A madman in the White House

Prior to the 2016 US presidential election, it was widely predicted that if Donald Trump lost the election, he would react by endlessly obsessing over unsubstantiated claims about being the victim of voter fraud. What fewer commentators had the foresight to predict was that Trump would obsess over this despite winning the election. But this is what he does.

Of course, Trump is hardly the first president to worry about his approval ratings and popularity in general. But he seems unique in his extreme egocentricity and his seemingly total lack of understanding of how important it is to at least give the impression of caring more about the nation than about his own popularity. This fits perfectly with Alexandra Erin's highly plausible and extremely worrying analysis of what may be going on in Trump's mind - read it and shiver!

Yet, self-praise is not the only thing that Trump has time for these days - if only we were that lucky! On top of his administration's furious anti-science crusade, we are now reached by news of his executive order to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants. I am sorry about my bluntness, but that is Nazism.

A madman has taken over the White House, and the United States is in deep deep trouble. And along with it, so is the world.

Dagsaktuellt om termodynamikens andra lag

Olika områden av fysiken verkar lämpa sig olika väl för att belysa mer vardagliga företeelser. När någon försöker sig på att använda kvantmekaniken på det viset landar resonemanget oftast i ren bullshit. Hänvisningar till termodynamikens andra lag (som säger att ett isolerat systems entropi aldrig minskar, och att systemet istället tenderar att utvecklas mot ett tillstånd av maximal entropi - maximal oordning) brukar gå bättre. När datalogen Scott Aaronson nyligen tillgrep termodynamikens andra lag i en kommentar till det fortfarande chockerande faktum att Donald Trump lyckats bli vald till USA:s president,¹ så reagerade jag med omedelbar förtjusning. Så här förklarar han det kanske vanligaste och mest grundläggande fel de väljare gjort som fått för sig att det är i deras intresse att Trump blir president:

[O]ne of humanity’s tragic flaws is to take for granted the gargantuan effort needed to create and maintain even little temporary pockets of order. Again and again, people imagine that, if their local pocket of order isn’t working how they want, then they should smash it to pieces, since while admittedly that might make things even worse, there’s also at least 50/50 odds that they’ll magically improve. In reasoning thus, people fail to appreciate just how exponentially more numerous are the paths downhill, into barbarism and chaos, than are the few paths further up. So thrashing about randomly, with no knowledge or understanding, is statistically certain to make things worse: on this point thermodynamics, common sense, and human history are all in total agreement. The implications of these musings for the present [is] left as exercises for the reader.

Citatet är från Aaronsons bloggpost State den 1 januari i år, men jag är skyldig Luke Muehlhauser ett tack som via sin egen blogg uppmärksammat mig på det. Muehlhauser tillfogar följande skämtteckning som illustrerar samma poäng:

Fotnot

1) Lustigt nog sammanfaller denna Aaronson-hänvisning till termodynamikens andra lag nästan exakt i tiden med en annan sådan, i ett helt annat sammanhang. I hans välskrivna, lärorika och formidabelt kunskapstäta nyss släppta 121-sidiga översiktsuppsats om P kontra NP - måhända det viktigaste öppna problemet i hela matematiken - drar han i Fotnot 20 på sidan 24 en humoristisk men likväl träffsäker parallell mellan termodyamikens andra lag och P≠NP:

I like to joke that, if computer scientists had been physicists, we’d simply have declared P≠NP to be an observed law of Nature, analogous to the laws of thermodynamics. A Nobel Prize would even be given for the discovery of that law. (And in the unlikely event that someone later proved P=NP, a second Nobel Prize would be awarded for the law’s overthrow.)

Maybe it isn't going to be so bad

This will not be my typical blog post about the American President-elect Donald Trump. I will not fall into my usual alarmist litany about what his presidency may bring about. I will not say a word about any dangerous personality disorders of his, or about his infamous December 22 nuclear tweet...

...or about his follow-up complaint that some news coverage had left out the second half of the tweet (here Trump appeared oblivious to the fact that the second half only made matters worse, by grotesquely suggeesting that leadership in nuclear disarmament is the responsibility of all countries except the United States). No, you will hear no such doom and gloom from me today. Instead, in a more cheerful spirit, I will say this about his upcoming presidency:

Maybe it isn't going to be so bad.

Which, incidentally, is also the caption of the following cartoon in The New Yorker last month:

Amazing Obama

Mannen som framträder i nedanstående video¹ är USA:s president, och kommer så att vara fram till den 20 januari, varefter... jag kommer att sakna honom mer än jag någonsin tidigare saknat en avgången politiker eller annan ledare.

Fotnot

1) Videon är från begravningen av delstatspolitikern och pastorn Clementa Pinckney, som dödades vid en masskjutning i Charleston, South Carolina, den 17 juni 2015.

Nya uttalanden från Trump om klimatfrågan

Den tillträdande amerikanske presidenten Donald Trumps mest kända utspel i klimatfrågan har tidigare varit hans ur luften gripna påstående om att klimatförändringarna är en bluff av kineserna med syfte att skada amerikansk exportindustri:

Sedan Trump nyligen uttalat vad som kan uppfatttas som ett avståndstagande från den tidigare "kinesisk bluff"-ståndpunkten och en allmän uppmjukning av hans syn på klimatfrågan, har det föreslagits (även från allmänt förnuftigt håll) att vi av strategiska skäl försiktigt borde applådera hans omsvängning, hellre än att hacka på honom för hans inkonsekvens.

För min del känns det dock inte aktuellt med någon sådan inrättning i ledet (och jag passar i sammanhanget på att rekommendera Masha Gessens överlevnadsmanual för amerikaner och det amerikanska samhället de kommande fyra åren, och särskilt hennes "Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality").¹ Jonathan Chait ger i New York Magazine en utmärkt sammanfattning av Trumps nya klimatuttalanden, och det framgår med all önskvärd tydlighet att dessa utgör samma slags osammanhängande och bottenlöst okunniga antivetenskap som vi hittar hos drägget på den svenska klimatförnekarblogg som tidigare hette The Climate Scam men som numera bär det orwellskt klingande namnet Klimatupplysningen. Ni vet, det har varit varmt förr... Climategate... det vanliga blajet. Mycket känns alltså igen, men ett par mer originella trumpska ståndpunkter framgår också:

• Trump säger sig vara en verklig miljövän i kraft av att han låter bygga golfbanor: "I have some great, great, very successful golf courses. I’ve received so many environmental awards for the way I’ve done, you know. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work where I’ve received tremendous numbers. Sometimes I’ll say I’m actually an environmentalist and people will smile in some cases and other people that know me understand that’s true."
• Som sin främste auktoritet i klimatvetenskapliga frågor framhåller Trump sin farbror, elektroingenjören John G Trump, som dock saknar klimatvetenskapliga meriter, och som dog 1985: "My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was... a long time ago, he had feelings - this was a long time ago - he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know."

Inget av detta är något att glädjas åt. Det amerikanska valresultatet är en katastrof, på område efter område varav klimatfrågan bara är ett, och jag instämmer dessvärre i min Uppsalainitiativet-kollega Lars Karlssons sammanfattande omdöme att det innebär att den amerikanska valmanskåren förkastat civilisationen.

Fotnot

1) Se även Charles Blow i gårdagens New York Times:

Donald Trump schlepped across town on Tuesday to meet with the publisher of The New York Times and some editors, columnists and reporters at the paper.

As The Times reported, Trump actually seemed to soften some of his positions:

He seemed to indicate that he wouldn’t seek to prosecute Hillary Clinton. But he should never have said that he was going to do that in the first place.

He seemed to indicate that he wouldn’t encourage the military to use torture. But he should never have said that he would do that in the first place.

He said that he would have an "open mind" on climate change. But that should always have been his position.

You don't get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid after exploiting that very radicalism to your advantage. Unrepentant opportunism belies a staggering lack of character and caring that can't simply be vanquished from memory. You did real harm to this country and many of its citizens, and I will never - never - forget that.

[...]

You are a fraud and a charlatan. Yes, you will be president, but you will not get any breaks just because one branch of your forked tongue is silver.

[...]

No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity - and certainly this columnist - have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.

Om robotar och artificiell intelligens på Katharinastiftelsen

I onsdags gick jag omkring i snökaoset i Stockholm med en känsla av overklighet och fasa, sedan jag tidigt på morgonen fått utfallet i det amerikanska presidentvalet klart för mig. Att fundamentala värden som demokrati och fred inte längre kan tas för givna är en svårsmält tanke vars aktualitet sakta smugit sig på oss på senare år, men i onsdags tog den ett jättekliv framåt, vilket gör ont.

Men dagen slutade ändå i ett bättre stämningsläge, tack vare ett spännande samtal med två professorskollegor: filosofen Åsa Wikforss och religionsvetaren Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm. Rubriken för vår paneldiskssion var "Robotar och artificiell intelligens - hot eller möjlighet?", och det var (som jag tidigare annonserat) ett arrangemang av Katharinastiftelsen. Hela det 90 minuter långa samtalet videofilmades:

USA har gjort sitt val

Jag vet såklart att det inte är konstruktivt att, inför den livsfarliga dumpopulismens framgångar, rycka på axlarna och säga att folk är väl idioter - som i nedanstående video. Bättre då att på allvar försöka sätta sig in i hur dessa väljare tänker, som Michael Moore i den film jag länkade till i förrgår, och Jonathan Haidt i en essä jag lyfte fram ett par månader tidigare. Denna dystra morgon ger jag dock efter för frestelsen, och jag tycker faktiskt att Robert Gustafssons och Henrik Schyfferts sketch erbjuder en relevant historisk parallell.

Dan före dan

Dan före dan. I morgon går amerikanerna till valurnorna. Om det vill sig väl löser de det första av de båda mycket allvarliga bekymmer som de själva och resten av världen idag står inför:

(1) Trump. Sannolikheten att det bortskämda förvuxna barnet, rasisten och kvinnohataren Donald Trump vinner det amerikanska presidentvalet är långt ifrån försumbar, och om det händer så står vi inför en långt mer katastrofal och omvälvande händelse än 9/11 för femton år sedan. Mycket kan sägas om detta, om Trumps direkt fientliga inställning till alt vad miljö- och klimathänsyn heter, om destabiliserandet och raserandet av mödosamt uppbyggda internationella relationer, om den misogyni och den rasism som skulle fortsätta att spridas i USA med förebild och uppmuntran från allra högsta ort, och om det ena med det tredje. Men det allra värsta är ändå att världens största kärnvapenarsenal skulle hamna i händerna på en befälhavare vars personlighet är snart sagt så långt ifrån lämpad för detta man kan komma, något som mycket väl kan innebära slutet för hela vår civilisation.

(2) Den opinionsströmning som fört Trump dit han är idag, och som är nära släkt med den europeiska motsvarighet som ligger bakom framgångarna för exempelvis Brexit, Nationella fronten, Sverigedemokraterna och polska Lag och rättvisa, kommer inte att försvinna även om Trump skulle förlora i morgon. Hans arga väljare finns kvar, det kommer nya presidentval och nya paralamentsval, och den västerländska demokratin befinner sig under starkt tryck. Om vi inte finner sätt att kanalisera detta folkliga missnöje fredligt och konstruktivt (och ingen vet ännu riktigt hur detta skall gå till) är vi illa ute.

Men first things first: nu gäller det att vi klarar oss undan (1). Och för den som har en timme över i kväll eller i morgon rekommenderar jag den underbara filmen Michael Moore in Trumpland, som formar sig till ett enda långt valtal för Hillary Clinton, känsloladdat, formidabelt och faktiskt ett av de bästa politiska tal jag någonsin hört. Här är den officiella trailern, men läsare i Sverige kan se filmen i dess helhet, med svensk text, på SVT Play.

Clinton's Daisy ad

Listen, America! There are many things to say about why voting Donald Trump into the White House on November 8 would be a terrible mistake, but Hillary Clinton's latest ad (echoing Lyndon Johnson's Daisy ad from his 1964 presidential campaign) gets to the heart of the matter - the single most important issue in the 2016 presidential election. Trump is not the kind of person that should ever be entrusted with the nuclear launch codes.

What we see is the real Donald Trump

During the primaries, many commentators would say that what we see is not the real Donald Trump. He is not really like this, do not underestimate his intelligence, it is all a clever act to attract this particular segment of voters. Blah blah blah...

We don't hear much of that anymore. Gradually, commentators have come to realize that what we see is the real Trump. The guy really does have the impulse control of a 5-year-old. Which is not the kind of trait we want the Commander in Chief of the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads to have.

Please read Ezra Klein's analysis of Trump's personality in his brand new essay "Donald Trump's problem isn't a conspiracy. It's him." And it's not just his lack of impulse control, it's also his never-ending quest for dominance, and his constant need for revenge and for inflicting pain on his antagonists. Klein's observations are spot on, his analysis rings true, and it is very very frightening.

I'm an atheist, so these words may sound a little awkward, but I have no better way to say it: God help us if Donald Trump becomes president!

Harris on Trump

Much has been said about the Donald Trump candidacy for president, but Sam Harris, in yesterday's blog post Trump in Exile, says it better and clearer than almost everyone else. He begins by noting that "it is a cliché [...] to claim that a presidential election is the most important in living memory", but then immediately notes that a cliché can still be true:

We arrived at that point in the 2016 campaign many months ago, when both sides declared their opponent unqualified for office, [...] and one side is actually right. A choice this stark proves that there is something wrong with our political system.

After a couple of passages on Trump's psychopathic and criminal behavior against women, he goes on to say this:

While Trump’s attitude toward women should be disqualifying, it is among his least frightening traits when it comes to assuming the responsibilities of the presidency. His fondness for Vladimir Putin, the whimsy with which he has entertained the first use of nuclear weapons, his disregard for our NATO alliances, his promise to use federal regulators to harass his critics, his belief that climate change is a hoax, his recommendation that we kill the families of terrorists, his suggestion that America might want to default on its debt - any one of these sentiments should have ended Trump’s bid for public office at once. In fact, Donald Trump is so unfit for the presidency that he has done great harm to our society by merely campaigning for it. The harm he could do from the White House can scarcely be imagined.

And towards the end of his piece, Harris notes that...

there was a point in the second presidential debate when Trump’s campaign ceased to be a depressing farce and became the terrifying, national disgrace we now see before us. The crucial moment wasn’t when Trump threatened to imprison Clinton if he wins in November - it was the shriek of joy this threat produced in half the audience. That was the sound of our democracy unraveling. And there was Trump, the crazed man-child tearing at the threads.

If there is a silver lining here, it is that many of us now see how vulnerable our political system is to charlatanism, conspiracy theories, and populist unreason on both the Right and the Left. The role that the media has played, rendering us all moths to the Trumpian flame, will be scrutinized for years to come. The truth about us is sobering: We have been playing with our smartphones while hurtling toward the abyss...

(Link added by me.) Do take two more minutes to read Sam Harris' blog post in whole!

Some not-quite-mainstream voices about the perils of electing Donald Trump

In yesterday's blog post, I offered (links to) some very good reasons why it would be a bad idea to elect Donald Trump US president in November. My sources were highly mainstream, and probably already familiar to many of my readers and all US presidential election zealots. Today I offer links to thoughts about the frightening possibility of a Trump presidency by three highly intelligent and wise thinkers who are less mainstream. They belong not to the usual circle of politicians, political pundits and journalists, but rather to the kind of loosely knit math/physics/CS/AI/futurology community that I consider myself to be part of. In my opinion, all three raise interesting points that deserve further spread:

• Eliezer Yudkowsky (who is heavily quoted in my latest book as well as here on this blog) has a short and somewhat unpolished but nevertheless very interesting piece in which he tells us about an experience that left him "with a suddenly increased respect for any administration that gets to the end of 4 years without nuclear weapons being used", and why a Trump administration may turn out less competent than most others in this respect.

• Scott Alexander, in a rather longer text which however is well worth the effort of reading, focuses mostly on possible societal consequences of a Trump presidency less extreme than global nuclear war. He writes very clearly from a kind of conservative viewpoint that I have much respect for (despite not being much of a fan of most other political positions with that label).

• Scott Aaronson (whose book Quantum Computing since Democritus is one of the best I've read this year) has a very substance-rich blog post about Trump which dates back to June but which is just as important and interesting now as it was then. After an overwhelmingly convincing 10-item list of reasons why a Trump presidency can be expected to wreak havoc on American society and the rest of the world, he urges us to try to understand the social psychology behind Trump's rise in popularity:
  There’s one crucial point on which I dissent from the consensus of my liberal friends. Namely, my friends and colleagues constantly describe the rise of Trump as "incomprehensible" - or at best, as comprehensible only in terms of the US being full of racist, xenophobic redneck scumbags who were driven to shrieking rage by a black guy being elected president. Which - OK, that’s one aspect of it, but it’s as if any attempt to dig deeper, to understand the roots of Trump’s appeal, if only to figure out how to defeat him, risks "someone mistaking you for the enemy."
  This is followed by some well considered thoughts on this social psychology problem, and then finally a discussion on some concrete proposals for what we can do to minimize the probability that Trump wins the election.

Character and temperament

Here's my view on the US presidential election this year. I accept that there are major differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on concrete issues. For instance, Clinton does not plan to erect a great wall along the Mexican border, and she does not dismiss global warming as a hoax "created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive". These differences, and others, are important. Still, I think the most important issue of all for US voters to consider this fall is that of whether Donald Trump's temperament and moral character make him fit for presidency. And the answer is a clear and overwhelming no.

Much has been said about Donald Trump's performance during Monday's presidential debate with Clinton. It was repugnant, of course. Yet, as Adam Gopnik pointed out in The New Yorker, "The problem with Trump isn't his debating skills". His performance in Monday's debate...

wasn’t a question of preparation. It was that the things he actually believes are themselves repellent even when coherently presented. This was not a bad performance. This is a bad man.

A bad man he is. And cruel. See the examples listed by Conor Friedersdorf in his recent piece in The Atlantic on Trump's cruel streak of willfully inflicting pain and humiliation on others. Or consider his reaction to the 2006 housing collapse. Here's Vice President Joe Biden's measured response to that:

Trump may claim that his temperament is suitable for presidency, but even when he does so, as he did on Monday, the way he delivers this message becomes such a clear demonstration of its negation that it hardly requires a response:

A key question that every US voter ought to ask herself is this: Should a man as utterly devoid of compassion, decency and self-control as Donald Trump be put in charge of the world's biggest nuclear arsenal? Watch Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic Dr Strangelove, and consider whether it would be a good idea to gamble the future survival of the human race on Trump's ability to handle conversations like this one:

Listen, America!

This is to all my American friends and readers over there. I suspect that many of you are Bernie fans, which is absolutely fine of course, but I fear that quite a few Bernie fans are planning to do something terribly stupid in November. So please, consider this - the harsh reality, expressed by a Twitterer named BWD:

I don't give a fuck if you don't like Hillary Clinton. Hold your nose and vote. There's a Nazi at the gate.

For more about Donald Trump, read Ezra Klein's recent acount in Vox.

Fenomenet Trump - en synpunkt från Tyskland

Som bekant pågår i USA en valrörelse inför presidentvalet i november, och det har talats en del om vem av de republikanska kandiaterna Donald Trump och Ted Cruz som är allra mest mardrömslik att tänka sig som president. På ett vis är Cruz värst, i kraft av att ha den mer reaktionära politiska agendan. Trump har emellertid något som i mina ögon är ännu mer skrämmande, ty jag vill verkligen inte se som commander in chief över världens största kärnvapenarsenal en person som ägnar sina valmöten åt hets och uppmuntran till hat och våld och som besitter en femårings emotionella och retoriska mognad och impulskontroll. I Tyskland har man sett paralleller till annat än femåringar; se gärna nedanstående briljanta musikvideo av TV-komikern Jan Böhmermann.

Edit 11 april 2016: Detta är samme Jan Böhmermann som är dagsaktuell för att tyska åklagarmyndigheter öppnat en förundersökning inför eventuellt åtal mot honom för att han gjort narr av Turkiets president Tayyip Erdogan. Det följande är lite lamt eftersom jag troligtvis inte omfattas av tysk förtalslagstiftning, men låt mig ändå i solidaritet med Böhmermann framhålla (och nu klämmer jag i med några grova förolämpningar valda lite grand på måfå) att...

...Erdogan är en nazist och en tidelagsman, med förståndsgåvor i nivå med en genomsnittlig guldhamster.

Om Erdogan skall stå vid sitt ord blir han nu tvungen att stämma mig, ty enligt uppgift har han meddelat att han visserligen välkomnar kritik, men att han avser stämma envar som förolämpar honom: "Mr Erdogan said at the start of April that he welcomed criticism but would 'file a lawsuit' against anyone who insulted him."