The Root Problem

What do homes, college tuition, and health care have in common? They have all had massive price increases in recent years. These increases were not funded by increased personal income. Instead they were funded by a combination of increased risky borrowing capacity, and redistributing the costs through government programs or private insurance. In the case of homes there is a current explicit debate about whether government price supports (like farm price supports!) would be a good thing. In the case of tuition and health care the "price support" effect is less understood. For all three there is little recognition that government subsidies are not free, partly due to current magical thinking around deficit spending (as discussed earlier). And because of this there is very slow movement toward the necessary final state: one in which prices are lower, so that individuals can make payments out of regular income, without the need for risky loans or deficit-funded government subsidies.

Brin on Rand's Essentialism

"We do need a brief aside about Objectivism, which begins by proposing that reality exists independent of its perception. This contrasts refreshingly against the subjective-relativism offered by today's fashionable neo-leftist philosophers, who claim (in blithe and total ignorance of science) that "truth" can always be textually redefined by any observer - a truly pitiable, easily-disproved, and essentially impotent way of looking at the world.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, any fledgling alliance between Rand's doctrine and actual science breaks down soon after that. For she further holds that objective reality is readily accessible by solitary individuals using words and logic alone. This proposition - rejected by nearly all modern scientists - is essentially a restatement of the Platonic World-view, a fundamental axiom of which is that the universe is made up of ideal essences or "values" (the term Rand preferred) that can be discovered, dispassionately examined, and objectively analyzed by those few bold minds who are able to finally free themselves from the hoary assumptions of the past. Once freed, any truly rational individual must, by simply applying verbal reasoning, independently reach the same set of fundamental conclusions about life, justice, and the universe. (Naturally any mind that fails to do so must, by definition, not yet be free.)"

"The Art of Fiction, by Ayn Rand", a review by David Brin in his Through Stranger Eyes

The Appeal of Fantasy Fiction

I've been thinking about the continued appeal of fantasy fiction, especially in relation to topics I have discussed before such as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Moral Realism, and Essentialism. Science fiction author David Brin has written several essays critical of fantasy fiction, including J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress. His basic theme is:

It's only been 200 years or so -- an eye blink -- that "scientific enlightenment" began waging its rebellion against the nearly universal pattern called feudalism, a hierarchic system that ruled our ancestors in every culture that developed both metallurgy and agriculture. Wherever human beings acquired both plows and swords, gangs of large men picked up the latter and took other men's women and wheat... They then proceeded to announce rules and "traditions" ensuring that their sons would inherit everything.

Brin explains how these actions are ennobled in the literature passed down to us, such as the Iliad and Odyssey, the Bible, Arthurian legends, etc. I've been thinking about how these values were embedded at a more basic level, in the language we still use. Look at the term I used earlier: ennobled. The first online dictionary definition gives:

1. to make noble, honourable, or excellent; dignify; exalt
2. to raise to a noble rank; confer a title of nobility upon

[Middle English *ennoblen, from Old French ennoblir : en-, causative pref.; see en-1 + noble, noble; see noble.]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ennobled

Here, prior to the emergence of modern English, the concept of honorable behavior was bound up with the concept of the superiority of certain blood-lines of inherited privilege. If you accept some form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, that language influences thought, then the use of the English language itself provides a subconscious favorable disposition to the idea of inherited privilege. Critiques of the past or present nobility will inherently generate a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. Also note that the idea of noble blood is "essentialist", and fits with humans natural predisposition towards essentialist thinking.

My hypothesis is that feudal and essentialist thinking are embedded throughout all languages, including English. We aren't living in a feudal society, and science is constantly critiquing essentialist thinking. This creates a constant tension in the minds of readers and speakers of English. Fantasy fiction provides a release for this tension. It is a place where the language fits with the action. Often a magical land where essentialist expectations are reality.

Fantasy fiction is in turn divided into two broad categories: High Fantasy, and Swords and Sorcery. High fantasy, of which Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is the prime example, is centered on an epic struggle between Good and Evil. Swords and Sorcery (think earlier pulp fiction, such as Howard's Conan the Barbarian) is more morally ambiguous. However essentialist expectations, such as the reality of magic and the supernatural, are still met.

Most written Science Fiction today is closer to Swords and Sorcery in terms of moral ambiguity. "Hard" science fiction follows modern science in rejecting essentialism. While the "what ifs" of this type of fiction satisfy some readers, many others yearn for the moral black-and-whites provided by High Fantasy. This demand is satisfied in popular science fiction films, such as Star Wars. Here the heroes turn out to be nobles (like Strider/Aragorn the returning king in LoTR!), matching the essentialist expectations bound up in our language.

Backpacking Gear Test 2010

In last year's Backpacking Gear Test I achieved a base weight (without food, water, or fuel) of 23 lbs and a total pack weight of 30 lbs. This year I have replaced various items, and gotten down to a base weight of 16 lbs and a total pack weight of 22 lbs : a reduction of 8 lbs, or over 25%.

Gear Weights (spreadsheet)

I took all the 2010 listed gear to Castle Rock State Park. I hiked 2.6 miles (each way) with full pack to Castle Rock Trail Camp, and stayed overnight.

Granite Gear Escape A.C. 60 Pack





The Escape is Granite Gear's newest ultralight pack. Compared to last year's North Face El Lobo 65, it is over 2 lbs lighter. It has 5 liters less rated capacity (60 versus 65L), but with the rest of this year's compact new gear I actually have more free space than before. It is rated for a maximum load of 35 lbs (versus 70 for the El Lobo), but I've discovered I have zero interest in carrying heavy loads. The Escape only has a plastic frame sheet (versus the internal aluminum X-frame of the El Lobo) and has a smaller hip belt, so the El Lobo would be preferable for heavy loads. Overall I found the Escape with lighter load more comfortable than last year's El Lobo with heavier load.

The Escape omits various features the El Lobo has, including separate sleeping bag compartment, attached padded belt for the detachable lid as a fanny pack (the Escape lid does have belt loops), extra zippered entries, etc. It does also have a hydration compartment (internal pocket for a "camelback" bladder, plus drinking tube ports), but I used the external bottle holsters instead. They are angled so bottles can be accessed while the pack is on. This frees up more internal space, and eliminates opportunities for liquid disasters.

Big Agnes Fly Creek UL1 Tent









This year I've switched to a one-person tent. The Fly Creek UL1 saves over 2 lbs compared to last year's Sierra Designs Vapor Light 2 XL. This tent is smaller : I can only sit upright in the exact enter of the tent, and my head does touch both sides when I do so. My regular length North Face sleeping bag exactly fits in the tent length. There isn't room to place my pack beside me, but since I only carry a short sleeping pad I use my empty pack as leg rest. One nifty feature: a pocket in the mesh roof holds a headlamp perfectly positioned for night reading (see flyless second image).

The tent is free-standing, though it needs 2 stakes at the rear to pull the foot area open. It also came with the same aluminum stakes as last year's Vapor Light 2 (see stake picture with last year's blog entry). This year I decided to give them a try. They worked fine: no bent stakes. And a tip: the titanium wire handle of a folding spork can be placed through the small hole to use as a stake-puller. Don't try to pull them by hand.

Therm-a-Rest ProLite Air Mattress, Small

See image inside tent, above. This doesn't save weight compared to my earlier closed cell foam pad, but it is much more compact when rolled. They do make an even lighter pad, but user comments have had concerns about durability. As stated above I am using my empty pack as leg rest, so a small works fine.

REI Ti Ware Titanium Pot - 0.9 Liter

I picked this up on close-out sale last year; this non-nonstick version has been discontinued. I only use it to boil water for dehydrated meals, so I don't need the nonstick. My stove melted the silicone coating off the fold-out wire handles almost immediately, so I threw the handles away and use the old pot-lifter from my MSR steel pot set instead. This expensive pot does feel cheap (the lid wants to drop into the pot), but at 0.9L it does balance over my stove better the the 2L MSR pot, and most importantly it saves half a pound and a bunch of pack space. Yes, I bought a folding Ti spork, as my old plastic utensils won't fit inside the 0.9L pot. As stated above, the spork wire handle can double as a tent stake puller...

Other Changes

Include headlamp instead of mini-mag-lite, and a lighter first aid kit.

ECONned

That brings us to a final outcome of this debacle. A radical campaign to reshape popular opinion recognized the seductive potential of the appealing phrase "free markets". Powerful business interests, largely captive regulators and officials, and a lapdog media took up this amorphous, malleable idea and made it a Trojan horse for a three-decade-long campaign to tear down the rules that constrained the finance sector. The result has been a massive transfer of wealth, with its centerpiece the greatest theft from the public purse in history. This campaign has been far too consistent and calculated to brand it with the traditional label, "spin". This manipulation of public perception can only be called propaganda. Only when we, the public, are able to call the underlying realities by their proper names - extortion, capture, looting, propaganda - can we begin to root them out.

Yves Smith, ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, p. 308.

Game Time

Pen-and-paper role-playing games (RPGs) began as an expansion of rules for historical tabletop miniatures wargames. Tabletop wargame rules were concerned with creating accurate simulations of historical battles -- including medieval battles, such as Agincourt. Early RPGs modeled "heroes" as having the equivalent strength of several ordinary soldiers, and added rules for fantastic creatures, magic, and advanced technology. But the rules kept realism as the base case, so an ordinary soldier could fight, travel, heal, etc. in a manner approximating real life unless assisted by magic or advanced technology.

Imposing realistic times for travel and healing worked in the pen-and-paper game since all the players typically formed a single "party", and the referee could arbitrarily move the time-line ahead to skip weeks of boring travel or healing. This flexibility matched that which naturally happened in the opposite direction, where a few minutes of simulated combat time often took hours of real time to resolve. This freedom to manipulate the time-line was retained when RPGs were first moved onto computers. Many single player computer RPGs are still turn-based, and allow the player (sometimes controlling an entire party) to stop time while providing orders to each character. Again a few minutes of simulated combat can take longer to resolve (though computerization makes fast resolution much easier). And many games still allow time to be sped up during travel or healing.

Unfortunately this flexibility disappears with massively-multiplayer online RPGs. These provide the same persistent world model for all the players, so the time-line must move forward at the same fixed rate for everyone. A "realistic" mechanic for healing or travel would impose an unacceptable level of boredom on the players. Instead these games allow characters (even without specialized magical or technological assistance) to quickly heal and travel long distances between encounters.

This common mechanic from online RPGs is currently filtering back into the newest revisions of classic paper-and-pencil RPGs. The "old school gamers" are understandably concerned and confused. They don't see the need, since the referee is always free to speed up the time-line. And those from a simulation (especially miniatures) background don't like the loss of realism.

Conflicting World Models in Conflict Simulation

Many board games have been created to simulate past military conflicts. They are often created to explore "what ifs", alternative choices the opposing commanders hypothetically could have made at the time. A basic problem, of course, is that we have hindsight knowledge (though sometimes still incomplete) of what actually happened.

To simulate "fog of war" games sometimes hide the positions or strengths of opposing troops. More rarely the strengths of untested "green" troops are even hidden from their own commanders. Elaborate scenario start conditions also try to recreate the historical limitations faced by commanders at the time: troops hopelessly out of position or delayed due to political restrictions, surprise, disrupted communications, etc.

What these games rarely represent, however, is that commanders sometimes start with fundamentally different understandings of "basic game mechanics", such as the effects of mapboard terrain on movement, supply, and combat. Many historical battles have hinged on one side believing certain terrain was impassible by many unit types. The classic gaming example is the Ardennes forest at the beginning of both WW I and II. A "historically correct" gameboard for the French would show it impassible to mechanized units, while the German gameboard would show it passable. Since the "after the fact" map has the terrain passable, the French player will of course want to defend it accordingly. Thus the elaborate setup-rules necessary to prevent this and ensure at least the possibility of achieving the historical outcome. But here the most important element of surprise, that of one commander suddenly discovering his world-model is incorrect, is lost.

This limitation becomes more acute the further players try to maneuver beyond the historical outcome. Since these alternative paths were (figuratively and literally) never explored, we have little idea where their differing world models would have broken down in conflict with reality.