NYC Junta

Junta 2 met at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown to discuss the eternal problem of the ultimate unknown: God.

Leading the discussion was Pete, fresh off reading Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great. Pete’s argument boiled down to atheism; literally, the opposite of theism, the belief in one god. A rejection of the belief that there is one thing determining the faith of your soul.

Pete talked mainly about Dawkins, who argues in his book that those who believe in science cannot possibly believe in God. Essentially, according to this theory, “God” has been the historic and traditional explanation for anything and everything that humans could not explain themselves: why the sun came up over here and went down over there, why the nights were longer in winter and the days in summer, why plants grew, etc. Having no understanding of these things, early humans created the idea of God: that which explains the unexplainable.

As time went on, of course, humans discovered the science behind all of these things, and God was no longer used as the catch-all explanation. It stands to reason, then, that after another thousand years, humans will understand many things that are unfathomable today – the nature of light, the origins of matter, black holes and so on. In time, the atheists say, science will explain all things to us.

Don brought up at interesting point here: science is its own faith. For example, we can read of the method of carbon dating, in which the age of ancient organic matter is determined by the amount of carbon-14 that is left in it. By this method scientists determine the age of artifacts and fossils. It is an accepted scientific method, and yet the majority of us have no idea how it works. We take it on faith that it is true. Isn’t science therefore just another religion, which most of us cannot verify, but instead put our blind trust in? It’s just another kind of faith.

Yet Pete came back with an effective (in my opinion) retort: science relies on the scientific method. Experiments must be repeated and verified by others before being accepted by the community. Everything they do is documented, recorded, repeated. In contrast, consider the miracles the Jesus performed. Though it was written in the New Testament that Jesus raised two people from the dead – from the dead! – no one ever thought to interview these people and hear about what an incredible experience that must have been. Brought back to life from death – yet it is simply recorded, never questioned, never followed up.

Further on the subject of Jesus, Don aired a point which I agree with completely: that Jesus definitely existed, that he was a guy who had a radical worldview, he was wildly charismatic, and his opinions reached a vast number of people because they were morally upright and essentially human. But he didn’t leave any of his own writings. He left that to his followers, who argued over it for years, who delayed, who made political compromises and ended up with the New Testament, a decidedly human work. Whether Jesus was the “Son of God” is beside the point, Don said. I would put forth that if there is a God, then we are all his sons and daughters.

Further to that, Don touched on the fundamentalist factor. That is, the chance that he, having been born a Catholic in Kansas, was “lucky” enough to fall into the “right” religion, unlike millions of others around the globe. How can fundamentalists be so exclusive, so narrow-minded, as to think that their God is the only god, that other people who believe just as fervently as they do in different gods are dead wrong, and not only that, they will be punished by burning in hell for all eternity? Don’s personal opinion was that anyone who thought that way, who truly believed that their way was the only way, and that others would be punished by their God in The End Times, were his intellectual inferiors.

Jeff chimed in on proving the existence or nonexistence of God, saying that both are impossible. That is the essence of faith: believing in that which cannot be proven. Just because science has learned the real reason the sun rises in the east and sets in the west does not rule out the possibility that there is an omnipotent God stroking his white beard in the heavens (though Jeff did not endorse this version of the Supreme Being). But his point was that no matter how much science figures out, it cannot prove that there is no God. Pete’s counterpoint came straight from Dawkins, who said the burden of proof is on those who claim that there is an invisible, omniscient being that created the universe and controls all things, but for whose existence there is exactly zero proof. You might as well claim that there is a giant green teacup hovering over all of us which controls the weather: hey, you can’t prove it’s not there, right?

Religion as Taste

All of this points to Dawkins’s conclusion that people’s religious opinions should be given no more preference or respect than their music opinions – because they are just that: opinions. I can’t prove that the Rolling Stones are a good band, and you can’t prove that Allah is the only true God. Some might believe in the creationist argument of “irreducible complexity,” as Jeff mentioned – the idea that some things about life are just too complicated to have come about by chance, by evolution. But others would argue that evolution is more than just blind chance; it’s the result of millions of years of trial and error. If the progress of life forms is a mountain, evolutionists believe that steps were made slowly up the mountain, one by one, over an impossibly long period of time. Intelligent designers picture a crane which lifted humans and their sophisticated organ systems right to the top of the mountain.

What about creativity, though? Where do ideas come from? Pete may argue that inspiration is just random sparks along our nerve endings, pulses jumping from neuron to neuron – but I can’t accept that, and my impression was that the others present are in my camp. Maybe it’s just a basic human impulse to believe in a higher order – maybe it’s an animal impulse and atheists are actually more developed life forms that us – but my own preference is that there are some mysteries that will never be solved by science, because they are divine. The field of quantum mechanics gives me hope, because my own limited following of the situation there indicates that the more our brilliant scientists discover about the nature of matter, of atoms and electrons and smaller particles, the more questions they raise. Pete would say that all will be revealed in time, but his argument is based on history, and history has not only shown us that we can figure things out, it has shown us that the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don’t know. But his riposte would be that “the world is amazing enough without a supernatural being.” Well, touche.

Or maybe Don put it best: “In the end, we’re all just a bunch of hairless monkeys, and when it’s over, the lights go out, and that’s it.”

Wrap-Ups atheism, dawkins, god, religion

At Junta number 2 we are going to talk about the financial crisis that is dominating the news, many are calling it the worst since the Great Depression. I spent a few days last week at hedge fund conference in Greenwich and it was amazing to be surrounded by that crowd as the market was doing somersaults. Guliani opened the conference, Larry Summers (former Treasury Secretary), and Eugene Ludwig (former Comptroller of the US Currency) spoke, among others. Ludwig was more willing to forecast and said that we are only “50%” through the crisis. He said that the main problem with the US economy was “an overabundance of financial services” and said that he expected at least another 100 banks in the US to fold.

As the crisis has unfolded I personally have felt that despite all the incompetence of the Bush administration, and all their culpability in the time leading up to the market meltdown, we were in good hands with Bernake and Paulson. Bernake is one of the world’s leading experts on the Great Depression, and Paulson is a former head of Goldman Sachs; I used to follow Paulson’s work on China through the Strategic Economic Dialogue he founded with the Chinese and was impressed with him. In reading about things I have been inclined to say that if these very serious men feel like this massive bailout is essential for the US economy to weather the storm than I guess we better do it. But listening to some contrarian opinions, and reading about Buffet’s investment in Goldman Sachs, I’m starting to wonder if the bailout is the right move and would like to hear other thoughts about that tonight.

I also suggest we talk about this business on executive pay and the bailout, and I would like it if some of our finance friends could shed some light on the debate surrounding mark to market versus fair value accounting. This all might sound pretty esoteric but it now affects us all. 

I heard a quote by John Maynard Keynes this morning that I thought was apropos: “The market’s ability to remain irrational will outlast a company’s ability to remain solvent.”

Meetings financial crisis

I don’t know that I can even come close to providing the quality overview of the discussion that Rindy provided. The China discussion came second and everyone was pretty into the whiskey at this point and the conversation became a bit more free-wheeling.

What I wanted to get was a sense of what people expected/hoped for from the upcoming games. What I was hoping for was that the games would be a success but that China would be embarrassed at least a couple of times, hopefully on Tibet and the environment. I just wanted to see one group drop a FREE TIBET poster outside one of the stadiums before an event, not have some fanatic disrupt the opening ceremony at the Bird’s Nest; I wanted to see just one marathon runner from an inconsequential country, like Turkmenistan, keel over during a race, not die just fall over in front of a gang of press photographers, chocking on Beijing’s noxious smog.

Didn’t happen. The games went extremely well for China with no big PR snafus and the Chinese coming away with more medals than anyone. It’s probably a good thing too–the Chinese, in particular the youth, are so nationalistic these days that if anyone messed with their Olympic experience they would have completely freaked out.  Maybe they will now start to truly get over their past grievances about colonialism and national humiliation. But then again, Red Sox fans have not stopped being whiny bitter donkeys even after they stopped losing and complaining about Babe Ruth.   Sometimes groups just don’t want to give up being the underdog.

What was amazing was that even though the games were successful and the country is doing a great job of developing its soft power, it still remains paranoid and rigidly authoritarian. It was really outrageous that the Chinese government encouraged people to apply for the right to protest in designated areas and then arrested those who tried to, simply setting a trap for those brave enough to want to vent genuine grievances. Even Septuagenarian women were deemed a threat by the Chinese government.

Meetings china, nationalism, olympics

In the first official meeting of the Junta, the topics of discussion were energy and China.

I led the discussion of energy. The future lies in determining a new way to power our society, not only in this country but in the world. Specific to my argument, however, is that the United States must build a new energy infrastructure as a point of national security. So that we can stop sending money abroad where it enriches others, and start spending it at home, creating jobs for Americans. So that if and when the well runs dry, we’ll be able to keep the lights on.

It has taken only 100 years or so for oil to be discovered, harnessed, glorified, vilified. How long before it is abandoned? Before it runs out? If oil were to expire tomorrow, the US would cease to be a superpower. Think about the fueling needs of the US military alone.

Clearly, though, oil is the power of the present. As is coal, which is responsible for 50% of America’s electricity. Environmentally, these are both disasters, but in terms of security, coal is fine. We have plenty. Still, it’s a nasty business that pollutes and we should be looking for alternatives.

Alternative energy is bound to be a huge market, probably even a bubble – or several bubbles. One of those is probably biofuels like corn-based ethanol. Most of what I’ve read says that it costs more energy to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol than the ethanol actually puts out in the final usage. James Lovelock wrote that there isn’t enough arable land on the planet to produce enough biofuel to power the US transportation sector – just the planes, trains and automobiles of one country.

T. Boone Pickens’s plan was brought up, and someone mentioned that his idea to use natural gas as a bridge fuel is not solving the problem. This is true from an environmental standpoint, but I believe it does help us move away from a dependence on religious extremists. I like Pickens’s contention that “America is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.” But somebody also mentioned the problem with wind power: transmission. New power lines need to be built to take the energy from the plains states to the coasts, and nobody wants power lines running through their yard, even if they are willing to put up with 400-ft-tall turbines.

Some of the notes I took about specific questions we had, as well as some additional info a few lazy Googles turned up:

• Oil industry profits in the 1990s? We had been talking about record profits for the oil companies lately and how it had made them a scapegoat for high gas prices, talk of windfall taxes and whatnot, when someone said that in the 1990s the oil companies weren’t making as much money, that the business is cyclical and that today’s profits had a lot to do with investments made during relatively lean years passed. I didn’t get very far looking into this, mostly because I don’t care how much money they make. I don’t believe in windfall taxes, but I also don’t believe those companies need any subsidies for oil and gas production.
• Who’s using more wind, America or China? Five minutes of research shows me that China has increased its wind power capacity a lot, but I haven’t found how much they actually produce. I found that the US produces 16.8 GW of power through wind, which is about 1% of national energy use. The government believes wind can produce 20% of our energy needs by 2030, but also cites transmission as the major hurdle to be cleared.
• Where is the off-shore border as far as drilling rights go? And where does the power lie between states and the federal government to get at that oil – or indeed anything else in those waters? This one I didn’t even attempt to research, but it could open up a whole new line of thinking as far as who owns the oil in the ground…

I will leave it to Jeremy to summarize his China discussion

Wrap-Ups energy, oil, wind power