Dave Maier vs Namit Arora

 Dave Maier writes, at 3Quarks

One starting point for any philosophical account of language is that the truth of a statement depends both on what it means and on how the world is.

Could this be this true? Suppose you start something you term 'a philosophical account of language' by saying 'the truth of a statement depends both on what it means and on how the world is' and I reply, quite reasonably, 'you are the neighbour's cat. You can't start a philosophical account of anything at all. All you can do is say miaow miaow which, for some reason probably not unconnected to those dodgy looking mushrooms I just put in my omelette, I hear quite differently.'

How, under these circumstances, could your philosophical account proceed? You may have begun it soundly enough but you can't continue it because you are actually saying miaow, miaow.

I suppose, you could prove you were not a cat by doing something useful for me which I could not do myself- like balance my cheque book- in which case I'd accept that you could indeed do a philosophical investigation even if you are a cat. After all, if you are smart enough to do elementary book-keeping, you might well be sufficiently rational to speak to some good purpose rather than make the equivalent of miaow miaow noises.

But what useful work has anyone who has ever taken this starting point for a philosophical investigation ever done?

Handily for contemporary pragmatists of my stripe, this fits neatly with the post-Davidsonian project of overcoming the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content. All we need to do is show that the two factors that make up truth are not so detachable as contemporary dualists claim.

Have contemporary pragmatists ever done anything useful? If they haven't, there is no way to certify their 'philosophical account' as other than a type of miaow miaow noise produced in the expectation of a piece of fish or a tummy rub.

Why bother overcoming the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content? How is that useful? We don't want to overcome the dualism between the spreadsheet and the entries in each cell.

Suppose we have a bunch of spreadsheets listing common household objects on one axis and the names of homeowners on this street on the other. We find these spreadsheets identical. They all contain nothing but zeroes. If this is because the spreadsheet relates to the number of Nicaraguan horcruxes of the neighbour's cat contained within a given house, then we would not be surprised. But we would have learnt no new truth. From the pragmatic point of view the exercise was meaningless.

Is there any situation where 'the dualism of conceptual scheme' and 'empirical content' does not relate to something absurd or nonsensical- e.g. Nicaraguan horcruxes?

If not, then the only conclusion we can draw is that no philosophical account commenced in the first place. All that happened was some random miaow miaow type noises occurred.

If it were as easy as that, though, we’d be done by now. Last time I said some things about semantic externalism, the idea that our meanings and other mental contents depend in some way on how things are in the world (as opposed, that is, to being transparently internal to the mind in the Cartesian manner). While not uncontroversial (there are a number of versions of this idea, some of which lead to serious problems), this thought is not generally regarded as scandalously radical or insane – possibly because when it goes bad, it does so in the direction of realism, contemporary philosophy’s default metaphysical assumption. The world, and the semantic content it determines, turns out to be too independent of our minds for us to know for sure what we are even saying. But again, for most contemporary philosophers, metaphysical realism, even of a problematic sort, has always seemed preferable to the unthinkable alternatives.

So only miaow miaow noises occur unless along with the commencement of a philosophical account some useful work is done in which case we have a regret minimising reason for assuming that there is some feature of the world which, in context, is not 'too independent of our minds'.
Unfortunately that feature of the world can't involve 'metaphysical realism' because no accompanying useful work gets done.

Things get dicier, or can easily seem to, if we consider the converse thought: that how things are in the world depend in some way on our meanings and beliefs.

How things in the world are, or can be, for us, is the only useful aspect they have. If the neighbour's cat can get me a write-off for imputed depreciation of intellectual property, things in the world have changed in a useful way for me though nothing material or 'metaphysically real' has changed.

A Philosophical account of something which commences by doing something useful for us- like making things in the world appear more full of promise- does not immediately halt. We have an incentive to go along with it.
By contrast, we have no incentive to go along with Maier's philosophical account- except to see how shite his shtick really is. But this is an exercise in schadenfreude not philo sophia.

Stated so baldly, the only people who accept it are the most hard-bitten idealists.

Nonsense! No idealist- ontologically hard-bitten or epistemologically softly gnawed- thinks that there are pre-existing things in the world which change as a result of some change in our meanings and beliefs. Come to think of it, Colin Wilson did once propound such a thesis- but it was in a novel called 'Space Vampires'.
The fact is, anyone who says "I accept that 'how things are in the world depend in some way on our meanings and beliefs' would soon be convicted of not being an Idealist at all but as subscribing to a particular type of materialist ontology- one that involves magical action at a distance.

Not only does this thereby fall off to the forbidden side, it’s not at all clear how to state it in any more acceptably hirsute fashion. (I except the obvious cases, the subject of an entire book by contemporary realist John Searle (The Construction of Social Reality), such as the straightforwardly conventional, mind-created, but thereby no less real, truth that this sawbuck is more valuable than that fin – although inventive if also perverse counter-examples are available even for that one.)

I don't understand 'acceptably hirsute'. No doubt, there is some hilarious reference I'm missing.  However, it is very clear to me that one can say 'how things in the world are, or can be, for us depends on our own beliefs and values etc' without getting shaved by Occam's Razor.

Searle's book is silly. Social Reality is not constructed. Nomos has no GOSPlAN. It is a a set of focal solutions to specific coordination games towards which evolution, of various types, has provided some of us with epigenetic intentions and which others can avail through mimetic effects. However, we also hedge on discoordination games so 'Social Reality' is contested, not constructed.

I won’t be arguing for any particular doctrine today, let alone anything controversial, but instead simply batting about some examples, in the hope of a better understanding of a few important and interrelated things: first, how diverse our semantic options really are, and how little the dictionary really tells us about them; second, how essential to meaning are the creative and expressive aspects of language use; and third, the overlapping and indeed interconstitutive notions of a) knowing what a word means; b) knowing how to use a word appropriately; c) knowing the word’s referent; d) knowing what such a thing is.

So this guy- a typical 3Quarks fuckwit of Namit Arora proportions- is gonna just be like grokking how like words mean stuff and like how amazing that is and y'know everything is interconnected and gee whiz aint Edumification fine! Money spent on tuition fees in non STEM subjects aint wasted at all. Why would you think it?

With any luck this may clear the way to discussing matters of meaning and truth without the threat of linguistic idealism seeming to hover over us at every turn.

Yeah. Luck. That's what you need coz that fucking linguistic idealism- which is so like a real thing- seems to be hovering over you at every turn.

This background of examples is important here because none of them work as a proof, as philosophers typically look to examples to provide, that actual linguistic practice entails this or that philosophical doctrine.

Important to you, perhaps. It is only important to the rest of us to demonstrate yet again that philosophers are worthless.
If 'actual linguistic practice entails a philosophical doctrine'- then, if the doctrine is 'buck stopped', Aumann agreement can always be reached. If the thing isn't 'buck stopped', what use is it? It may as well be miaow miaow noises uttered by my neighbour's cat.

I aim instead for a Wittgensteinian focus on “intermediate cases” where, as Wittgenstein definitely does not say, the rubber hits the road.

Aim your anus at the porcelain, Dave mate, otherwise as Wittgenstein definitely did say you will 'shit higher than your arsehole' only to lodge a turd upon the back of your own head.

Why focus on 'intermediate cases'? We already know that Game Theory explicates 'language games'. David Lewis took up Thomas Schelling around the time I was born.

Consider the following shite from the Philosophical Investigations

One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy" there must be a second -- order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second -- order. So this is what Kripke calls 'buck-stopping' which is conventional, juristic, protocol bound and is a more than focal solution to a coordination game. It is the basis of a unique correlated equilibrium of a particular type- one that does some very useful work indeed. Kripke also showed that philosophy can be wholly first order- it can contain its own truth predicate- but at a high price to significance. But everybody already knew this. The thing is like totally cromulent, dude. 122.A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. Nonsense! The only source of Wittlesstein's failure to understand shite was that he chose to do useless things. Okay, maybe he needed the salary. But still... I guess he also lacked empathy, not, as in my case, basic I.Q. -- Our grammar is lacking in just this sort of perspicuity. So what? Grammar does not matter. Only Pragmatics does and it faces no Sapir Whorf type constraint. At one time some shitheads said things like 'Chinese people can't be theoretical physicists because of the nature of their grammar.' Then Madam Wu took their pants down and made found of their tiny genitals.  A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connections'. If this were true, why would we need Professors? The fact is the Hindus and the Muslims believe their Revealed Scriptures contain nothing but such 'perspicuous representations'. However, 'seeing connections' demands some esoteric paideia of a type which involves entering antarabhave, bardo or barzakh as that 'limit' which unites what it would otherwise divides. But this 'intermediate' or methexu realm- like the actions of the risen Christ over the course of 40 days- if written down would constitute a book larger than the world- Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases. Sorry Witlessstein. You were barking up the wrong tree. Everything is an intermediate case unless it isn't- it is 'buck stopped' for the specific purpose of supporting a specific correlated equilibrium, which, however, remains defeasible as the fitness landscape shifts. Dude, you should have paid more attention to Brouwer- Turing used his Choice Sequences, you know- or else got pally with Von Neumann. Instead you got stuck in Cambridge where the smartest guy you met was Sraffa. Sraffa, for fuck's sake! Returning to Dave Maier, we find that he isn't even going to venture an actual 'intermediate case'. He's just gonna talk shite.

This procedure requires a certain tolerance for not knowing what to say which makes some philosophers uncomfortable or even angry. However, it may be that the place in which you are pulled in various different directions is the best place to see what’s going on.

Dave, mate, you are an idiot. You don't know what is going on. Whether you are pulled or pushed doesn't matter. You are a fool. So are these 'philosophers' who get uncomfortable or even angry because...urm... who the fuck cares?

Take for example the third issue I just mentioned. (knowing a name's referent) We do distinguish, in particular cases, between knowing what “davenport” means and knowing what a davenport is. For example, in speaking to you, I may attribute the latter knowledge to a third party, based on their experience and understanding of those things which we call “davenports,” without thereby, or ever, attributing the former (as that person may call such things “sofas”). That is, he knows perfectly well what they are; he just doesn’t know that that’s what they’re (also) called.

This is not an 'intermediate case'. It may have been for Witlesstein- coz he didn't have a smartphone. It isn't for us. Davenport is a word with a picture for every useful purpose. The Tractatus alone has salience here. The Philosophical Investigations can very kindly go fuck itself.

In other cases, especially depending on how the question has come up, that distinction may make little sense.

There is no distinction. There is a picture theory and a rigid designator and everything is buckstopped. Dave, mate, you just choose a stupid example coz u r as stupid as shit more particularly because you are competing with Namit Arora for the title of stupidest shithead on 3Quarks. Give it up, Dave. Us Hindus will always have you beat.

Maybe the context is one for which the term “davenport” is essential.

Why? What onomastic magic is Dave invoking?

Lady Bingham demands of her servants that the davenport be moved into the parlour.

Fuck is wrong with Dave? English country houses don't have davenports. They have Sofas (from the Grand Sufi of Persia, with whom we were allied in the early eighteenth century) and Ottomans.

Is Lady Bingham American? If so she'd be extra careful to be ultra British- 'lift' for 'elevator' and so forth.

If they fail to understand, without her pointing at what is directly in front of them, what she means, there doesn’t seem to be any important difference between the one sort of knowledge and the other.

Actually Lady Bingham should get rid of a footman who understands that davenport means sofa. Why? The fellow clearly reads American pulp fiction and frequents the Kinema. Sack him before he gets the scullery maid preggers.

Here, if they knew the one, they would thereby know the other in the relevant sense. Knowing all there is to know about sofas wouldn’t help.

Nobody knows all there is to know about sofas- or anything else. Why is this idiot mentioning the possibility? How fucking stupid is he?

The intent and context of an utterance is, perhaps not surprisingly, often the key, and meaning may have rather different ways of playing the same practical role. Let’s say (counterfactually) I’m a connoisseur of Japanese cuisine and sushi in particular. I am thus acutely aware of the difference between what I might call real wasabi, which is made from the wasabi plant (Eutrema japonicum, a.k.a “Japanese horseradish”), and the green paste typically offered in non-insanely-expensive Japanese restaurants in the USA, which is made of (regular) horseradish powder, water, and green food coloring, and which I may call “imitation wasabi,” to make clear my preference or simply to show off.
If I am asked the simple question – a question seemingly about the world, rather than about what we say – “Is that stuff wasabi or not?”, I will answer “certainly not!”

Liar! A fuckwit like you won't answer in so sensible a fashion. You will instead start gassing on about Eutrema Japonicum on my face you know you want to you skinny little Hindu you. Oh... Urm...sorry.  I was picturing Namit and Dave at the restaurant. Too much information? Fair cop, Guv.

But it is uncontroversial that we do not need to talk that way, and even that I myself might not consistently do so, even while maintaining to the last that the distinction between the two substances is an important one. You and I have eaten at a particular restaurant many times, one where only the poor substitute is available, and you are well aware of and indeed tired of hearing about my preference for the finer stuff. Yet faute de mieux I still put it on my tuna roll; and when I need it to be passed to me I ask not for the “imitation wasabi” – that’s all there is, after all – but simply for the wasabi. If instead of passing it you instead feigned ignorance of my meaning, protesting that there is unfortunately no wasabi here to be had, you would be being perverse.

Nonsense! You would be being 'a character'- like Sheldon on Big Bang- and adding, not subtracting, from the bonhomie.

So is the stuff wasabi or not? There is no real puzzle here, of course: if “wasabi” means the stuff made from E. japonicum, then no; if instead it means the green stuff, of whatever origin, yet still capable of blowing out one’s sinuses, that one puts on one’s sushi, then yes.

Actually, wasabi is 'buck-stopped' in some jurisdictions and for certain purposes. The proper course is to say 'pass me that green stuff there'.

Still, given the form of the question, which presents itself as being about the world rather than about what we say, we can easily let ourselves assume that the world itself, and not our intention, decides which meaning is the real one, and which merely contextual or something.

Nonsense! No question- save that addressed to a particular sort of expert in a protocol bound forum- 'presents itself as being about the world' as opposed to how it appears to us for some common purpose.
Suppose you ask me 'how is the soup?' do I really 'easily assume' that you are asking anything save whether I like it?
No. I'm not stupid. Suppose you say 'I didn't ask if you like the soup. I wanted expert information about this soup such as might be provided by the International Association of Soup Evaluators'. My answer to you is 'go fuck yourself you worthless turd.'

The former meaning, for example, makes a real distinction between types of thing, while the latter does not.

Rubbish! Both make a real distinction. There may be some sort of Olympics for Soups and a real distinction might exist between 'gold medal' soups and 'bronze' varieties. But there is a similar distinction between soup I like and ones I didn't wank into earlier in the pantry.

Or does it? It’s very easy to let our examples go before we’re done with them; yet with a little invention we can easily construct variations in which “wasabi” plays all kinds of different roles. Even now, when I ask for it to be passed to me, I distinguish between it and the pickled ginger, which is already within my reach. That I would say the same were “real” wasabi to be had doesn’t mean I’m not making a contextually important distinction here as well.

Yes it does. The context is your preference to horseradish to ginger.

Or how about this. If I am making a film, in which one scene takes place in a Japanese restaurant, the background prop need not be “wasabi” of any kind, but instead some green stuff in a jar. Yet I will demand of the prop guys, in these very words, that the “wasabi” be to the right of the “soy sauce” instead of to the left. Here the word literally refers to that green stuff, even though no one will be putting it on anything. Maybe I even wish to distinguish between it and what I would in contrast call “real wasabi” – here meaning either E. japonicum or mere horseradish paste, between which it would now be pointless to distinguish – because neither of the latter film well, while the former looks just right.

So what? The fact is Directors may be Japanese or Finnish or whatever. They still manage to get their directions followed by prop-guys speaking a different language. Why? Because this is an essentially economic- not philosophical- game. Guys who do what you need to get done get paid. Those who don't, don't. Scarcity, not Sophia, is the governing principle here.

It seems to be a general principle that one may use a word literally to refer to something which is (“merely”) imitating the normal referent of the word, which in the following case doesn’t even exist in the first place.

One may also start micturating all over the place till what you want done gets done. If you have enough money and people need that money badly enough anybody can get anything done for you by strategic incontinence rather than the use of words.

That's why, the bigger the budget on a movie, the less it matters if the Director can communicate with others on the set.

Five trick-or-treaters are at my door, but I don’t see the fifth, standing in back, and only distribute four treats. In this case, the natural objection could perfectly well be “you missed the ghost in back” — and it is no proper reply to this to say “that wasn’t a ghost — ghosts don’t exist.” That is, though the dictionary doesn’t say so (and why should it?), it is a perfectly cromulent use of “ghost” to mean “someone dressed up (say, on Halloween) as ghosts are typically thought of: that is, he’s wearing a white sheet with eyeholes or something.”

Oh dear. This stupid fucker doesn't get that this 'natural objection' is nothing of the sort. If there are 5 trick or treaters, at least two are bound to be ghosts coz that's the just the cheapest and laziest way for Moms to get rid of the little shits for a couple of quiet hours of cunnilingus.

If ghosts don't exist, why did you just give candy to one you fuckwit? Furthermore, everyone knows ghosts and witches are in the Bible, but Vampires and Werewolves aren't. Fuck is wrong with you?

Similarly, again, “wasabi” can perfectly well mean “‘wasabi’’/“imitation wasabi” (or even, given the proper context, “imitation imitation wasabi,” etc.). Consider this actual sentence Google provides in response to the question “What is the difference between horseradish and wasabi?”: “Most wasabi sold in the United States is just horseradish.” We might say: use erodes scare quotes. Or, as Davidson notes, metaphors die and become literal speech; although I am reluctant to say even that the use of “ghost” here is not literal. (Incidentally, I live for the day when “cromulent” itself makes the dictionary.)

Anything can mean anything provided it is useful for it to do so. If my nieghbour's cat's miaows cause me to get a tax write-off, they aren't miaows at all but could represent the commencement of  a philosophical account of language and meaning.

I think Dave was channeling Namit when he wrote this. But, Namit has an excuse. His mother tongue is not English. What is Dave's major malfunction?

One more group of examples should do us for now. One key principle of Kripke’s (orthodox-externalist) semantics – one which provides both the real anti-internalist power of his view as well as its equally real difficulties – is that the reference of our terms depends essentially on an initial “baptism” in which the coiner of a term points to a thing and says something like “Xs are those things.” After that (here’s where the hardcore essentialist realism comes in) the world takes it from there. Much as I may want to, I may not use the term properly to refer to anything but things with the same metaphysical essence as the original thing.

Rigid designation only matters in protocol bound, juristic or professional, contexts such that buck-stopping occurs. Otherwise they too are 'anything goes' because any semantic general equilibrium can be reached by Arrow Debreu methods and so the Sonnenschein Mantel Debreu result, and that of Kirman etc, applies.

I hear an echo of this attitude, if perhaps only that, in the idea that etymology in general (that is, not necessarily a “baptism” of the Kripkean sort) determines proper reference. I referred above to sushi as Japanese “cuisine,” but the origin of the word (French cuisine, Latin coquina) suggests that cuisine is something which is “cooked” (as sushi is not).

Oh dear. Fuckwit Dave doesn't get that fish does indeed start to cook when acids or alkalines are applied.

(Note: I have never heard anyone make this specific objection; but see below.)
Or consider gratuities. This word for “tip” comes from the French word gratuit, meaning “free”:

Fuck is wrong with this fuckwit? Gratuity is an English word which means something not contracted for but which nevertheless compensates something supererogatory by nature. How fucking Namit Arora is this illiterate shithead?

I am required by law to pay my food bill, but I may reward or stiff my wait-staff as I please. But some restaurants include a service fee in the bill itself. In some sense this is the same thing, and in others not. As a matter of semantics, must I register that difference by denying that this service charge is in fact a “gratuity”?

In a Court of Law, yes- of course. Why? The forum features buckstopping. If the thing is immaterial, legally or economically or emotionally, you can use what word you like or simply say miaow miaow as I do. What? It makes my face look less fat in selfies.

As a native English speaker I say no, and it seems that even Merriam-Webster leaves it open: “gratuity” sends us to “tip” in sense #10: “a gift or small sum given for a service performed or anticipated.” (Not, again, that I think we should let the dictionary order us around.)

Dave, mate, you are not a native English speaker. You are fucking Collidge is wot you are. And all the more illiterate for it.

Returning to the kitchen: I once got into it (evidence at my old blog) with a philosopher who claimed that since “biscotti” means “twice cooked,” nothing counted as a “biscotto” until it emerged from the oven a second time. Similarly, on this view, nothing counts as a “cookie” unless it has been cooked: balls of uncooked dough do not count. And indeed, if I ask you to bring me a cookie from the kitchen, the default (but of course entirely context-dependent) assumption is that since I want a cookie because I intend to eat it, if you bring me instead a ball of uncooked dough, I will protest that such a thing is not a cookie at all.

You got into it did you? That too with a philosopher? Had you by any chance chopped off your own head and shoved it up your rectum in such a manner that 'getting into it' involved the buggery of your brains? Were they turned to mush by all that thrusting? Is that what happened?

I don't believe it for a second. You are clearly trying to out do Namit Arora in idiocy and rob us Hindus of the one laurel we can always pride ourselves upon while perusing the Pakistani run 3Quarks website.

Dave, mate, your strategy is bound to fail. Them Pakis are cunning. No matter how much you lower the bar, they can always get Namit to post something stupider yer. Take my advise, Dave me old mucker. Change your name to Dilip. Dilip... Mai... no!...Mukherjee. Then you can publish any shite you like and, what's more, will be rewarded with tenure at Ivy League.

Also don't talk about cookies. Or ovens. Go with jelabis or, better yet, sandesh.

But of course it can perfectly well go the other way. If I’m (in the middle of) cookies, I guess they’re not done yet, nor are they so when the cookies are in the oven. Even if I am approaching the oven with a tray of what are clearly balls of uncooked dough, I may not be able to answer the phone right now because, like I just said, I am in the middle of putting a tray of cookies into the oven. (Consider also snickerdoodles, which seem to have no etymological obligation to emerge from the oven before they attain full snickerdoodlehood; yet of course snickerdoodles are cookies, so if something is the former then it is the latter as well.) Again, as a native English speaker, I take these things to be flatly uncontroversial; but maybe we need to get the experimental philosophers on the case.

Why? What good would it do? You are already showing superior rationality to Namit Arora who has proved statistically that cookies are more likely to be raped in the oven than anywhere else.

Why bring 'experimental philosophers' in? Could they show, as Namit can, that cookies can only avoid sexually motivated cannibalism if they raise their collective consciousness as part of a much wider struggle for Human Rights?

Will the idea of putting a tray of cookies into the oven really provoke vox populi to protest “why are you putting cookies into the oven? They’re already cooked, or they wouldn’t be cookies!” I’ll believe that when I see it. (Or, I guess, we could be making biscotti.)

Dave, putting a tray of cookies into the oven is the type of thing Narendra Modi would do! Don't you understand that those cookies will be raped and indoctrinated into Patriarchalism if you do any such thing?

So let’s say we agree that we have two semantic options here:

Why two? Why not three? As a matter of fact, for Operations Research, or Control Theory (i.e. for the semantics which governs the production of most cookies consumed in the U.S) there is range here which grows rather than contracts as technology improves.

that we may say, of a tray of balls of dough ready for the oven either a) that it is a tray of cookies, or b) that it is not (yet) a tray of cookies. This does not mean that it is metaphysically indeterminate whether the thing is or is not a tray of cookies. It does not exist in a quasi-quantum superposition of states (cookies/non-cookies) until someone comes along and says one thing or another, thereby making it so. (That would be idealism.) It simply means that to ask whether something is a cookie is not the same as asking whether the term “cookie” applies to it.

Nonsense! Either the thing is a cookie or it isn't.  When first extracted from the oven, a given baked good can be turned into many things. Only once it has sufficiently cooled and is placed within reach of my greedy little hands is it a cookie as opposed to the sweet tasting shit sandwich my ex-wife was wont to prepare for my elevenses.

But a natural response to this is that if something is a cookie the term does indeed apply, and not otherwise! So it may not seem that we have gotten anywhere. Indeed, it may seem that I have deliberately courted confusion. But as I noted at the beginning, this is where we want to be: not in confusionland itself, but rather in a place where we can see it up close, really feeling the pull in different directions rather than giving the “wrong” one perfunctory lip service. In any case, this hard-fought vantage point seems to me to be preferable, for pragmatist purposes, to the sort of clear-cut yet arbitrary distinctions out of which all too many philosophical doctrines are constructed. But the proof of this pudding is in the eating; and right now it’s still in the oven.

Weak! Namit Arora would have proved by now that cookies in ovens are being raped by Donald Trump and Narendra Modi while Theresa May and Angela Merkel look on laughing heartily and providing Golden Showers, financed by Putin, for all and sundry.