger central government for managing public policy (finance, health, commerce, business) but weaker authority when dealing with private policy (religion, morality, reproduction).
  • The conservative-right favors a weaker central government for managing public policy and stronger authority for managing private policy.
  • The liberal-left distrusts power wielded by groups within the system (by business, local government, military, religious political structures, etc.).
  • The conservative-right protects the power wielded by groups within the system.
Freedom -vs- Fairness
Another way to characterize the differences between the liberal-left and the conservative-right is how they view power sharing at the individual level. One side seems to emphasize freedom, the other fairness:

Freedom
 The conservative-right believes everybody should be free to pursue power (money, fame, etc.) with as little interference as possible from big government. How power is ultimately distributed depends on the individuals. Some will always end up with more power (money, fame, etc) than others. Inequities happen. The subgroups distrusted by the liberal-left will always be controlled by the richest, the smarted, the most aggressive, the strongest. For the conservative-right, this is a natural process, not to be messed with.

Fairness
The liberal-left believes not only in fairness of opportunity (like the conservative-right), but in fairness of results. No one individual should be allowed to have undue power over another individual. Inequities should be minimized. The power of central government shall be used to restrict the power of some to protect the power of others. Although not always acknowledged, the liberal-left believes that strong individuals, if left alone, will always get an unfair advantage over everybody else.

Freedom -vs- Fairness Corollaries
The freedom-vs-fairness division yields some interesting fall-out:

Correctness
There are correct expressions, utterances, views. Both the liberal-left and the conservative-right have notions of correctness that arise (or not) from their core positions. For the conservative-right, religion is often viewed as correct because it stems from individuals in the pursuit of freedom. Gun ownership is correct for the same reason. The liberal-left is concerned with speech; it should be fair and correct. Unfair speech is incorrect. Certain community esthetics are also subject to correctness (public art, landscapes).

Unfairness and Loss of Freedom
In the pursuit of fairness for all, the liberal-left is unfair to some (graduated taxes, business regulations, trade rules, etc). In the pursuit of freedom for all, the conservative-right allows individuals at the bottom of the heap to be dominated by those at the top. Only freedom of opportunity is equal.

Both sides impose order (and sacrifice freedom and fairness) in the name of correctness. For example, the conservative-right might censor speech and freedom in order to preserve a particular hierarchical structure (resulting from some individual’s exercise of freedom). The liberal-left might censor speech in order to ensure that one group does not speak unfairly about another group (this is “political correctness”).

At the extremes, both the liberal-left and the conservative-right can result (and have resulted) in totalitarianism. The unfettered liberal-left tends toward communism. The unfettered conservative-right tends toward dictatorship.

Hubris of the Left
When devising rules of fairness for the operation of a political system, the liberal-left must presume to understand the operation of the system. Those devising the rules of the liberal-left must assume they know better than those for whom the rules are being devised. When exercising power in the name of a public esthetic the liberal-left must assume that its esthetic is correct.

Free-Will and Responsibility
To the conservative-right, being free means having free-will. Individuals are free to choose between right and wrong. They are presumed to know the difference. They are responsibility for their acts. The liberal-left might acknowledge the free-will of others, but not their correctness. According to the liberal-left individuals don’t necessarily know their own best interests. They need to be helped, guided (or managed) - in the name of fairness and correctness. Free-will for some is limited - illusory. Such people might be held accountable for their acts, but not responsible.

Celebrations of the Right
The conservative-right with its emphasis on individual power favors hierarchical organizations. It celebrates the strong man, the tribe, the team. The conservative-right loves competition, aggression, dominance.

Symbols of the Right
  • Mel Gibson shouting “Freedom” in Braveheart.
  • Charlton Heston holding a musket in front of the NRA giving his “cold dead hands” speech.
  • A flag (especially the Confederate battle flag).
  • Patrick Henry shouting “Give me liberty or give me death.”
  • A lion.
Symbols of the Left
  • Gregory Peck arguing, “All men are created equal.” in To Kill a Mocking Bird
  • Martin Luther King saying “I’ve got a dream”.
  • Abraham Lincoln saying “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
  • A bonobo mokney.
Religious Orientation
The religious orientation of the conservative-right is toward Jehovah and Allah. The religious orientation of the liberal-left is toward Jesus and Buddha.

Economics
Positions on economic issues can also be grouped along fairness -vs- freedom lines.

The conservative-right believes in the freedom of individuals to pursue wealth without interference from central authority. The inequalities that result when stronger, smarter, more aggressive people rise to the top of the economic heap are to be tolerated. Unfettered capitalism - without external controls is the most efficient system for managing goods and services.

The liberal-left believes that unfettered capitalism will result in an unfair concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. It also believes that in a managed economy where everyone gains wealth, the total wealth in the system increases. Even if the slices of the pie remain unequally divided, the total size of the pie gets bigger.

Capitalism, even when somewhat managed, seems to be a system of emergent rules - where the order springs from the system itself.
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