White Angus

Jack White thumbs his nose at OU for publishing the details of his contract, including a very specific guacamole recipe. (h/t the one and only king of the skins Martin Atkins)

The recipe in question:

Click for an even more pit-tastic image.

Here, I'll let ol' Diamond Dave explain the logic behind weird contract riders. It makes pretty good sense once you hear it.



Consider the following two explanations for Jack White's refusal to grace OU with his sick guitar chops anymore:

1. He's a petty prima donna who has his knickers in a twist over being publicly embarrassed. Some snotty college kid at the student newspaper wants to make a fool of him? Up yours, OU. Up yours FOREVER. Ha!
2. The game theoretic logic behind strange, specific demands included in contract riders only work as intended when the punishment threat is credible. If White had folded and said "ha ha, It's just a joke you guys, I don't actually care about f'ing guacamole. It's just to keep the venue on its toes. I have a very demanding schedule what with all the traveling and writing new material and the rehearsing and whatnot. All I'm really looking for is one quick signal that the people supporting my show are being thorough and diligent," then future venues could game this bit of information to shirk consequence-free.

Naturally, these two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. I don't know White, so I can't comment on the quality of his character, but would you be able to reject either hypothesis on the weight of the evidence presented?

People, ever since Altamont (or West Warwick if you're a little younger), audience safety is a pretty serious bit of due diligence. For conscientious performers, disregarding this duty comes with a penalty. Note that White is effectively burning his own future earnings to send a signal to venues that he takes the terms of his contract seriously. He insists on accepting his BATNA to signal his credibility. 

That? That's integrity. Integrity and humility. To have the world (or at least Oklahoma) think less of your character all for the safety of the audience and one's fellow performers is an act of courage. Well done, sir. Well done.

Exegesis in the Springtime

I often hear this or that thing being called "Straussian", but I never [hear] if people think Strauss was right in his main claims.
— robinhanson (@robinhanson) October 21, 2014

 There's good discussion appended, so I encourage you to click through for more.

For my readers unfamiliar with Leo Strauss, his main claims were that philosophers, poets, scribes, translators, and playwrights encode hidden messages and secret knowledge in their writing. Naive readers can enjoy the surface meaning of books, plays, poems, whatever and walk away content. But for the initiated, the hidden wisdom is what matters. Finding the hidden meaning of coded text is called "exegesis." The discipline of finding the hidden meaning in any work, written or otherwise is called "hermeneutics." As you might imagine, it's a tough claim to test empirically, though there are good game theoretical reasons to believe that writers with little direct political clout might wish to hide heretical ideas inside coded text.

The question then is: why should anyone bother to look for Straussian encoding in more modern works? There is no longer an Inquisition interested in strapping heretics to a dunking stool. Anyone in the secular west can write as they wish, without fear of state reprisal.

Answer (1): Straussian writing is a skill, and like any skill, it needs to be practiced lest it atrophy. Sure, there's little political suppression of disfavored speech these days, but forward induction urges risk-averse writers to keep their nibs sharp in case a totalitarian regime takes over, burns the books, and marches the heretics up the gallows scaffolding.

Answer (2): Straussian writing is a defense against the soft coercion of tribal exclusion. Are you a Team Blue partisan wishing to criticize the Chief Executive ca. 2009? Are you a Team Red partisan wishing to criticize the Chief Executive ca. 2002? Maybe you'll be gently dis-invited to write for DailyKos/NRO if you make your criticism plain. Even if the BATNA is not dire, it still remains unattractive.

Answer (3): Straussian writing is fun. Contrast a Straussian message with outright satire. Satire is an outrageous caricature of a position, with a very obvious exegesis; no special training is required to understand the "hidden" message. You simply have to be not-stupid. Straussian exegesis, to the contrary (when done properly) needs a key to unlock the mysteries held within. For example, if I'm guilty of Strausianism from time to time, the key is a passing familiarity with public choice economics. For the Tao Te Ching, the key is obtained after solving a series of koans. For Seussian Straussians, you need merely eat it in a box with a fox.

Answer (4): Straussian writing is accidental. Exegesis is prone to Type I errors, especially if the reader is actively on the hunt. Joe McCarthy was a hermeneutical Communist hunter. If you have the stomach for it, perform a search for "Illuminati" and browse what you find.

Answer (5): Straussian writing keeps out the riff-raff. If you want to go Full Nietzsche (never go Full Nietzsche), hidden knowledge should be reserved only for the eyes of those courageous few who have the fortitude to pass through the crucible of enlightenment. This is perhaps reasonable for some select religious texts. Recall that much of the Gospels are parables.

Get lost, Richard O'Brien

The risk of censure, be it political, religious, or secular, means that writing that could be salient to elites is not euvoluntary: writing plainly could result in outcomes unfavorable to the author. Straussian encoding is a partial defense against that. Hermeneutics makes writing more euvoluntary.

#GamerGate

If Wishes Were Fishes: Dead Musician Edition

You can restore one dead musician to life. Who would it be?

So asketh Fightin' Steve H. Answers range from classical (plenty of Mozarts) to the more contemporary (at least one ODB). But the question itself asks more than it seems to. Professor Horwitz's own answer (John Entwistle) illustrates something about the nature of production in what is basically an extension of folk music.

The sole reason to bring back a Mozart or a Liszt or (my own pick) a Dvořák (okay, you caught me—I'd actually choose Grieg) is because they'd have a few good compositions left in them. Beethoven could have easily produced more work on par with Für Elise; Mozart could have had another Requiem in D minor or two given a few extra years on earth; Russian ballet would have certainly benefited from an extra Tchaikovsky composition or two.

But folk music, including jazz, blues, rock and roll, and their many offshoots combines the songwriter with the performer. In a way, most of today's pop where the performer doesn't get within arm's reach of a pen and paper hearkens back to the days of chamber music. But for much of the 20th century, the person on stage is the person who wrote the song (for the most part). Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan as much for his nosebeast yawrl as for the contents of his lyrics.

So if you were to bring back Entwistle, it would be for up to two reasons: 1) you expect he'd produce more studio work and 2) you want to enjoy a live performance. The second reason is inapplicable for a Handel or a Strauss. In other words, the marginal revenue product of a singer-songwriter is separable into two parts: the composition and the performance. If you lose one person, ceteris paribus, you lose two sources of value generation. The BATNA disparity for keeping a singer-songwriter alive is higher than for keeping a composer or a performer alone alive.

The recent trend towards separating these two functions therefore makes today's pop music more euvoluntary than in Janis Joplin's time. Right? Specialization of trade is limited by the extent of the market, yes? Cheap digital distribution means that the slog of studio production can be sourced to specialists, while the pretty people with questionable chops can run the tour circuit. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? The Wal-Mart model reigns supreme?

To answer the question however, I'd bring back Dwayne Goettel. In a flash.