Cyclic Causality

Moral Imperatives for Economists

Most people think that macroeconomics is a legitimate subject because its experts are employed by prestigious organizations like central banks, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, treasury departments, investment funds, and universities. They don’t know that macroeconomics is colonialism by another name. In this post, I will describe what macroeconomics is, and how it is used for exploiting weaker nations. Just as...

What is Causal Closure?

Toward the end of a recent conversation, someone asked me: “Is the universe causally closed?” For a moment I was stumped because I realized that what the person is really asking is whether God intervenes in the universe. If God intervenes in the universe, then the universe is not causally closed. If He doesn’t, then the universe is causally closed. I...

Why the West Rules the World—For Now

I recently came across a book with the same title as this post, by a British historian Ian Morris, that tells an obscurantist history of the West, attributing its successes to geography. There have been similar books (e.g., Collapse by Jared Diamond) that attribute the rise and fall of empires to climate changes, and the availability of food and energy. This...

How Living Systems Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics

When James Clerk Maxwell proposed the second law of thermodynamics, he envisioned a thought experiment in which two chambers of gas were joined by a small door under the control of a ‘demon’ who would selectively open the door depending on which direction the gas molecules were moving. If we think of the two chambers as containing mixtures of blue and...

The Cyclic Model of Causality

In modern science, causes are equated to forces. These forces represent how change occurs; it involves explaining the creation of a trajectory. However, forces don’t explain why change occurs, which involves the goal or destination along with a moral justification of the goal. For example, if someone asks you, “How did you come here?” you can respond by saying that “I...