Pun Salad

This is the second volume in Sean Carroll's "Biggest Ideas in the Universe" series. I reported on the first one, Space, Time, and Motion here.

My comments there apply, more or less, to this one: (1) There's a lot of math (and Carroll kind of assumes you've mastered the classical topics, like the Langrangian and Hamiltonian); (2) Like the first book, I got lost at many points, finding myself totally out of my depth. Although (good news) I was often pulled back into more accessible territory.

The basic idea is simple enough to express, even when you don't really understand it, can't visualize it, don't get the math. At bottom, just about everything is a "quantum field" of one sort or another. What we experience as particles, working their way up to atoms, molecules, etc., are excited states of those fields. This is easiest to describe with electromagnetic fields, which (when poked) produce photons.

I liked his description (it's near the end) of why we experience (some) matter as solid. When most of the "space" in an object is taken up by very unmassive electrons, why don't we (for example) just fall through the mattress when we hit the hay at night. Or fall through the floor when we walk to the bedroom. Or fall through the earth's surface and, … well, you get the idea.

The answer is a "force" that's not one of the Big Four Forces you heard about as an undergrad (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear). It's the "Pauli repulsion" force, brought about from the fact you can't have two electrons in the same quantum state. And Carroll explains that, if you'd like.

And Kevin D. Williamson is the right person to do it: Government Isn’t Your Mamaw.

Okay, I'll quote one more paragraph…

Vance had a grandmother who encouraged him—and, perhaps equally important, discouraged him—in the right ways. And Vance did what poor white trash types who do not wish to remain poor white trash do: He got out, in his case by joining the Marine Corps, one of the great exemplars of American meritocracy. He went to a good state college and an Ivy League law school, he married a woman from an immigrant family with values superior to the ones exhibited by the Real Americans™ who brought him into the world, took a job that paid a lot of money, and made the kind of social and economic connections that give a man options in life. He rails against multinational corporations and “woke” colleges and then goes home to his wife, a lawyer whose clients have included the Walt Disney Co. and the University of California; he himself is a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist, not a small-town hardware-shop owner. He rails against self-interested billionaires while Peter Thiel scratches him behind the ear.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, even if that involves you subscribing to the Dispatch.

Also of note:

• At least he didn't say 'needs to be shot in the face.' Greg Lukianoff wants something terminated with extreme prejudice: Why the ‘words are violence’ argument needs to die. Just a snippet:

  Equating words and violence is a rhetorical escalation designed to protect an all-too-human preference which Nat Hentoff, a dearly departed friend and a great defender of freedom of speech in the 20th century, used to call “Free speech for me, but not for thee.”

  Under this logic, my speech — even if sharp, brutal, and filled with invective — is still simply speech. Indeed, it might be commendable, righteous rage. But their speech, even if it’s similarly sharp and brutal, is violence — and I am therefore allowed to respond with violence. It is the kind of bad idea that can only be generated in an environment of low viewpoint diversity and highly moralistic ideological rigidity, which of course we see in too many corners of campus today.

  It's a long and thoughtful essay, with examples of Lukianoff's experience with actual violence. And makes the further point that equating speech with violence shows a profound disrespect to victims of actual violence.

• Fortunately, it's a metaphor. J.D. Tuccille echoes a complaint I've made myself: Libertarians Are More Politically Homeless Than Ever.

  For libertarians, modern American politics makes for a lonely place. Lonelier than usual, that is. Democrats are doubling down on their longtime taste for government control of the economy while replacing vestigial civil liberties concerns with a mania for policing political discourse. Republicans want to close the doors of the land of opportunity so they can dole out jobs to supporters in the not-very free economy they plan to manipulate for their own purposes. The major parties strongly agree on one point: State power should be enhanced and wielded for their own ends.

  That leaves little room for free minds and free markets.

  And if you're thinking "But what about…?"

  Normally, I would drop in a mention here that at least we can park our votes with the Libertarian Party. But that column of smoke you see in the distance is the dumpster fire it has become after an influx of populist trolls. Oh, well, it was nice-ish, and often amusing, while it lasted.

• Also a little depressed about the options is… George Will, who observes: This election is Democratic progressivism vs. GOP progressivism-lite. Alas.

  (Yes, that "alas" is in his headline. Does he write his own headlines? Sounds like him.)

  The consensus that the nation is politically polarized is indisputable only because it is undisputed. Granted, there is cultural polarization about this and that — pronouns, bathrooms, indoctrination masquerading as education, etc. Politically, however — regarding government’s proper scope and actual competence — there is deepening bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately.

  Concerning the broad contours of public policy, there is a disturbing convergence. Programmatically, the parties are more aligned than they have been since the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower caused Republicans to accept the permanency of the New Deal’s legacy: a transfer-payment state (Social Security, soon to include Medicare and much more) and federal supervision of the economy. The Republicans’ 1964 nominee, Barry Goldwater, expressed a growing exasperation with ideological homogenization, promising “A choice, not an echo.” He initiated an epochal divergence between the parties, which culminated 16 years later.

  Today, beneath the frothy partisanship, Republican progressivism echoes the Democrats’. Both parties favor significant expansions of government’s control of economic activity and the distribution of wealth. Both promise to leave unchanged the transfer-payment programs (Social Security, Medicare) that are plunging toward insolvency, and driving unsustainable national indebtedness.

  But at least there's a chance we'll live long enough to say: "Told you so."

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