With God's help

Reality constantly outwits our logic. The desire to deal with reality using logical tools is naive and usually doomed to failure. But this is not because logic is incorrect, but because we use it to deal with reality in an incomplete and imprecise way, and even more so because reality contains components that are far too complex and unpredictable for logical treatment. It turns out that this limitation of logic is an important tool in the hands of those who rebel against various kinds of tyranny, chiefly logical tyranny.

The Heatball (heatball)

A wonderful example of this is one of the great inventions of recent years, namely the Heatball (warning: anyone who reads this site may be seized by uncontrollable fits of laughter), the heating ball.

A few years ago, a law was passed in Israel forbidding the use of incandescent bulbs because they guzzle electricity, that is, their efficiency is low (meaning: most of the energy is dispersed as heat at the expense of lighting output). Therefore our legislators, in their boundless kindness, compelled us to consume only energy-saving bulbs. By way of example, let us assume that an ordinary bulb operates at 10% efficiency, meaning that 90% of the energy invested in it goes to heat and only 10% gives us light. Our goal is light, and therefore this is outrageous waste. So what do they do? They force us to use an energy-saving bulb that operates at 40% efficiency, meaning that only 60% is wasted as heat. Wonderful, is it not? But do not worry; even in this field we are not pioneers. In Europe, such a law was passed much earlier.

What does the anarchist mind do? It invents the Heatball. A creative person in Germany got up and decided to sell highly efficient heaters. He took the forsaken incandescent bulbs and sold them, without any change whatsoever, as small heaters (heating balls, heatballs). Note the outstanding advantage of these heaters: they have 90% efficiency (since now the desired output is heat rather than light), as opposed to the "energy-saving heaters," which have an efficiency of only 60%. Now we can continue buying ordinary incandescent bulbs, screw them into the orphaned lamp sockets in our homes, and get the lighting we are so fond of. When the policeman comes to arrest us, we will tell him that these are not bulbs but small heaters. Really, we just want to warm ourselves a little (although unfortunately 10% of the energy goes to light. What can one do? Life is not perfect).

The heading that appears above the pages on the Heatball website is:

A HEATBALL® is not a light bulb, but fits into the same socket!

You must admit that this is a brilliant idea. It apparently succeeded very well, and they are now looking to sell the thriving business:

SOLD OUT The most original invention since the electric light bulb! Although a heatball is technically very similar to a light bulb, it is a heater rather than a source of light. Heatballs fit into commonly found E27 and E14 sockets. Its efficiency [more…] is unprecedented. Uses In passively heated houses, light bulbs are a substantial source of heat. When these are substituted with energy saving lamps, the missing heat has to be introduced by other means.. [more…] Resistance It is our duty to use the natural energy reserves of our planet judiciously to make it a comfortable living environment for future generations. Are we really doing our children a favour by condemning the poor old light bulb while at the same time our forests are being razed in an ever increasing tempo? € 0,30 from the purchase of each Heatball will be donated to a project saving our forests! A heatball is electrical resistance, used as a heater. Heatball is a campaign. Heatball is an opposition against regulations being passed that bluntly ignore the most basic democratic principles as well as bypassing parliamentary procedures, effectively muzzling the common law man. Heatball also resists unreasonable measures supposedly protecting our natural environment. How can we be made to believe that using energy saving lamps will save our planet, while at the same time the rain forests have been waiting in vain for decades for effective sustainable protection?

I simply cannot refrain from bringing you the following warning, which confronts us head-on with the wickedness of physics as it abuses us:

During its use as a heater, HEATBALLS have an unavoidable emission of light in the visible spectrum. This light is harmless and cannot be used as a reason for reclamation.

As many writers have noted, the invention of the Heatball made an enormous contribution to energy conservation (after all, these "heaters" have the highest possible heat efficiency J), but it contributed no less to the struggle against intellectual tyranny. And this is what they write there on the site as they enumerate the fundamental theses of the Heatball project (see especially the boldfaced sentence in item 12):

1. Heatball is the enlightened view of what is essential 2. Heatball is the warmth that has not been recognised for decades 3. Heatball is the reversal of disaffected thinking 4. Heatball has become satire through the absurdity of reality 5. Heatball is like Hamlet, who presents a mirror to his cynical stepfather 6. Heatball is easy to understand and difficult to fight, and gets stronger through arbitrariness and harassment 7. Heatball is an electrical resistance against the destruction of cultural goods 8. Heatball is an image for the dilemma of culture to combine knowledge and emotions 9. Heatball is an Art Action and connects the people of Europe with warmth 10. Heatball is the artistic answer to a product of politics 11. Heatball is unbureaucratic help for the rain forest from people for humanity 12. Heatball is free from mercury, independent from lobbyists, and a symbol of free mind.

Anyone who did not fall to the floor laughing while reading every word on that site may stop reading here. Incidentally, I understand that this was a real business that made a great deal of money. I suspect that a substantial part of that was not because of the need for small heaters, and not even because of the desire to use incandescent bulbs against the tyranny of legislators, but simply as an anti-establishment protest born of the spirit of the free individual.

Who wants carrots on sale?

My in-law (Tzvi Schreiber, may he live long and well), who brought the brilliant product described above to my attention, told me another story. In Britain it is forbidden to open businesses on Sunday, except for the sale of fresh food. Someone in his family who was in the furniture business (a Jew who was in synagogue on the Sabbath and on Sunday wanted to open the store) sold carrots on Sundays as a special offer: whoever buys a kilo of carrots for two thousand pounds sterling receives a living-room suite free of charge. In Heatball terms, this is essentially a living-room suite (or two thousand pounds sterling) with an efficiency of about 99.9% (assuming that a kilo of carrots costs 2 pounds sterling).

The Lesson and the Desired Outcome

What can be learned from these two amusing stories? That the legislator, as well as the legal formalism that serves as a tool in his tyrannical hand, is helpless before the free spirit of the thinking and creative citizen.[1] Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics (who held a capitalist conception of free-market economics in the style of Adam Smith), once said that what saves the State of Israel from itself is two thousand years of exile. During exile, the Jews developed a blessed tendency and skill to circumvent every law and every governmental decree, and thus, despite the government's tireless attempts to destroy the state and the economy (through intervention, overregulation, and centralism), it does not succeed. The citizen's steadfast and free spirit (free spirit) saves him from his saviors. As the saying goes: protect me, my God, from my friends; with my enemies I will manage on my own (ibid., ibid., 16).

Here is another story that illustrates the other side of the coin. In some district in India there was a plague of snakes. The parliament there, desperate to deal with the plague, enacted a law that anyone who brought in the corpse of a cobra would receive a cash prize. What happened? People bred cobras and brought in their corpses, and received fitting compensation for their efforts (admit that this is only fair: after all, it is not easy to raise cobras at home). And what is the lesson? As stated, it is simply the other side of the same coin: problems cannot be solved through legislation. Legal formalism and governmental tools will not truly succeed in imposing themselves on the world – not on the inanimate world, and certainly not on the human world. A thinking person will always evade the stupid regime that tries to save him from the world or from himself. The conclusion is that when we as a society have some problem, the way to solve it is usually not legislation or governmental acts from above downward (top-down). At most, one may try to improve the situation through bottom-up processes.

More examples from our own lives

Just so that you do not think these are esoteric examples, take as a current example the Book Law. Your faithful servant, who has already written a few books in his lifetime and has already lamented his bitter financial fate (for although they sold quite well, my sins decreed that I saw no financial salvation from them), foresaw with his prophetic eye, already when the Book Law was proposed and passed, that it was a foolish absurdity. After all, the author receives a percentage of what the publisher receives, and therefore the publisher has an interest in selling as many books as possible and receiving as much money as possible. A percentage of that reaches the author. That is, the publisher's profits are not at the author's expense but parallel to them (it is not a zero-sum game). Hence, when the publisher gives a discount, that decision is grounded in considerations of profitability that benefit both the publisher and the author. Then the Knesset comes along and explains, with excellent taste and praiseworthy eloquence, to the publishers how they can improve the profits of both the author and themselves, and the result is of course that they earn less and consequently the authors receive less as well.[2] Lo and behold, reality proved that your faithful servant (who is no economist or great marketing expert) was right. To the surprise of our legislators, publishers know better than members of the Knesset how to maximize their profits, and I am sure they will gladly forgo the gracious assistance of our energetic and worthy members of Knesset. The law, of course, was repealed, to everyone's delight.

Something similar happened with the law on bank fees. The Knesset was very proud that it had managed to pass a law compelling the banks to reduce the fees they charge the public. This was in order to improve the condition of the little citizen in the face of the fearsome banks, those malicious schemers. How good it is that we have in the Knesset courageous defenders of the little citizen against those who seek his harm. There too, your faithful servant (although his economic abilities had not improved significantly since the Book Law. The proof is that he is still your servant) foresaw with his prophetic eye that this would not succeed. He mused inwardly that members of the Knesset surely could not cope with the banks, whose revenue depends on those fees and who would invest far more effort, thought, labor hours, professionalism, knowledge, and talent, and in the end would of course charge us more. I did not check the matter to the very end, but from my immediate and unbiased impression, here too it seems to me that your aforesaid servant was right. There are fees that are regulated, but there are many more (the bank charges hundreds of different fees) that are not. It seems to me that following this resounding achievement, a few more fees were also added that are not included in the law. Once again we all see that the government cannot overcome a single citizen, and certainly not the forces of the private market. Shelly Yachimovich and Amir Peretz, please take note.

Here is another example, this time not from the economic sphere. The law for the direct election of the prime minister, which upended the established order and on which genuinely messianic hopes were hung. We were told that it would repair the kingdom of the Almighty and our distorted system of government, and especially the disproportionate power of minority forces (small parties). And what happened in practice? The power of those groups only increased, of course (because the prime minister depended on them even more in order to obtain a majority). This law too was repealed. Dayan once said that only donkeys do not change their minds. Here we learned that even donkeys do so from time to time.

Another example is the National Health Insurance Law, after whose passage all of us (those who were paying even before) pay much more and receive less. Perhaps there is some benefit in the fact that all citizens are insured, but in my well-known pessimism I am sure that even this small gain is not worth the damage. And I have not yet mentioned the water corporations and many more projects for our salvation that emerge again and again from the great study hall in built Jerusalem.

The root of the matter: logic and reality

In all these cases, steps were taken that seemed very logical. At their base stood a solid theory with logical proofs built magnificently. But reality is recalcitrant. Every beginning physicist knows that the result in the laboratory is never what theory predicts it should be. If by chance it comes out right, check again, because you have certainly made a mistake. So when human beings are at issue and not inanimate nature, there can certainly be no expectation that reality will behave according to theory.

Dividing a cake

Many think that dividing a cake is a simple matter. You take a knife, cut, and divide. But not so. Think of parents who want to educate their selfish children toward consideration for one another and fair division. Our energetic parents, Yaakov and Leah, have two children: Reuven and Shimon. Yaakov, a first-rate full-time yeshiva scholar, bought a cake, and Leah, a well-known mathematician, offers it to the children. Yaakov, who is occupied with the theory of justice and education (he is the mainstay of the home), wonders to himself how to ensure that the cake is divided equally between their two children. Character refinement is needed, he tells himself while studying ethics with enthusiasm. But our Leah offers a much simpler answer, based on her knowledge of game theory: Reuven will divide the cake into two parts, and Shimon will choose first from among them. Reuven, Leah explained to Yaakov, will divide the cake in a completely equal fashion, for if one piece is even slightly larger than the other, Shimon will choose it first and leave his brother the smaller piece. A veritable hymn to mathematics in the service of education. Who needs character refinement?!

Except that after a not very long period during which Yaakov and Leah employed this educational method, it became clear to them that they were raising two complete egoists. True, each of them always received a portion equal to the other's, but their accursed and irritating character remained as it had been and even worsened over time. The war council reconvenes and wonders where we went wrong. The conclusion is that the method they chose is the root of the evil (once again we failed through mathematics). This method of division assumes that each child is selfish, but it also encourages them to be so. In fact, the success of the method depends on the selfish character of the children. The more selfish they are, the more equal the division will be. Reuven will take care that Shimon cannot, God forbid, receive even a drop more than he does, and if Shimon is not sufficiently self-interested, Reuven will have no motivation to divide the cake in exact equality to begin with. Thus this ingenious and perfect method does indeed produce admirably equal division, but it is based on selfishness and encourages it. The method works on the symptoms (equality) but leaves the essential problem (character and education) unresolved, and even worsens it.

Bureaucracy in the service of democracy

It is important to understand that the whole idea of democratic bureaucracy is like this. We fear the accursed and irritating character of our elected officials, all of whom are greedy, power-hungry, and in pursuit of office and bribes. What do we do? There is a simple mathematical solution: we put officeholders up for election by the public, and hold elections every few years. This will certainly lead every candidate who is elected to behave properly, for otherwise he will not be elected again. Thus we shall manage, through bureaucratic tools, to ensure proper conduct. And what happens in practice? The government becomes more and more corrupt.

Why? For the same reason as with the cake. The bureaucratic method yields to corruption, and in fact assumes and encourages it. We recognize soberly (and in truth assume, not always soberly and realistically) that people are corrupt and power-hungry, and we try to exploit and leverage their corruption and lust for power to our benefit. Precisely their lust for government and office will lead them to do what we want them to do. It is therefore no wonder that here too, exactly as in the case of the cake, the bureaucratic method does not address the root but the symptom. Here too, as there, this method not only fails to solve the problem but creates more lust for power, for the existence of that lust is a condition for the method's success. Without the candidate's being hungry for power, he will not behave accordingly, just as a non-selfish child will not insist on an equal division of the cake. So what is surprising about the fact that in the end the pursuit of office only intensifies, just as the children's selfishness only intensifies.

Mathematical and mechanical solutions that assume the problem and try to use and leverage it are truly perfect. They have only one small drawback: they do not really work.

On solving complicated problems

In the context of the cake we manage to arrive at an equal result, and the problem we have failed to confront is only the character of the children. By contrast, in the context of governmental corruption, bureaucracy does not succeed even in improving the symptoms. Not only did we fail to eliminate the lust for power, we did not even manage to attain proper governmental conduct on the practical plane. It is important to understand that the failure in this case is colossal. Unlike the question of educating children, in the governmental context we do not even wish to educate the people. What we really want is chiefly the practical results (proper and decent government). The character of the elected officials is a matter for their parents and friends, and chiefly for themselves, but not for us. Therefore, results such as those in dividing the cake would satisfy us in the governmental case, but as noted, we do not even reach those.

Why does this happen? What is the difference between dividing a cake and proper government? It seems to me that the fundamental difference is that dividing a cake is a simple problem, and therefore mathematics has something to say about it. But proper government is an astonishingly complex problem, and therefore a mathematical-bureaucratic solution will generally not succeed regarding it. Even if such methods solve one problem, they usually create five others. And in general, game theory and mathematical thinking can solve only simple problems. Usually these are problems whose solution even a layman understands without the mathematics. More complex situations cannot be solved by mathematical methods. Such methods may sometimes solve difficult theoretical problems, but the complexity of life is of a different character. Life, and human beings in particular, refuse to accept upon themselves the yoke of mathematics. They kick and refuse to enter the vise that theory forces upon them.

It is therefore no wonder that the laws mentioned above, which were passed with great fanfare, were soon afterward repealed in a still, small voice. In paraphrase of the well-known Yiddish proverb (man plans and God laughs): the theoreticians cheer optimistically, but reality always laughs last.

The role of theory

We are accustomed to thinking that complex problems are solved with mathematics. But that is not so. Mathematics is for simple problems (or more precisely, pure ones). Complex problems (that is, those dirtied by the dirt of reality and life) are almost never solved by mathematical means. Our recalcitrant reality does not submit to the laws of logic and mathematics. What misleads people is that mathematics itself is a difficult, sophisticated, and complex field, and sometimes mathematics also solves difficult problems, but these are theoretical and pure problems. Problems from life contain essential difficulty and complexity that mathematics cannot overcome.

All this is of course a generalization, and therefore it too does not always work (after all, that too is logic). Sometimes such solutions do work and improve the situation. But it is important to note that such a process of mathematical solution and ongoing corrections does not necessarily improve the situation monotonically. Sometimes one tries a further improvement and the process advances, but in certain cases one sees that it is hopeless and then the law is repealed.

The conclusion is that mathematics and logic provide directions for thought and illuminate elusive angles that escape our notice, but the practical solution will never be the mathematical one. Someone before me already said that theory never works and one should not expect it to work. A good theory gives us various insights into reality. That is the main role of theory and logic when they are applied to life. Theory is always simplistic and therefore not implementable. But that is precisely its role: to take reality and distill from it elements that can be understood. It does not explain the whole of reality, but rather sheds light and offers insights into aspects of it.

Some attribute this to the fact that people are not rational. Thomas Schelling, Nobel laureate in economics, once said that trying to predict human behavior on the basis of theory alone is like trying to prove that a joke is funny without telling it. But it seems to me that there is something deeper here. Even when people act in a completely rational manner, the collision of their interests leads to a dead end on the social plane. It is a tangle created by the fact that society is made up of several different people with conflicting interests (see, for example, the discussion of the prisoner's dilemma here and the entire column here). Beyond that, life is complicated and mathematics is simplistic by its very nature. And I say this as one who is very fond of mathematics and logic and tends to think in those forms about reality as well.

In the next column I will continue and discuss the relation between bottom-up thinking and top-down thinking.

[1] Of course, this is only so long as the ruler is a democratic tyrant. Against real tyranny, it seems to me that logic will not really help. A real tyrant will not be much impressed by the intellect behind the invention of the Heatball and will cut off the head of the person who uses it.

[2] The description is somewhat superficial (there are a few additional details), but broadly speaking it is entirely correct.