Rad Geek People's Daily

From Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day podcast (2022-12-25), rather belatedly listened to:

Life Cycle of Common Man

Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits,
This average consumer of the middle class,
Consumed in the course of his average life span
Just under half a million cigarettes,
Four thousand fifths of gin and about
A quarter as much vermouth; he drank
Maybe a hundred thousand cups of coffee,
And counting his parents’ share it cost
Something like half a million dollars
To put him through life. How many beasts
Died to provide him with meat, belt and shoes
Cannot be certainly said.
But anyhow,
It is in this way that a man travels through time,
Leaving behind him a lengthening trail
Of empty bottles and bones, of broken shoes,
Frayed collars and worn out or outgrown
Diapers and dinnerjackets, silk ties and slickers.

Given the energy and security thus achieved,
He did …? What? The usual things, of course,
The eating, dreaming, drinking and begetting,
And he worked for the money which was to pay
For the eating, et cetera, which were necessary
If he were to go on working for the money, et cetera,
But chiefly he talked. As the bottles and bones
Accumulated behind him, the words proceeded
Steadily from the front of his face as he
Advanced into the silence and made it verbal.
Who can tally the tale of his words? A lifetime
Would barely suffice for their repetition;
If you merely printed all his commas the result
Would be a very large volume, and the number of times
He said thank you or very little sugar, please,
Would stagger the imagination. There were also
Witticisms, platitudes, and statements beginning
It seems to me or As I always say.
Consider the courage in all that, and behold the man
Walking into deep silence, with the ectoplastic
Cartoon’s balloon of speech proceeding
Steadily out of the front of his face, the words
Borne along on the breath which is his spirit
Telling the numberless tale of his untold Word
Which makes the world his apple, and forces him to eat.

— Howard Nemerov (1977), Life Cycle of Common Man
From The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov.

    col. -8, ll. 2-14:   
2   ...]ι̣μ̣εν τοὺϲ̣ [πα]ρ̣[ὰ Ξ]ε̣-   
    νοφάντωι το̣ιούτου[ϲ,   
    ὃ καὶ ὑπ’ ἄ̣λλων δοκεῖ    
5   γείνεϲθαι, παραπλη-   
    ϲίωϲ δ̣’ ο̣ὐδὲ παρ̣’ ἑτέρωι   
    ἴδι̣ον το̣ῦ δ̣οκοῦ̣ντοϲ̣    
    εἶναι καὶ παρὰ πλε̣ί-  
    οϲ̣ι̣ν̣ ἥδιο̣ν, ἀλλ’ ὡ̣ϲ̣ καὶ   
10  ἐ̣π̣ὶ τῶν βρω̣μ̣άτ̣ων   
    ο̣ὐ̣κ ἤδ̣η τὰ ϲπάνια    
    πάντωϲ̣ καὶ ἡδ̣ίω    
    τῶν δ̣αψιλῶν̣ ε̣ἶναι̣   
14  νομίζ̣ο̣με̣ν· οὐ γ̣ὰρ̣

—Author Unknown, possibly Philodemus; decoded by the Vesuvius Challenge project

. . .

    col. -7, ll. 4-10:   
    λ̣ει παρὰ τὰ δαψιλῆ.    
5   θεωρηθήϲεται δὲ τὰ    
    τοιαῦθ’ οὕτω{ι} πολ̣λά-    
    κιϲ πότερον ὅ̣ταν πα-    
    ρῇ τὸ δαψιλέϲτερον    
    ἡ φύϲιϲ ἥδιον ἀπαλλάτ-    
10  τει το̣ύ̣τ̣ο̣υ̣ καὶ πάλ̣ι̣ν̣ ̣ ̣    

—Author Unknown, possibly Philodemus; decoded by the Vesuvius Challenge project

. . .

    col. -2, ll. 2-8:   
2   ἑ̣κάϲτηϲ κριτηρίων    
    θεωροῦνται. πρὸϲ δὲ    
    οὔτε καθόλου περὶ    
5   ἡδονῆϲ ἐχόντων τι    
    λέγειν οὔτε περὶ τῆϲ    
    κατὰ μ̣έ̣ρο̣ϲ̣, ὅ̣τε ὡ-    
8   ριϲμένον τι, ἀλλ’ οὖν    

—Author Unknown, possibly Philodemus; decoded by the Vesuvius Challenge project

. . .

    col. -1, ll. 1-6:    
1   ὰρ ἀπ̣εχόμ̣ε̣θ̣α̣ τὰ    
    μὲν κρίνειν, τὰ δὲ   
    κατέχειν καὶ ἐμφαί   
    νoιθ’ ἡμῖν ἀληθῆ λέ-    
5   γειν ὥϲπερ πολλά̣κιϲ   
    ἂν ἐ̣μφανε̣ίη̣{ι}.

—Author Unknown, possibly Philodemus; decoded by the Vesuvius Challenge project

The text has to do with some notable Epicurean themes, in particular the relationship of pleasure to the scarcity or abundance of goods, perhaps especially aesthetic goods or goods of sensory experience (Per the translators: … As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant.)

The in-house scholars at the Vesuvius Challenge have confirmed that the text is new, unattested text from an ancient writer. Right now they seem inclined to think that the author might be the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus (ca. 110 BCE – ca. 40 BCE).^[1] He wrote extensively on ethics, music, and the philosophical controversies between the Epicureans and the Stoics.

It is hard to express just how immensely exciting this is. This is the first major passage to come from a cache of books that, in a series of really horrific disasters and insane accidents, has been preserved down to our present distant future, where we can use frickin’ X-rays, 3-D modeling and artificial intelligence to peer through the body of burnt, sealed scrolls and read off the letters from their carbonized insides without unrolling them. This would be an awesome enough story as it is, but the technological feat also has a lot of promise to heal a real and massive loss. Most — the vast majority — of writing from the ancient world is lost to us.^[2] For the next phase of the project, Vesuvius Challenge’s goals are:

In 2023 we got from 0% to 5% of a scroll. In 2024 our goal is to go from 5% of one scroll, to 90% of all four scrolls we have scanned, and to lay the foundation to read all 800 scrolls.

The primary goal for 2024 is to read 90% of the scrolls, and we will issue the 2024 Grand Prize to the first team that is able to do this. More details on the exact grand prize judging criteria will be available in March.

— Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize Awarded

Every lost scroll that is recovered shines new light into the corners of a world covered in deep shadow, which we have only seen with the briefest, strobe-light glimpses. The Villa of the Papyri is a lost library from the high point of classical civilization; there are more than 800 carbonized scrolls which the project may be able to recover. It offers once of the most exciting chances in decades to recover lost works and add new primary sources for understanding and debating ancient history and ancient philosophy.

Technological civilization is awesome.

1. ^[1]This is a pretty good bet even aside from the topics in the passages decoded; the scroll was taken from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, which seems to have had a really large collection of Philodemus’s work.↩
2. ^[2]This is true even of the most famous and celebrated authors. All of Aristotle’s dialogues and the second volume of the Poetics are famously lost; volumes of Livy; every poem by Sappho except for one or possibly two which were preserved in the work of others who quoted or translated them; etc. etc.↩

Turkey Vultures

Since the wind knocked down power lines
and lightning set a birch aflame
from within, three turkey vultures roost
along the topmost branches,
matted black feathers with small red heads,
unfortunate harbingers of death,
though really, almost comically alive—
hunched as though deciding
some minor point before slipping off
on the umbrellas of their wings to rid
the roads of evidence of violence not theirs.

— Maya C. Popa (2022), Turkey Vultures
In The New York Review of Books (January 13, 2022)

The paper is available as Open Access, so you should be able to read it for free either in HTML form or by downloading or printing a full-text PDF.

Is the way that economics is organized conducive to the production of economic knowledge?

James Heckman and Sidharth Moktan (Reference Heckman and Moktan2020) recently highlighted the dominance of economics’ ‘Top 5’ journals. Others have noted the outsize representation of economists from top-ranked departments among the authors and editors of those journals (Fourcade et al. Reference Fourcade, Ollion and Algan2015; Colussi Reference Colussi2018). I collect these issues together with others to highlight the many asymmetries of power, status and influence that exist between economists. In addition to (i) the dominance of the Top 5 and the concentration of (ii) authors and (iii) editors from a few universities in those journals, the top-ranked departments also train most of the discipline’s (iv) governors and (v) awardees, (vi) individual star economists dominate networks of coauthorship and (vii) the discipline exhibits a strong prestige factor in hiring. Together these asymmetries constitute the hierarchy in economics.

I give reasons to believe that the hierarchy in economics is both steeper – the asymmetries are greater – than it could be and steeper than hierarchies in other fields. I then highlight four reasons to worry about this increased degree of hierarchy in economics. Through (a) reinforcing conservative selection biases and (b) disincentivizing innovation, the steeper hierarchy in economics constrains the development of new beliefs from the discipline. By (c) restricting the exploration of alternatives, the steeper hierarchy reduces the justification we have for believing the outputs of economics. By (d) discouraging criticism, the steeper hierarchy makes it less likely that errors and faulty reasoning will be spotted. This reduces the likelihood that the outputs of economics will be true and so further reduces the justification we have for believing them. My descriptions of (a–d) will be qualitative. I will describe how the present organization of economics leads to (a–d) and describe the negative impact (a-d) have on the production of economic knowledge. I will not measure the effect size of (a–d) or weigh them off against trade-offs. My argument will, consequently, not constitute an all-things-considered judgement on the health of economics. The point is rather to describe the asymmetries that exist between economists (i–vii) and to spell out the mechanism by which these social features of economics impact the epistemic virtues of its outputs (a–d).

— Jack Wright (2023), The Hierarchy in Economics and Its Implications
In Economics & Philosophy. Published online 2023:1-22. doi:10.1017/S0266267123000032

The top-line argument of the paper as a whole is pretty interesting; there is also an interesting passage off to one side later on in the paper in response to a possible objection that there may be convincing countervailing reasons why economics should be strongly hierarchical or as hierarchical as it actually is or…. Maybe so! But even if so, these considerations still have to be considered as a real cost, even if they are the cost of something that is worth having for other reasons.

A second way of responding to the points I have raised could be to suggest that I have been too one-sided. Are there not circumstances in which steep hierarchies can be beneficial? To this I offer a clarification. The issues I describe should be considered pro tanto reasons to worry about the present degree of hierarchy in economics. I have argued that the steeper hierarchy in economics encourages four mechanisms that lower the uptake and supply of new beliefs in and the justification of the outputs of the discipline. I have not argued that the hierarchy in economics has no other effects. Thus, although (a–d) should give us reason to worry about the present organization of economics, they do not constitute an all-things-considered judgement on the health of the discipline. (a–d) are best thought of as tendencies worth paying attention to in discussions of how economics should be organized. An all-things-considered judgement on the organization of the discipline should consider (a–d) in conjugation with calculations of their effect sizes and also consider trade-offs from changing the present situation – including any beneficial effects of the hierarchy in economics.

— Jack Wright (2023), The Hierarchy in Economics and Its Implications
In Economics & Philosophy. Published online 2023:1-22. doi:10.1017/S0266267123000032

If it’s not worth having for other reasons, then the paper closes with some really interesting and thoughtful (if not especially decisive) considerations of things that might be done within the discipline.

Read the whole thing, as the kids of my generation used to say.