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“Nero fiddled… Trump golfs”—but did Nero really fiddle while Rome burned?

After almost 2,000 years, Nero’s fiddle is back in the news. Everyone knows the story of how the Roman emperor Nero (54-68), in the midst of a crisis, ignored his duties and instead sang songs. The phrase “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” is now shorthand for a failure of leadership. It has even made its way into our imagined future, as a theme for a “Star Trek” movie (“Nero Fiddles, Narada Burns”).

So it comes as no surprise that U S Senator Bernie Sanders updated the line to criticize President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs.”

But are we being entirely fair to Nero? Here are the bare facts.

In July of the year 64, Nero was vacationing at Antium (the modern Anzio), when he learned that fire had broken out in the capital city. He raced back to Rome, but there was little he could do in a city that was composed primarily of jerry-built tenements and narrow, twisting streets. Before the fire burned itself out a week later, 10 of Rome’s 14 districts had burned to the ground and thousands in this city of between half a million and a million souls had lost everything. Nero arranged emergency shelter and supplies of food and drink, and even opened his own palace and gardens for shelter.

At some point, the exhausted emperor (who fancied himself something of a philosopher and musician) is said to have consoled himself by singing about another great conflagration—the fall of Troy, a Homeric tale that the poet Vergil had turned into Rome’s great foundation epic, the Aeneid. Of course, Nero did not use a fiddle—bowed instruments would not become popular for another 1,000 years. To accompany himself, he probably would have used a cithara, a harp-like portable instrument with seven strings.

In the aftermath of the fire, Nero offered financial incentives to landlords to clear their property of debris and begin rebuilding, and he also instituted civic planning, setting standards for wide streets and parks, and height limits on buildings. He also mandated that developers use stone instead of wood.

Not exactly what we think of when we hear that “Nero fiddled.” Why, then, the bad press?

“Almost everything we know about Nero comes from one of two sources… Neither had any reason to think kindly of Nero”

Almost everything we know about Nero comes from one of two sources—Roman senators and Christians. Neither had any reason to think kindly of Nero. He terrorized senators, members of an august body who had been reduced to mere rubber stamps. A note from the emperor that they had displeased him was tantamount to a death sentence, and Nero wrote lots of notes.

Our most detailed account of the fire comes from the pen of one senator, Cornelius Tacitus, who wrote about half a century later. Tacitus is on everyone’s list of top 10 historians of antiquity. He tried to write sine studio et ira (“without passion or partisanship”), but he could not forbear putting his own spin on Nero’s reforms. “These acts,” he wrote, “though popular, produced no effect, since a rumor had gone forth everywhere that, at the very time when the city was in flames, the emperor appeared on a private stage and sang of the destruction of Troy, comparing present misfortunes with the calamities of antiquity.”

So there it is: Nero “fiddles” as Rome burns was a “rumor.” Tacitus was too conscientious to repeat the rumor as fact, as later authors would do, but neither was he about to take a pass on such a damning story about an emperor he loathed.

Christians had no love for Nero, either. Tacitus, once again, gives us the reason. Because another rumor began circulating that the emperor himself was behind the fire, Nero looked for a scapegoat and found one in the members of this new sect (the year 64 was only about 35 years after the Crucifixion), who did not have many friends in the city. “An immense multitude,” Tacitus tells us, “was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination.”

To Christians, Nero understandably became the father of all the persecutions they would subsequently endure. Some even saw the numbers in his name as proof that he was the Antichrist. So don’t look for mercy in these sources.

I hold no brief for Nero. But a better grasp of what he did, and why he fiddled, can help us gauge the incompetence of rulers in later ages.

Featured image by Leigh Patrick

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The splintering South: the growing effect of migration on Republican strongholds

Migration patterns have laid siege to southern Republican dominance. Solidly red states a generation ago—Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina—are now purple or bright blue. The Democratic presence in Texas and South Carolina grows as Florida remains a battleground. These are all “fast growth” states. The remaining Republican bulwark represents a declining portion of the Southern electorate. If the South is the core of the modern Republican Party, its days are numbered.

The post-Reconstruction era “Solid South” was overwhelmingly Democratic. But as the Democratic Party began to champion efforts to honor the civil rights of African Americans in the latter part of the 20th century, conservative white southerners fled the Democratic Party, paving with the way for Republican dominance. At the dawning of the 21st century, the South was a Republican region. In the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, Democrats failed to win a single southern state.

Since then, however, progressivism is making a southern comeback. President Barack Obama won three southern states in 2008, and Democrats have won states in each of the last four presidential elections. Virginia is now consistently blue. Georgia and Virginia both have two Democratic Senators for the first time since the 1970s. And even in some states won by President Trump in 2016 and 2020 (e.g. North Carolina and Texas), Democratic prospects are improving dramatically.

The sea change in southern politics is not simply a function of national trends; in the Midwest, for example, Democratic strength is apparently declining. The partisan shift is not even manifest throughout the South. In states like Alabama or Tennessee, it seems that Republicans are as strong as ever. But in a set of fast-growing southern states, Republican prospects are fading. Solidly red a generation ago, Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina, are purple or bright blue. The Democratic presence in Texas and South Carolina grows as Florida remains an intensely contested battleground state.

“Growing states are becoming significantly more progressive; stagnant or declining states are not, and migration patterns are fueling these differences.”

Politically, the South is splintering, and dramatic differences in population growth have created the fault line along which this break is occurring. Growing states are becoming significantly more progressive; stagnant or declining states are not, and migration patterns are fueling these differences. In Movers and Stayers: The Partisan Transformation of 21st Century Southern Politics, I show that movers—migrants from other regions or other parts of the South—tend to be younger, more educated, and somewhat more racially diverse than southerners who stay put. In 1975, migrants from other regions were far more likely to Republicans than native southerners. Today, movers are more likely to be Democrats. The states and counties they move to are becoming more progressive. Conversely, the states and counties southern movers vacate tend to become more Republican. A key facet of this political transformation is the impact of movers on stayers (long-term community residents), specifically white stayers. White stayers in economically vibrant and increasingly diverse growth areas become more progressive. White stayers in demographically-challenged areas incurring the loss of the young and (often) educated are becoming more Republican. However, African Americans and Latinos in these stagnant or declining communities do not shift to the political right as whites do.

Significantly, the new sub-regional distinction between the growing and the stagnant South does not map onto the traditional distinction between Deep South and Rim South. Since V.O. Key published Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949), scholars have considered the Deep South states of the “black belt”—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina—the bastion of racial conservatism, and as white racial conservatives fled the Democratic Party, the citadel of Southern Republicanism. Due to movers and stayers dynamics—and the nationalization of our racialized politics—black context no longer drives white racial conservatism. The partisan differences generated by population growth have eroded the traditional distinctions between the Deep South and the Rim South. Growing states are becoming more progressive whether they are in the Deep South (Georgia) or the Rim South (Virginia). By the same token, stagnant states have become Republican standard bearers whether they are in the Deep South (Alabama, Mississippi) or the Rim South (Arkansas, Tennessee).

The changing character of southern politics has important implications for the future of our political parties. The core of support of the modern Republican Party is the South. If the South is to be the future of a nationally competitive party, Republicans will need to attract movers and the increasingly-progressive communities to which they are attracted. Given the increasing progressivism of the growth states—states which will only play an increasingly prominent role in southern politics—the social and racial conservatism of today’s Republican Party pose a serious obstacle to continued competitiveness in the 21st century South (and the US more generally). Absent a more inclusive organization with a future-focused agenda committed to competent and capable government, Republicans’ hold on the South may well be history.

Feature image by Clay Banks

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More than a Vogue cover: Madam Vice President Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris graced the February cover of Vogue magazine wearing her signature Converse sneakers, a dark jacket, and skinny pants, paired with a white top. This casual image of the first female vice president drew considerable criticism for failing to capture Harris in a pose and outfit more appropriate for her historic position in American government. Anna Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chef, and others defended the cover picture by noting that this image best reflects the events of the moment—but has now announced a re-do, with a new limited edition cover for Kamala Harris as a result of the widespread backlash. The cover photo controversy is much more than a disagreement over a styling choice. Madam Vice-President’s racial identity is central to understanding why some take exception to this cover. Black women’s bodies are political. Their styling choices have cultural meanings that are deeply rooted in cultural norms that carry the legacies of racism, sexism, and respectability politics. Thus, the uproar over Kamala Harris’s Vogue cover must be read through a socio-cultural lens that acknowledges the intersectional salience of her racialized and gendered body.

Outside of her historic victory, Kamala Harris’s appearance also affords her some possibilities, such as this Vogue cover, not open to other Black women candidates. This multi-ethnic Black woman was once called the “best-looking attorney general in the country” by President Barack Obama. She’s also appeared on the Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful list. Contrast the recognition of Kamala Harris’ beauty to the experiences of Stacey Abrams. The former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and founder of Fair Fight plainly stated to the co-hosts of The Breakfast Club, a syndicated hip-hop/urban radio show based in New York City, that  “They [doubters] don’t think I’m viable, because I’m a Black woman with natural hair.” Harris and Abrams have received differential treatment that is not shaped by their political ideologies, fitness for an elected position, nor their ability to represent constituents.

Black women political elites experience this complicated relationship between genetic makeup, personal styling choices, and the cultural norms that prioritize Euro-American standards of beauty. They must weigh decisions about their self-presentation against stereotypical tropes, cultural norms that denigrate Blackness, and European beauty standards, in addition to the historical legacies of racism, colorism, sexism, and heteropatriarchy. As such, Black women candidates face unique pulls and pushes in how to present themselves as acceptable in the eyes of voters—or, in Harris’ case, the eyes of Vogue readers.

The premier fashion magazine allowed Vice President Harris to wear her own clothes for the photo shoot to reflect her personal sense of style. Tyler Mitchell, the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover, captured Kamala Harris’ image against a backdrop of pink and green—an ode to her sorority’s colors. As a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sorority Inc., the first Black collegiate sorority, founded on the campus of Howard University in 1908, Kamala Harris chose to present herself to readers by displaying Black American cultural symbols. Black Congresswomen highlight their membership in Black sororities, civil rights organizations, and degrees from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to signal to constituents that they are connected to Black communities.

Kamala Harris’ symbolic use of her sorority may have been muted by efforts to make her appear more Euro-American and perhaps more appealing to White audiences. The Vogue cover photo of the first female vice president of Black and South Indian descent has noticeable lighting issues in which Kamala Harris appears to have lighter skin tone than her actual coloring. White-washing or lightening the skin tone of women of color in major fashion magazines reveals racial bias in photography. Black women political elites are cognizant of the role of colorism—a preference for lighter skin—within electoral politics. Indeed, a senator in the Missouri state house shared that “this is troubling. Because what was defined as ‘beauty’ within the African American community, with the first 50 elected officials, you had to almost look like a White person.” In other words, Black women’s beauty is deeply tied to racialized and gendered stereotypes and voter preferences that prioritize a non-Afrocentric phenotype. Furthermore, Black women candidates must conform to Eurocentric beauty norms even when running in a majority Black district. Colorism is not simply an issue for how Black women political elites are viewed by Whites, but also by Blacks.

While Kamala Harris is rightly lauded for being the first woman of color vice president, the Vogue cover controversary demonstrates that she will be viewed within socio-cultural constructions. Even when she is able to control how she is presented, her image may be manipulated or read in ways that are distinctly racialized and gendered. Indeed, Black women political elites acknowledge the politicization of their bodies. Like Kamala Harris, they all desire to present themselves in a professional manner but prevailing race/gender stereotypes continue to stigmatize Black women in politics. Unfortunately, I expect to see other instances where Madam Vice President’s body is the subject of discussion rather than her politics. For Black women political elites, their bodies are often the focus of inquiry just as much as their policy preferences and political stances.

Feature image by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Online music-making with nearly no lag time—really!

Susan Alexander found a way to fill the “big, depressing hole in your life where playing music with other people used to be”—a hole caused by this year’s official restrictions on in-person gatherings to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus. That hole grew smaller when this avocational Maryland pianist discovered JamKazam, one of several free music-making software programs that nearly eliminate the annoying lag time in sound transmission that occurs when musicians try to make music together on Zoom or Skype.

“I’m now as busy playing chamber music as I was pre-pandemic,” she wrote in a how-to guide she created for JamKazam that she posted on the website of the DC Concert Orchestra Society. She also emailed her guide to ACMP (Associated Chamber Music Players), a group for fellow avocational chamber music enthusiasts. ACMP’s new executive director, Stephanie Griffin, had received emails this summer from other members who sang the praises of Jamulus, another low lag-time program. “I’ve never been a technology buff,” said Griffin, a professional violist. “I didn’t know about these programs.” She quickly sent out a survey to ACMP members to learn more.

The ACMP survey showed that nearly 30 percent of the more than 150 survey respondents were playing chamber music online, with JamKazam and Jamulus the two most popular programs used; a few also tried another option, SoundJack. Most respondents who weren’t yet making music online said they wanted to learn how, but fear of technology was holding them back. So Griffin set a new goal for ACMP, at least for the remaining months of the pandemic: to provide information on how to use online music-making programs.

To help overcome musicians’ tech fears, Griffin invited online players to join a Technology Task Force to tutor other ACMP members with the set-up process. Griffin has now successfully mastered JamKazam and Jamulus herself and plans to tackle SoundJack, Sonobus, JackTrip, and others. Because instructions on the programs’ websites can be challenging reading for non-techies, Griffin posted Susan Alexander’s JamKazam user guide on the public part of the ACMP website, making it available to ACMP’s 2,500 members worldwide, as well as to others. Griffin also posted a Jamulus guide and plans to roll out guides for other programs and host informational webinars.

A computer is required for these programs. Recommended extras—whose combined cost can range from $100 to $300—include wired earphones, a microphone, an audio interface device to adjust sound quality, and an ethernet cable for a stronger internet connection than wifi. However, Maryland singer Suzanne Epstein just uses her computer’s mic and doesn’t have an audio interface. Even so, she is able to make music via JamKazam with others in Maryland and Colorado.

“Cellist Mike Tietz … tried Jamulus this spring: ‘I had absolutely no audio knowledge, but with help from others, I’m now a “regular” online.'”

Violist Phyllis Kaiden, one of ACMP’s volunteer tutors, uses both JamKazam and Jamulus. A retired Seattle librarian with experience writing software, it still took her a while to master the programs this spring, while playing online with a friend in Canada. She invited local friends to join her. “When the weather was nice, they preferred to gather in backyards. Recently, as the weather turned bad, they’ve been more interested,” she said. “I’ve had luck getting people set up in half an hour. More frequently, it’s two hours.” Even those with no tech background catch on quickly, including cellist Mike Tietz, a retired New York lawyer who tried Jamulus this spring: “I had absolutely no audio knowledge, but with help from others, I’m now a ‘regular’ online.”

There are differences among the programs in how online playing occurs. With JamKazam, a player creates a session and invites others to join. With Jamulus, players can use public servers that anyone can join at any time. Kaiden didn’t like the idea of people barging in on a private session, so she created her own server—not an easy task. Her tech background helped. She lets others, including a local orchestra, use her server to set up their own Jamulus sessions.

Long before the pandemic, many programs already existed, created by tech-savvy musicians. When social-distancing rules arrived, the programs were updated and rolled out in a big way to help musicians stay connected. Most programs use open-sourced software that keeps being updated.

After the pandemic ends, some may stop playing online, but Kaiden said she’ll definitely keep on with her Canadian friend. Mike Tietz will probably still play with the friends around the world he met through Jamulus. So will Susan Alexander, who noted that playing online “might make it easier to rehearse” with local musicians when post-pandemic schedules get crowded again.

As recommended by musicians:

Below is information on several of the free programs with low lag times that allow real-time online music-making, as recommended by the musicians in this blog post. Most are audio only because displaying video images uses too much Internet bandwidth. All have Facebook pages where fans share advice.

Jamulus: In 2006, German music professor Volker Fisher created Jamulus to play with members of his rock band who moved to other cities, according to a SourceForge article. The Concordia Quartet has created how-to videos for Jamulus, as has avocational violinist .

JamKazam: In 2014, Austin, Texas, cloud-based-gaming executive David Wilson received a grant to develop JamKazam, which he was inspired to create in order to play with a brother in Dallas. A Go Fund Me campaign this year raised money to further lower the program’s lag time.

SoundJack: Dr. Alexander Carôt, a German professor of media computer science who plays bass in rock and jazz bands, created SoundJack in 2009 and has kept updating it. In 2020, New England Conservatory students began writing an English manual for it.

JackTrip: In 2000, Stanford University music professor Chris Chafe and colleagues developed JackTrip to let university music groups around the world perform together. In 2020, they began adapting the software to work on home computers.

Sonobus: This was created by musician and software engineer Jesse Chappell, Sonosaurus LLC, who has developed other music apps. Sonobus works using a computer, but, unlike some programs, it can also work on an iPhone or iPad that runs Apple iOS 11 or newer.  

Jammr: This differs from the others in being “designed for improvising together to a chord progression,” not for playing a specific piece of chamber music. There is a free beta version, as well as a paid-for Premium version.

Feature image: Susan Alexander and friends at their homes in Maryland and Virginia playing chamber music together online via JamKazam. Left to right: Valerie Matthews, Susan Alexander, Michael Casassa. Most are volunteer tutors with ACMP’s Technology Task Force. Photo courtesy of Susan Alexander.

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Coming to terms with recalcitrant kids and with mots populaires

A look at such English animal names as pig, cow, bull, bun (that is, bunny), cat, dog, tyke, horse, and quite a few others reveals a certain uniformity: their roots have always been monosyllabic (except for an occasional case ending), and dictionaries tend to call their origin unknown or uncertain. Does it follow that their etymology is as simple as bow-wow, oink-oink, as cluck-cluck? Surely, this is not the whole story. Also, camel and elephant are not reducible to animal cries. The same holds for English heifer, from heahfore, one of my favorites, because the neglect of it in etymological dictionaries inspired my work on the origin of English words more than twenty years ago. Those who have read the previous posts on calf and cub are also aware of the fact that the same sound complex often designates several animals. The initial meaning of such a complex might be something like “a soft, round creature (object).” From the history of camel and elephant we can see that many animal names are borrowings. Such loans from other languages do not have to be several syllables long, like hippopotamus, armadillo, and platypus. Cat seems to have reached Europe from Africa, and it is monosyllabic (once again: never mind an occasional ending) in the languages all over Europe. We’ll return to animal cries and migratory words some time later.

A chip off the old block. (Image by Sabine van Straaten.)

Kid, the subject of this blog post, has a few relatives outside English, but in an English text it appeared only around 1200, in a poem so strongly influenced by the language of the Scandinavians that the fact of borrowing is incontestable: kid is an import from Danish. Old Norse preserved kið (ð has the value of th in English this), and the Modern Danish form is kid. However, West Germanic also had this word, even though Old English lacked it, as evidenced by German Kitze “fawn” (!), going back to the oldest period.

Last time, in anticipation of today’s story, I wrote that old animal names are being constantly ousted by new ones. And indeed, the speakers of Old English called a kid ticcen. Though there was no great need to substitute a Scandinavian word for it, this is what happened. In ticcen, –en is a diminutive suffix (thus, a little ticc-). Apparently, ticc– meant “goat.” Modern German Ziege and Zicke continue this form (in addition, there is Zick-lein “kid”). I also noted that the names of small animals do not typically derive from the names of their parents (cow ~ bull versus calf, ewe/sheep ~ ram versus lamb, dog/bitch versus ~ whelp, and so forth, including of course cub), but for some reasons, the word for “kid” often has the same root as the name of its mother. In fourth-century Gothic, gait-s “goat” occurred, and the kid was called gait-ein (the same word with a diminutive suffix). A similar picture can be seen in Russian (koza ~ kozlyonok). To increase our amusement, we find Latin haedus “kid” (not “goat!”), an almost certain cognate of English goat and Gothic gaits.

Now, if Germanic gait– has the same root as goad, from gaid-, the goat may have received its name from its horns (a rather realistic fantasy). Were the insect tick and Old English ticcen also called this for their stinging “horns”? Possibly so. Some monosyllables might refer to concrete objects, rather than being mere verbal playthings, like cob, cub, cib, ceb (products of badly definable emotions?). One often witnesses the type of coining that falls under the denomination of “Language at Play.” Ticcen has the root tik– (cc, that is, the long consonant kk, is, like many geminates, a feature of emphasis), and kid– looks like tik– with its consonants reversed! One gets the impression that this game has no hard and fast rules.

Here you see a tick, a probable etymological sibling of the horned kid. (Image by
Erik Karits.)

Dialects provide us with an almost endless list of words like the ones mentioned above. Here, my source of information is an article by Felix Wortmann in the periodical Niederdeutsches Wort 4, 1964, 53-76. Wortmann borrowed numerous examples from Joseph Wright’s great English Dialect Dictionary, but some of them have universal currency: kid “seed vessel, etc.,” kipper ~ gib “salmon,” kib “a bone in the leg of a sheep,” gibby “children’s word for’ sheep’,” keb “sheep louse,” kit “a young hare,” chit “young of a beast; a very young person; potato shoot” (ch before i goes back to k), along with chi ~ chice ~ chiddick “a tiny bit,” chips and chitters “fragments,” and many others that are not connected with animals, small size, or cutting to pieces. The situation elsewhere in Germanic is the same.

In dictionaries, such words are discussed individually, though they make more sense as a group. This is the information we find in The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Chit: obscurely related to Old English cīþ “shoot, sprout, etc.” (þ = th in Engl. thick), with cognates elsewhere, from the root kī– “split.” Chip is not derived there from any root. Kipper is called a word of obscure history, perhaps related to Old English coppor “copper,” with allusion to the color of the male salmon. At kið, the main etymological dictionary of Old Icelandic mentions the derivation from a call to the animal as the most plausible hypothesis. The idea that we are dealing with the root kī- (this hypothesis goes back to the nineteenth century) is called less persuasive. In the most recent etymological dictionary of German (at Kitz), the root kid-, with the emphatic variant kitt-, is cited. Klaas Heeroma, a distinguished Dutch scholar, wrote in 1944 an article on emotional words and preferred to trace kid to the root meaning “a thick formless mass.”

Such is the state of the art. I am not suggesting that individual words of this type do not deserve attention. A bird’s-eye view of probably a hundred nouns won’t reveal their etymology in one fell swoop, but a few conclusions seem obvious. First, referring animal names to the words used to call such animals is not wrong, but unsafe. If someone calls a pussycat by saying puss-puss-puss, we cannot know which came first: the name or the call. And what did people say to kids a thousand years ago? Alas, those kids and callers are all dead. Nor would they have been able to provide an answer. Second, the idea of an Indo-European or Germanic root from which such words arose is based on circular reasoning. Indeed, some complex like ki– or kī can be “abstracted” from a multitude of nouns vaguely belonging together, but we have no way of showing that they derived from this reconstructed root. (The same logical error mars the reconstruction of all old roots.) Finally, it appears that, in coining words for small animals, small children, and small objects, people, perhaps rather arbitrarily choose certain sound complexes and play with them, without caring for so-called sound laws. Some such words must be mildly sound-symbolic or sound-imitative, but neither the symbolism nor the imitation is obvious enough in kid, cub, cild “child,” and so forth, for us to draw definite conclusions. Perhaps such multitudes first appeared arbitrarily and later became models for more coinages.

These are all kids. (Image by Lukas.)

Etymologists often cite words like kid and calf in non-Indo-European, especially Semitic, languages (the same sound shape and the same or similar meaning, though, as we have seen, meanings are unstable here). This fact suggests neither a great language unity in the past nor multiple borrowings. It more probably points to near-universal psychological impulses in calling small, especially round, creatures all over the world (as Wilhelm Oehl might have suggested; I often refer to his interesting but largely neglected work on “elementary word creation”).

Kid “child” used to be low slang, and the details of its history are obscure. Most likely, in dialects, the word always had a broad range of meanings (“little goat,” “any little animal,” “child”). The amazing fact is not the emergence of this sense, but its acceptance and triumph in the language of the educated class.

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What is “representation” in the human brain and AI systems?

You know the way Google search will sometimes finish your sentences for you? Or, when you’re typing an email, there’s some ghostly predictive text that floats just in front of your cursor? Well, there’s a new kid on the block that makes these gadgets look like toy tricks out of a Christmas cracker. Give it a sentence of Jane Austen and it will finish the paragraph in the same style. Give it a philosophical conjecture and it will fill the page with near-coherent academic ruminations. GPT-3 is essentially just predicting what words should come next, following on from the prompt it’s been given. That the machine does so well is partly because it’s been trained on an unimaginably huge database of samples of English (reputedly, $13 million worth of training). A similar machine can predict, from a sequence of amino acids, how the resulting protein will fold, short-cutting months of lab work and in some cases years of human ingenuity (AlphaFold). But what is going on inside the machine? What is it keeping track of inside its huge neural network “brain”?

We face the same question, of course, when we look at the human brain—a seemingly inscrutable organ of even greater complexity. Yet neuroscience is beginning to make sense of what’s going on inside: of patterns of activity distributed across millions of neurons, flowing into other patterns; coupling and modulating; unfolding in a way that opens the organism to the world outside, projected through its inner space of needs and drives, bathed in the wash of past experience, reaching out to control and modify that world to its own agenda. We can now see what some of these patterns of activity are, and we have an inkling of what they are doing, of how they track the environment, and subserve behaviour.

Neuroscientists are recording these patterns with new techniques. But what do the patterns mean? How should they be understood? Neuroscience is increasingly tackling these questions by asking what the activation patterns represent. For example, “representational similarity analysis” (RSA) is used to ask whether the human brain processes images in the same way as the brain of the macaque monkey. Surprisingly, similar techniques can be used to compare the human brain to an AI computer system trained to perform the same task. These AIs are deep neural networks, cousins of the seemingly unfathomable GPT-3 and AlphaFold brains we met at the start. Astoundingly, it turns out that sometimes the deep neural network is processing images in roughly the same way as the human brain. In a general sense, both are performing the same computations en route to working out that they are looking at a picture of two cats on a sofa. In other cases, we see the brain using a hexagonal code to represent physical space—and more abstract conceptual spaces—and to reason about them.

All of this means that representation has become something of a hot topic in cognitive neuroscience. Representation has always been around, of course, working away in the foundations ever since the “cognitive revolution” showed that we could explain behaviour in terms of internal processing without having to feel embarrassed about intelligent homunculi or ghosts in the machine. What we have now are much better ways to see those representations in the brain and to marry them up with the computational story about how the organism intelligently deals with its environment.

“representation is the crucial link for connecting brain activity with functional, adaptive behaviour”

What we still need is a proper understanding of what representation is—an understanding of how there come to be things in the head which stand in for, and allow creatures to deal with, things in their environment. A once-unconventional idea in contemporary philosophy (originating with Ruth Millikan, David Papineau, and Karen Neander) is that this is intimately tied up with function—biological functions based on natural selection. Although a connection to function may have always been implicit in some scientific practice, it is now being recognised explicitly (Hunt et al. 2012, Richards et al. 2019). For example, in a recent manifesto for the role of representation in computational cognitive neuroscience, Kriegeskorte and Diedrichsen (2019) argue that representation is the crucial link for connecting brain activity with functional, adaptive behaviour. Meanwhile in philosophy, appealing to natural teleology to explain representation has moved into the mainstream, being embraced by researchers from diverse disciplinary starting points (David Haig, Robert Williams), alongside recent landmark contributions from early advocates (Karen Neander, Ruth Millikan).

The devil is in the details, of course, but it is beginning to look as if we have the main ingredients in place: internal states that stand in useful relations to things in the environment, internal processing which relies on those relations, and the functions that serves for the organism. Just as the cognitive sciences come to lean on representation ever more heavily, it seems that we now have the resources to understand this foundational notion.

Feature image by issaronow

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Trump and the mainstreaming of racism in American politics [long read]

The mob that ransacked the Capitol at President Donald Trump’s behest on January 6th brought together various sorts of extremists deeply committed to sustaining Trump’s presidency by any means possible, including violence if necessary. Yet, in addition to their loyalty to Donald Trump, many of these extremists were also united by an ideology of white nationalism, driven by a strong sense of white racial identity and hostility toward racial outgroups. This fact was clear from the many white nationalist symbols on display at the protests. And as more information has been released concerning the identity of the participants in the insurrection, we have come to learn that members of several organizations tied to the white nationalist movement were present at the protests. This is not surprising—the insurrection was at its base founded on a racist lie that nonwhites, African Americans in particular, in big cities, in key swing states, not the violent rioters, were the ones who were undermining the rule of law by committing massive voter fraud to hand Biden the election.

This “big lie” of the “stop the steal” campaign and its role in the Capitol riot provides perhaps the most alarming evidence yet of how the racism of a burgeoning white nationalist movement has been “mainstreamed” in contemporary politics. Our research in many ways suggests that the events of January 6th were years in the making. The evidence shows how Trump as a political novice came to power by adopting the white nationalist movement as his ready-made base of support. The white nationalist movement had no doubt been around for years, if only lingering on the fringe of mainstream politics, but it intensified in reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama when the Tea Party led the way to inflame racists to increase their involvement in conventional electoral politics in reaction to the first nonwhite president in US history. This was a definite inflection point in this mainstreaming. Yet, Trump took this mainstreaming of racism to another level with his initial run for office right through to the end of his presidency and in the process has become the de facto leader of the white nationalist movement in the United States that has reached its apotheosis in the seditious insurrection of January 6th.

“Trump … has become the de facto leader of the white nationalist movement in the United States”

While playing with the fire of racial extremism is a very risky business for politicians, people like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley do not seem chastened by the fallout of the Capitol riot and still look to assume leadership of the Trump coalition and its white nationalist base. For now, we can say it is a sign that American politics has changed. For decades, playing the race card has been a way for politicians in both parties, but especially for Republicans, to rise in prominence. But now, more than ever, racial attitudes have come to define partisan identities, and partisan polarization has become more racialized than ever. Republicans all around the country must without reservation seek to at least placate their racist base if they are to gain office. While Trump is being removed from the political scene, Trumpism’s incendiary racist politics is likely to persist for some time to come, at least until it is thoroughly repudiated at the ballot box.

Part of the problem of Trumpism is that its racist appeals are broader than what politicians most often used in the past. Our research had begun with an examination of racial attitudes in contemporary politics and the growth in what we call “white racial extremism,” which we argue is no longer simply about white attitudes towards black people. Over the last four presidential elections, the most politically potent racial attitudes have been those directed toward a constellation of groups, most especially African Americans, Latinx immigrants, and Muslims. These attitudes have become increasingly intertwined, especially since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, comprising the basis of what we call white “outgroup hostility.”

To better understand this mainstreaming of racism in electoral politics, we identified people we define as “white racial extremists.” These are not simply people who feel some level of resentment toward these groups—although to be identified as a racial extremist in our data, one must display a greater than average level of hostility toward all three racial groups. The most important condition for satisfying our definition of “white racial extremist” is that the respondent must display the absolute highest level of hostility allowed by the survey items toward at least one of the groups. Identifying racial extremists in this way thus allows for us to study their political behavior over time as measured in repeated surveys.

According to our calculations, the number of white racial extremists under this new definition has grown over the last four elections and they have come to represent a politically significant share of the Republican coalition. In 2004, white racial extremists comprised only 13% of George W. Bush’s supporters, but this increased in 2008 to 19% and by 2012 had reached 23% of supporters of the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Thus, by the time Donald Trump rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, white racial extremists represented a cohesive voting bloc that was roughly comparable in size to other traditional voting blocs within the Republican coalition, such as white evangelical Christians, the elderly, and veterans.

“over the last four elections [white racial extremists] have come to represent a politically significant share of the Republican coalition”

The building blocks to this burgeoning white nationalist movement took time to put in place. Our research also confirms work by Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto that shows that the mainstreaming of racial extremists associated with white nationalist movement began with the rise of the Tea Party movement and its infiltration by white nationalist group leaders and activists. Although some white nationalist groups such as the American Freedom Party and the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party tried to pursue electoral politics on their own, they failed to achieve any major victories. The Tea Party movement became attractive to white nationalists due to the fact that it allowed them to pursue many of their goals while participating in a movement that was already part of the mainstream. Many white nationalists viewed their participation in the Tea Party as a form of what they referred to as “entryism,” which movement strategists define as the infiltration of another movement for the purpose of influencing its agenda. Tea Party-affiliated political elites responded favorably by incorporating elements (albeit watered down) of white nationalist ideology into their platforms, which further attracted racial extremists to the Tea Party.

By the time that Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, white nationalists had already gotten a taste of electoral success through the Tea Party. However, the movement lacked a charismatic national leader who could unite the white nationalist movement while at the same time being electable to a broader group of voters. Trump, it turns out, was exactly who they were waiting for, and from the very beginning it seemed that he knew this. Throughout the campaign there was a long list of incidents in which Trump seemed to offer a nod to white nationalists, much like he did in the first presidential debate when he blew his dog-whistle and directed the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Our research also finds that in his campaign speeches, Trump was far more likely to call out African Americans, Latinx immigrants, and Muslims compared to his primary competitors and he was far more likely to do so using terms that reflect negative stereotypes and tap into white outgroup hostility.

Our research relies on a variety of data sources to show that white racial extremists responded with great enthusiasm to Trump’s candidacy. Most importantly, compared to previous elections, racial extremists were significantly more likely to turn out for Trump in the critical swing states that carried him to victory. Racial extremists were also more likely to have participated in the campaign in other important ways, such as attending campaign rallies and working for the campaign. Finally, our research shows that as a result of Trump’s election, racial extremists experienced a significant increase in political efficacy—the sense that the federal government is responsive to your concerns. This development is especially noteworthy because in the past few decades, people with high, overt levels of racial prejudice have displayed low levels of political efficacy and for this reason have been more likely to sit out of politics altogether, compared to other voters. This has changed with Trump. After the election, racial extremists had closed the efficacy gap with non-racial extremists and by all accounts continued to actively participate in Trump’s re-election efforts.

“Trump rose to power by embracing white nationalists and he ends his presidency in infamy for doing so”

Trends in the activity levels of white nationalist organizations have supported these conclusions. For years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking the identity and location of active hate groups. It turns out that the mainstreaming of white nationalism in US politics has had what many would consider an unanticipated consequence. Since 2010, when activity levels of white nationalist groups peaked, the number of white nationalist groups has steadily declined, even throughout the 2016 campaign and Trump’s first term. In addition, the decline in white nationalist group activity has been disproportionately concentrated in counties where there was an active Tea Party organization (for years 2010-2015 when the Tea Party was active) and in counties where support for Trump was the highest (for years 2012-2016). While this decline may on its face seem encouraging, we conclude that an important reason for this downward trend in white nationalist organizations is that many white nationalists have now been co-opted into the Trump-led Republican Party. To the extent that these groups continue to exist, many of them, like the Proud Boys, have aligned their organizational mission with the Trump’s agenda. As a result, Trump feels he cannot afford to risk alienating the white nationalists, as they are a significant part of his base of support.

Trump’s allegiance to white nationalists explains his hesitation to condemn such groups during the first presidential debate and even after the Capitol riot. Yet, his undying loyalty to his racist base will now prove to be his demise, ending his one-term presidency with a second impeachment brought about by his embrace of a seditious mob of white nationalist supporters. Trump rose to power by embracing white nationalists and he ends his presidency in infamy for doing so. Given the mainstreaming of white nationalism in our politics today, and the fact that partisan politics is now so thoroughly polarized along racial lines, the demise of Trump only opens the door to the next stage of Trumpism. The resistance to white nationalism inevitably must enter a new phase. The only viable solution is punishing the Republican party for embracing white nationalism by defeating them at the ballot. Today, the solution to the mainstreaming of white nationalism is profoundly partisan.

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Essenes in Judaean Society: the sectarians of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The sectarians reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls, identified with the Essenes, were not the isolated community of popular imagination that spent their days praying, studying scriptures, and waiting for one or two messiahs in the desert. Some of them did do so, especially those who lived at a site near the Dead Sea known as Khirbet (‘ruins of’) Qumran, but most of them did not. Four thousand of them lived in towns, villages, and large groups throughout Judaea. They were in Jerusalem, where a gate was named after them, and also at Masada, where their writings were found.  They worked in agriculture, animal husbandry, bee-keeping, and crafts of various kinds, but did not produce weapons.

They participated in public life by trading with other Jews and gentiles, and some of them could read and speak Greek. They were peace-loving, but that conviction did not prevent them from participating in the first Jewish revolt against Rome, 66-70 CE, preferring to be tortured and killed as martyrs rather than blaspheme the lawgiver or eat forbidden food.

The sectarians knew about the Romans, whom they designated by the cipher “the Kittim,” and described them as “swift and mighty in war” as they mercilessly destroyed many with the sword under Roman rule. The Roman commanders, as the Essenes described them, mockingly sneered at and besieged fortresses, symbols of the power of kings, princes and people, and all the nations were in fear and dread of them. The sectarians were familiar with the practices of the great army of the Romans, detailing as they did how it crushed and plundered the towns of the earth as the army marched across the expanse of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, coming from afar and the coastlands, devouring all the peoples “as an eagle.” The sectarian commentator (“pesherist”) of the prophecy of the biblical book of Habakkuk described the Roman army’s tactical use of horses and beasts in trampling the earth underfoot. The pesherist knew that the Romans imposed a payment of tribute of corn, money, and forced labour upon the nations, including Judaea in the province of Coele-Syria, and celebrated their success by sacrificing to the ensign of their military standards.

Political and military strategies of the Romans were known to the Essenes. They knew that the Romans made “allies” and “friends” of those who feared to confront them. They understood that the Romans were cunning, wily and the Essenes considered them deceitful as the Romans patiently planned to control the whole region. They described the Roman Senate as “the council of the house of [their] guil[t]” that dispatched a succession of “praetors” or governors to Judaea to devastate the land. With this antipathy towards the Romans it is not surprising to learn that one of them, named John the Essene, participated in the first Jewish revolt against Rome. He, being one of three men of exceptional strength, was appointed as general in charge of the areas north and west of Judaea, the toparchy of Thamma, Lydda, Joppa, and Ammaus.

The Essenes were a Jewish “sect” or school of philosophy with two branches: some were celibate, disdained marriage and adopted children; others believed that marriage and procreation were needed if the group was to continue and not disappear. Their community was hierarchical, structured, and disciplined. They cared for the elderly and the ill, and they shared their belongings with each other. They studied the holy books of Judaism, notably prophecy, and were punctilious in their observance of Jewish law, especially as regards purity and sabbath laws. They wore white linen, renounced pleasure, and regarded continence as a virtue. The Jewish historian Josephus compared them to the Greek Pythagoreans.

The Essenes practised a form of prophecy that involved the prediction of the fate of political figures. Judas the Essene foretold the death of Mattathias Antigonos at an underground place called “Strato’s Tower.” Manaemus prophesied that the boy Herod would one day become king of the Jews, and as a result the Essenes were spared the requirement to take an oath of loyalty to the monarch. It is thought that this consequent favour was the reason why there was an “Essene Gate” in the first wall of Herodian Jerusalem. And Simon the Essene divined the demise of Archelaus as ethnarch of Judaea, and his banishment to Gaul.

Most of the Essenes lived life within Judaean society. Philo described them with the triple definition of piety: love of God, love of virtue, and love of men. Like other Jews, they relied on God and venerated the lawgiver. But they also held beliefs that distinguished them from other Jews: they believed in providence and fate, the resurrection of the flesh, and immortality of the soul. Distinct to all others in the ancient world, they were against slavery, condemning slave-ownership as both unjust and ungodly, and against the law of nature that made all men equal at birth.

Featured image by Jad Limcaco via  Unsplash.

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Understanding black holes: young star clusters filling up gaps

Since their groundbreaking discovery of gravitational waves from a pair of in-spiralling black holes back in 2015, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has detected nearly 70 candidates of such events, 50 being confirmed and published until now. A tight binary comprising black holes or neutron stars would always spiral in and become tighter with time by losing energy in the form of gravitational waves until they plunge onto each other and merge. The final phase (typically, some ten seconds long) of this merger process would generate the strongest “chirp” of gravitational waves which the mammoth laser interferometers of LIGOVirgo can register as an “event.” Each of such event, apart from being fascinating by its own right, also provides us with valuable information such as how heavy the black holes are, how fast they are spinning, and whether the spins are tilted. Such information is the key to understanding how black holes are formed out of stars and how they end up in binaries.

Most, if not all, of the stars in the Universe form in densely-packed spherical groups. Such a fresh hatch of stars, called a young cluster, is held together by the stars’ mutual gravitational pull. Black holes are formed when the most massive and shortest living of the stars, some tens to hundreds of times heavier than the Sun, run out of their nuclear fuel and collapse under their own gravity. Once formed, these black holes become by far the heaviest members of the cluster. Therefore, they sink up to the stomach of the cluster where they are free to interact and exchange energy with each other via gravitational attraction. That way, they often end up pairing.

The interaction chain doesn’t stop there, though. The binary black holes continue to interact with neighbouring black holes, forming triples of black holes (rarely, even up to quadruples and quintuplets). Such a triple, by itself, is a highly active system undergoing extreme internal oscillations (known as the Kozai-Lidov oscillation), a process which causes its constituent black holes to periodically zip by, approaching each other’s event horizon: this is when things become relativistic. This is how, mediated purely by gravitational interactions, binary black holes form and go all the way up to in-spiral and merge inside star clusters.

I recently conducted a computer simulation of this whole picture that has explicitly reproduced all the key properties of the merging binary black holes that LIGOVirgo have derived from their observations. These are extensive and ab initio simulations of star clusters, comprising tens of thousands of stars, with practically no inherent simplifying assumptions. No compromise is made in these simulations: the latest knowledge of black hole formation from stars and Einstein’s general relativity are knit together with a rigorous mechanism for tracking all sorts of encounters that the stars and the black holes would go through. In terms of physical ingredients, these are the most advanced and realistic computer simulations of star clusters to date which successfully tackle a long-awaited problem in computational and multi-disciplinary astrophysics.

The binary black hole mergers from these calculations reproduce not only the overall trends in masses and spins of the observed LIGO-Virgo merger events but also the oddest ones among them—. Events, for example, like the recently revealed GW190521, involving a black hole of 80 solar mass that is “forbidden” by stellar evolution theory, occur naturally in these simulations. Current understanding of stars and binaries tells us that black holes cannot have masses in between 60 and 120 solar masses which is why GW190521 is, so far, the oddest among the odds. Of course, in my own simulations, black holes are never born within this forbidden range. However, as time passes, some of the black holes jump up in mass to enter the forbidden zone. The mass jump happens either by merging with another black hole (which is itself a “normal” event) or by eating up a star. Inside a cluster, such a massive object becomes a mighty attractor enabling it to participate in a merger again and thus create an apparently impossible gravitational-wave event. In these simulations, black holes of up to 100 solar mass undergo mergers, forming intermediate-mass black holes as in GW190521.

The computed star cluster models also make mergers resembling other remarkable LIGO-Virgo events such as GW170729 (formation of an 80 solar mass, unusually spinning black hole) and GW190412 (merger of two black holes that are unexpectedly dissimilar in mass). By virtue of their high internal activity and ambience, young, moderate-sized star clusters have the potential to explain both the trend and the oddities of the observed gravitational-wave merger events. The importance of these apparently humble clusters in generating the most energetic events in the Universe is just beginning to be realised.

Featured image by Brett Ritchie

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COVID-19 and pollution: double standards, quadruple bias

The difference between policy responses to COVID-19 and to environmental crises is striking. When faced with the pandemic, governments around the world (with a few notable exceptions) adopted draconian measures to limit the disaster. These measures are not inconsequential: it will take years to reduce unemployment and the public debt. Yet, they were sacrifices considered necessary to protect public health.

Environmental crises are not tackled with the same aplomb. Just like the pandemic, pollution causes different kinds of damage, which cannot be expressed with a single measure. As we are now used to evaluating the severity of a crisis in terms of the resulting death toll, we should bear in mind the following indicator: according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), COVID-19 will cause almost 2 million deaths in 2020; again according to the WHO, different forms of pollution cause over 12 million deaths per year. Reducing the huge death toll caused by pollution is feasible without triggering a major recession, like the one that COVID-19 has plunged us into. Yet, for decades, environmentalists have been told that environmental measures must be moderated to avoid destabilising the economy.

There are clearly double standards. Why do governments refuse to invest as much in the environment as they are prepared to invest in the fight against COVID-19? Our perceptions of crises are influenced by four types of bias.

The first bias is the identification of victims. COVID-19 victims can be easily identified, whereas, the victims of pollution cannot. Pollution’s effect on public health is diffuse and causes “statistical victims.” Although we know that atmospheric pollution increases the frequency of heart failure and pulmonary diseases, causing a further 7 million deaths each year, it is difficult to determine which specific individual was saved because of the absence of pollution. The same applies to victims of polluted water, ozone depletion, and climate change. Establishing the causal link between pollution and mortality is easier statistically for an entire population than it is medically for a specific individual. When there is no clearly identifiable victim and just cold statistics, it is difficult to feel empathy and be moved by the effects of pollution.

“Why do governments refuse to invest as much in the environment as they are prepared to invest in the fight against COVID-19?”

The second bias is socio-economic. Both COVID-19 and pollution have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable populations. However, COVID-19 is more of a threat to the elite than pollution. The virus has affected powerful heads of state and wealthy business leaders. On the other hand, climate change and biodiversity loss do not threaten the elites directly. Since the elites have a privileged voice in public debates, their interests are over-represented.

The third bias is spatial optimism. We are under the false impression that environmental crises occur in remote countries. Europe and North America were also victims of this bias with COVID-19 in January and February 2020, when the epidemic appeared to be limited to Asia. In March, however, countries around the world were forced to acknowledge that they would not escape the pandemic. However, many of us are still lulled into the false sense of security that we are left more or less unscathed by the damage caused by pollution.

The last bias is temporal. The pandemic was sudden and called for emergency measures. In contrast, environmental crises have been reported for decades. Too often, they are seen as upcoming events, rather than disasters unfolding before our very eyes. Consequently, we have grown used to the bleak predictions made by environmentalists. In fact, they are now part of the background noise in public debates. Although environmental degradation calls for immediate corrective action, it is no longer perceived as an emergency. It has now become our new normal.

The experience of COVID-19 has shown that environmental protection is not just hindered by economic obstacles, but also by misperceptions. To correct the four different types of bias, greater visibility should be given to the real and immediate victims, people like us, people we are close to. Environmental action is not just for polar bears, future generations, or remote climate refugees; it is a matter for us as well.

Featured image: United States Geological Survey

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