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Needless to say that immigration law is one of the most intricate subjects of law in the United States. It's absurd in its complexity and lack of flexibility; it's irrational and inefficient. Hence such environment allows plentiful fishing in its muddy waters. As a lawyer I need to stay tuned to the ever changing laws, maintain healthy level of insanity and keep my mind sharp to produce an innovative solution to a particular client. Thus I organized MC Law Group, LLP to achieve just that.

Newcomb's Paradox and Global Warming

“Après nous les deluge”

King Louis XV of France (1715-1774)

“Suggestion can lead to false memories being injected outright into the minds of people. These findings have implications for police investigation, clinical practice, and other settings in which memory reports are solicited.”

“Make-Believe Memories”

Elizabeth F. Loftus (University of CA, Irvine)

“Witches, with the help of the devil, could steal milk simply by thinking of a cow.”

“Sermon on Exodus” (Martin Luther, 1526)

Both "Doomsday Revisited" by John Leslie and "Newcomb's Paradox and Neuroeconomics" by Waldemar Stronka are neatly connected with one the aspect of the energy law that deals with highly advertised Doomsday as a result of the greenhouse pollution. Humans would like to pollute but they want much more to avoid the Doomsday than to continue to pollute. What should they do?

The Newcomb’s Paradox operates in a synthetically created philosophical environment and its goal is to demonstrate the unsolvable clash between the probabilistic evidentiary determinism and the strategic maximization of one’s utility. One, if properly equipped with this concept, could engage oneself in all sorts of analyses in regards to the rational decision making and whatnot. Hence, as a versatile tool, the Newcomb’s Paradox may as well be used to analyze more practical questions such as a threat of the global warming.

The way the threat of global warming is portrayed today by the environmental zealots, humankind is on the brink of extinction unless it undertakes truly heroic efforts to save itself. The supporters of the trend argue that unlike most naturally occurring climate changes, the present one appears to be rapid and one cannot rule out the possibility of unexpected climate transitions that may bring about horrible outcomes. They also argue that because the climate change is a global issue, it is essential that major greenhouse gas emitting nations engage in a collective action globally to slow or reverse the rise in the atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gases. However, this prematurely announced Doomsday has quite a few contentious points.

I suspect that the supporters of the global warming phenomena erroneously infer direct causal relationship between probably two probably highly statistically correlated events. The only evidence that the supporters can produce is the correlation itself. There is no a priori evidence that the human-made greenhouse pollution ever caused global warming. To the contrary, the evidence that is provided by the National Climatic Data Center suggests that the climate experienced dramatic temperature increase between 1915 and 1940 with no correlation with the greenhouse pollution. The term “global warming” is suspect itself. It relates to the average rise of temperature across the globe whereas some areas actually experience a “global cooling.” Hence, the conclusion that the advocates of the global warming theory make is based on their belief that they are right. In addition, since they already fully rationalized the infallibility of their position, they refuse to consider that their epistemic judgment might be false and any counter arguments bring about in them further resistance with respect to alternative explanations.

First, if the global warming is inevitable due to some extrinsic factors then no amount of efforts would prevent it from happening. Second, it is quite presumptuous to explain a complex natural phenomenon through just one cause. Their argument might have been right had the humans, unfortunately, been so not involved in other sorts of potentially self-destructive activities.

Let’s assume that as a result of an intricate scientific research it has been discovered that the reason for the correlation between the greenhouse gases and the global warming (the Doomsday) is not that the greenhouse gases tend to cause the Doomsday. Let’s assume, the cause of the latter is another unavoidable factor. Let’s also assume that this factor is the self-destructive tendencies of humankind, and the Doomsday occurs if and only if this factor is present. Then, the humans realize that pollution does not cause the Doomsday but provides an unwelcomed evidence that the Doomsday is likely to happen. However, some humans may still be tempted to stop polluting in order to avoid the Doomsday. Yet, this is plainly irrational since foregoing the comforts of modern living and pollution that is associated with it will in no way postpone the Doomsday. Thus, the attempt to reduce pollution would be self-deceiving because it does not change the primary factor - the self-destructive behavior. In the view of traditional Newcomb’s Paradox, fighting greenhouse pollution will be equivalent to taking one-box, the evidence-based choice, whereas continue polluting is taking two boxes, the strategic choice.

The proponents of Al Gore’s point of view and those who still favor the evidentiary approach to the global warming – “I believe what I see” would argue that this approach works and that the greenhouse pollution needs to be eliminated or reduced. They may even agree with my logic but still may insist that even if the pollution is one of many evils, it may still be worthwhile eliminating. However, thus far, there is no apparent agreement to what extent the reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases, for example, may stop the rise in the sea levels – the alleged result of the global warming. Massachusetts v. EPA, 05-1120. Even if the pollution levels are reduced at some unspecified but supposedly high costs that reduction probably will just postpone the advent of the hypothetical Doomsday.

In addition to the unspecified costs, convincing other humans is another uphill battle for the Al Gore army. The Kyoto Protocol demonstrated that the “doomed” humans are also deadlocked in the “Voter’s Paradox”, a variety of the “prisoners’ dilemma.” Specifically, the situation is such that: (1) while everyone would be better off if everyone cooperates, a particular country is always better off defecting and (2) a country’s contribution will not affect the outcome anyway. Hence, there is a danger that the "prisoners' dilemma" situation will prevail where coordination is unlikely because every country is better off by behaving strategically and refusing to cooperate. Second, because it is impossible to exclude non-cooperative countries from enjoying the benefits of climate as a public good, countries have an incentive to be "free-riders," encouraging collective action, but then defecting to maximize their own benefits. Both the Newcomb’s Paradox and the Prisoners’ Dilemma suggest that voluntary participation in the efforts to reduce greenhouse pollution is not strategically sound.

The unfortunate truth is that my abovementioned mental exercise is not necessarily correct or rational either. Godel's incompleteness theorem states that in any formal system powerful enough to represent arithmetic, there are statements that can not be proven true or false. Hence, the implication is that all logical systems of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete: each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules. Upon this discovery, I found myself suspended in rather lonely spatial-temporal continuum where Mr. Goodwin disapprovingly waived at me his “grue-bleen” finger. In addition, the Newcomb’s Paradox convinced me that since one’s expected behavior is a result of one’s beliefs, neither choice is necessarily rational nor irrational because it is predicated on those beliefs. Consequently, in order to explain their choices the actors fall into all sorts of fallacious reasoning that leads to self-conviction and post factum rationalizing. Accordingly, all of the above discoveries allowed me to conclude, with a degree of certainty, that in my particular legal universe the irrational judges will create irrational laws, whereas irrational jurors will find guilty no less irrational brethren who, philosophically speaking, may not even have a choice of not committing their crimes. And what is most amazing is that I could be totally correct in my conclusion or mistaken and totally incorrect at the same time.