Sen-tentious quotes

Is everything Amartya Sen ever said foolish or false, or both foolish and false? Consider the following quotes from 'goodreads.com' 

“the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute”

Identity depends on having a corporeal body which endures in Time and Space. The choices made by this body don't affect her identity. They modify the predicates applied to that identity. A predicate is not itself an identity. I may identify as a cat. But I am not a cat. I am a sad, elderly, Tamil man who chooses for some bizarre reason to go around saying 'miaow'. 

“A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.”
― Amartya Sen

No Society can be Pareto optimal. Why? Information is costly and transactions use up resources. Just at this moment, there is a guy somewhere in the world who has a couple of samosas and who would trade one for a can of cold beer. I have two cans of cold beer and would trade one for a samosa. But, this 'Pareto improvement' can't occur because I don't know the location of the guy with two samosas and also teleportation hasn't yet been invented. 

No Society can be perfectly nice or disgusting or anything else. Think of any disgusting society and you will soon see it could be worse. 

“The increasing tendency towards seeing people in terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which he or she belongs).”

There is no 'increasing tendency'. It has always been the case that the dominant identity you have relates to your body and your oikeiosis (family and other ties of belonging). There is nothing arbitrary about a Religion or a Nationality you belong to, insisting that you do certain things and stop doing other things. Why? These are 'separating equilibria' based on a more or less costly to disguise 'signals'. Game theory predicts that there will be 'bourgeois strategies' based on uncorrelated asymmetries- e.g. your being born into a Muslim or Chinese family rather than a Hindu or British family. By contrast 'cheap talk' 'pooling equilibria' tend to be worthless. A guy who says all men are brothers aint going to offer you his kidney. 

It is wholly arbitrary to say some Sent-tentious tosser gets to define what is or isn't loyalty. On the other hand, if the guy really offers his kidney to you, that is loyalty. The guy genuinely is a brother. Loyalty isn't cheap talk. It is a costly signal. 

“While I am interested both in economics and in philosophy, the union of my interests in the two fields far exceeds their intersection”

― Amartya Sen

In which case Sen is not interested in either economics or philosophy because only their intersection features either. Their union has no specific intensional property- i.e. conforms to no logic or method of analysis. Thus, Sen is interested in something entirely lacking in rigor of any kind- viz. talking bollocks. True, to get paid, he has to pretend to be working at the intersection of the two fields. But it is merely pretense. 

“A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.”
― Amartya Sen

Anything which is defeated but alive remains alive. Arguments aren't defeated. They are sent to bed without any supper. People grow out of arguments unless they are immured on a campus and thus remain eternally adolescent. 

“While we cannot live without history, we need not live within it either.”
― Amartya Sen,

This is only true if we can live somewhere outside of this universe. Sadly, our identity is tied to our body which has a 'world-line' or history in this Universe. I suppose, you could say 'Sen means that we don't have to be the puppets of our history'. The problem is that we don't know what actions aren't historically determined. Where does hysteresis end and ergodicity begin? None can tell. 

“It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality

Why? We ignore stupid pedants and only stupid pendants gas on about the 'demands of rationality' as opposed to the 'demands of our Mummy or our Wifey that we stop watching TV and just go to school or work already.'

“Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong.”

Very true. Sen should not resent my claim that he eats only dog turds. But I should resent his oeuvre because it has been a potent source of mischief for India. Fuck 'leanings of the heart'. Stupid, mischievous, lies should be resented. 

“The notion of human right builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being. They differ, therefore, from constitutionally created rights guaranteed for specific people.”

 No. Every notion of 'rights' builds on the notion of 'obligations' under a bond of law. Human rights have remedies provided by Governments which in turn are supported by the citizens of specific countries. Thus citizens of specific countries, in the final analysis, supply remedies for Human rights violations. The plain fact is, such remedies are rationed in a manner those citizens decide. Thus, Obama- a Law Professor- could have Osama shot and dumped in the Sea because Osama wasn't an American citizen. To kill Awlaki, the permission of the National Security Council had to be sought. 

“Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.”

Very true. You should shoot yourself in the foot only when experiencing delight at the acuteness of others. 

“Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, 

a flippant effort is bound to fail- right? The truth is quite different. A serious attempt will fail if you don't have the resources. A flippant attempt will succeed if you are as rich as fuck, even if you are only doing the thing on a whim. 

and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort.

Unless it is a Muslim League Government in Bengal or Bangladesh. 

 Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence

India stopped having famines, till control over food was handed over to elected Bengalis. The Bangladesh famine happened after Democracy had been established. Mujib was moving to one party rule when he was assassinated.

 … they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press.

except in Bengal during Sen's lifetime 

… a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have”

But B.R Sen and other ICS officers saw the 'early-warning signs' in 1942, long before Ian Stephens of the Statesman. Indeed, the latter says in his book 'Monsoon morning', that his deputy- who had been with the Indian Education Service in Bengal and thus knew that official statistics re. food production were completely useless- let slip that everybody in the Legislative Assembly knew there was a big food availability deficit and people were already starving. Sen relied on those official statistics, even though they were totally bogus, to come to a crazy conclusion- viz. Bengal had plenty of food in 1943. 

“Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all it's many forms. Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.”

This sounds Buddhist. Did Sen really say this? Still, it is stupid, so maybe he did. Limited change permits the existence of life. So far as we know, the gravitational constant hasn't changed by even 0.00001 percent in the last ten billion years. Dwelling peacefully isn't an option because things change and you will have to fight to keep what you have. Death may 'liberate' suffering sentient beings. Sen's death may bring great joy. But then again, it may not. There are people stupider yet who will take over his role. 

“Hindutava's nationalism ignores the rationalist traditions of India, 

Nonsense! Those guys are always making out that ancient Indians were super sciencey. 

a country in which some of the earliest steps in algebra, geometry, and astronomy were taken, where the decimal system emerged, where early philosophy — secular as well as religious — achieved exceptional sophistication, where people invented games like chess, pioneered sex education, and began the first systematic study of political economy. 

Yes, yes. India invented zero. But what is this shit about sex education? Are you telling me Indians didn't know putting pee pee in chee chee place is how you get babies? How fucking stupid were the ancient Indians?

The Hindu militant chooses instead to present India — explicitly or implicitly — as a country of unquestioning idolaters, delirious fanatics, belligerent devotees, and religious murderers”

How come Sen's family ran away from their homes in Dacca, East Bengal? Why aren't Bengalis running away from Modi's Gujarat? Why aren't they returning to Bangladesh? Is it because 'religious murderers' are not Hindus? We hear of people of different Islamic sects killing each other. We don't hear of Hindus doing any such thing for religious reasons. Sen himself is a delirious fanatic. But he is not afraid that Hindutva zealots will kill him. On the other hand, if he criticizes Mamta, his head will be kicked in.  

“If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.”

A theory of Justice should not guide policy. It should guide Legal Judgments. On the other hand, it is sufficient to fully identify just social arrangements to specify a theory of Justice. There is a 'concrete model' which Judges can aim at. To give an example, the Soviet's had a theory of Justice which took into account the social class of the offender. If he is a genuine 'prole, you 're-educate' him and help him rise even if he was engaged in theft or hooliganism. If he is a 'class enemy' you send him to the Gulag even if he is of saintly character. The 'concrete model' here maximizes the power and hegemony of the proletariat while continually decimating the ranks of those of bourgeois origin. 

“The World Bank has not invariably been my favorite organization. The power to do good goes almost always with the possibility to do the opposite, and as a professional economist, I have had occasions in the past to wonder whther the Bank could not have done very much better.”

The World Bank helped China rise up in the Eighties. Edwin Lim moved from Beijing to Delhi in the early Nineties. He expected to do even better in India because Montek and Manmohan and so forth were on the same page as him. Then he discovered that Sen-tetntious NGO type activists get more money and power preventing development rather than enabling it to happen. That's what prevented India rising up. 

“Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms, it is argued here, is constitutive of development.”

Development happens when people give up leisure and freedom in return for the chance to build up capital and expertise. Slavery can increase Development. Freedom can't unless people choose 'unfreedom'. On the other hand, freer markets and lower compliance costs arising from Government regulations, can lead to rapid Development. But Sen doesn't see red-tape as an 'unfreedom'. 

Incidentally, 'unfreedom' just means 'disutility'. Working is 'disutility'. In return for working, you get money which you use to buy cool stuff. Cool stuff yields utility. By ignoring disutility, Sen-tentious nutters can claim that Society should 'cut up the cake' so everybody gets an equal share. The problem is that if you know you'll get the same reward as everybody else, you will avoid 'dis-utility'. Nobody will do the boring or shitty jobs. There will be no cake. 

“It is hard to understand how a compassionate world order can include so many people afflicted by acute misery, persistent hunger and deprived and desperate lives, and why millions of innocent children have to die each year from lack of food or medical attention or social care.

It is easy to understand that man is a product of evolution on a harsh and uncertain fitness landscape. If very poor people didn't have lots of kids who were bound to have miserable lives, then Mankind would not have survived. On the other hand, the danger now is that Human impact on the Environment will make the planet uninhabitable. Pro-natalism is no longer a good strategy for the species. 

This issue, of course, is not new, and it has been a subject of some discussion among theologians. The argument that God has reasons to want us to deal with these matters ourselves has had considerable intellectual support. 

Sen's family had to run away from East Bengal because the Muslims there thought God had reasons to want them to deal with the problem of kaffirs by themselves. But it is not Islam Sen objects to. It is Hinduism. This is classic 'moral inversion'- a term coined by Michael Polyani to denote hatred of your own people and great love for those who want to kill them. 

As a nonreligious person, I am not in a position to assess the theological merits of this argument. 

A nonreligious person assesses and rejects theological arguments as wholly lacking in merit. Indeed, it is the responsibility of a thinking, reflective, being to assess arguments and arrive at a reasoned position of their own. I'm kidding. Thinking, reflective, beings watch porn. They don't waste their time doing stupid shit. 

But I can appreciate the force of the claim that people themselves must have responsibility for the development and change of the world in which they live. 

So, blaming Hindus for Muslims chasing your family out of East Bengal is a responsibility which lies heavily on your shoulders. 

One does not have to be either devout or non devout to accept this basic connection. As people who live-in a broad sense-together, we cannot escape the thought that the terrible occurrences that we see around us are quintessentially our problems.

Unless we aint poor and aint having lots and lots of babies who are bound to be poor. 

 They are our responsibility-whether or not they are also anyone else's.

Only in the sense that all women are our wives, whether or not they are also someone else's. Sen, of course, ran away from India with his best friend's wife. I hope his pal complimented Sen on his taking over the responsibility for porking the lady in question. 

As competent human beings, we cannot shirk the task of judging how things are and what needs to be done. 

Very true. More peeps should judge that their pal is not porking his wife sufficiently. They should then run off with the good lady and discharge that heavy responsibility with their dicks. 

As reflective creatures, we have the ability to contemplate the lives of others.

Especially if our pal's wife be smokin'. Then we contemplate the fuck out of her. Hopefully, we too, like Sen, will get to run off with her and discharge the onerous responsibility of giving her a good porking. 

 Our sense of behavior may have caused (though that can be very important as well), but can also relate more generally to the miseries that we see around us and that lie within our power to help remedy.

Your pal's wife is miserable due to sub-standard porking. Get in there, son!

 That responsibility is not, of course, the only consideration that can claim our attention, but to deny the relevance of that general claim would be to miss something central about our social existence. 

which depends on our biological existence- which depends on porking. 

It is not so much a matter of having the exact rules about how precisely we ought to behave, as of recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the choices we face.”
― Amartya Sen,

Very true. There is a precise rule which says 'don't run off with your best friend's wife'. We should ignore it coz our shared humanity involves porking her. 

“A good statement of an inherently imprecise concern – and most important concerns in the world are imprecise – must capture that imprecision, and not replace it by a precise statement about something else. You should learn to speak in an articulate way about ideas that are inescapably imprecise (as a man called Aristotle explained more than two millennia ago). 

No. Aristotle warned of 'akreibia'- greater precision than the subject matter warrants. 'Economia' is the way to go. However, some sub-field of the subject can be investigated in a rigorous and precise manner. Akreibia is only a fault in rhetoric if you jump from 'minute particulars' to 'the general good' without qualifying what you are saying. Thus you may say 'there is evidence that freer markets are associated with more rapid Development'. You should not say 'Freedom means Development'. This is because Freedom encompasses much much more than just free markets. What freedom did East Bengal get in 1947? It got the freedom to chase away people of Sen's religion. This did not boost Development very much. However, Bangladesh has risen over Pakistan and West Bengal because it followed sensible policies- viz. getting rural girls into factory dormitories. It ignored Sen-tentious shite. 

And that is one of the reasons why the humanities are important. A novel can point to a truth without pretending to capture it exactly in some imagined numbers and formulae.”
― Amartya Sen,

But a novel can point to a lie with equal facility. What matters is whether it is entertaining. 

“Ashoka supplemented this general moral and political principle by 

Slaughtering vast numbers of people- including Jain monks. He only began to prate about non-violence once everybody was utterly terrified of him. 

a dialectical argument based on enlightened self-interest: ‘For he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his own sect.”

Sen has harmed his own 'sect' by his foolish attacks on Hindutva.

“The purely rational economic man is, indeed, close to being a social moron.”
― Amartya Sen

Even a social moron doesn't abandon his own wife to run off with the wife of his best friend. On the other hand, Sen gained by doing so. His pal had married someone related to both Gramsci and Sraffa. By contrast, his Indian wife had no such illustrious connections. Sen's current wife is a Rothschild. 

“To conclude this discussion, assessment of justice demands

actually studying the judicial system in various countries and at various times. 

 engagement with the 'eyes of mankind', first,

Though this impossible. Men have eyes. Mankind doesn't. To assess a judicial system you need to see it through the eyes of petitioners and practicing lawyers, and offenders and Judges and so forth.

because we may variously identify with the others elsewhere and not just with our local community;

or we may not identify with foreigners at all. The thing is irrelevant. 

second, because our choices and actions may affect the lives of others far as well as near;

this would very seldom be the case. Of course, it is possible that if I shit on the pavement, then the guy who was on the point of discovering the cure for COVID slips and breaks his neck and thus I become responsible for millions of deaths. The moral of this story is that if you shit on the pavement you should stick around to have a good laugh at those who slip on your turds. 

and third, because what they see from their respective perspective of history and geography may help us to overcome our own parochialism.”

Or it may make us bigoted racists. The fact of the matter is that to 'assess Justice' you need to know a lot about the Law and how the Legal system functions. It does not help to know that the Eskimos give valuable presents to those who run off with their wives, whereas the Afghans slit their throats. I need hardly say that Sen's best friend was Bengali. The good thing about a proper Islamic Republic is that a guy who runs off with your wife would go to jail or, better still, get bits chopped off his lying, cheating, body. I'm not saying any such thing happened to me. It was this bloke I know. I can't tell you his name because we were in the S.A.S together. Anyway, I'm a cat. Cats are above this sort of thing.