About the universe: Science vs. Speculation

I’m reading a fascinating book by Paul Halpern on the Edge of the Universe, where he says that astronomers can now give reasonable approximations to its age (about 13.75 billion years) and its observable size (approximately 93 billion light years in diameter). They also estimate that less than 5% of the observable universe is made of ordinary matter, the rest being dark matter (23%) and dark energy (72%). There is also strong scientific evidence that it began from an incredibly hot and unbelievably dense Big Bang and that it is expanding at a rate faster than previously anticipated.

This is what hard scientific evidence can tell us. Beyond this we can only speculate or join the realm of science fiction. Since I am not a Cosmologist I can only speculate about the many unanswered questions raised by the universe. Let me select three of them to speculate about – how much universe lies beyond the visible universe, how will the current expansion terminate and whether there are more universes beyond ours?

To help with my speculation I shall use an analogy with a child blowing soap bubbles as depicted in the following picture.

To answer the first two questions let us assume that our universe is the bubble that she is still blowing. The question then becomes how will it end? One possibility is that she will stop blowing and instead begin sucking in the air to deflate the bubble. This is the favourite forecast by those astronomers who believe in the so-called Big Crunch.

This possibility raises two correlated questions and answers. When will she decide to reverse the blowing and how many times can she use the same water and soap to inflate and deflate the bubble. Some astronomers who believe in the Big Crunch usually estimate that she will blow for about 100 billion years but do not venture an answer if or how often the process can be repeated.

As an economist I am inclined to accept that such cycles can repeat themselves indefinitely. But I have some difficulty to understand the existence of infinity outside mathematics and as something external to the human mind. So let me return to the other alternatives.

She may either continue blowing or stop blowing. In the latter case she could release the bubble or try to keep it. If she continues blowing, the bubble may release itself or simply bust. Whenever the bubble is released it can fly in space isolated or merge with other bubbles until eventually they implode or vanish from our sight.

It is easy to understand that the outcome is highly unpredictable in the absence of statistical history. Unfortunately, when it comes to forecasting the future expansion path of our universe(s) we do not have the luxury of statistical analysis. So we can only speculate on how large is the share of the observable universe. Is it 99% or just an infinitesimal part of it? This remains an open question.

Turning now to the third question – the possible existence of many universes – the picture seems to suggest that we can have many bubbles (universes) all originating from the same source. But we can equally admit that there more boys and girls blowing soap bubbles. Indeed, why not admit the possibility that there an infinity of universes? This multiverse idea about a collection of universes is gaining ground among many cosmologists but so far it can only be a speculation of the kind any layperson like me can make.

Even if the existence of one or two more universes is proved we are still left with the problem of deciding if their number is finite.

So, until we have tackled satisfactorily the notions of finite and infinity, scientific pronouncements must be separated from speculative hypothesis. That is, just like investors, cosmologists must separate facts from speculations.

The stupidity about the climate change debate

No day passes without us hearing about climate change. No problem with that for the British, because for them weather has always been a popular topic to start a conversation. What is annoying about this is that some people are trying to make a political issue about it and cash-in money out of this at the tax-payers cost.

Of course, there is climate change as there has been for millions of years and will continue to be for the million years ahead. There will be recurring spells of extreme heat, cold, rain, drought and so on.

Some of these changes may be influenced by mankind be it through fire, deforestation, CO2 emissions or something else.

Mankind has experienced that and has successfully adapted and survived such extreme conditions and will continue to do so.

So is there anything new about climate change except the mumbo-jumbo of today’s environmentalists; which is not fundamentally different from the Middle Ages prey of the church and witchcraft on the helpless and ignorant before a plague? Absolutely not!

We may wish to believe that we can fine tune the weather to our desires. That might be a possibility in a distant future, but it certainly is not an option now and in the foreseeable future. The best proof is to remind us that if we cannot easily fine tune the economic activity, a man-made process, we cannot expect to fine tune a natural process of which we know much less and over which we have so little control.

So modern sorcerers – sorry, “pseudo-environmentalists” – please give us a break and find something useful to do which is not preying on other people´s fear or ignorance.

Lasting errors, prejudices and rediscoveries in science

It is astonishing how prejudices can perpetuate the generalized acceptance of some errors many centuries after they were identified as such. The following examples from astronomy and economics are paradigmatic.

Despite Copernicus demonstration in 1543 that the Earth was not the centre of our solar system, the Ptolemaic geocentric view of the Universe was still widespread at the time (1687) when Newton published his law of universal gravitation. More extraordinary is that today in America one in five Americans still believe that the sun moves around the earth.

Such lasting mistaken beliefs can only be explained by theological prejudices and dogmatism.

Similarly, in economics, the Marxist labour theory of value inspired in David Ricardo´s theory of value was being drafted in 1844 (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts) while Gossen (1854), Jevons (1862) and Walras (1874) separately developed the marginal theory of value based on utility. This new theory provided a better explanation about the way exchange prices are set in markets and could also incorporate labour in its approach without invoking the Marxist view of labour exploitation. Marx, in the first edition of Das Kapital published in 1867, persists in a labour theory of value based on the idea that “the worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates”.

Still today, despite the theoretical and historical discredit of such theory, Marxists and other believers in the labour theory of value persist in such erroneous view of how prices are formed. Again, the survival of such prejudice can only be explained by ideological reasons, this time by their aversion to capitalism.

Although such forms of ideological obscurantism should be avoided by science, it would be ill-advised to discard completely their starting axioms as they may prove useful for new rediscoveries.

For instance, in astronomy, I can postulate that if the universe is infinite then every point in a three-dimensional space can be considered the centre of that universe and thus restate the geocentric view of the earth. Likewise in economics. Since consumption and work cannot be defined respectively as synonymous of utility and disutility (for instance I often derive more pleasure from work than from consumption), I can postulate that no matter how widely defined is utility it is a finite standard insufficient for unequivocal determination of exchange prices. So, a multi-dimensional approach is required to bring in cost of production, neurological and social factors that account for non-rational determinants.

In conclusion science is a continuous process of discovery–error–rediscovery that cannot be prejudiced about past beliefs.

Personality and Productivity

In a recent book Susan Cain tries to rebalance the current obsession with extrovert personalities, by illustrating “the Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”.

Just as the fashion industry has been promoting a major slimming industry by employing only skinny models, the entertainment business is creating a similar big business in personality spinning through self-help books and coaching seminars on assertiveness, social skills, team playing and many other activities aimed at making us all extroverts.

There is nothing wrong with the extroversion and slimming industries as long as they profit from such passing fads and illusions without damaging our health. However, Cain claims that contrary to conventional wisdom introverts are in fact significantly more productive and creative than extroverts. Therefore, if that is true, the current bias in educational pedagogy to promote extroversion through group work and other socializing techniques might threaten our children´s future productivity.

Nevertheless, from my personal experience, I am inclined to favor the hypothesis that personality has little or no role in explaining individual productivity in most professions (with the obvious exception of showbiz). And, this might be so regardless of whether higher individual productivity is achieved by effort (endurance) or creativity (entrepreneurship).

So, until psychologists and biologists provide us with sufficient data on the link between productivity and personality the jury is still out to decide on this matter, and parents and educators should be careful about embarking on fads to manipulate personality in whatever direction they like more. Education is more about diversity than conformity.

University Men in Business

University Men in Business was the topic of one of the earliest radio broadcasts by John Maynard Keynes in 1927. Obviously, the much discussed and little understood relation between Universities and Business is an ever-lasting theme. The talk was moderated by Sir Ernest Benn, a business man who had not attended University. The two discussants were Mr. Walls, the Managing Director of Lever Bros Ltd, who had attended University and Mr. Keynes of Cambridge University.

After an introduction by Sir Benn, where he made a distinction between education and instruction, here are some interesting extracts of what they said:

Mr. Walls: Universities can help us in business … making the career of business more of a profession than it is today. … Today it is expected that an undergraduate … will leap straight from the university into business and settle down immediately into it. No one expects the same thing of a lawyer or any other professional man (clergy, doctors, etc.).

Business calls for a professionally trained business man and the question is: Can the universities provide him in the same way that they have successfully supplied the older professions?

Mr. Keynes: The men whom the universities have supplied to the business world in the past have belonged to two quite distinct types.

There are first of all the sons of wealthy business parents … they will, at the end of it all, find a safe berth in the family business or in some other concern where the family has influence. … The degree he takes will not be much scrutinized. For him, the university is a pleasant and delightful interlude without much serious bearing in his future career.

The other type consists of undergraduates with no family or other influence in the business world, who are faced with the necessity of earning a living immediately after the conclusion of their university career, and have nothing but themselves to depend upon. These young men are naturally, as a rule, pretty serious workers.

Now, in the past, the majority of university men in business have belonged as a rule to the first type. … I fancy, however, that the other type … is going to become increasingly important.

[Blogger comment: How much has this ratio changed?]

Mr. Walls: What I would be interested to know is what kind of vocational training, if any, followed the university course in these cases.

Mr. Keynes: it is a mistake for the universities to attempt vocational training. Their business is to develop a man’s intelligence and character in such a way that he can pick up relatively quickly the special details of that business he turns to subsequently. … special training … can only be taught by business men to business men.

[Blogger comment: Where are we now on this endless dispute?]

Note: The full transcript can be found in: Keynes on the Wireless, Edited by Donald Moggridge

Economics retreat?

At least since Adam Smith, welfare economists have been aware of the limitations of their science to measure wealth. However, they have done very little to overcome the limitations of measures such as GDP, except in relation to price adjustments through the so-called purchasing power parities.

Not surprisingly, some have come up with complementary/ alternative measures such as the UN Human Development Index. However, these are often a mixed-bag of vague concepts that many scientists disregard as not serious science.

However, now the OECD, once a stronghold of serious economics, has joined the crowd with a Better Life Index (see: OECD), intent on finding “out what people want and need and what government is giving them”. This seems a lot of wishful thinking that will fail the quantitative test required by economic science.

To understand how difficult is to measure the way people value some non- traded goods and services it is easy. For instance, some people are happy to live in dirty and congested cities and would be bored to death if forced to live in perfected landscaped and organized towns, while others feel the other way around. So, how do you aggregate the preferences of these two people to come up with a national valuation of their welfare?

So the real challenge to economics will not come from this new OECD index.

Instead, it might come from the emerging science of happiness initiated by Prof. Richard Layard and others. However, this is only in its infancy and it will take many years before it deserves the title of science.

Meanwhile, may be economists will decide to descend from their pedestal of an axiomatic science based exclusively on positive economics.

Sex and family relationships as pillars of human happiness

This month SlutWalk marches, sparked by a Toronto’s cop remark about the role of provocative dressing in rape, brought sex again to the forefront of public debate. Given the importance that sex (or the lack of it) has in our daily lives, and the fact that family relationship always come top in any surveys about human happiness, we need to explain why we did not include them among the six pillars of human happiness.

The reasons for exclusion are different from those we used to exclude religion. They derive mostly from the fact that all controversial issues surrounding sex and family relationships depend on historical context and involve moral values that are better debated within the principles of liberalism, enlightenment and science.

For instance, the right to indecent exposure or promiscuous relations that is invoked by some of the feminists among the SlutWalk promoters is better discussed in the context of the limits to freedom in a society ruled by liberal principles.

Namely, such limits must be defined bearing in mind the historical experiments with free love in the 1920s and the 1960s and the attempts to eliminate the family institution in communist regimes. Both experiments ended up degrading the role of women. The first by turning into sects whose leaders abused women into coercive sex while the second degraded women turned into second class citizens or forced to prostitution.

Likewise, old debates about the use of sex for pleasure or procreation, the health consequences of masturbation, incestuous relations and other non-conventional forms of sex can now be studied scientifically. Other issues such as the age of consent, monogamy vs. polygamy, cohabitation vs. marriage, divorce, etc. should be discussed under enlightened principles and bearing in mind their impact on society cohesiveness and productive capacity.

For all these reasons, and despite the vital importance of family relationships for happiness, we did not separate them as one of the six pillars of human happiness.

Sharing the gains of research: public costs vs. private profits

The rewards from research are basically unpredictable. A researcher may spend his entire life tackling a problem without finding a solution or he may find a solution in a matter of minutes. Equally, society may value instantly a discovery or it may take centuries before finding a profitable use for such discovery. This raises some fundamental questions on how to ensure a fair sharing of the rewards of scientific endeavors.

Let us use the tale of four friends who began their research careers at the same time and retired on the same day. Researcher A, B, and C worked in a public sector University while researcher D worked in a private sector company. By sheer chance, on the first week after retirement, researchers A and D came up with a discovery they had pursued their entire life and that can be immediately sold for 100 million each. Researchers B and C did not make any money-making discoveries but had significantly different careers. Researcher B was a hard working researcher like researcher A, while researcher C enjoyed an easy life and devoted himself to academic politics that frequently were hostile and obstructive in relation to the work of researchers A and B.

The first question to reflect is on whether researchers A and D should keep the 200 million or should payback some of the money to their former employers. Since their employers financed the freedom they enjoyed to conduct research during their entire career, it seems fair that they should share the gain with their former employers. Note that this applies regardless of how much their employers spent on their research projects. Indeed, researcher D is most likely to have some claw back clause in his contract with his former private sector employer that will force him to return 70% or more of his gain to his former company. However, in many government institutions researcher A would get away with keeping his full gain. This would be a typical case of socializing the costs and privatizing the gains from research and most of us would consider it as an unfair greedy behavior.

But let us judge the fairness of the situation from the point of view of the researchers. Research is a rather individual process, and therefore its results are largely perceived as an individual achievement. Moreover, in some fields, like literature, employers do not support any costs beyond the researchers’ salaries. While other institutions make the life of their researchers a hell. So from the individual researchers’ point of view it seems extremely unfair that those who contributed nothing to their money jackpot now want to keep a large share of the gain. For instance, researcher A would not mind sharing the money with his university provided that it would be used to finance the careers of future researchers like his colleague B, but he will feel defrauded if the money is to be used to pay for the University’s bureaucracy and to finance researchers like his colleague C.

So we may conclude that there is no single standard to judge the fairness of the distribution of the gains from research. Only a balanced view of the interests of the researchers and their institutions will be conducive to a solution that can be judged fair on unequivocal moral grounds.

Scientific spirit and Easter traditions

It is Easter time and, from Spain to the Philippines, the media is full of re-enactments of Easter traditions.

There is nothing wrong with the revival of old traditions, provided that they are selected on a scientific basis. Easter provides a unique example of this principle.

For instance, it is quite different the re-enactment of the burial of Christ on Friday Easter and the resumption of Sunday pastoral visits.

The second celebrates the resurrection of Christ and the opening of our house to friends and acquaintances. It is a hymn to joy and friendship.

The first, appeals to the dark side of humankind, self-flagellation and fear. These are all low and primitive sentiments on which religion has often prayed during its darkest days of the medieval inquisition.

So, unless one is ignorant, macabre or masochist, there is no sensible reason to support the revival of the first type of traditions, which go against everything that an enlightened spirit should pursue.

The origins of enlightenment and liberalism

Liberalism and enlightenment are sometimes taken as synonymous. It is true that they are both indispensable pillars of human progress and rose intertwined to preeminence in the middle of the 18th century.

Enlightenment traces its origins to Descartes' Discourse on the Method, published in 1637, while John Locke’s Two Treatises (1690) established the liberal idea that government acquires consent to rule from the governed, not from supernatural authorities. However, they can develop separately and do not need to tag along, in the way the scientific method and the enlightened virtues do.

Besides, there are two distinct schools of enlightenment, the French Enlightenment focused on the power of reason and the members of the British Enlightenment emphasizing its limits. For an excellent summary contrasting the role of these views on reform and gradualism read this post by David Brooks on two theories of change.