National (Slippery) Treasure, Part 1

You may have never heard of Jack Bogle, but he arguably did more for the financial well-being of society than any other individual since the New Deal of the 1930s. His major contribution was to pioneer the concept and implementation of a low-cost index fund, thereby making a diversified stock portfolio accessible to the average person. If you have any kind of retirement account, some of your money is almost certainly invested in a stock index fund.

Although they can be volatile and ruinous if not managed wisely, stocks are an elegant democratizer of wealth. The basic concept is quite simple. Stock ownership gives you a small piece of ownership in a company. The company hires workers and builds infrastructure to offer goods or services for sale. Customers who value those goods and services purchase them. If everything goes well, the company takes in more money from customers than it uses to pay its own bills and eventually returns some of that excess money to its owners--the shareholders. Stock prices fluctuate constantly as buyers and sellers estimate what that future financial return is worth. Sometimes prices become disconnected from financial reality, but in an efficient market (i.e. where accurate information flows rapidly) reality eventually reasserts itself.

Different companies have varying success at being profitable over time, which is why it is important to own a large selection of stocks and thereby reduce the risk that company failures will wipe out your investment. (That's what Jack Bogle made easy, through index funds.) And since the stock market is such a potent method of wealth generation, and since wealth so easily corrupts people, the government plays an important role to maintain the health of the system by enforcing rules designed to keep things as honest and safe as reasonably possible. Many of these rules were born from the Great Depression as part of the New Deal.

One of the beautiful aspects of stock ownership is that the wealth creation that occurs is repeatable. I don't mean that everyone gets the same return, since risk and reward will vary by company and over time. Rather, anyone who consistently invests in a diversified stock portfolio over the long term is likely (but not guaranteed) to be rewarded with (variable) growth in their wealth. You don't have to get in at the right time or be lucky enough to have picked the right stock to benefit. The companies behind the stocks are economic engines that keep churning and generating wealth. Therefore, our children and grandchildren can expect to generate wealth through stock investment just as we have. The companies and industries might change, but as long as conditions remain fertile for companies to grow, we can expect stock ownership to continue to deliver wealth over the long term.

While there may be valid criticisms to be made in how the stock market operates and is regulated, when you take in the big picture it is a marvelous system that embodies and facilitates capitalism (i.e. individual judgments about how capital should be allocated), and I am a beliver that virtually everyone should have some level of investment in stocks. Doing so gives you a piece of ownership in the national and international economy and makes you a beneficiary of the success of companies you otherwise have no financial ties to [1].

In a forthcoming post I will contrast stocks with cyrptocurrencies and explain why I think we should be skeptical of cyrptocurrencies in spite of the hype around them.

Notes:
1. The stock market, as most people interact with it, is a secondary market where stock owners buy and sell stock. Purchasing stock in this market does not directly provide any funding to the company behind the stock. Different people will have different views on the ethics of this matter, but it's important to understand that owning stock in, say, a beer company simply means that you are entitled to benefit from the company's profits and to vote in coproprate elections. You aren't providing the company any additional working capital, and selling the stock doesn't financially punish the company.

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BYU Publishes Significant Book on Evolution and the Gospel

The BYU College of Life Sciences recently published a book (free online) titled The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution. I think it is arguably the most significant church-related publication on the topic since Joseph Fielding Smith's Man, His Origin and Destiny, especially when paired with the near simultaneous entry in the Gospel Library on Religion and Science.

In order to understand why I think the book is so significant, a little history is in order. During the mid-twentieth century the views of President Joseph Fielding Smith and Elder Bruce R. McConkie (his son-in-law) on this topic dominated within the Church. Both men were prolific writers and their books were widely read, widely quoted, and widely considered authoritative. LDS scientists and students really had to swim upstream in that kind of atmosphere. For example, in 1980 Elder McConkie gave a talk at BYU titled, "The Seven Deadly Heresies," where evolution was the second of the seven heresies. In the meantime, LDS historians were uncovering information from the early twentieth century showing that church leaders had not been as unified on the issue as it seemed. Publication of this information was not necessarily warmly received, with then-apostle Ezra Taft Benson, for example, viewing it as an attack on the integrity of Joseph Fielding Smith. In 1992 the BYU Board of Trustees authorized publication of a packet on the topic that consisted of First Presidency statements and the entry on evolution from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. This packet provided LDS scientists and students some cover by emphasizing that only First Presidency statements represented the official Church position, thus implicitly providing a way to faithfully disagree with President Smith and Elder McConkie. However, the packet had limited circulation (especially prior to the Internet), and was never referenced in Church publications so it remained largely hidden from general church membership.

So the state of play in the late 1990s and early 2000s was basically this: General church membership was still influenced by the legacy of Smith and McConkie (dovetailing with conservative strains of Protestantism). Meanwhile, people "in the know" could eke out a contrary position using the BYU packet combined with a sort of mournful harkening back to the views expressed by leaders such as Elders James E. Talmage and John A. Widtsoe, as well as prominent members like Henry Eyring.

While there have been a few minor developments in the last decade, this new book is a big leap forward. Here are some of the reasons I think it is significant.

1. It is published by BYU, thus giving it a halo of Church-sanctioned acceptability.
2. It will be a standard resource distributed to all freshman biology students. As the years pass it will influence tens of thousands of BYU students.
3. It is bold and forthright in declaring that evolution has been demonstrated and can be accepted with joy (a reference to the 1910 First Presidency statement that has been the tagline of this blog since its beginning), and brags a bit about how successful BYU has been in its scientific research related to evolution.
4. It dissects some of the assumptions that have undergird certain scriptural interpretations, providing a deeper understanding that goes beyond simply pitting two interpretations against each other.
5. It uses modern scholarship to help provide some cultural context to the Genesis creation account, even going so far as to adopt the scholarly recognition that the first two chapters of Genesis contain two different creation accounts spliced together (something that would further horrify Joseph Fielding Smith).
6. It does all of this without picking a fight and emphasizes a model of seeking reconciliation while maintaining comfort with leaving unknowns open.

The book was not intended to be comprehensive on every topic. For example, while some of the science supporting evolution is briefly discussed, it is pretty high-level and is unlikely to satisfy readers who are familiar with young-earth creationist arguments. Similarly, while there is some introduction to the cultural context of Genesis and issues with English translation, there is much, much, more that could be said. In both cases, readers should consult additional resources. Similarly, the book does not attempt to grapple with every scriptural objection or solve every doctrinal problem. What the book does more than anything is model a broad-minded orientation of faithful inquiry and acceptance while expanding the boundaries of inquiry beyond fundamentalism [1].

Perhaps a day will come when we will see another era of retrenchment and a renewal of Joseph Fielding Smith's fundamentalist approach (vestiges of which can still be found in Church publications such as the Institute manual for the Old Testament). But for the time being it looks like Church leaders are willing to let the science play out and leave the resulting religious incongruities open to personal study and interpretation. This book is a great resource to help in that effort.

Notes:
1. Lots of people did similar work in the past, but they tended to be published in venues that lacked the halo of Church approval or broad distribution among the rank-and-file.

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Vitamins Are Only Useful in their Sphere of Physiology

I don't know exactly why vitamins have such a hold on people's imagination as the key to good health [1], but they are really overrated when it comes to infectious diseases. They are kind of like motor oil--needed for engine function, but otherwise pretty useless when a car is stuck in the mud or snow. If your engine seizes up while trying to escape, sure, that's a problem. But pouring more and more oil into the engine just isn't going to address the fundamental problem.

I can't think of a single infectious disease that is solved by vitamins. Vitamins may help at the margins and contribute to an effective immune response, and certainly you are better off than if you had a vitamin deficiency, but they do not fundamentally protect you from infectious disease. Consider how smallpox was erradicated from the earth in the 1970s. Hint: it wasn't because of vitamins. In the early 2000's measles was virtually eliminated from the United States. It wasn't because we were in the zenith of healthy living and vitamin consumption. And if we look beyond humans to livestock, where every dollar counts, they all receive multiple vaccinations to help protect from various infectious diseases. If it was simply a matter of vitamins, I can assure you that producers wouldn't bother with vaccination.

So embracing vitamin A (or any vitamin) as the answer to measles (or any infectious disease) is health malpractice, pure and simple.

But this reminds me of a story: Early in my career a lady who worked in the same lab as me said that before traveling she had taken a popular vitamin supplement that claimed to protect from colds, but that it didn't work and she got sick anyway. I was appalled. Not because she took a bogus disease preventative, but because she concluded it didn't work. Not that I thought it would, because of course it wouldn't. But her conclusion was not scientific in the least. She had no idea when she got infected vs when she started taking the supplement, what she got infected with, or any sense for how long and at what dose she would need to take it to supposedly be protected. So how could she draw any conclusions about its efficacy? (Again, not that I thought for a second it would actually prevent sickness.) The point is that these kinds of loosey-goosey anectdotes drive most people's decision making...even people who ought to know better.

Notes:
1. Well, maybe I do: marketing

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The Church Accepts an Old Earth and is Neutral on Evolution

The Church recently added a new entry to its Topics and Questions section of the Gospel Library titled, Religion and Science. It is significant in that it is the most positive collection of statements for general membership about science that I have seen in a long time. Mostly, it just tries to keep the peace by remaining neutral and giving people room to sort through scientific and religious truths on their own. This paragraph is typical of the tone and content:

The Church does not take a position on most scientific matters. Instead, the Church focuses on teaching revealed, spiritual truths and helping God’s children live by those truths. At the same time, many Latter-day Saints seek to understand and contribute to scientific knowledge, following the Lord’s invitation to Joseph Smith to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

However, the following statement caught my eye. Not so much because of its implicit acceptance of an old earth (which has generally not been a major sticking point for Church members), but because of what it says about how we know the earth is old.

Using reliable methods of measurement, such as radiometric dating, scientists currently estimate the age of the earth to be approximately 4.5 billion years.

To understand the significance of this, you need to know that rejection of scientific chronology is a cornerstone of fundamentalist young-earth creationism and they have invented a number of excuses for disbelieving radiometric dating. To the extent that Church members align with creationism, they import (sometimes without knowing) the arguments of fundamentalist creationism into their own thinking. Moreover, an LDS twist on this comes in the form of the so-called "Heartland Model" of Book of Mormon geography, which relies on a young-earth creationist paradigm. Although Book of Mormon geography would seem to have nothing to do with the age of the earth, the connection comes from trying to torture DNA data into showing that Native Americans are decendants of ancient Israel. The problem is that the particular DNA marker in question was present in native populations thousands of years before the Book of Mormon events took place. Thus, the need to deny scientific chronology.

For the Church to call radiometric dating a "reliable method of measurement" breaks a lot of brackets, so to speak [1].

Then there is the section on evolution: "Over the years, Church leaders have expressed differing views about evolution. However, the Church takes no position on the topic."

This also breaks brackets. I can't remember the number of online arguments I have seen (or occassionally participated in) where LDS critics of evolution would insist that the Church DID in fact have a position on evolution. They would lay out a variety of Church teachings about the Fall and so forth, including the 1909 First Presidency statement, "The Origin of Man", and then conclude that whether or not the Church said so explicitly, its teachings clearly excluded evolution. If you pointed to the First Presidency's instructions to General Authorities in 1931 that struck a neutral balance, they would counter that the statement had never been published to the general Church membership. Well, now it has been (in at least three separate places within the Gosepl Library), and the Church here explicitly says that it takes no position on evolution.

Perhaps the best thing about this new topical entry is that it can be used to defuse attacks based on General Authority quotes. As I previously wrote,

Although pronouncements by authorities do not determine the truth or falsity of a proposition (hence the logical fallacy), we look to the prophets and apostles as a source of truth, and their thoughts deserve consideration. This style of argumentation, where one is made to feel like s/he is rejecting the prophets, can therefore be quite difficult and frustrating to grapple with because, in its strongest form, there can be no counter-argument. Attempting to do so only validates the perception that you reject the prophets. And yet, we who defend science cannot remain silent or else the authoritarian bullies will be the only ones heard. So what can we do when confronted with such material?

Well, now you can just point to this entry in the Gospel Library.

Notes:
1. I'm using predicted March Madness college basketball tournament brackets as a metaphor.

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Trump is Raking it in. Congratulations to All Who Fell for the Hunter Biden Misdirection

Last month Forbes did their best to figure out Donald Trump's various sources of income and summarized it in the graphic below. A large chunk of his wealth is now in the form of cryptocurrency-associated activities. $Trump of course is the meme coin he launched days before his inaugruation and that he has occasionally plugged via social media. Market caps of meme coins are not necessarily what they seem, but what is more certain is that Trump has made $350 million just from the trading fees alone. Beyond that, he has a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, that was established last year just two months before the election while the crypto industry was making big donations to his campaign. He is thereby positioned to directly benefit from his own administration's decisions around crypto, not to mention creating a portal for global forces to funnel money to him. (Independent journalist Molly White tracks the crime and corruption in the crypto industry. See her latest rundown on Trump's crypto profiteering here.)

Remember, Republicans in the House wanted to impeach Joe Biden because his son had previously brought in $20 million by allegedly trading on his family name, with the innuendo that Joe Biden had also profited. The whole theory was dodgy as noted by multiple fact-checking organizations (here and here), but it was all Fox News could talk about. It was pretty obvious at the time, and is even more so in retrospect, that the whole Hunter Biden obsession of Republicans was just a cynical ploy to damage Joe Biden's re-election and to direct the public's attention away from the sins of Donald Trump and minimize them by making Joe Biden look just as bad.

Donald Trump trades on his own name right out in the open while holding presidential office for vastly greater amounts of money while controlling policy making and law enforcement. Too bad Hunter Biden wasn't a "businessman". Because if you're a "buisinessman", they let you do it.

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Everything Good Flows from Truth

Oh say, what is truth? ’Tis the fairest gem
That the riches of worlds can produce,

Unless it conflicts with political views.
Then disparage it, deny it, and call it fake news,
And count it but dross and refuse.

The New Testament book of James asks,

Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? (James 3:11–12)

This is echoed by Mormon, who said,

For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water (Moroni 7:11)

Elder Richard G. Scott once said, "[T]ruth is the only meaningful foundation upon which we can make wise decisions." Some people don't know what is true because they are "blinded by the subtle craftiness of men." Others, however, know what is true but choose not to honor it because they believe that they will receive some favored outcome or because embracing the truth is harmful to their self-conception. But the fact of the matter is that you cannot get good medicine, a good economy, or good public policy if you do not value what is true. A random process may indeed yield rewards from time to time. It's why people go to casinos, after all. But over the longer term, as the consequences of decision after decision build, you are ultimately left with bitter water.

America decided to give the most powerful position in the world to a man who not only does not value the truth, but is himself a continual source and enforcer of untruth. A man whose guiding ethic is, "It doesn’t matter what you say...say it enough and people will believe you." Somehow people thought that this would bring forth sweet water. Moreover, this time around he made sure to put sycophants in the most powerful positions of government, and now we watch one continual parade of toadying, deflecting, and gaslighting. How can we expect anything other than bitter water [1]?

Inasmuch as this is ostensibly a science blog, you may wonder why I am harping on politics. The reason is that science is downstream of valuing truth, as it is the primary method for discovering truth in this world. A nation that doesn't care about truth has little need for science, and therefore we shouldn't be surprised to see science under attack by the current administration as it cuts grants, destroys its science-based agencies, and replaces competent professionals with cranks and "influencers". When you don't care about the truth, science isn't just irrelevant. It gets in the way because it insists on distinguishing truth from falsehood.

Value truth and you can have good water. Ignore or deny truth and you join those who, as the prophet Isaiah put it, eat their own dung and drink their own piss.

Notes:
1. You would think that voters who lived through the Iraq War under George W. Bush would intuitively understand this, but evidently not!

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We Can Do All Things Through Christ

This is just a reminder that anything done in the name of Christ is OK. Nobody has ever done anything unethical, dishonest, unwise, wicked, or fraudulent under his name, nor have they ever flaunted their Christianity as a cover for bad behavior [1]. Jesus would never allow his name to be misused [2]. So if someone claims to be a Christian, then their public or political words and actions should not be criticized. To do so is to criticize Jesus [3].

The Bible says so (Philippians 4:13). I don't make the rules.

Notes:
1. I didn't include "illegal" because laws are made by men and often used to oppress true Christians. Therefore, breaking the law in the name of Jesus is OK.
2. Since Jesus knows the end from the beginning, anything a Christian does is according to his plan.
3. What if some Christians don't like what other Christians are doing in the name of Jesus? That's not a question a true Christian would ask.

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Time to Get Your Year Supply of Excuses Ready

Now that Trump is regularly making menacing statements about annexing Canada and Greenland, it's time to make sure you are stocked up on excuses for supporting him. If you've made it through the lies about the 2020 election, January 6, his court convictions, pardoning J6 insurrectionists, turning the management of the executive branch over to Elon Musk, purging the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense of anyone who might stand between him and illegal or unconstitutional orders, halting humanitarian aid, deciding that he can deport virtually anyone if he wants to, working to nulify the 14th amendment, turning against European allies and increasingly aligning with Russia, threatening the press, universities, and companies that don't align themselves to his will, his on-again-off-again tariffs, and so on, and so on...

...if you've made it through all of that, you may find your short-term supplies of excuses dwindling. And if you think you aren't going to need more, you are kidding yourself. You definitely need to stock up a least a year supply, if not more. You can start small and just regularly add to your supply. Perhaps you think you can just get by with, "I never thought that would happen". A little bit is certainly helpful, but you really are going to need something more substantial.

Probably the most cost-effective way to stock up on excuses is to go to the storehouse of Fox News. They regularly feature excuses that, although not of high quality, will sustain you in a pinch. For example, just recently they had a guest on claiming that Canada has been taken over by Mexican drug cartels. Sure it's stupid, but down the road when the U.S. is taking military action against Canada you are going to need something to justify your support. Other excuse suppliers that you find on social media or in podcasts can also be helpful, but I would recommend comparison shopping by cross-checking with Fox News to make sure that your excuses are of the best MAGA quality.

While you are building your supply of excuses to make it through the short-to-medium term, you also need to start working on your long-term excuses. Generations after you are going to ask, "Why on earth would you do that?" Providing excuses to them is beyond the scope of this post, but I recommend that you start building a story about how it's what God wanted. Few excuses are as durable.

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