The blogosphere has been having its fun with this little bit of instant punditry from Glenn Reynolds:
Of course, if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. But we’d be called imperialist oppressors, then.
Far be it from me to add anything to the trenchant political analysis already available. But as a Physics Blog, we feel it’s our duty here to point out the exciting scientific consequences that our more humanistical friends have thus far missed: the possibility that Prof. Reynolds has discovered a new state of wrongness.
You see, wrongness is a fermionic property. That is to say, a statement is either wrong or it is not wrong; you can’t pile on the wrongness to make a condensate of wrong. By the conventional rules, n declarative statements can be wrong at most n times. By the Pauli exclusion principle, you just can’t be more wrong than that!
I count four declarative statements in Instapundit’s two sentences. (“… prices would plummet,” “dictators would be broke,” “poor nations would benefit,” “we’d be called imperialist oppressors.”) Now let’s count how many time he is wrong.
- prices would plummet — No, they wouldn’t. As it turns out, the Saudi and Iranian oil fields are running at very close to full capacity; any increase would be at most a perturbation.
- dictators would be broke — Not sure which dictators we’re talking about here — the ones we just deposed? In fact, dictators have shown a remarkable ability to not be broke even in countries without vast stores of oil wealth.
- poor nations would benefit — Because it’s really the poor countries that guzzle oil? This one baffles me.
- we’d be called imperialist oppressors — Now, in a strict sense this is not wrong. We would be called that. Because invading sovereign countries in order to take over their natural resources is more or less the definition of imperialist oppression. However, Reynolds’ implication is clearly that we should not be called imperialist oppressors, that it would somehow be unfair. Which is crazy. So can we count that as wrong? Yes!
So indeed we count four instances of wrongness in only four declarative statements — Fermi degeneracy! No more wrongness should be possible.
But as Tim Lambert points out, Instapundit managed to be wrong yet another time, by begging a question and then getting the wrong answer!
- The subjunctive clause opening the first sentence cleverly slides from invading Saudi Arabia and Iran to running pumps at full speed. Actually not something that would happen in the reality-based world! As Tim says, “Yeah, because that’s pretty much the way it worked out in Iraq.”
So in fact, Reynolds has managed to fit five units of wrongness into only four declarative statements! This is the hackular equivalent of crossing the Chandrasekhar Limit, at which point your blog cannot help but collapse in on itself. It is unknown at this point whether the resulting end state will be an intermediate neutron-blog phase, or whether the collapse will proceed all the way to a singularity surrounded by a black hole event horizon. We may have to wait for the neutrino signal to be sure.
Sorry, but I have to correct this inaccuracy.
You need a stellar collapse of a star that is much more than 1.4 solar mass to form blackholes; something like 20 solar mass stars will form blackholes at the end of its life. The Chandrasekhar mass is the maximum mass of a degenerate star, but to form this degenerate star you need much more massive progenitors, since stars tend to cast away much of its mass when it dies (through supernovae, shedding of outer layers or otherwise).
Bah. I am a killjoy.
you can’t pile on the wrongness to make a condensate of wrong
why not, let’s call it w-essence, and use it to explain the inflation of the US-ego.
I’m surprised that nobody has yet proposed the obvious name for this new measure of wrongness. Why not “Reynolds number” ? 😉
A useful dimensionless quantity: the ratio of number of units of wrongness to the number of declarative statements.
-cvj
poor nations would benefit — Because it’s really the poor countries that guzzle oil? This one baffles me.
Actually, there’s a couple problems with your statement. 1. It’s actually true that if oil prices were lower, poor nations would benefit. Whether or not rich nations guzzle oil is not really relevant to whether poor nations would benefit. 2. Poor nations tend to use oil less efficiently than rich ones, and oil costs makeup a larger percentage of their total production costs (because labor, etc, are cheap). So, high oil prices actually do hurt poor nations more than rich ones. In absolute dollar amounts, rich nations lose the most from high oil prices, but poor nations get hurt the most percentage-wise.
Of course, all of this assumes a lowering of oil prices, and an invasion of oil-producing nations isn’t likely to cause that.
Some numbers to backup my argument:
When you look at a nations GDP / oil consumption, you find that developed nations have better GDP/oil consumption numbers than poorer nations. By “better” ratios, I mean that they produce larger values of GDP on fewer barrels of oil. Worse ratios means that oil is being consumed, but with less production.
Top five economies: (GDP per year / barrels of oil consumed per day)
United states: $11,667,515,000,000 / 20,030,000 = 582,501
Japan: $4,623,398,000,000 / 5,578,000 = 828,863
Germany: $2,714,418,000,000 / 2,677,000 = 1,013,977
United Kingdom: $2,140,898,000,000 / 1,722,000 = 1,243,262
France: $2,002,582,000,000 / 2,060,000 = 972,127
Some randomly chosen third-world nations:
Guatemala: $27,451,000,000 / 66,000 = 415,924
Costa Rica: $18,395,000,000 / 40,000 = 459,875
Honduras: $7,371,000,000 / 37,000 = 199,216
Ethiopia: $8,077,000,000 / 27,000 = 299,148
Botswana: $8,659,000,000 / 12,000 = 721,583
Haiti: $3,535,000,000 / 11,800 = 299,576
Mongolia: $1,525,000,000 / 11,000 = 138,636
With the exception of Botswana, all the third-world nations have ratios below 500,000 and first world nations have ratios above 500,000. I picked those third-world nations at random (I didn’t find some good-ratio nations that I left out). A lot of this probably has to do with the type of economy (agriculture consumes more oil than, say, computer programming). Regardless of the reason, it still stands that third-world nations are more heavily dependent on oil prices than developed nations.
Source:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/ene_oil_con
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp
I posted this over at PZ’s but in light of Clifford suggestion for the name of this new nmeasure of wrongness. Thereference is to William Dembski, one of the bright lights (yeah I’m kidding) in the intelligent design creationist camp.
“I am not a physicist and cannot propose a new Pauli principle but I think we can come up with a new terminology. The unit of wrongness should be the dembski. One dembski reflects the situation where the number of wrongs equals the number of declarative statements. To calculate the dembski number you divide the number of wrongs by the number of declarative statment and square the answer. So Seans example of five wrongs in four statements would be the square of 5/4 or 1.5625 dembski. Something like Ken Hovinds presentations would have dembski numbers in the 9 to 25 range. I am currently trying to get time on a supercomputer to calulate the dembski number of the bible.”
Eugene wrote:
“Sorry, but I have to correct this inaccuracy.
You need a stellar collapse of a star that is much more than 1.4 solar mass to form blackholes; something like 20 solar mass stars will form blackholes at the end of its life…..”
Sorry, just to render your terminology consistent:
Youneed a stellarcollapse of astar thatis muchmore than 1.4 solarmass toform blackholes; somethinglike 20 solarmass stars willform blackholes atthe endof itslife. The Chandrasekharmass isthe maximummass ofa degeneratestar, but toform this degeneratestar youneed muchmore massiveprogenitors, sincestars tendto castaway muchof itsmass whenit dies (throughsupernovae, shedding of outerlayers orotherwise).
Bah. Iam akilljoy.
By theway, how doyou pronounce “blackhole”? Somethinglike
“Black’ll”?
By theway, Ihope I havenot giventhe impressionthat Eugeneis theonly onewho talksabout “blackholes”. Jacquesdistler doesthe samething.
Heh, I suppose it’s no accident you mention Pauli in an articla about a new state of wrongness.
I can’t wait until string theory is proven correct when the LHC turns on! How cool will that be?
I’m sorry, but if you look at the statement mathematically, you will see that it is an implication, of the form
(A and B) -> (C & D & E & F)
Where
A = we seize the oil fields
B = we run the pumps at full speed
C = oil prices plummet
D = dictators would be broke
E = poor nations would benefit from cheap energy
F = we’d be called imperialist oppressors
As you’ve pointed out, C, D, E, and F are all wrong, but that doesn’t make the statement false. Propositional calculus teaches us that T -> F is the only way an implication can be false. So, for the statement to be wrong, we would have to seize the oil fields AND run the pumps at full speed.
So, Glenn Reynolds is not wrong. Yet.
Uh, in this discussion of stellar gravitational collapse as metaphor for the immense wrongness of the Reynolds thesis, I think you are overlooking that this wrongness may represent a truly quantum leap in stupidity and thus the phenomenon should best be described as Loopy Quantum Stupidity.
Clifford,
If we take the Reynolds number X hbar do we get a fundamental measure of wrong action?
🙂
two wrongnesses in different orders differ by negative sign? too subtle to be quickly convinced! great post, anyway!
Am I to take it from the black hole analogy that you would like to see that blog become causally disconnected from the rest of the universe?
Just as long as that Instaperson’s blog is on one side of the Reynolds Radius and I’m on the other. Although it’s nice to think that there may be wormholes in the Internets and parallel blogospheres that contain inconceivably intense concentrations of rightness.
Hey! Why is everyone moving away from me at a constant speed?
There’s a story that a friend showed Wolfgang Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘It is not even wrong.‘ – a phrase which I’ve found of great use since I heard it.
Because, sir, space has a well-known Red bias.
Whether this will continue is an open question, perhaps the open question of our times. Surveys have returned confusing and contradictory results. A number of theories to explain this dark matter have been put forward over the years: neutrinos, WIMPs, family values. Crackpot conspiracy theories, the lot of them.
Oh, and previously discarded theories created by a German around 1915 are being given a fresh look.
[help help I’m trapped in the joke machinie]
Can we use this to calculate the “wrongness” of the sum total of the Bush regime’s policies in Iraq as well? My fear is that the computation would be intractable.
Elliot
Yes, I have read that the Turks allowed themselves to be ruled by neutrinos in their fading past…
It was a quark of their religion.
My god, it’s full of wrong …
George Musser missed the obvious, when millions of people make the same mistake, the only word that suffices to explain them is bozon.
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