Okay, now I've done wine, I've done physics, I've done economics and policy griping, but still no song yet. I think I'd better remedy that---this will have to do, for now. (If you're easily amused I'd avoid food or drink while viewing this one.)
Cheers...
So far, there hasn't been much physics in Wine, Physics, and Song---nor much song, for that matter, though there's been plenty of wine, and some economics and politics. I guess wine is easier and more relaxing to write about. But it's time to redress that balance.
I arrived in Ponta Delgada, the main town of the island of São Miguel in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, courtesy of the Foundational Questions Institute, to attend and speak at their second annual conference. We were treated to dinner and an after-dinner talk. (The wines, especially a white called something like Tierra de Lavas that was served before dinner, were tasty.) The talk was by Peter Byrne, who is writing a biography of Hugh Everett III, the originator (unless you want to ascribe it to Schrödinger in his cat paper) of what he called the "relative state" interpretation of quantum mechanics, often called the "many worlds interpretation" (MWI). I was particularly interested in this talk because a fascination with the problem of how to interpret quantum theory is a large part of what got me into physics. In 1989--1990 I wrote a paper (unpublished), "The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Psychological versus Physical Bases for the Multiplicity of "Worlds", arguing that Everett's interpretation had often been misunderstood as involving a "physical" splitting of the universe into different branches, whereas Everett was actually fairly clear that the "branching" into parts of the universe involving different outcomes of a quantum experiment was associated with different subspaces of a single Hilbert space of the world, subspaces defined by which of the different macroscopic outcomes of the experiment an observer had experienced. So I was very interested to hear from Peter Byrne that among the boxes of Everett's paper that he has been sorting and studying, were drafts of Everett's thesis in which there is much more extensive discussion of splitting minds than was available even in the long version of his thesis published by Princeton. If I'm reporting Byrne correctly, one of these drafts compares the splitting minds to splitting amoebas, noting there is no fact of the matter as to which of the amoebas is the original one. The whole thing, he says, had much more extensive discussion of splitting, which his advisor John Wheeler made him take out (partly, if I understood correctly, because of negative comments by Bohr, relayed by Stern who was on Everett's thesis committee). It will be interesting to see the details of these drafts, and find out more about how Everett understood this "splitting".
My early paper was to some extent a "devil's advocate" exercise---I did not then, and do not now, believe in Everett's interpretation in the sense that a macroscopically entangled wavefunction, describing me having all kinds of different conscious experiences, is a real entity. But I did believe, and still do, that pushing Everett's idea as far as possible is one good way of getting a better understanding of what is weird about quantum theory, and of the unexpected difficulties we've encountered in figuring out what quantum physics has to tell us about the world, and our place in it.
My reasons for not accepting many worlds are in part tied up with the fact that there don't seem to be probabilities of measurement outcomes on this interpretation, as there are indeed not definite classical outcomes. More on this later---it is something that I've been thinking about for years, and before Byrne's talk, I had a long discussion about it with Alan Guth at dinner. But one last thing: it was therefore striking to hear from Byrne that one of a myriad of titles Everett considered for his dissertation was "Wave mechanics without probability".
This inexpensive Chilean Chardonnay, which I drank at my parents' in DC recently, seems like great value---I believe they paid around $6 for it, but I'm not sure. Some nice aromas and flavors something like peach and vanilla, a rounded, balanced, even somewhat elegant feel in the mouth---not high-acid, but not flabby (or lush). No overbearing oakiness--an excellent food wine. Very drinkable, and somewhat reminiscent of Sonoma County's Chateau St. Jean Chardonnays---even their higher-end Robert Young Vineyard ones, which also have that low-acid, vanilla thing though more prominently, and (at least in the Robert Youngs) often with a velvetiness this lacks. But velvetiness would not necessarily be an improvement. This is crisper, a summer quaffer of a chardonnay but still quite flavorful and holding one's interest through a a meal---maybe not seriously complex, but far from one-dimensional. Yum! This is "produced and bottled by Viñas Errazuriz Ovalle, SA San Ignacio 2170 Santiago, Chile", and imported by Monsieur Touton, NYC; alas, I can't find a price or distributor reference with a cursory Google. I do find some entertaining snark at Le Cheap Lush concerning Monsieur Touton, though---to which this wine would seem to be a counterexample, unless I was just in a particularly good mood when I drank it.
Next week, I'll be at a workshop in Vienna, VA that has been organized to help come up with a national strategy for public investment in quantum information science and technology.
To quote from the workshop website:
This Workshop on Quantum Information Science (QIS) has been organized in response to the NSTC report. It brings together leading theorists and experimenters drawn from physical science, computer science, mathematics, and engineering who will assess recent progress in QIS and identify major goals and challenges for future research.
The report in question, titled "A Federal Vision for Quantum Information Science came out this January, from the US National Science and Technology Council which is part of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.
All in all, a very interesting and promising development, which suggests serious potential for US government support for research in quantum information science, which is to say quantum computation, quantum computing, quantum cryptography, the use of quantum information science concepts to understand and engineer the behavior of complex physical systems, including quantum control and quantum metrology. The report emphasizes computation and the understanding of new quantum states of matter and quantum phase transitions. The organization appears to have been fairly rapid---probably carried out at Caltech, where John Preskill heads the Institute for Quantum Information, since that's where the website is located and the administrative coordinator is the IQI's.
The invited speaker lineup looks excellent, though some have complained that it's not representative of some aspects of quantum information research (metrology, i.e. precision quantum measurement, is covered only lightly) and some top US groups (like the quantum cryptography effort led by Richard Hughes at Los Alamos) are missing (though I don't know why). Evenings will involve open discussions on strategy for QIS research, though I worry we may be burned out after full days of excellent technical presentations.
I'm looking forward to hearing Anne Broadbent talk about Universal Blind Quantum Computation with Joseph Fitzsimmons and Elham Kashefi, and not only because a crucial component of it is the use of quantum authentication codes, a concept developed my collaborators Claude Crepeau, Daniel Gottesman, Adam Smith, Alain Tapp, and me. (Hey, this is my blog, so shameless self-promotion is de rigeur.)
2005 was a superb year, in surprisingly similar ways, in many of the most important winegrowing areas around the world. California and South Australia certainly did well, and I'm told 2005 Bordeaux were excellent too. (I haven't swilled enough of the latter to know without consulting my tasting notes...) So I've gotten into a project of checking out Aussie Shiraz, especially from the Barossa and McClaren Vale...so many of them are just delicious, and some are truly great wines. So I've just realized what others have probably known for more than a century...that this is one of the great grape/wine region combinations of the world.
What we may have here is a chance to benefit from the McCain campaign flameout last year... I don't know for sure that this wine was named and released with an eye to becoming the high-end swill of Republican conventioneers in St. Paul---indeed, perhaps the subtitle "Above the Law" was intended to underline the Obama campaign's theme ("more of the same"). But whatever the reason (the label actually say it's a tribute to the masive influx of immigrant mavericks to the Australian gold fields in 1851) for the too-cute name and the image of a Colt Navy Model 1851 pistol on the label of this puppy from Pure Love Wines, the wine hits the bullseye.
According to my tasting notes this is a full-bodied, pretty smooth wine with medium finegrained tannins, rich blueberry and blackberry fruit, some spiciness or tarriness---one of the best "budget" Aussie Shirazes I've tasted yet. Still excellent on the second day (after overnight refrigeration). My wife liked it too.
I've only tasted one or two Aussie Shirazes this year that were better (a Two Dudes Gnarly Hands Two Hands Gnarly Dudes Shiraz) that I tasted at Vino Volo (BWI), which was sold out next time I passed through, at way more expensive, would be one; a 2005 Slipstream as well.) This partakes of some of their complexity and tight structure, but is definitely not as full of smokiness, tarriness, and such. In exchange, it veers toward lush, delicious fruitiness but without getting sloppy.
On further investigation the origin of the wine is described here.
The $15 price targeted is a great deal for this wine. Major kudos to Pure Love's Jayson Woodbridge for this one, and I'll be on the lookout for its siblings at the same target price: Barossa Jack, Desert Eagle, and Layer Cake. What, no Community Organizer? No matter, just buy this wine, get out your corkscrews, and drill... whoops, it has a Stelvin closure. Unscrew, baby, unscrew!
Joseph Stiglitz on the bank bailout, from Bloomberg:
“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”
Stiglitz is only one of the world's best economists; when he talks, you really *should* listen.
President Obama, on why the new financial bailout/rescue plan doesn't temporarily "nationalize" the banks (as Sweden successfully did in its 1990s financial crisis):
"Obviously, Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets and America's different. And we want to retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core -- core investment needs of this country.
And so, what we've tried to do is to apply some of the tough love that's going to be necessary, but do it in a way that's also recognizing we've got big private capital markets and ultimately that's going to be the key to getting credit flowing again."
Well, we voted for change, didn't we, so let's start changing the culture that says we can't even temporarily nationalize the largest banks with the worst balance-sheet issues, in an emergency that threatens the world economy and is in part attributable to these banks' irresponsibility. Say, as many, including lefties like the former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff, and lefty financial-history prof Niall Ferguson seem to believe, a belief perhaps even reflected in the stock market's fall on Geithner's press conference, we need to temporarily nationalize the banks. Call it restructuring, make the call that the zombie banks are effectively bankrupt and an expedited, not court-supervised, receivership is needed, call it tough love, pander to our "culture" of responsibility. Nationalization is a stupid word to use---it suggests an intention for long-term transfer of banking to the government, and few are seriously suggesting that. We can do bank restructuring and still "retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core investment needs of this country." Maybe it can be done, in a stealthier way, through Geithner's plan---but it's apparently not clear to most what Geithner's "plan" will turn out to be, in practice.
To prevent a filibuster, the administration has to coddle the Senate's Great Men (and Women) Of The Center. Specter insisting the plan cost less than either the $820 billion house bill or the $838 billion senate version---knocking $40-58 billion, 5% or more, off of a stimulus that may already be too small. And with the final total looking like it will be $790 billion, pretty much succeeding. A few Republican moderates (and a Democrat or two) holding the economy hostage so that --- what? Their power be recognized? It's been a while since I saw Specter in action in a hearing, but I recall, perhaps erroneously, a really bad gut-check about the guy as he browbeat some poor sap, or maybe some perfectly reasonable guy he happened not to agree with. True, he's been a voice of reason on some issues, but I was not impressed. Maybe the Republican moderates feel they have something to take back to their party in order not to be drummed out of it for supporting the plan at all. Specter also insisting on keeping $10 billion for NIH untouched, while an increase for the NSF was scaled back by the Senate plan---what's with that, does NIH have a facility in Pennsylvania, or is Specter just a health nut?
Probably Obama's playing it cool at this point is the right game plan... getting the thing passed without having to break a filibuster is probably much better for his long-run efficacy. But I worry that it is not large enough---that by not signing on, but effectively watering it down through the implcit threat of a filibuster, the Republicans are setting up---not consciously for the most part, except that there probably are those who believe an extended recession is better than any increase in government spending---to try to benefit from an unnecessary extension of the recession. At some point---perhaps on the second batch of stimulus that will likely turn out to be necess, crying "stimulus was ineffective". I'm not sure Obama will get a chance to put in another round of stimulus, though he occasionally talks of it. And, he may be able to get in another round under the guise of longer-term public investment, which he has called for, with stimulus as a side-benefit. But I imagine there will be a filibuster showdown at some point. Hopefully the chits will be called in and the moderates will help him break it, maybe with another ceremonial multi-billion-dollar bone or two as compensation. But it is frustrating that the "senate moderates" are as boneheaded as they are about this. One can only hope they are doing it because they feel the need to shelter themselves from the ire of their party.
"Earlier Tuesday, the Senate sailed to approval of its $838 billion economic stimulus bill, but with only three moderate Republicans signing on and then demanding the bill's cost go down when the final version emerges from negotiations.
Negotiators initially were working with a target of about $800 billion for the final bill, lawmakers said. But GOP moderate Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Tuesday night on MSNBC's "Hardball" that he was insisting on a figure at around $780 billion."
Credit for the pound of flesh metaphor to Paul Krugman, back on Feb. 6th.
Here’s Greg Mankiw’s preferred fiscal stimulus plan.
I would institute an immediate and permanent reduction in the payroll tax, financed by a gradual, permanent, and substantial increase in the gasoline tax. I would make the two tax changes equal in present value, so while the package results in a short-run budget deficit, there is no long-term budget impact. Call it the create-jobs, save-the-environment, reduce-traffic-congestion, budget-neutral tax shift.
I recognize that some state governments are now struggling in light of the macroeconomic crisis. For the next two years, I would let each state governor have the authority to divert a portion of the payroll tax cut in his or her state and take the funds instead as state aid.
Would the equal present value of the payroll tax cut and the gas tax increase be discounted by consumers, who would save in anticipation of the effects of the future increase, resulting in no stimulus to aggregate demand from the policy? I doubt it; I think it would have some Keynesian multiplier effect nonetheless. But much of it may be saved, in the form of paying down debt. It does also give a straightforward reduction in the cost of keeping people employed, a microeconomic incentive effect that might prove to have positive macroeconomic consequences in the present situation. I still tend to think government spending will, as the simplest Econ 1 Keynesian theory suggests, have a bigger multiplier (a point Greg does explicitly address---he thinks the empirical evidence, though not conclusive, casts some doubt on this).
I’d be most concerned, though, with what would happen to the programs normally funded by payroll taxes: Social Security and Medicare. Social Security in particular is at least nominally supported by paying payroll tax receipts into a fund reserved for Social Security payouts to retirees; would the program continue to pay out at current rates, now funded by general revenues or the gasoline tax? That might not be such a bad idea, but I’m not sure it’s what Mankiw has in mind….
Note that even if the increased-state-spending-for-payroll-tax-cut exchange would be macroeconomically benefical globally, it might have some negative micro effects if only a few states adopted it, as it would put them at some competitive disadvantage for jobs.
Paul Krugman's thoughts on Japan from around a decade ago are quite interesting. He wrote:
But it is quite a stretch to argue that Japan in the 90s is a parallel case [to the US from the Great Depression through World War II]. It might be; but an at least equally, if not more, plausible story is that Japan has a structural excess of saving over investment, even at a zero interest rate; in that case a temporary fiscal stimulus will produce only temporary results.
What continues to amaze me is this: Japan's current strategy of massive, unsustainable deficit spending in the hopes that this will somehow generate a self-sustained recovery is currently regarded as the orthodox, sensible thing to do - even though it can be justified only by exotic stories about multiple equilibria, the sort of thing you would imagine only a professor could believe. Meanwhile further steps on monetary policy - the sort of thing you would advocate if you believed in a more conventional, boring model, one in which the problem is simply a question of the savings-investment balance - are rejected as dangerously radical and unbecoming of a dignified economy.
The "exotic" multiple-equilibrium story must not really be that exotic, since just above this he entertains it as an explanation of the 1996 Asian financial crisis, and of the apparent success of WWII spending in lifting the US sustainably out of depression.
The current situation certainly differs from Japan's in the 90's in many ways, but it does raise the question which of those ways are likely to render fiscal policy more effective for us now, than for Japan then. Of course, I think no-one would argue that we have a structural excess of savings over investment. But it does appear that the propensity to save may have shifted up at least temporarily. Do we face an S-shaped consumption-income relation? If this slump drags on too long, will we need to target inflation?
At the time Krugman wrote these pieces, he felt the multiple-equilibrium possibility looked dubious because there had been prolonged fiscal stimulus, but it hadn't rendered itself unnecessary. Others (see the article linked below) think apparently think it just wasn't large enough, and intense enough over a short period of time, to succeed. And there are those who think that Japan didn't clean up its banking problem effectively---that its banks still had the balance sheet problems that, Krugman argues, fiscal stimulus can provide breathing room to work out.
Greg Mankiw links to an interesting article on Japan, that largely confirms the continuance of the situation Krugman described in 1999---fiscal stimulus not having rendered itself unnecessary by producing a self-sustaining recovery. Make sure and read past the first page. It would be interesting to further investigate the content, and methodology, of the Institute for Local Government study that concluded:
every 1 trillion yen, or about $11.2 billion, spent on social services like care for the elderly and monthly pension payments added 1.64 trillion yen in growth. Financing for schools and education delivered an even bigger boost of 1.74 trillion yen, the report found. But every 1 trillion yen spent on infrastructure projects in the 1990s increased Japan’s gross domestic product, a measure of its overall economic size, by only 1.37 trillion yen, mainly by creating jobs and other improvements like reducing travel times.
Mankiw has his own suggestion for a stimulus plan, about which a bit more in the next post.