What is ethics? I knew, but I've forgotten.
"The study of morality.Of the precepts of conduct: of being decorous, noble, decent and honest. Of the heights of goodness, to which probity and morality carry up the human spirit. And of the chasms of evil, into which malice and immorality are flung ..."
'The heights of goodness!' she snorted. 'Probity! Morality! Don't make me laugh, or the scar on my face will burst. You were lucky that you weren't hunted, that they didn't send bounty hunters after you, people like .... You'd see what chasms of evil are. Ethics? Your ethics are worth shit, .... It isn't the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.'
'Thanks for the lesson,' he sneered.'In truth, though one may have lived a century, it is never too late to learn something new. Indeed, it is always worth listening to mature, wordly and inexperienced people.'
'Mock. Go ahead and mock.' She tossed her head.'While you still can.For now it is my turn, now I shall entertain you with a tale.I'll tell you what happened to me.And when I'm done we'll see if you still feel like mocking me.'
INDIA IPPON DESU
Monday, December 26, 2022
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Stanford hates fun
By John Cochrane
Stanford hates fun is the title of the second Stanford article in the Wall Street Journal this week. (On the first, Stanford's guide to acceptable words, enough said already.)
This has been bubbling up for a while. Last June, Ginevra Davis wrote a powerful article in Palladium, "Stanford's war on social life." She recounted how the slightly transgressive Stanford atmosphere in the 90s, which seeded the slightly transgressive get it done attitude of tech in the early 2000s, is being smothered by the Administration. For example, back in the early 90s,
...The brothers were winding down from Kappa Alpha’s annual Cabo-themed party on the house lawn.... a day-to-night extravaganza that would start sometime in the morning and continue long after midnight. The girls wore bikini tops and plastic flower leis, and the boys wore their best Hawaiian shirts.
Uh-oh, I can already smell trouble if you tried that today. But the point,
That year, the brothers had filled the entire main level of Kappa Alpha’s house with a layer of sand six inches deep. The night was almost over; the guests were leaving and the local surf rock band had been paid their customary hundred dollars in beer. The only question was what to do with all the sand.
No one remembers who had the idea to build the island. A group of five or six brothers managed the project. One rented a bulldozer...
Later that year, the brothers installed a zipline from the roof of their house to the center of the island. They also built a barge, which they would paddle around the lake on weekends and between classes.
More generally
Through the late 1990s, Stanford ... featured a wacky campus culture that combined collegiate prep with West Coast laissez-faire. Stanford was home to a rich patchwork of wild and experimental campus life. Communal living houses (“co-ops”) encouraged casual nudity, while fraternities threw a raucous annual “Greek Week” and lit their houses on fire. Until 2013, Stanford hosted a fully student-run anarchist house, where residents covered the walls with eccentric murals.
Today,
The Kappa Alpha boys have been kicked out of their old house. Lake Lagunita was closed to student activities in 2001,...
...In less than a decade, Stanford’s administration eviscerated a hundred years of undergraduate culture and social groups. They ended decades-old traditions. They drove student groups out of their houses. They scraped names off buildings. They went after long-established hubs of student life, like fraternities and cultural theme houses...
A powerful observation: This spirit of self-organization, slightly transgressive but organized fun taught students how to organize things like the 2000s tech revolution. Stanford’s support for the unconventional pioneered a new breed of elite student: the charismatic builder who excelled at “breaking things” in nearby Silicon Valley.
... unlike most elite schools, ...Stanford ... was also fun. Stanford had created a global talent hub combined with explicit permission for rule-breaking. As a result, students learned a valuable lesson: they had agency; they could create their own norms and culture instead of relying on higher authorities.
Young kids need to be out in the playground negotiating the rules themselves, without lots of parents and coaches around. College students need self-organized parties and pranks to learn to be tech entrepreneurs. I had always disparaged "party schools" as places with too much drinking and not enough studying, and most parties seem to me like a pointless drunken bacchanalia. But the importance of self-organized activity is something I had missed.
The article explains nicely the advantages of fraternities and sororities to young people.
In the middle of my freshman year, I started noticing that students, particularly older ones not in a housed Greek organization, seemed quite aimless and very lonely....
When students live together, united by a shared identity, they tend to look after each other. The boys in one fraternity sleep together in a pile on the floor. Girls in housed sororities leave their doors open and treat their clothes like a communal wardrobe.
The process
In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals. The next year, Stanford drained the remnants of Lake Lagunita, where students used to gather to host bonfires, and ended the annual anything-but-clothes party known as Exotic Erotic. And the year after that, in 2015, the administration put the notoriously anti-establishment Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band on “super-probation,” the culmination of years of increasing restrictions on their antics.
over the ensuing years, the Band mostly lost its raucous, fraternity-esque culture, and stopped doing anything particularly controversial. Once, the Band mocked Stanford’s rivals with crass marching formations; today, the Band designs all their pranks based on pre-approved themes from the university and clears the final plans with a panel of administrators.
Then they came for the fraternities
One night, I was biking home late from the Caltrain. I made it halfway back to my dorm before I realized that something was missing. Music. It was a Friday night, but the campus was completely silent.
Unlike Harvard, which abruptly tried to ban “single-gender social organizations” and was immediately sued by alumni, Stanford picked off the Greek life organizations one by one to avoid student or alumni pushback. The playbook was always the same. Some incident would spark an investigation, and the administration would insist that the offending organization had lost its right to remain on campus. The group would be promptly removed.
...When Stanford could not remove a student organization for bad behavior, they found other justifications. One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations.” ...
Next year, Outdoor House will be reinstated, but only because house members promised to refocus their theme on “racial and environmental justice in the outdoors.” Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing. Stanford reserves the right to unhouse any organization that does not, in their opinion, uphold these principles.
Covid provided the excuse to really clamp down. The new system sounds awfully bleak.
The first thing Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness” and “community” on campus. Under the system, new freshmen would be assigned to one of eight artificially-created housing groups called “neighborhoods,” each containing a representative sample of campus housing.
The reality of the neighborhood system is that it strips students of their ability to form distinct personalities or formal friend groups. I am in Neighborhood S. Some of my friends are in Neighborhood N. It doesn’t actually matter. The neighborhoods are not based on geography—many houses in the same “neighborhood” are on opposite sides of campus—and have no personalities outside of their letter name. They are distinctions without meaning.
... students in “bad housing”—the labyrinth of themeless, meaningless dorms awaiting most Stanford students—rarely bother to learn their neighbor’s names. Hallways are quiet and doors are locked. Without a strong existing support network, these students can easily bounce from anonymous dorms, to lecture halls, to cavernous dining halls without anyone acknowledging their presence for days.
..Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn’t ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends.
When I tell current Stanford students the story about JP and his island, I swear their eyes pop out of their heads. Everything was so different then. It sounds like a story from another school—the house, the lake, and the groundskeeper who let the boys pass. But mostly, what feels foreign is the spirit expressed by the six brothers, the wild unfettered joy.
A bottom line
Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands..
***
Izzy Meyerson followed up in the Stanford Daily. Izzy transferred from the University of Chicago,
...the place where “fun goes to die.” Yet, in my first quarter at Stanford, I found myself missing the unique community hubs that so easily brought people together at the University of Chicago: the student run coffee shops, each with its own personality (the one for indie kids, the one for econ bros and their adjacents, the one for more edgy, subversive “alt” students, etc…), the student center, even the silent Harper Library, which was a place for me to hang with friends and meet new people...
When I was at UChicago, there was an active effort underway to make the school more appealing to the general high achieving high school student... This involved embracing looser restrictions ... and a new community-driven student life strategy. It seems to me that Stanford is heading in the opposite direction, embracing the “where fun goes to die” mantra that UChicago is trying so hard to shed.
...when I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021, I saw a dull and tired campus, one that had forgotten it was supposed to be the fun California school... I spent much of my time working in my room, and I am someone that hates working in my room. But there were few social places to work on campus where you could meet new people. I felt awkward and unwelcome when I walked into the first floor of Green to absolute silence and stares from people as the squeak of my shoes seemed to fill the emptiness of the space.
Izzy has a deep point. The lack of campus social life is about a lot more than big alcohol-fueled parties.
...Stanford has been eroding away traditions (such as Full Moon on the Quad) and historical community hubs through the Neighborhood System. This was easy for them to do — there was an entire year of remote schooling in which traditions were not passed down to the incoming class, and so their demise was imminent. Though such traditions may seem frivolous, it is exactly these small, uniquely Stanford events that bring people together...
..what makes college so valuable is the relationships you make with others across wide and varying backgrounds.... But we must have access to abundant social interactions and involvements for such meaningful growth to take place. So, I implore you, Stanford, to embrace “fun” again, revitalize our unique campus culture, not simply for the enjoyment of the student body but to allow your students to build themselves into complex and diverse beings.
The WSJ notes
Stanford began mandating students file an application two weeks ahead of a party including a list of attendees, along with sober monitors, students said.
The number of registered parties dwindled to 45 during the first four weeks of school this fall, down from 158 over the same period in 2019, according to the Stanford Daily.
My jaw dropped. Filing an application for a party two weeks ahead of time? You must be kidding. I went to MIT, lived in a dorm, and even there parties were organized about 5 minutes ahead of time! "List of attendees?" Is this China? The university keeps track of who is invited to what party?
What's going on? It's right there -- "Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing.." " Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness”.." The bureaucrat's vision of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" cannot stand any self-organization by students. Voluntary association might not be sufficiently "diverse" and "inclusive" (except, of course, the "affinity" groups which are deliberately not diverse and inclusive.) The only way to be "equitably" "included," apparently, is to be equally, intensely, lonely and miserable. So even the most minor social organization, like having a party, must be policed by bureaucrats. And smothered in the process.
No wonder there is a mental health crisis! Living all alone in a faceless dorm with closed doors would drive any 18 year old nuts. I found my first years in a college dorm intensely difficult, and only the fellowship of the irreverent Burton Third Bombers got me through. (Thank you all!) I can't imagine living all alone in a motel-like silent dorm a thousand miles from home. I would have cracked too.
***
Stanford's response, per WSJ, could be written by The Onion,
Samuel Santos Jr., associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs, says the school is working to address students’ concerns about Stanford’s social atmosphere.
The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life.
“We want events to be fun, inclusive and safe and those things can happen,” Mr. Santos says. “They just require collaboration and honesty.”
Maybe the problem is reflected in the fact that Stanford has an "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning" in the first place! Streamlining the paperwork to ask mommy for permission to have a party is not the answer. And "more administrators will be hired !" Jaw drops again. Isn't it breathtakingly obvious that the problem is too many administrators in the first place?
***
This may seem minor. Who cares if undergraduates have fun? Well, maybe some people care if undergraduates mature into confident people, capable of organizing a party without guidance and permission from the Ministry of Parties, before they head out into the world to start the next generation of tech companies. Or, more likely take jobs as deputy directors of "inclusion, community and integrative learning" at the newly sclerotic old tech companies.
I hope, however, that Stanford's alumni will wake up and take notice. They are a key constituency for an institution that lives off their generous donations. The loss of academic freedom and free speech doesn't seem to bother them much, even when taken to the ridiculous such as the guide to acceptable words. The imposition of far-left politics under the "IDEAL" banner hasn't woken them up.
But they give money in memory of the great time they had as undergraduates -- and the experiences that made their lifelong friends, molded their personalities, and were core foundations of their current success and personal happiness. Perhaps news that these core fond memories have gone up in smoke will catalyze them.
Stanford hates fun is the title of the second Stanford article in the Wall Street Journal this week. (On the first, Stanford's guide to acceptable words, enough said already.)
This has been bubbling up for a while. Last June, Ginevra Davis wrote a powerful article in Palladium, "Stanford's war on social life." She recounted how the slightly transgressive Stanford atmosphere in the 90s, which seeded the slightly transgressive get it done attitude of tech in the early 2000s, is being smothered by the Administration. For example, back in the early 90s,
...The brothers were winding down from Kappa Alpha’s annual Cabo-themed party on the house lawn.... a day-to-night extravaganza that would start sometime in the morning and continue long after midnight. The girls wore bikini tops and plastic flower leis, and the boys wore their best Hawaiian shirts.
Uh-oh, I can already smell trouble if you tried that today. But the point,
That year, the brothers had filled the entire main level of Kappa Alpha’s house with a layer of sand six inches deep. The night was almost over; the guests were leaving and the local surf rock band had been paid their customary hundred dollars in beer. The only question was what to do with all the sand.
No one remembers who had the idea to build the island. A group of five or six brothers managed the project. One rented a bulldozer...
Later that year, the brothers installed a zipline from the roof of their house to the center of the island. They also built a barge, which they would paddle around the lake on weekends and between classes.
More generally
Through the late 1990s, Stanford ... featured a wacky campus culture that combined collegiate prep with West Coast laissez-faire. Stanford was home to a rich patchwork of wild and experimental campus life. Communal living houses (“co-ops”) encouraged casual nudity, while fraternities threw a raucous annual “Greek Week” and lit their houses on fire. Until 2013, Stanford hosted a fully student-run anarchist house, where residents covered the walls with eccentric murals.
Today,
The Kappa Alpha boys have been kicked out of their old house. Lake Lagunita was closed to student activities in 2001,...
...In less than a decade, Stanford’s administration eviscerated a hundred years of undergraduate culture and social groups. They ended decades-old traditions. They drove student groups out of their houses. They scraped names off buildings. They went after long-established hubs of student life, like fraternities and cultural theme houses...
A powerful observation: This spirit of self-organization, slightly transgressive but organized fun taught students how to organize things like the 2000s tech revolution. Stanford’s support for the unconventional pioneered a new breed of elite student: the charismatic builder who excelled at “breaking things” in nearby Silicon Valley.
... unlike most elite schools, ...Stanford ... was also fun. Stanford had created a global talent hub combined with explicit permission for rule-breaking. As a result, students learned a valuable lesson: they had agency; they could create their own norms and culture instead of relying on higher authorities.
Young kids need to be out in the playground negotiating the rules themselves, without lots of parents and coaches around. College students need self-organized parties and pranks to learn to be tech entrepreneurs. I had always disparaged "party schools" as places with too much drinking and not enough studying, and most parties seem to me like a pointless drunken bacchanalia. But the importance of self-organized activity is something I had missed.
The article explains nicely the advantages of fraternities and sororities to young people.
In the middle of my freshman year, I started noticing that students, particularly older ones not in a housed Greek organization, seemed quite aimless and very lonely....
When students live together, united by a shared identity, they tend to look after each other. The boys in one fraternity sleep together in a pile on the floor. Girls in housed sororities leave their doors open and treat their clothes like a communal wardrobe.
The process
In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals. The next year, Stanford drained the remnants of Lake Lagunita, where students used to gather to host bonfires, and ended the annual anything-but-clothes party known as Exotic Erotic. And the year after that, in 2015, the administration put the notoriously anti-establishment Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band on “super-probation,” the culmination of years of increasing restrictions on their antics.
over the ensuing years, the Band mostly lost its raucous, fraternity-esque culture, and stopped doing anything particularly controversial. Once, the Band mocked Stanford’s rivals with crass marching formations; today, the Band designs all their pranks based on pre-approved themes from the university and clears the final plans with a panel of administrators.
Then they came for the fraternities
One night, I was biking home late from the Caltrain. I made it halfway back to my dorm before I realized that something was missing. Music. It was a Friday night, but the campus was completely silent.
Unlike Harvard, which abruptly tried to ban “single-gender social organizations” and was immediately sued by alumni, Stanford picked off the Greek life organizations one by one to avoid student or alumni pushback. The playbook was always the same. Some incident would spark an investigation, and the administration would insist that the offending organization had lost its right to remain on campus. The group would be promptly removed.
...When Stanford could not remove a student organization for bad behavior, they found other justifications. One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations.” ...
Next year, Outdoor House will be reinstated, but only because house members promised to refocus their theme on “racial and environmental justice in the outdoors.” Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing. Stanford reserves the right to unhouse any organization that does not, in their opinion, uphold these principles.
Covid provided the excuse to really clamp down. The new system sounds awfully bleak.
The first thing Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness” and “community” on campus. Under the system, new freshmen would be assigned to one of eight artificially-created housing groups called “neighborhoods,” each containing a representative sample of campus housing.
The reality of the neighborhood system is that it strips students of their ability to form distinct personalities or formal friend groups. I am in Neighborhood S. Some of my friends are in Neighborhood N. It doesn’t actually matter. The neighborhoods are not based on geography—many houses in the same “neighborhood” are on opposite sides of campus—and have no personalities outside of their letter name. They are distinctions without meaning.
... students in “bad housing”—the labyrinth of themeless, meaningless dorms awaiting most Stanford students—rarely bother to learn their neighbor’s names. Hallways are quiet and doors are locked. Without a strong existing support network, these students can easily bounce from anonymous dorms, to lecture halls, to cavernous dining halls without anyone acknowledging their presence for days.
..Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn’t ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends.
When I tell current Stanford students the story about JP and his island, I swear their eyes pop out of their heads. Everything was so different then. It sounds like a story from another school—the house, the lake, and the groundskeeper who let the boys pass. But mostly, what feels foreign is the spirit expressed by the six brothers, the wild unfettered joy.
A bottom line
Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands..
***
Izzy Meyerson followed up in the Stanford Daily. Izzy transferred from the University of Chicago,
...the place where “fun goes to die.” Yet, in my first quarter at Stanford, I found myself missing the unique community hubs that so easily brought people together at the University of Chicago: the student run coffee shops, each with its own personality (the one for indie kids, the one for econ bros and their adjacents, the one for more edgy, subversive “alt” students, etc…), the student center, even the silent Harper Library, which was a place for me to hang with friends and meet new people...
When I was at UChicago, there was an active effort underway to make the school more appealing to the general high achieving high school student... This involved embracing looser restrictions ... and a new community-driven student life strategy. It seems to me that Stanford is heading in the opposite direction, embracing the “where fun goes to die” mantra that UChicago is trying so hard to shed.
...when I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021, I saw a dull and tired campus, one that had forgotten it was supposed to be the fun California school... I spent much of my time working in my room, and I am someone that hates working in my room. But there were few social places to work on campus where you could meet new people. I felt awkward and unwelcome when I walked into the first floor of Green to absolute silence and stares from people as the squeak of my shoes seemed to fill the emptiness of the space.
Izzy has a deep point. The lack of campus social life is about a lot more than big alcohol-fueled parties.
...Stanford has been eroding away traditions (such as Full Moon on the Quad) and historical community hubs through the Neighborhood System. This was easy for them to do — there was an entire year of remote schooling in which traditions were not passed down to the incoming class, and so their demise was imminent. Though such traditions may seem frivolous, it is exactly these small, uniquely Stanford events that bring people together...
..what makes college so valuable is the relationships you make with others across wide and varying backgrounds.... But we must have access to abundant social interactions and involvements for such meaningful growth to take place. So, I implore you, Stanford, to embrace “fun” again, revitalize our unique campus culture, not simply for the enjoyment of the student body but to allow your students to build themselves into complex and diverse beings.
The WSJ notes
Stanford began mandating students file an application two weeks ahead of a party including a list of attendees, along with sober monitors, students said.
The number of registered parties dwindled to 45 during the first four weeks of school this fall, down from 158 over the same period in 2019, according to the Stanford Daily.
My jaw dropped. Filing an application for a party two weeks ahead of time? You must be kidding. I went to MIT, lived in a dorm, and even there parties were organized about 5 minutes ahead of time! "List of attendees?" Is this China? The university keeps track of who is invited to what party?
What's going on? It's right there -- "Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing.." " Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness”.." The bureaucrat's vision of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" cannot stand any self-organization by students. Voluntary association might not be sufficiently "diverse" and "inclusive" (except, of course, the "affinity" groups which are deliberately not diverse and inclusive.) The only way to be "equitably" "included," apparently, is to be equally, intensely, lonely and miserable. So even the most minor social organization, like having a party, must be policed by bureaucrats. And smothered in the process.
No wonder there is a mental health crisis! Living all alone in a faceless dorm with closed doors would drive any 18 year old nuts. I found my first years in a college dorm intensely difficult, and only the fellowship of the irreverent Burton Third Bombers got me through. (Thank you all!) I can't imagine living all alone in a motel-like silent dorm a thousand miles from home. I would have cracked too.
***
Stanford's response, per WSJ, could be written by The Onion,
Samuel Santos Jr., associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs, says the school is working to address students’ concerns about Stanford’s social atmosphere.
The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life.
“We want events to be fun, inclusive and safe and those things can happen,” Mr. Santos says. “They just require collaboration and honesty.”
Maybe the problem is reflected in the fact that Stanford has an "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning" in the first place! Streamlining the paperwork to ask mommy for permission to have a party is not the answer. And "more administrators will be hired !" Jaw drops again. Isn't it breathtakingly obvious that the problem is too many administrators in the first place?
***
This may seem minor. Who cares if undergraduates have fun? Well, maybe some people care if undergraduates mature into confident people, capable of organizing a party without guidance and permission from the Ministry of Parties, before they head out into the world to start the next generation of tech companies. Or, more likely take jobs as deputy directors of "inclusion, community and integrative learning" at the newly sclerotic old tech companies.
I hope, however, that Stanford's alumni will wake up and take notice. They are a key constituency for an institution that lives off their generous donations. The loss of academic freedom and free speech doesn't seem to bother them much, even when taken to the ridiculous such as the guide to acceptable words. The imposition of far-left politics under the "IDEAL" banner hasn't woken them up.
But they give money in memory of the great time they had as undergraduates -- and the experiences that made their lifelong friends, molded their personalities, and were core foundations of their current success and personal happiness. Perhaps news that these core fond memories have gone up in smoke will catalyze them.
Friday, December 23, 2022
Wednesday, December 07, 2022
Saturday, December 03, 2022
Why are there no more protests in Russia
Sergey Radchenko on Twitter
On the question of why protests are breaking out in China and in Iran but *not* in Russia. This has nothing to do with any kind of predisposition for authoritarianism or some special degree of subservience that the Russians supposedly possess. Let's look at what's happening.
1. The most important factor is economic. Russians today are not doing great but in comparative terms - compared to where they were even twenty years ago - they are still fairly well off. Russian nominal GDP per capita today is 5 times what it was 20 years ago, more than $12,000.
The impact of sanctions is being felt, and inflation is going up, but this is really not the 1990s. In the 1990s, the town I lived in (in the Russian Far East) suffered daily blackouts and the absence of hot or, often, cold water, and no one was even bombing it.
2. Russia is a moderately repressive society. We know for instance that brave, honest activists like Navanly and Kara-Murza are in prison, and there are laws in place to put anyone behind bars for made-up reasons. But people can go much as before if they don't go out on a limb.
There is a certain degree of normality to life in Russia (unlike, say, in China since covid). So life goes on, more or less, as before. Except of course that some are being drafted to die in Ukraine. But - crucially - a relatively small number (still).
3. There is a degree of novelty to this situation. The war began in February - en eternity ago - but its reality has not quite sunk in. Partly, it's related to the above: life more or less goes on as before, and the war is something happening far away, not here and now.
4. Russia still allows people to leave. True, they can't go to Europe but those most opposed to the regime have been able to leave and restart their lives in places like Kazakhstan, Georgia, even Turkey and Mongolia. Russia is not a pressure cooker
5 (crucially). Putin has benefited from the rallying-around-the-flag effect, something denied to the Iranian and Chinese rulers. Although Russia has invaded Ukraine (not the other way around), there is a factor of us-vs-them in this war.
This has of course been helped by Western narratives about de-colonizing Russia, proclaiming it a terrorist state, banning all Russians from Europe, etc. Those who understand the problematic effect of these measures on Russia (including me) have long drawn attention to this.
So, no, I am not surprised that there are no large scale protests in Russia. Are you?
On the question of why protests are breaking out in China and in Iran but *not* in Russia. This has nothing to do with any kind of predisposition for authoritarianism or some special degree of subservience that the Russians supposedly possess. Let's look at what's happening.
1. The most important factor is economic. Russians today are not doing great but in comparative terms - compared to where they were even twenty years ago - they are still fairly well off. Russian nominal GDP per capita today is 5 times what it was 20 years ago, more than $12,000.
The impact of sanctions is being felt, and inflation is going up, but this is really not the 1990s. In the 1990s, the town I lived in (in the Russian Far East) suffered daily blackouts and the absence of hot or, often, cold water, and no one was even bombing it.
2. Russia is a moderately repressive society. We know for instance that brave, honest activists like Navanly and Kara-Murza are in prison, and there are laws in place to put anyone behind bars for made-up reasons. But people can go much as before if they don't go out on a limb.
There is a certain degree of normality to life in Russia (unlike, say, in China since covid). So life goes on, more or less, as before. Except of course that some are being drafted to die in Ukraine. But - crucially - a relatively small number (still).
3. There is a degree of novelty to this situation. The war began in February - en eternity ago - but its reality has not quite sunk in. Partly, it's related to the above: life more or less goes on as before, and the war is something happening far away, not here and now.
4. Russia still allows people to leave. True, they can't go to Europe but those most opposed to the regime have been able to leave and restart their lives in places like Kazakhstan, Georgia, even Turkey and Mongolia. Russia is not a pressure cooker
5 (crucially). Putin has benefited from the rallying-around-the-flag effect, something denied to the Iranian and Chinese rulers. Although Russia has invaded Ukraine (not the other way around), there is a factor of us-vs-them in this war.
This has of course been helped by Western narratives about de-colonizing Russia, proclaiming it a terrorist state, banning all Russians from Europe, etc. Those who understand the problematic effect of these measures on Russia (including me) have long drawn attention to this.
So, no, I am not surprised that there are no large scale protests in Russia. Are you?
Life on Titan
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has a surface temperature of 94 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, about a third of Earth’s. Titan is located 9.5 times farther than the Earth-Sun separation and the surface temperature of Solar system objects declines roughly as the square-root of their distance from the Sun.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has a surface temperature of 94 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, about a third of Earth’s. Titan is located 9.5 times farther than the Earth-Sun separation and the surface temperature of Solar system objects declines roughly as the square-root of their distance from the Sun.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has a surface temperature of 94 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, about a third of Earth’s. Titan is located 9.5 times farther than the Earth-Sun separation and the surface temperature of Solar system objects declines roughly as the square-root of their distance from the Sun.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)