Derbyshire the Innumerate

An interesting synchronicity occurred today involving Steve Sailer’s mention of “Stock and Flow”, John Derbyshire’s claim that “If Americans minded what was happening, they didn’t mind enough to stop it.” regarding the US’s majority dispossession, and my having spent the last week acquainting myself with system dynamics software so I could, based on my early work on limits to growth, try some pedagogy to deal with the innumerate.

Herein I discuss a bit how Mr. Derbyshire’s statements make it obvious that, whatever his book-learning about mathematics, he is functionally innumerate hence the worst form of pedant.

The innumerate I am specifically interested in addressing by using system dynamics software packages with nice graphical user presentations are people who don’t seem to understand the difference between a function and its integral. Historically, the main problem I’ve had to deal with in this regard is the insistence on confusing “income” with “wealth” in tax policy. This confusion is right up there, in terms of political economy, with the confusion that separated the physics of Aristotle from that of Newton. You can imagine Newton’s frustration if he went back in time to discuss physics with some of Aristotle’s more innumerate students. Well, that’s about how I feel discussing tax policy with most people dabbling with political economy.

Nowadays we have new innumerates abounding not just in political economy but in immigration policy, as Sailer describes in the aforementioned article

Thus, a typical poll will more or less start off by asking what should be done about the “12 million” illegal immigrants in the United States. (Objection! No-one knows the real number.)

Clearly, having that many illegal immigrants in the country represents a difficult problem. There is, however, one universal answer about what to do about a difficult problem:

Don’t make it worse.

There’s a standard distinction between a “stock” and a “flow.” If, say, your firm’s balance sheet at this point in time (the stock) is in the red, the first priority is to get your next income statement (the flow) in the black.

Similarly, if you have too many illegal immigrants right now, the last thing you want is more next year.

But that common sense approach has almost never informed poll design.

So, what does John Derbyshire the Innumerate do with this distinction during his most recent “flow” of NRO excrement?

And so white-Anglo America slips into minority status. Probably we never wanted it to happen. Probably, if asked around 1970 whether it ought to happen, most of us would have said no. The topic never rose to the status of a major political issue among the mass of Americans, though. The coming presidential election will be the first in my lifetime to have immigration as a major theme.

If Americans minded what was happening, they didn’t mind enough to stop it. To be sure, their indifference was aided and abetted by the late 20th-century browbeating campaigns by cultural elites on behalf of “diversity,” “political correctness,” and racial guilt; but Americans didn’t seem to mind those much, either — not enough to rebel against them in any significant way.

Sure, Johnny. We understand why you can’t draw the sole numerate conclusion from the completely obvious fact that the majority didn’t want to be dispossessed.

Perhaps meditating on this “stock and flow” diagram will help you reflect on your functional innumeracy:

Posted by James Bowery on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 09:21 PM in
Comments (11) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Lurker on May 29, 2007, 09:53 PM | #

Pedantry Alert!

James, its Steve Sailer not Sailor. Though obviously we know who you mean.

Posted by Lurler on May 29, 2007, 09:57 PM | #

Blimey, that was fast work there! Rendering my comment even more redundant.

Posted by James Bowery on May 29, 2007, 10:25 PM | #

I was just flushing out the pedants.

Posted by dchamil on May 29, 2007, 10:31 PM | #

You may well disagree with John Derbyshire, but I wouldn’t call him innumerate. His recent book on the Riemann Zeta Function is pretty advanced mathematics by the standards of most of us.

Posted by James Bowery on May 29, 2007, 10:34 PM | #

Precisely my point.

Mr. Derbyshire has no excuse.

If you can’t use your mathematical knowledge when it counts, you count as innumerate.

Posted by karlmagnus on May 30, 2007, 11:26 AM | #

I have to say your point is completely incomprehensible. Derbyshire is about as restrictionist a writer as you’re ever going to get in the MSM, so slagging him off is counterproductive, at least when a short term goal like stopping the new US Immigration Bill is concerned.

His point that the US majority didn’t care enough to turn the tap off is valid; this happened because the majority was consistently lied to. Given that the existing US population majority has not yet become a minority, why is the flow relevant to the question of its opinion?—if immigrants and their relatives are currently even 80 million of a population of 300 million, the other 220 million still constitutes a majority. By all means, the election of 2048 may be dominated by the new ethnics, but not that of 2008.

And kindly avoid calling me mathematically illiterate in your repsonse; I have a First in the subject from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on May 30, 2007, 11:41 AM | #

His point that the US majority didn’t care enough to turn the tap off is valid; this happened because the majority was consistently lied to.

Sort of an odd point, like arguing that a victim of fraud who doesn’t quite understand he’s been defrauded is somehow desirous or deserving of his fate.

Posted by Alex Zeka on May 30, 2007, 02:35 PM | #

I assume that james meant that wealth is income, as Hispanic population is to Hispanic immigration. Beyond that, I’ve no idea what the entry is about.

The Derb is right to suggest that Americans never seemed to get angry enough to actually do something about pc political tyranny. His attitude is puzzling, however. Without effective leadership, the average man doesn’t stay angry for long about anything not immediately affecting him. provide some bloomin’ leadership - like by saying that this has serious negative consequences, for instance.

Posted by James Bowery on May 30, 2007, 03:44 PM | #

Alex, you’re not hard enough on Derbyshire and too hard on “the average man”.

Think of “the average man” as a stock holder in a corporation.

If the stockholders elected a CEO to run their corporation with the understanding that maximizing some quantity was critical to them—like say “profit”—then the CEO would be expected to perform basic cognitive functions involving numbers to make sure that quantity was, in fact, maximized. They shouldn’t have to babysit the CEO, nor any of the rest of the officers.

Indeed, when the CEO shows the kind of innumeracy shown by Derbyshire, he is often personally sued for “breach of fiduciary responsibility”. It’s not about some guy getting up and “leading the rabble”—it is stewardship of an asset over which he has been granted temporary and conditional responsibility.

Now, certainly, it may take a while for the stockholders to figure out that they’ve been defrauded, embezzled, or otherwise. However, under no circumstance are the “experts” to be forgiven for functional innumeracy.

PS: And my point is more about pitting Sailer against Derbyshire. Sailer’s point is that poll takers are functionally innumerate in precisely the way Derbyshire demonstrated he is.

Posted by john on June 05, 2007, 11:27 PM | #

The Derb obviously doesn’t get it. Here’s the math. What the immigration issue proves is that democracy is not a representative government. The elites burnt their own meal ticket. Democracy doesn’t exist. Because if the people who supposedly being represented are marginalized then it’s impossible to claim they were represented. It doesn’t matter weather they marched in the street or even voted. It may even be considered the peoples fault, but that doesn’t matter. Such a government cannot claim legitimacy.

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