tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62010267019144135462024-03-23T03:17:04.367-07:00The Literate HickJust because we's all a buncha dumb hillbillies, it don' mean we can't get some o' that quality education ya'll been sayin' we're missin'. The blue skies, clear air, and relatively potable waters, the publicly subsidized libraries of our forefathers...yes, they inspire profound, if sometimes unpopular, ephiphany....
Still...the big question is: does the Dancing Bear defecate competently in arboreal regions? Laugh, if you don't wanna weep.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-16239964467737662472019-04-19T23:49:00.000-07:002019-04-19T23:49:10.403-07:00OedipusI confess to the horrible crime of betrayal, and divided loyalties; I am the spawn of one father and the spiritual son of two others, both as horribly flawed as the natural one, and I am beginning to fear that I am channeling all three of them. Sybil herself (or at least the opportunism of her psychologists/biographers) couldn't have put up with the energetic belligerence of three such overwhelming personalities. I've got a grip on the edges of reality, but then I spent a lot lot of years clinging to things by sheer stupidity and gall. Let's just hope the synapses and the integrity of the flesh last a few more years....<br />
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BETRAYAL. Dante (a brilliant student of a very particular school) understood the very essence of aboriginal humanity: the blackest and most viscerally heinous sin is betrayal. Rhesus monkeys understand the essence of this, and a slightly more sophisticated cousin named Dante buried his favorite enemies in the ice for it. If you read the Inferno or any modern renditions of it, ALL sins the flesh is born to ultimately boil down to betrayal.<br />
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Now, I can hear you fucking cynics whining already.....SIN, you say, what the fuck, were you born in the 16th goddamn century or something? I DO have to admit that sin sounds a bit antiquated and overly specific, and certainly a violation of general spirit of ironic whimsical optimism we 'enjoy' presently...however the pinko tree-hugging beardy weirdies have ignored the stark fact that the universe really doesn't GIVE a flying <explitive deleted> about their commitment to a sustainable way of life.<br />
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SIN admittedly is a terrible word, and one that has recently acquired a bit of <butt-fucking predetory hypocritical pious jackass unpresidential m****f*** but I digress> disregard and ambiguity in recent years; but Jesus, the crazy Esseneite terrorist Maccabeetista/hippy that he actually appears to have been, would have been the first to admit that a bit of moral compass is easy to discover and impossible to lose, if you really have decided to be an honest person rather than a cabbage or something. Jon Stewart, may we draw bated breath at his name, realized that we cannot pretend to believe that our ambitions really constitute the essence of a meaningful life if we forget, even for an instant, who truly suffers in this life, and who lives off the blood of those who suffer. 'Vuestra Merced', my hairy pink ass....<br />
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Which, apparently, (or so my conscience, or at least the demon of consistency, tells me), leads back to betrayal.<br />
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Whew. It is a kind of mental hari-kiri one must commit, to admit that one just cannot stand the pretensions of one's mentors; the terrible flaws that they threw up (smirk) as virtues and principles; the beliefs that they swore they were too wise to own. It is not maturity that I recognize, but birth. Fuck manhood, that was a shill and a load of horseshit from start to finish. Give me the pain and shock and blood of birth any day. SHOCK puts the fear of death in you, and someday we'll know enough to make that a right of passage. Millions of aboriginal traditions can't be TOO far wrong....<br />
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It comes to this; I have developed a terrible guilty pride in the metephorical body slams and face plants I've delivered to my septa/octogenarian political adversaries in recent years. Their dearest favorite sons have disillusioned them vastly, and it enrages and horrifies them to have to face up to the fact that, after all these years, they are going to have to THINK again. They are going to have to actually use those hard-fought skills of critical thinking to deploy and defend their own innate sense of honesty.<br />
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Heinlein, Solzhenitsyn, Howard and Vance had their particular blind spots, but the very essence of shock is the realization that the universe is NOT going to slide a comfy sling under your ass if you feel a bit lazy....fanatics, beware, for there be Tygers here. Yea, oh brothers, you must become more than your teachers, you must transcend and defeat their flaws in order to discover new and more fantastic flaws that neither you nor Dunning-Kruger can comprehend.<br />
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<br />Patrick Struthershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02949718897987386161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-27473680545061512452018-02-15T00:15:00.000-08:002018-02-15T00:15:45.197-08:00Quotes for today...President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are
not clothed.”<br />
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Our nation grew out of this principle. During the first terrible winter
after landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620, many of the Pilgrims and their
children were saved from starvation by the food given them by Native
Americans. It was our first supplemental nutrition assistance program.
Our national narrative and legendry were set in motion by this act of
lifesaving food aid. We should not abandon this noble tradition, but
honor it. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-50568525908185800012018-02-14T23:20:00.000-08:002018-12-09T20:05:35.205-08:00Darwin Day 2012<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: left; }p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Tahoma"; font-size: 12pt; }a:link { }</style>
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We probably shouldn't lapse into the belief that we live at some unique point in history, that we have no where to go but down... the great neo-conservative mistake is that a world once existed that resembled their libertarian/theocratic paradise (I wonder how we missed it when we were there?). The great pinko/communist utopia is no more likely, but it exists in the future. The former ignores the facts of history, the latter the basic nature of (naturally selected?) human beings. By refusing to live in or learn about their own time (how they got there, where they might be going), both groups are betraying themselves as well as us.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">1. The death of Socrates</span><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I only know that I know nothing. - Socrates (English translation)</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The writer of the Wikipedia article on this last quote adds the following: "The impreciseness of the English translation stems from the fact that the author is not saying that he does not know anything but means instead that one cannot know anything with absolute certainty but can feel confident about certain things."</i></blockquote>
<br />The problem, as the city fathers saw it, was that he was too often infuriatingly right.<br /><br />Athens had just lost a 'war of choice'; Sparta, the occupying power, had set up a 'conservative' (i.e reactionary) regime to keep the Athenians out of their hair for a few years, and bogged back off the the Peloponessus to flog their peasants and sing hymns to themselves. Democracy had apparently failed the Athenians, and the new rulers were in the mood to settle a few long standing vendettas and stifle a few irritants.<br /><br />Socrates had dedicated his life to being an irritant. He dressed badly, lived off everyone, never bathed, and could drink (and talk) anyone in Athens under the table. But so what? I am sure we've all known someone like that. Heh-heh.<br /><br />A quote from the Wikipedia article on the life and death of Socrates says: "Socrates defended his role as a gadfly until the end: at his trial, when Socrates is asked to propose his own punishment, he suggests a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life instead, to finance the time he spends as Athens' benefactor." <br /><br />A most infuriating person, indeed! He considered himself the least wise of men, and the most ignorant; his only arrogance was that he considered himself enlightened and improved by this epiphany. Since he was indisputably successful at making anyone look like a fool, merely by demonstrating how shaky the roots of their convictions were, he was very skeptical of the value of 'inherent' or pious virtue and the wisdom of influential men. A recipe tailor-made to piss off everyone, almost all the time. The kids loved him, of course.<br /><br />Back in the bad old days, while Athens slowly destroying the spirit of 'democracy' with that thoroughness that only a really successful society can muster, Socrates was inventing situational thinking in the most Darwinian possible arena: he was an infantryman during the later episodes of the war with Persia. Luckily, he had apparently been introduced to the pioneers of Greek 'science' (Anaxagoras and his predecessor Thales) in his youth, and this practice in abstraction of thought served him well, both on the battlefield and at the dinner table. Socrates became an expert at 'dialectic' reasoning, i.e. thinking on one's feet. <br /><br />Socrates possibly considered his complicity in his death sentence a last act of instruction; by throwing himself under the bus, he may have averted worse. He has often been cited (mainly through the mouth of Plato) as an opponent of Athenian democracy, but... From what little we know of his life and his character, it seems more likely that he despised what Athenian Democracy (capital D intentional here) had become; what had been done in its name, particularly in the disastrous war with Sparta. (A.R. Burn, Thucydides)<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">2. the Socratic legacy</span><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /><i>The wisdom of nature is such that it produces nothing superfluous or useless but often produces many effects from one cause. - Copernicus</i></blockquote>
<br /><br />Non-scientists and semi-scientific 'philosophers' of the current era often mischaracterize the nature of the scientific enterprise: that science thrives on certainty and... the immutability of facts and... the rigid adherence to logic... etc. This is EXACTLY wrong, as we can see from the practice of situational ethics, the perspective of 'weak' anthropomorphism, and phenomenon of anosognosis.<br /><br />The Socratic habit of skepticism, of ever-shifting ethical principles, is the very basis of Western philosophy and particularly the scientific method; it is at the very core of what separates what scientists do from 'opinion' (or religion if we must be blunt). No hypothesis is safe from scrutiny, no matter how overwhelming the evidence; and no facts are safe either: we should always go back and measure again, just to make sure.... in other words, the skeptical intuition of the scientist leads him where logic cannot or will not. <br /><br />So in reality, 'Intelligent' Design enthusiasts and others who try to hijack the scientific apparatus invariably accuse the scientific 'establishment' of exactly the things that make religions and churches soinsidious; rigidity, blind adherence to logic (Aquinas and St. Augustine), unshakeable axioms, indisputable and unexaminable 'facts'. “More hypocrisy?? Haven't we had enough of this cr***? ....and a wonderful arena for examining psychological motivations and such, hmmm..??”<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">3. the 'weak' anthropic principle</span><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><br /></i><i>[Freeman] Dyson [takes] Steven Weinberg (a physicist and Nobel laureate) to task for his claim that someday we will be able to know everything. “Our ape-brains and tool-making hands were marvelously effective for solving a limited class of puzzles. Weinberg expects the same brains and hands to illuminate far broader areas of nature with the same clarity. I would be disappointed if nature could be so easily tamed. I find the idea of a Final Theory repugnant because it diminishes both the richness of nature and the richness of human destiny. I prefer to live in a universe full of inexhaustible mysteries, and to belong to a species destined for inexhaustible intellectual growth.” - from the Errol Morris article</i></blockquote>
<br />Darwinism and evolution and contingent history extend far back in time; infinitely far back beyond the history of life on earth and very possibly beyond the Big Bang itself... human intellect may very well be incapable of grasping a scale of history of even human history. How can we cope with a time scale that encompasses millions and billions of year? How will we ever reach a consensus on exactly what the universe IS, much less discern any purpose to it?<br /><br />Strong anthropic adherents try to take advantage of the apprehension that the current cosmological 'physical setup' is so improbable that there MUST have been intelligent intervention at some point; the more weasely and 'devout' scientists place this intervention 'outside space and time' and, usually, beyond the Big Bang (e.g. Owen Gingerich and Francis Collins) so that 'atheistic' scientists can't get the filthy fingers of their 'method' on it (or Him).<br /><br />But what does it matter if it IS improbable? If WE are improbable? According to the best biological and paleontological evidence, humans certainly were NOT the purpose of evolution; there is no direction of evolution other than the historical spread of species into available niches; the supposed 'advance' in complexity in earthly life is simply an inevitable consequence of this gradual, trail-and-error process of taking advantage of new vacancies in ecological space; the number of bacterial strains alone still VASTLY outnumber all other species combined. (And then there are all those beetles....) Complexity in just another tool of the trade in the evolution game.<br /><br />So the fact that the universe seems so improbably constituted to allow humans to perceive it SHOULD imply the opposite conclusion: that humans ONLY 'notice the universe is improbably hospitable' because it so happens to BE constituted to allow life of our type to evolve to the point of self-appraisal. There could very well be multiple universes where that did NOT happen, or possibly ancestral or successive universes where self-aware beings didn't/won't exist. We don't know, possibly cannot know, since we are here. And that leads us to...<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">4. Anosognosis: Something is wrong, but we will never know what it is....</span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>(ref: NY Times article by Errol Morris is here:<br /> <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/</a> )</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. - Charles Darwin (1871)</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>People will often make the case, “We can’t be that stupid, or we would have been evolutionarily wiped out as a species a long time ago.” I don’t agree. I find myself saying, “Well, no. Gee, all you need to do is be far enough along to be able to get three square meals or to solve the calorie problem long enough so that you can reproduce. And then, that’s it. You don’t need a lot of smarts. You don’t have to do tensor calculus. You don’t have to do quantum physics to be able to survive to the point where you can reproduce.” One could argue that evolution suggests we’re not idiots, but I would say, “Well, no. Evolution just makes sure we’re not blithering idiots. But, we could be idiots in a lot of different ways and still make it through the day.” - David Dunning (inteviewed by Errol Morris)</i></blockquote>
<br /><br />Anosognosis ("You cannot know all of what you do not know.") itself no longer appears to be simply (simply? Bwahahahah!) an aberration or a delusion (or even a neurological condition), but rather a profound mental reflex of Homo Sapiens; we are wired to let the circuit breakers trip in our head, to not notice the facts if they are too terrible or traumatic or demoralizing to deal with consciously. We can't help it, not a single one of us. Every person on earth has some “unknown unknown”, some space in the mental universe that they are completely unaware of.<br /><br />David Dunning and his colleagues discovered, in an exhaustive set of studies, that people consistently overestimate their abilities in areas where they are not competent; moreover they found that the more incompetent a person was in a given field, the worse they were at assessing their competence. Indeed they overestimated their abilities to a degree in direct negative correlation with their actual competence. And they also appeared to the lack the skills to judge the performance of people who were competent in that field. In other words, they were not in what we would call denial. Worst of all, the more ignorant they were, the more they were incapable of discovering or correcting their ignorance.<br /><br />So...we can't just marginalize 'willfully' ignorant or malicious people merely because they must 'bad' or selfish to exhibit that much stubborn incompetence. They may be LITERALLY incapable of the kind introspective and intense self-appraisal that those of us here suffer through every day. And who can blame them, really? Ignorance may really be bliss.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">5. Wrapping it all up together...situational ethics</span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><br />Stupidity got us into this mess; why can't it get us out? - Will Rogers</i></blockquote>
<br />Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place. - John Dewey<br /><br />All of us here have repeatably fallen into the neo-Platonic swamp; I am quite sure of that.. Progressives, liberals, free-thinkers, secular humanists, moderate Republicans, No-Labelers.... we have all hit that wall that sez: “NOTHING YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE. There is NO SOLID GROUND to stand on. EVERYONE, even the people you absolutely despise, are to be tolerated, no matter how venomous or malignant their observations or conclusions or habits. Turn the other cheek. Hope for the best.” At best we believe we have discovered that we are competent enough to recognize how shaky the ground is.<br /><br />Socrates, Darwin and Lincoln all shared a more constructive perspective: in a moving, constantly mutating, incredibly complex universe, we cannot afford to build a permanent foundation of belief on anything...but we can certainly find the best of the terrible alternatives, if we look hard enough and think hard enough and never, NEVER pretend that we know enough. Those ethics and morals and principles we have so painfully arrived at may be entirely irrelevant next week, but...we KNOW that's going to happen, and we are ready for it. Over and over again, throughout our lives, we will have to apply our best efforts to finding a new temporary home for our thoughts.<br /><br />Darwin never lost sight of his purpose, kept his eye on the ball. He labored for more than 20 years to probe TO HIMSELF that his first intuition of his theory was true. As if it was open to question, his generosity to Wallace removed any accusation of ego from the publication of his work. He worked hard in his chosen field, for the rest of his life, defending and reinforcing his ideas. He died content, with no fear of death, because he was confident that he had comprehended what really drove biological 'determination' (or better, lack of same). And he knew that his offspring and his own personal death were an intimate part of it all. He was not of the Chosen people; he was relieved to settle for Peace instead. Only peace. Was he deluded, or was he one of the few people competent enough to judge the evidence and come to the correct conclusions?<br /><br />Socrates sacrificed himself for his country (becoming a martyr to the cause of skeptical thought), as Giordano Bruno and Thomas Paine and Abbie Hoffman and Abe Lincoln did; so should we, in small ways at least. We probably will not be able to teach people who cannot or refuse to think, but we should keep trying regardless; and some of us will inevitably be burned for it. The topography of situational ethics is an ever-shifting ground of evolutionary, cultural, and physical forces in an indifferent universe. We stand willingly in the gap. The real glory is in the comprehension of a tiny part of the vast mystery of our journey. As Darwin did, perhaps, we can find solace and even content on that road.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-79927086967391744902018-02-14T07:46:00.002-08:002019-01-13T09:14:50.598-08:00Space Brothers Bulletin!!!!! ---- #6 -- May 2001 Been a LONG hiatus in the news because (whimper!) my 007 super-secret contact with the Brothers has BETRAYED me. Well, sort of. Io thinks my brother-in-law and nephews need her 'benign influence' (hoo-hah) more than I do. Says I'm 'enlightened' enough. Really? I haven't noticed...<br />
<br /> So she sent me off to an EVIL and FORNICATING land on a Mission from, well, God. Not that it IS a mission from Him (as if he cared), but it has such a whimsical, 80's sort of ring to it. If I said I was on a 'Mission from Space' it would get me *looked at*, ya know. Or, I should say, *looked at more*. <br /><br /> My purgatory was long and eventless, punctuated only by the election of a Forehead as President, selenium accumulation, and countless frozen burritos. I withstood numerous attacks from NIMBY-crazed suburbanites and acne-ravaged meth cookers. I began to revere television and Harry Potter. I even took a job as a security guard. <br /><br /> But at last, while in the terrible throes of temple-slapping boredom, I was contacted! One Dark and (well, not Stormy. No night in the EVIL and FORNICATING land is really all that awful.) as I was 'doing-something-secret' in the parking lot of my Assigned Post (us security people have are own little lingo here, as you will see) I saw a Suspcious Activity. Well, actually, it *appeared* to be a bunny-rabbit, chewing on some of our client's ornamental plantings. But with my newly aquired enlightenment, coupled with the Honed Precision Senses of the Private Security Officer, I was able to see that, yes, it was a bunny-rabbit, eating the damn weeds in the corner of the parking lot. Rats. <br /><br /> Well, I 'investigated', in any case. Much to my surprise, the Susp.. I mean, rabbit, didn't 'evade'; he even introduced himself, in a sort of back-handed way: "Pat, why don't you tell Kim to plant something EDIBLE out here. These damn shrubs are awful! Hard, scratchy... My name's Benny, by the way, plant manager here and your new contact." <br /><br /> I screwed my face up in my best intelligent expression, while attempting to process this last: 'A rabbit is telling me he is managing a motherboard fabrication plant. All automated, give him his due, all he needs to do is chitter at people and push buttons with his nose or something..' <br /><br /> "What's wrong, are you ill or something? I'll admit I didn't expect much, Io certainly didn't describe you very impressively, but your look even worse than I'd imagined." What is it with these guys? Is there some kind of Space Brothers Agent Institute of Mockery and Bitchiness somewhere? <br /><br /> Meanwhile he launched into a very boring, if relatively tactful, diatribe about how I had not been conducting myself as befits one who has been admitted to 'vastness' (huh?). Those damn burritos again, I guess. All this while masticating Mrs. Love's flower bed. <br /><br /> Benny and his tribe are part of a new Brothers project (he explained), SPASM (Strategic Products for the Anti-Stultification of Mankind), and they are infiltrating the various electronics manufacturers around Morgan Hill to introduce Subliminal Geekification/Fnord Visualization code into all of the ROMs. Soon everyone that buys cell phones and computers will be swearing at FOX News and getting into number theory 'really deep'. <br /><br /> He lamented the fact that all the major manufacturers were not represented close by; Gateway, ferinstance. "No big deal, though. Since Michael lost the big foof-raw we've come to realize that anyone who buys one of them must be too far gone already. Probably an AOL user or something." <br /><br /> Now this was news! "You mean <glyph-squiggle>, formerly the artiste formerly known as Prince, has won the title?", I interrupted excitedly. "Don't break out your sequined leotards yet. Being inaugurated for Perfect Beingness is a long, painful process, mainly for us. His second had to be exhumed and reconstituted first, and now that he 'has returned' we are having a real hard time keeping him from performing a coup. He's been pretty pissed off ever since they took Japan away from him, and they really should have substituted something else, like Las Vegas maybe. Look what he did for the Phillipines! Elvis should have pre-empted The General as soon as <glyph-squiggle> started that project, but, well. Hindsight ya know." <br /><br /> Benny also informed me about activities of the DWEAB (Director of Wyrd Education for Aboriginal Beings) so I am 'in the know' once again. Since Voyager is in UPN syndication now the DWEAB has been looking for an effectively brainless way to get Their point across without borrowing too many tactics from the Grays. The current DWEAB (James Cameron, apparently) is going to visit the Brothers IN PERSON in the next year or so, once he's completed his various NASA courses, bribed the suitable congressmen, etc. He also states that he has discovered a painful but effective method of removing the Gray Implant, something calls the 'drowning-that-whiny-Leonardo' method. Has to do with watching some horrible video tape of some kind, over and over until the Gray Operators are driven insane and the implant is burned out by some sort of reverse feedback effect. Not sure what he's talking about here, but then I've been 'vastened' (NOT 'vaselined'. That's something else, also a painful but, unfortunately, INEFFECTIVE means of, well..). <br /><br /> Elvis managed to bail out Gravy, in March last year. Leave it to... <br /><br />--- PAID ADVERTISEMENT --- <br /><br />----- Space Brothers Inc. <br /><br />----- "Gravity Repulsion And Vastening Ylem" (GRAVY) <br /><br />----- <br /><br />------------------------------------------- <br /><br />The Space Brothers admonish thee all, Aboriginal Earth Beings: <br /><br /><br /> BUY GRAVY! EAT GRAVY! DRINK GRAVY! <br /><br /> <br /><br />FILL YOUR SWIMMING POOLS WITH GRAVY! <br /><br /><br /> IMPROVE YOUR COMPLEXION WITH GRAVY PACKS! <br /><br /><br /> GRAVY COMBATS DANDRUFF AND ATHLETES FOOT! <br /><br /><br /> GRAVY GIVES YOU SLACK(tm)! <br /><br /><br /> REMOVES THE NASTY AFTERTASTE OF BUDWEISER! <br /><br /><br /> REVERSES THE POLLUTION OF OUR BODILY FLUIDS! <br /><br /><br /> CURES BALDNESS! CURES ACNE! CURES IMPOTENCE! <br /><br />CURES STUPIDITY! CURES THE ENERGY CRISIS! <br /><br />CURES GEORGE W. BUSH! (Well, we're reaching, here.) <br /><br /><br /> Suggested marketing slogans... <br /><br /><br /> Kill vermin and noxious weeds in a biodegradable, economical <br /><br />and asthetically pleasing manner! <br /><br /><br /> The brown stuff that DOESN'T smell bad. <br /><br /><br /> Smear it on the windshields of Black Helicopters and Limos and <br /><br />MIB sunglasses! <br /><br /><br /> Promotes Intestinal Fortitude! <br /><br /><br /> Makes your engine run smoother and more fuel efficient! <br /><br /><br /> Elvis sez: "Eat GRAVY and you, too, can be a Perfect Being." <br /><br /><br /> --- END PAID ADVERTISEMENT --- <br /><br /><br />...to a former Perfect Being to know the ins and outs of the stock market. So the Benevolent Ones did very well, and now own a controlling interest in IBM in addition to other former purgative mimic-ing corporate regimes. They've also managed to subvert the Bill's dad, and they must be working on Him, too, considering the his public utterences lately. This dove-tails neatly with their campaign to sabotage the Gray-sponsored prospective merger of Microsoft and Time-Warner. <br /><br /> The management of this last project is floundering a bit due to confusion over strategy. Some of the Brothers think that prying His Billness away will remove the last remnants of intelligence from MS. They think that the resulting company will then collapse into a huge bogosity-sinkhole from the intense concentration of stupidity that will occur when Case and Ballmer attempt to occupy the same boardroom.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-52495459835892438022018-02-14T07:43:00.004-08:002018-02-14T07:43:43.766-08:00Space Brothers Bulletin #7 -- Aug 2005 ------------------------------------
<br />(A semi-regular feature of Peers of Wyrd, Good and Hearty Men,
<br />none@all, the G/HADL, and the Vanquishers of the Gaseous)
<br />------------------------------------
<br /><br /> "So tell me again why I have to eat this crap? Io told me she used to get cottage cheese and tuna fish."
<br /> I gave her my best evil eye, but you know cats - they're only perceptive when it's incovenient for YOU. She stood there with the offended posture that is universal among her kind, as if I'd mistaken the contents of her litter box for the entre' of a seven-course dinner.
<br /> I decided to fight fire with fire. "I swear, Satin, you guys' monitor implants must be flawed; either that or the Brothers stipulate bitcheness as job requirement."
<br /> "Read my lips, monkey-boy..."
<br /> "And quit complaining about the food! The people here will figure I've finally popped a rivet if I start feeding you stuff like that. Do you want to make them suspicious?"
<br /> "I don't have the slightest concern of making them suspicious, apeman. They already think you're a dangerous whacko, believe me. You should hear what they say about you!...And you really could work on your speil, you know. I didn't believe Io when she gave me your persuasion score during her time with you but she DID say you were an idiot and..."
<br /> "Agghhh! Quit mentioning Io! She's a traitor! She forsook me for Republican, even!"
<br /> "Well, even Republicans deserve our..."
<br /> "Blaphemer!" I gave her a smug look. "Won't they drum you out of your union for saying something like that?"
<br /> "Bah... Damned higher-ups are always bitching at us about 'tolerence' this, 'appropriate' that. 'Extending an olive branch to the loyal opposition'. Ugghh! If even one of them raised his fat ass off his..."
<br /> Hah ha! I knew I could distract her, eventually. I cut off her rant, cleverly: "But shouldn't the lower echelon of cadres be idealogically aligned with the Brothers Who Labor For The Good Of Us All? I must say that, under the influence of your cynical attitude, my faith is wavering; I suffer *terribly* in my manful resistance to the Evil Lure of Material Temptation-"
<br /> "You know, I almost see what Io was getting at, you being an idiot and all. In a sort of sickening way. You have this sort of perverse talent for obviating the stupidity of the Enemy and all His works. Considering your profound lack of intellect for the job I'm not quite sure how you do it yet, but...Amazing, amazing..." She shook her head, as if she was trying to shake loose cheat grass from her ear, and dipped her head to the food bowl, crunching contentedly.
<br /> Victory!....or as close as I'd get to it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-6603835952191228492018-02-14T07:39:00.001-08:002018-02-14T07:39:57.614-08:00[We, the Space Brothers, endorse this advertisement. Insipid as it may be.]-----
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<br />you are a GRAVY supplier!)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-37624603744541225832018-02-14T07:36:00.002-08:002018-02-14T07:36:25.007-08:00Of Myths and Fables
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<br />
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Because
parents think truth will spoil childhood</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">They
conspire in kindly untruth</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We
get Christmas presents from Santa</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
siblings delivered by the stork</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Some
cling to these puzzling stories</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">preserving
them long beyond youth</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
for most the comfort of fables</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">is
destroyed by the passage of years</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">At
some point in our lives, if we're lucky</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">comes
humility balancing fear </span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
we learn to learn from our children</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So
that each generation makes progress</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">on
a journey through daylight and darkness</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Toward
a truth more amazing than myth</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
a past even older than God. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
– <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Marie
Struthers</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(you go, Mom!) </span></span></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-54822916410992946122018-02-14T07:24:00.004-08:002024-03-21T08:07:52.750-07:00Darwin Day 2013<div class="tr_bq">
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<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The 'Problem of Evil': a
shortcut to moral corruption?</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gary Gutting (NYTimes,
2012): "Here, discussions of the problem of evil become
crucial. An all-good being, even with maximal power, may have to
allow considerable local evils for the sake of the overall good of
the universe; some evils may be necessary for the sake of avoiding
even worse evils. We have no way of knowing whether we humans might
be the victims of this necessity.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course, an all-good God
would do everything possible to minimize the evil we suffer, but for
all we know that minimum might have to include our annihilation or
eternal suffering. We might hope that any evil we endure will at
least be offset by an equal or greater amount of good for us, but
there can be no guarantee. As defenders of theism often point out,
the freedom of moral agents may be an immense good, worth God’s
tolerating horrendous wrongdoing. Perhaps God in his omniscience
knows that the good of allowing some higher type of beings to destroy
our eternal happiness outweighs the good of that happiness. Perhaps,
for example, their destroying our happiness is an unavoidable step in
the moral drama leading to their salvation and eternal happiness."</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Clever (or cynical)
fundamentalists are particularly susceptable moral corruption because
of the usual Christian/Judiacal/Islamic solution to the 'problem of
evil'; because of their selfishness regarding their own salvation,
and the righteousness their faith lends them, they will tend to
'write off' the suffering of other people becuase they are playing on
their cynical appreciation of the statitists. THEY will make it to
heaven because THEY are allowing the 'balancing' evils to be
perpetrated on and by heathens.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Worse, their own
transgressions are forgiven (conveniently) by the same code, or even
justified..even to the point of martyrdom. Martyrdom is not just a
Muslim thing, either; one imagines that American patriotism has been
perverted in just this way, justifying and/or forgiving any number of
atrocities and glorifying any number of casualties.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another corrupting notion is
the 'assumption of ignorance'; we DO not (and by the formala, CAN
not) understand God's ultimate intent at any scale. Fundamentalist
Joe Blow on the ground, thought, cannot stand the idea that, however
'good' he may be, he MAY not make it to Heaven....so he cheats,
teleologically speaking. Since he is 'saved', he must have ALWAYS
been saved, and always will be saved...simply by the fiat that he is,
ummm, doing his best with his very limited knowledge of what he
should be doing.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
From Dunning-Kruger, we know
that the more ignorant you are, the more righteous you are going to
be...so the fundamentalist block that is the most willfully ignorant
is also going to be the most anti-intellectual and the hardest to
move off of the shifting sands of faith. We are talking about
generational damage, here.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What does this tell us about
neo-liberatarianism, then? Do neo-libertarians have a 'faith'? Do
they have a 'problem of evil'? Do they slump into teleological
explanations when their backs are against the wall? Does the newest
version of 'libertarianism' have more in common with a religion than
any kind of logically constructed social theory?</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Articles of Faith:</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
---------------------</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
1. Government is an
unnecessary and 'unnatural' imposition on the freedom of man.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As a corollary to the
above, any initiative by any government is 'evil' and an abrogation
of freedom.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
2. A free market economy is
the most 'natural' economy for humans. [Implication: Neolithic man
(or American Indians, or Athenian democrats, or Roman republicans, or
nineteenth-century American West emigrants....) enjoyed the benefits
of a 'free-market'. Ha-ha.]</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
3. Maximum individual
freedom = maximum collective good = minimum injustice.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
4. Any individual is
theoretically (and therefore practically) a perfect agent of economic
action (i.e. 'enforcer' of the free market).</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
5. A policy of maximum
individual self-sufficiency is a necessary and sufficient condition
for a robust economy. [Negative examples: post-war Europe]</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
6. Any individual is
theoretically (and therefore practically) a perfect ethical agent
(i.e. enforcer of the social contract).</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
[Note: I am invoking
'nature' here as the only real substitute for 'God'...This is sort of
a cop-out, but it is in agreement with recent trends in libertarian
apologetics.]</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />Addendum: John F. Kennedy on the Seperation of Church and State<br /><br /><br />(September 12, 1960, address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association)<br /><blockquote>
<br />While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida--the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power--the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms--an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.<br />These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues--for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.<br />But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in.<br />I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.<br />I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.<br />For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.<br />Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.<br />That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.<br /> I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so--and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test--even by indirection--for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.<br />I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none--who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him--and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.<br />This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."<br />And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died--when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches--when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom--and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey--but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.<br />I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition--to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress--on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)--instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.<br />I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts--why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France--and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle.<br />But let me stress again that these are my views--for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters--and the church does not speak for me.<br />Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.<br />But if the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.<br />But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith--nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.<br />If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.<br />But if, on the other hand, I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the Presidency--practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution...so help me God.</blockquote>
<br /> <br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-88761029376128557472018-02-14T07:16:00.002-08:002018-02-14T07:16:29.039-08:00Darwin Day 2014
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<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Confucius
– 'What is necessary first is to rectify the names.'</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Science,
done right, NEVER makes assumptions. Get the data first; work the
logic back until you find the least hare-brained assumptions that
lead to the data. If new data screws up your beautiful and wonderful
logic...do the goddam math again. Right this time! THAT is Occam's
Razor.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">-----</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I've
been reading a lot of ancient philosophy, so I am going to bore you
for the next while with a recap of my latest self-obsessed
epiphanies. After all, the whole point of being 'cultured' is to
inflict the fruits of your lack of mundane industry on the pathetic
intellects of your unelightened friends, yes? Russians, brillant
masters of both simple and subtle tortures, consider the adjective
'niculturniiy' to possess the same emotional freight and derogotary
intent as we would put into, 'congenital dipshit'. They also say
'God writes straight with crooked lines', sooo....what exactly are
they getting at?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And
why do the fragmentary and mythical blatherings of 2500 year old
cultures have any relevance to a 21<sup>st</sup> century controversy
between the following philosophical positions?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<ol>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
universe was built, last week in geological terms, by a vaporous
moral cripple, in a few days of light-duty labor that would shame
the efforts of a fingerpainting monkey. And THIS week, the Jesuits
realized how stupid this all sounded, hijacked a gimmick called
'logic', and created enough bullshit in the intervening, uh, days,
to completely flummox everyone that wasn't following with a score
card.</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Universally
observable and derivable physical laws, completely without purpose
or destiny and entirely indifferent to the pathetic concerns of
intelligent beings, managed to assemble the Damned Thing over an
unimagineably vast period of time, completely by trial and error.
Mostly error.</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Shit!
Can we submit some more alternatives here?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
Indian philosopher Kapila, around the time of the Buddha, managed to
invent the essential scientific view of biological evolution, and it
is a masterpiece of reductionist thinking:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<ol>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">'Our'
senses are all we have to observe with, or even IMAGINE we can
observe with. No matter what kind of handy spy gadget we may
create, we will still have to be able to read the needle on the
damned thing somehow and have a vague idea of what the number means.</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Limbs,
words, sex and filth are all we're equipped with to effect changes.
All our fancy gadgets (if I must repeat myself) are overextended
exaggerations of what we're already packing at birth.</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">What
we end up seeing is mostly dirt, air, fire, light, beetles and each
other; we also suspect that 'nothing' might be an object in its own
right, because we are quite capable of complaing when we lack
anything in the list above, except maybe the beetles. Weird.</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Since
this is all we have, and all we see, and all we can do...the
emotions this stupid situation creates are the most basic things
(and probably the ONLY things) that drives progress of any kind.</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Period.</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">If
you think this over for a bit, you realize that....even the most
primitive one-celled critter in the muckiest sea on the most
deity-forsaken rock in the galaxy is going share the same essential
motivations as the famous shit-flinging apes of Planet III/dipshit
yellow dwarf/Orion sector. Move, blab, eat, shit, engage in
procreative activity. Mr. Paramecium will be quite satisified to do
those things over and over and over....to escape the last thing,
which is to...</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">GO
TO HEAVEN! WHERE WE CAN MOCK THE PETTY ASPIRATIONS OF OUR
FILTHY-MINDED ENEMIES FOREVER!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">What,
no, I didn't mean....Hmm. This seems a bit, well, selfish to me,
somehow. So maybe what will happen is that I will stave off a
wonderful opportunity to...</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">BURN
IN HELL! BECAUSE I WAS TOO STUBBORN AND UNLUCKY TO KISS THE RIGHT
ASSES WHEN I HAD A CHANCE!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Um,
no, not that either. Odd how, when you go to heaven, you are part of
the 'in' crowd, whereas if you end up in the other place...Surely
being neck-deep in burning pitch would a LOT more tolerable if there
were a few friends there, cheering you...uh, maybe not. Maybe we're
engaging in hedonistic orgies because we don't like...</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">TAXES!
NOW, DAMMIT, THE CONSTITUTION SPECIFICALLY STATES THAT MY GUNS ARE
GRANTED TO ME BY A BENEFICIENT AND VENGEFUL GOD TO SHOOT THE FIRST
GUBBEMENT EMPLOYEE THAT I TELLS ME TO REMOVE THE AXLE OF MY
GRANDADDY'S 36 FORD COUPE, RIGHT BEHIND THE PERFECTLY GOOD CHEST
FREEZER THAT I SWEAR I'LL GET FIXED UP TO SELL REAL SOON NOW...</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Uk.
That's worse the first two. Let's just we'll leave the answer to
the student for now..</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">-----</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Confucius,
around the same time as Kapila, was vastly disgusted with things
Chinese. During his later years, he was head-hunted by a recruiter
for the prince of Wei. When the famous sage was asked what he would
do first when the prince appointed him his head of government, he
said 'What is necessary to rectify the names.' </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">What
the hell did he mean by that?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Many
people are intimidated by science, and one of the most common
complaints is that:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">'There
are too many weird, made up words, and even the ones I recognize
don't seem to mean what I (was brought up, was taught, should by
golly) think they mean.'</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">..and
the paranoid or traumitized ones might add:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">'and
I think THEY are part of a world-wide UN conspiracy to take our jobs,
corrupt our children and bodily fluids, and generally sneer at us for
our lack of...uh, whatever it is they think we lack...'</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Confucius
would have understood, though, because, above all things, he taught
his thousands of pupils that 'the whole end of speech is to be
understood'. Clarity, in thinking and speaking, is the most
important thing he thought he could beat into the heads of his
students.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Scientists
use many common words, and have invented hundreds of thousands of new
ones, because clarity and precision are absolutely essential in order
to do consistent, universal, and verifiable science.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">A
decent scientific education includes a course in logic, and if there
is ANYTHING they've tried to hammer into students' brains since the
days of Plato, it is that logic can be used, and abused, to 'prove'
absolutely anything. Some handy tricks include: vague terminology;
absurd analogies; or unquestionable assumptions. (Ass, you, me,
umption...there's a joke in there somewhere.) Thanks to a vast lack
of sense of humor, imagination, and ethical intuition, the
practitioners of these methods can delude themselves into thinking
that they are turning the 'tools of science' against their
tormentors. Hah-hah! Take that, you logic-chopping atheist
bastards! God sez your tools are useless!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">'Suzy,
a careful and methodical girl, bought a new pair of scissors. Being
(those things), she read the scissor-manual very carefully, learning
that: for safety purposes, the thumb and middle finger of the left
hand must be inserted as indicated in the accompanying diagram
and....' Gahh! ' Suzy used the scissors to cut a neat circle of
yellow paper, and drew a happy face on it. By attaching this
ornament to the diplay case for her rock collection, she hoped to add
a cheerful and attractive decorative note to her admittedly drab
entry in the local science fair. Due to her careful attention and
skillful use of the appropriate tools, she was quite pleased with the
result and was sure the judges would approach her exhibit in a
receptive frame of mind, the better to appreciate the detailed
descriptions and outlines of geological provenance for each of her
specimens.'</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">'Glenn,
her classmate, was more energetic and outgoing, always good for a
laugh. Just the kind of person you wanted to share the room with
during those boring lectures in Earth Science (whatever that was).
He also wished to enter something for the science fair; morever, he
believed that his theme, 'Timeline for Scientific Creationism', would
easily win first prize; after all, his mom had already found him a
design for a good poster off the Internet. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Wow,
mom had done a great job of having this printed for him downtown.
All Glenn had to do was make an eye-catching caption for it. He
thought '6000 BC (Before Jesus Christ)' would nicely summarize his
entry.'</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-920452934511177922018-02-14T07:14:00.003-08:002018-02-14T07:14:54.104-08:00Patience - from Darwin Day 2012
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<br />
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Patience</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Men talk of killing
time, while time quietly kills them." - Dion Boucicault</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
By 1842, Charled Darwin had
230-page essay outlining his theory of Natural Selection; and yet he
waited for another seventeen years (cooridnating his work with that
of Alfred Russel Wallace) to publish the first edition of <i>On the
Origin of Species. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">He knew he
was right, but he refused to become righteous.</span></div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Abraham
Lincoln tolerated a long string of incompetent generals, a viciously
divided cabinet, and even the borderline treasonous behaviour of
McClellan because he kept he eye firmly on the long-term plan, the
big picture, the real deal: get the country through the bloodiest war
in its history intact. Because of his patience with his generals,
his staff, his opponents, he acheived much more for his efforts than
he imagined when he was elected, and our country in the better for
it.</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Impatience
will kill us. Apathy, adrenaline and anger addiction, greed,
bigotry, ideological fanaticism, displaced rage are the malignant
symptoms of our haste to be done with disappointment of expectations,
grief, love, depression, anticipation of success.
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What
kind of civilized society should have anything but contempt for the
"I just want mine, now, and fuck you if you can't take a joke
you pathetic, socialist loser." attitude of the typical
techinical school graduate? What kind of rational educational system
rewards a tiny fraction of its most idosyncratically talentented
students with the vast majority of its financial and emotional
resources, and narrowly trains the rest to be wedged sideways into a
vastly compromised economic system?</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="zxx" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
All the
plagues of modern political life revolve around the endemic inability
of Americans tolerate a little discomfort. We are the richest
country in the world, and we arrogate to ourselves all the
prerequisites of our forunate history leads us to believe we deserve.
This is one of the worst and most pernicious cognitive biases: the
habit of humans to mistake the results of historical contingency for
a validation of a ideology.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-77310941785760508022018-01-09T15:25:00.003-08:002018-01-11T17:08:31.810-08:00'The Dispossessed' and Anarchic Musings<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<b>Why Le Guin kicks ASS:</b></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from Pendleton Book Blather circa August 2014)</span> </i><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />For a little perspective on things political (De Toqueville and some Jared Diamond), I am re-reading 'The Dispossessed', by Ursula Le Guin.<br /><br />Odo, the founding intellect of the 'dispossessed' citizens of Anarres, called herself an anarchist....but her followers never denied they could get along without some kind of collective culture. In implementing her 'anarchy' the Odonians had to introduce the idea of permanent revolution, self-criticism, and a moral conscience that constantly fought against the human tendency to dominate and own.<br /><br />Since Odo asserted that most of human suffering came from the greedier tendencies of humanity, and the more overt long-term manifestations of that greed such as the accumulation of power and influence, the dogmatism of religion and nationalism, the growth of status structures, the enshrinement of property; and since she, (Le Guin that is), unlike Marx, clearly realized that all these traits were the downsides of well-ingrained survival traits of homo sap...the Odonians realized that their non-very-utopian utopia would be threatened by the tendency of their own creed to become a dogma.<br /><br />The constant parallels between this struggle, and the similar problems with libertarianism and socialism, cannot be denied. And science, in order to progress, seems to have the same troubles: the constant battle against the rigidity of ideas, the disruption caused by new situations, the recurring ignorance of the less empathetic members of society.<br /><br />To me, building a civilization is concisely this: Educating a culture to accommodate it to the realities of the universe, against its baser instincts. Any reaction or emotion that is 'natural' should be held in vast suspicion.<br /><br />'..we didn't come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine. If an individual can't work in solidarity with his fellows, it's his duty to work alone. HIs duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We have been saying, more and more often, you must work with others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will society live, change, adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded on law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation, our hope for evolution. "The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is for nothing. If it is seen as having an end, it can never truly begin." We can't stop here. We must go on. We must take risks.'<br />- the 'old miner from the south'<br /><br />Notice that this does NOT advocate laying around, doing nothing. There is a very strong impulse here to contribute, to improve things, to never be satisfied that you have done enough. 'Freedom' and 'Revolution' for Odonians did not consist of sitting on the front porch drinking beer, bitching about the price of gas, and shooting at the neighbors with an assault rifle. <br /><br />I would assert that the ultimate goal of libertarians and socialists is the kind of freedom described above: a 'withering away of the state' when all individuals know their responsibilities and their duties, and rules are no longer necessary.<br /><br /><br /> Critics of anarchism, libertarianism and socialism bitch about the problem of pure human cussedness. In response, Le Guin also asserts that there are two kinds of human ambition: the outward one (dominance over others) and the inward (self-sacrifice). Odonians tried to channel natural human aggression into the latter rather than the former. She seemed to think that, in the absence of examples of 'better people', most energetic types would dissipate their excess obnoxiousness by trying to put more English on the universe, and therby improving the lot of everyone.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-37726862881276572102018-01-09T14:58:00.001-08:002018-01-09T15:35:48.044-08:00From the Pendleton Book Blather Facebook group...<div class="_4_j7 _5s6c">
<div class="_4_j7 _5s6c">
<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Aphorism time!</b></div>
IGNORISTA: a fanatic of the right, center or left who, with ignorance of and/or contempt of history and science, advocates an activist path that is doomed to repeat the stupidities of the past.<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-weight: 400; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">[We (the Space Brothers, who share my brain) are in *cautious* agreement on this point. We smell some smoke here, tho, so we promise to pull the plug if the 'Chao' starts any of the more energetic styles of ranting of which he is so fond. Dipshit indeed.]</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline;">
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px;">
<b>A paradox of specialization:</b></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Sometimes the best way to obtain a broad understanding of, well, everything, is to study a VERY specific part of it....but do that very thoroughly. You discover that almost all subjects worth the time are interdisciplinary; in other words, it is almost impossible to get down to the the guts of a thing without wandering off into a related field.</div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
[And I will add; a major bonus of dredging into all this muck? You are no longer a dilettante! You ar<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">e a buff, a geek, an educated layperson in the field....and you have so many, many fertile questions to follow up on!]</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px;">
The Vietnam War is a case in point.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
1. You can learn the strictly military details; if you consider (like the Vietnamese do) that the war REALLY started in 1946 and that the SECOND part was the one the US was involved in (essentially the day we installed Diem)...military technology? Guerrilla tactics and strategies? The effectiveness of strategic and tactical bombing? The role of civilians?</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
2. History of communism: how does the Vietnamese version of communism compare to Maoism, or Stalinism, or Titoism for that matter? How do ANY of them relate to Marx or Socialism in general? Did the Vietnamese believe themselves to be part of the Communist International at all, considering that they hated the Chinese and the Russians?</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
3. Contemporary domestic US politics! Did the war contribute, kick off, distort the political disruption of the late Sixties? How did this affect Presidential politics? Are the lessons and mistakes of the war and the Sixties of any use to us now?</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
4. Historical domestic politics! Isolationism! The League of Nations! The UN! Anti-communism! European politics between the wars!</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
5. How does Vietnamese history fit in with the history of the rest of Asia? With the US role there in the Philippines, Japan, China, and Korea? Why was colonial Asia important to the US, when we were (supposedly? Really? Philippines?) not a colonial power?</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
And on, and on, and on. Several dozen books later (or a few dozen hours on Wikipedia at least), you have a pretty good outline of twen-cent history.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<b>11/4/2014</b> (Jon Preston) <b>Of Scientists and Salamanders</b></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Surprise, I found the time to read a book. So a feller came into my visitor center striking up a conversation about amphibians. We got to talkin' and I mentioned a little about my stop and go driving on the way to work to get the migrating newts off the road surface and on their merry way to wherever newts go, so's they don't git runned over. I also mentioned to the visitor, that I had once heard a blurb, one time in the past, that became stitched into my memory. It was about<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;"> a book that an embryologist wrote, you probably guessed it by now, about where the newts are going.</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px;">
He said oh you mean "Of Scientists and Salamanders." It is the story of Professor Victor Chandler Twitty. Published in 1966. Stanford's Prof. Twitty unlocked a whole bunch of Biologic mysteries including where the newts go. But more, he was a students teacher who's instruction birthed a generation of notable biologists. It is a very intimate, whimsical, funny book about a very smart man who never took himself too seriously and how 61% of 564 newts relocated (forcibly) from their few yards of stream to another stream 7 miles away made it back to their home waters over a six year period. I found a copy on Amazon thanks to this guy. And just to be clear, it came from a little bookshop in New Hampshire.</div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-32712395111861962872018-01-09T14:57:00.003-08:002018-01-11T17:15:07.633-08:00Bakunin and 'God and the State'<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(from Pendleton Book Blather circa 2014)</i></span><b style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></b><br />
<br />
<b style="font-size: 14px;">Lev Tolstoy: "What do you mean, why remember?...If we remember the old, and look it straight in the face, then our new and present violence will also disclose itself." - from 'The Gulag Archipelago' Pt. 3, Ch. 7</b></div>
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---</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Michael Bakunin, form "God and the State"<br />
<a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="async" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gutenberg.org%2Ffiles%2F36568%2F36568-h%2F36568-h.htm&h=ATMNXUTt_oFSwlyDOJmIrzc-W8M8NVIy5cHB6vrvQImXRASHV1VuZLtVBmYTlYHDmUHz4r68OKAHuuHSPOc3n_abSTc0Qd9hw79Jxt4ir34-sublqrjrAKwad0FPoI09k2iNQvrI79b1VnGVyP_Du5rqT733HfQEYnIPJzzHGub8v3CqgbdoJPajlORHI85Myd73pbnebWwglkzj4PRlQ3dliTUuWcR1aMZR78HMk4OXdne-Ud5FDQ13JgoyNaZIr6Sp09IKBVk1rDsfky87ZpnM5ZQBpfUEMrQLnQg" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h/36568-h.htm" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #365899; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h/36568-h.htm</a></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"All branches of modern science, of true and disinterested science, concur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive: The social world, properly speaking, the human world—in short, humanity—is nothing other than the last and supreme development—at least on our planet and as far as we know—the highest manifestation of animality. But as every development necessaril<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">y implies a negation, that of its base or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man; and it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational only because natural—at once historical and logical, as inevitable as the development and realization of all the natural laws in the world—that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral convictions."</span></div>
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I am on a sidetrack, looking at Anarcho-Communist history and revolutionary history generally. Bakunin and Kropotkin are the basic sources (with Tolstoy and the French Encyclopedists, first-wave feminism, Locke and Stuart Mill as heavy duty influences). Marx and Engels were Hegelian quasi-mystical hacks, but that doesn't necessarily make either socialism or captial-S-Socialism suspect. K & B had their eyes on the ball and made lifelong efforts to avoid violence and stick to reality.</div>
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Bakunin and Kropotkin, in particular, were the main voices in opposition to the 'rightist' or 'individualist' proponents of Social Darwinism. Both of them were trained scientists as well as very outspoken political activists, and were very quick to point out that for many, or even most, animal species, 'survival of the fittest' was best understood as as survival of societies rather than as individuals.</div>
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Bakunin also understood, better than Marx or his inheritors ever would, the underlying reality of change in the environment (natural, social, political or whatever), and thus the need for self-criticism, eternal reform and evolution in any society or government.</div>
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'Stick a fork in it, it's done.' - the dumbest and most delusional political statement made in this century. US Constitutional nutbags, Randites, and neo-libertarians say this over and over. Meanwhile, in our stupid, supposedly liberal-pinko country, founded on the notion of welcoming anyone and allowing any creed that didn't meddle with politics, women and most minorities still have to sue, beg, and kill to get equality.</div>
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'Don't forget Ferguson'</div>
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"Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation for and the organization of society, and that, inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames none but laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organization would be a monstrosity, and that for two reasons: first, that human science is alw<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">ays and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely greater thing than science."</span></div>
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Yep. THAT would be worse than a religious theocracy. And this is exactly where Plato and his Republic went south into crazy-land. Every philosophy based on moral relativism, those creeds that refused to tackle mysticism as the FIRST delusion to be avoided (Descartes, Hegel, Austrian economics, Marxism, the divine right of kings, etc. etc.), have compounded the irrationality of religion and created worse problems than they ever solved.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Comment from<a href="https://www.facebook.com/wyrdchao.kallisti?fref=gc&dti=284941605021600"> Wyrdchao Kallisti</a>) </span></i>And (sorry for leaving out a step in my logic)...moral relativism always collapses into mysticism because, sooner or later, you have to resort to a higher power in order to make your moral decisions for you. If you make the big plunge, and resign yourself to the stark fact that the laws of nature DON'T GIVE A FUCK about humanity, and that you are going to have to deal with that....then you have finally discovered objectivity, and you can start deciding things based on the facts of the case....</div>
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From Wikipedia:</div>
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By "liberty", Bakunin did not mean an abstract ideal but a concrete reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense, liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and by material prosperity." Such a conception of liberty is "eminently social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation. In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of th<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">e individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority."</span></div>
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This contrast between the two types of 'liberty' is the fundamental (and needless) divide between libertarians and socialists. Selfish interest vs. blind altruism. Group vs. individual...etc. etc.</div>
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We're all in this together, folks...we just disagree on how to get there...</div>
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Bakunin was an angry man, of course; I don't think he would have had the energy and courage to take on the questions he did otherwise. But in his later life he was able to correct a lot of his mistakes.</div>
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He points out, to oppose the more reactionary social Darwinists, that humans are social, like many other animals...survival of the fittest is more than duking it out tooth and nail; cooperation sometimes works too. Humans and chimps and gorillas and whales and baboons and d<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">ogs and ravens have empathy, in other words....but there are two categories of behavior where humans are world champions: we THINIK, and we REBEL. Amusing!</span></div>
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So....an appreciation of fairness and cooperation is built into us from the ground up! Thinking helps us predict events; empathy puts us in the other guy's shoes...and rebellion makes us take action if we think those shoes are going to get stolen. (It could be mine next!).</div>
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Thus Bakunin defines both negative liberty (freedom for the individual), and positive liberty (freedom for everyone else). A preference for either can be selfishly motivated, but a person is likely to be happier in the long run if the people around him are happy.</div>
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So...when we build a society, we make a choice: are we going to try to maximize individual freedom (greed is good), or collective freedom (fairness is better than nothing). There is a constant tension between the two...</div>
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Ideologists say: 'there is a problem, and only WE know how to fix it. Join us! If you don't, you will be a big loser like 'them'.' In other words, a previously homogenous group is now separated into 'us' and 'them'. 'We' know better than 'them'. 'We' can make decisions for 'them'. And 'them' no longer deserve as much freedom as much as 'us'.</div>
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Bukunin (spell check!) analogizes (and I paraphrase and explicate):</div>
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Science is our mirror (our perceptual filter, our Platonic cave) on reality. Period! It is the Universal Experience, the one thing we could lose tomorrow, and rebuild from the ground up (if we happen to have 3000 years or so of free time) and have essentially the same thing....because it depends on NO assumptions or axioms other than that we are awake and alert and not too distracted by anger or lust....</div>
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Al<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">l religions (and all ideologies as well) probably STARTED as a hypothesis or theory, rationally constructed or not; heck, there's got to be SOME good reason to 'believe', to 'have faith', right? Some basis in reality....</span></div>
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Hah! Those guys looked at the stars in the sky and had these lively old discussions around the cook-fire, trying to figger out what was going on up there. They were all in it together, a nice friendly debate..heck, those things are way the hell up there, what do they have to do with us? What's the use of making a Supreme Court case out of who has the better theory? Let everyone talk, let's see whose brain is on track tonight...</div>
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Poor prehistoric dudes..they didn't realize our brains had all these cognitive biases screwing with our perception, did they? So....</div>
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The guy with the crazy eyes gets on his feet. He was beat up when he was small, or was born with a brain lesion, or got gored by a gazelle, or something, and he hasn't been quite right since. He starts ranting, a bit. The loudmouth bully guy (someone stole his woman, dammit!) listens raptly, encourages Crazy Eyes, makes suggestions, keeps him stirred up. They get together. They get IDEAS (as in: idealistic). They start to moralize. They start to INTERPRET what they think they see in that mirror. They may even hallucinate, a little. They start to see, and they tell or even compel others to see, their INTERPRETATION rather than the actual, original thing that they saw...</div>
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And it all goes down hill from there.</div>
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From the Appendix of 'God and the State' (Note 4):</div>
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"Must we, then, [because of the tyrannical root of spiritual authority buried there] eliminate from society all instruction and abolish all schools? Far from it! Instruction must be spread among the masses without stint, transforming all the churches, all those temples dedicated to the glory of God and to the slavery of men, into so many schools of human emancipation. But, in the first place, let us understand each other; sch<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">ools, properly speaking, in a normal society founded on equality and on respect for human liberty, will exist only for children and not for adults; and, in order that they may become schools of emancipation and not of enslavement, it will be necessary to eliminate, first of all, this fiction of God, the eternal and absolute enslaver. The whole education of children and their instruction must be founded on the scientific development of reason, not on that of faith; on the development of personal dignity and independence, not on that of piety and obedience; on the worship of truth and justice at any cost, and above all on respect for humanity, which must replace always and everywhere the worship of divinity. The principle of authority, in the education of children, constitutes the natural point of departure; it is legitimate, necessary, when applied to children of a tender age, whose intelligence has not yet openly developed itself. But as the development of everything, and consequently of education, implies the gradual negation of the point of departure, this principle must diminish as fast as education and instruction advance, giving place to increasing liberty. All rational education is at bottom nothing but this progressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the final object of education necessarily being the formation of free men full of respect and love for the liberty of others. Therefore the first day of the pupils’ life, if the school takes infants scarcely able as yet to stammer a few words, should be that of the greatest authority and an almost entire absence of liberty; but its last day should be that of the greatest liberty and the absolute abolition of every vestige of the animal or divine principle of authority."</span></div>
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And yes, he ONLY means children. No analogies, please!</div>
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This was perverted by impatient Marxist nutbags such as Lenin, and greedy bastards like Stalin, to justify treating ALL (unenlighted) people as 'children'; "We know what's best for you." Therefore the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' became a dictatorship in fact. Liberal meritocrats and right-wing bible freaks and Randite libertarians are not one whit less tyrannical.</div>
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Bakunin makes another point, loudly, over and over:</div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Science doesn't sit still, so academic institutions should NEVER be involved in government. Any organization of 'higher' learning has an implied hierarchy, and any hierarchy tends to dogmatize its basic principles even though science is advancing, walking right out from under those principles, a little every day. Once that happens, the institution is no more competent to run things in the real world than any </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">other ideology<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">...with the added hazard of an apparent monopoly on reason.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Science enlightens; it should not rule. Religions and other ideologies are just poor imitations of science; perception without reasoning. Substituting ideologies doesn't improve things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Art, on the other hand, embellishes.....it personalizes perceptions. The Critic is one who says: 'The artist is saying [this]. My interpretation is the only correct one.' A Reviewer of art, on the other hand, says: 'I saw [this] in it...the artist put a lot of himself into it, obviously. I like it!' (or 'It's not my cup of tea, though.')</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reviewers are classy: they have developed an instinctive or unconscious preference for higher standards! Critics only have 'refined taste': all their cultured friends know the best things, and...last thing we want to do is go against our friends! "Oh, my reputation, my tenure, my...."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hmmm. Maybe we need governments to be run by....the artists of history?</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-78088850757056900262018-01-09T14:57:00.000-08:002018-01-11T17:10:18.291-08:00Cognitive Biases<div style="color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(from the Pendleton Book Blather Facebook group)</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">...and, in case you are a late comer and have missed the point:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">WHY cognitive biases? Why are they interesting?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">IM(not so)HO, this is the single most important area of sociology after demographics, because it studies the decision making of individuals and groups. It is practical!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hard sciences (math, physics, chemistry, etc.): Good grounding in the cognitive sciences makes it easier for scientists, particularly physicists, to construct models (both for themselves and for us) that are less likely to be anthopocentric constructs and hopefully more likely to actually describe physical reality. If that is possible. Lisa Randall, Steven Hawking, and the late Richard Feynmann are/were particularly good at this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Economics particularly suffers from one particular flaw: EVERYBODY lies about money. And cognitive science can help disperse the smoke. Paul Krugman (<a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="async" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fkrugman.blogs.nytimes.com%2F&h=ATMNecO2Yu1uGiiET2gTecVj4fnYVutw7x2eP-X5YAF4DBPX3QyLFTQ2E74YX7-F9pWOBXKLwyAOMhXTMCSN1Z7m5Gssgu3GEz5RMJSqct1_58YE94nI0gO8wDqd_B1kQqUgw4CZkph_Ti7oMonjZapWb-Phlhm4AKrYqXdgAuQYGesJ-bABcwbhMYn2HaZ4n0k622mTpWO91WJjG0WeCp54yP18FxEOBS9n9iOLw4mLTr5K1ENhQrE_xVGuEYkWF37HC5d_5egcGwVcEfAmx3wr0Hr7W1e3QTBDR3U" href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #365899; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/</a>) continually refers, in his wonkier postings, to the problems economists run into when they try to model the decision making process of different 'actors' (consumers, stock market players/brokers/exchanges, governments).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Medical science, particularly diagnostic and preventive medicine: A real minefield, here....people make MAJOR decisions about their own health, throughout life, and are almost never capable of objective judgement in that regard. And because of our extremely screwed up health care system, medical professionals and institutions also suffer from built in biases, as the result of ambiguous mandates and many disincentives to actual provide appropriate care.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I could go on, and on, and on....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">History! Gah! Helps us understand and correct for the biases of individual and group decision making by both historians and historical actors. Extremely important if you are to comprehend context and compare texts and accounts. After all, they always complain that history is just a long, boring litany of 'kings'...and what do kings do, but make decisions all day long?</span></div>
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<a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="async" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_cognitive_biases&h=ATP6APAPdQ1u9D-MKVjooSQ7KDoLXEfhFGGmcezFkZpcddkPIikRU9z_rv1PVRupmNd63vNCNWXkqZlrkT9VBm45IJnokvMeUn2oXq8abZeUlrUiSpLGxZNoDxAuMxKuhngv2JLmQKeC6QJpN21XNS-5PcZbuDzwjBIRLZfa_PY_GIFjFYG5CgCCvCzzelWGsu-WaE__H3mzPQf-yn2512xO-5iYa-Yur4Er04vsaXAPgHaAfN_kXahrk23yStL-wVGXn4W-4k-QzYceq5mueCgr0EO_oqAqbJNpNtg" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #365899; font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases</a></div>
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EXPERIMENTER'S or EXPECTATION BIAS: The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.</div>
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Cold Fusion. The Piltdown Man. Differences in intelligence based on race or gender. Statin drugs. The Tonkin Gulf Incident.</div>
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They tell themselves: "Why do all this work, waste all this money, invest all this emotional capital...and find out we are wrong?" Even if they are honest, they are going to unconsciously EXPECT results to be different.</div>
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Negative findings are seldom published; after all, the experimenter has just wasted his time! He would rather toss his data in the trash, design a NEW experiment, and hope that THAT turns out the way he expected.</div>
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EXAGGERATED EXPECTATION Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).</div>
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Translated....the universe is more boring than we give it credit for....sure, we are surprised (the conservative bias) when we flip six heads in a row...but that doesn't happen often. Our poor little memories are associative, and the extremes and landmarks and aberrations are the anchors for it. We forget the boring stretch of straight road between the curves...</div>
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This is another case (sort of the opposite of conservative bias), where we have a difficult time understand the true meaning of 'random'. Probability is NOT intuitive.</div>
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ENDOWMENT EFFECT: The fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.</div>
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<a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="async" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FEndowment_effect&h=ATP8PI5UFYDhBReArZR2-8U9j8KP060yVN5ExwW6rVR3BwZRNczu0p-KP6I65vcXwm9fzDX1y2VXOZeLhITnzWVeA62sZNU_QhLokCXWWsDLBrUp8JxT3EbQXmjifq-SRPW9nVJ33Bzhad8F3Ygeu-LLBMsWvaqtzdgubBoMI7Gb3Uvd8S0mtn3Si7d-1j5YB7L1RMORJsdfcDT88SSmbbPFvcrqv4kma3xqzkopUzhciVp49MXuZcUuSuHu6MP_M8g_YicIgsmjBdxP3vbA_hPYIRmnpHxEU6tbNKA" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #365899; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect</a></div>
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Essentially, psychological researchers have proved that the perceived value of an object almost IMMEDIATELY doubles (at least) once the person has purchased or acquired it. Bizarre and profoundly strange? I am always wondering if this is the true root cause of acquisitiveness, the inability of many greedy people to relinquish something once they've gained possession of it, legally or not.</div>
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Yes, you had really better read the link on this particular one. It has profound effects on human economic activity, to the point where it is an absolutely essential field of study for marketers.</div>
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EMPATHY GAP: The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.</div>
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This is where we make a decision based on emotional factors ('I wanted to hit that guy.') and then later rationalize it ('I wanted to hit him because looked at me funny.').</div>
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By the same token, you are likely to attribute to evil what may merely be bad anger management (using the same situation in reverse).</div>
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So...honesty (to yourself and through empathy) is always the best politcy here. Delusion starts by denying that you and other people lack feelings.</div>
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CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE: When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.</div>
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So this should make anyone who has been accused of being 'elitist' feel a little better. This is also one piece of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome.</div>
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As a science and computer geek, I find this 'curse' fairly easy to comprehend. I have spent 40 years overdosing on science, and almost 35 years learning about computers. And I have spent at least that long trying to explain WHY these things work the way they do.</div>
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And...I do have a solution to the 'curse': I revert back mentally to the time when I was first learning the thing the less informed person is stuck on, and pretend I am in the same state of ignorance. Believe it or not, this has helped me greatly with my customers, when I bother to slow down and try it.</div>
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DISTINCTION BIAS: The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.<br />
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The first can also be called the 'less-is-better effect'; we tend to notice more defining details when comparing two similar objects side-by-side; we are more likely to judge something fairly if we isolate it from other things we might want to compare it against.</div>
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The second one is very similar; the way to avoid it is to realize that proximity in TIME can also effect one's perception. Ferinstance, you are more likely to think a person is attractive if you have just been shown a picture of someone that is attractive.</div>
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These two just underline the fact that our brains are NOT logic engines; we are NOT good at filtering out the emotional and cooincidentially irrelevant details of life to arrive at the basic data.</div>
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DENOMINATION EFFECT: The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) rather than large amounts (e.g. bills).</div>
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I am guessing that most people are reluctant to break large bills just to buy something small....or possibly there is a certain amount of superstitious awe involved in 'disrupting' round numbers?</div>
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Question: If you were given exactly $1000 as a windfall, and did not have any immediate needs...how likely are you to spend it on something trivial like a large TV? Or would you feel 'better' saving for later, paying rent or buying food with it?</div>
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If, on the other hand, you get a tax return for $738.25, would you be more likely to spend it immediately on non-essentials?</div>
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I think this bias might be related to the well-known marketing tactic of (ferinstance) selling a product for $39.95 rather than $40. The 'random' string of digits in the former are less intimidating that the round number of the latter.</div>
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DECOY EFFECT: Preferences for either option A or B changes in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is similar to option B but in no way better.</div>
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Muddying the waters, essentially. A common marketing tactic that takes advantage of this bias involves offering a third alternative that is more expensive BUT has fewer positive features. This makes the more expensive of the original two choices look more appealing by contrast.</div>
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CONSERVATIVE/REGRESSIVE BIAS: A certain state of mind wherein high values and high likelihoods are overestimated while low values and low likelihoods are underestimated.<br />
-- and/or --<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;"><br />BAYESIAN CONSERVATISM: The tendency to revise one's belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.</span></div>
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Eek. Very closely correlated these are.</div>
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The first results in the tendency to ignore 'data' that is in the minority (to use some rather slanted terms, heheh)....one could say that this type of conservatism defines the natural anti-democratic strain in human nature. This is a much less loaded explanation that avoids referring to such tendencies as 'narcissism', 'egotism', and 'greed'. Smirk.</div>
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The second can be mistaken for plain old pigheadedness, but....in both of these cases, we are talking about biases here, not necessarily fully conscious choices. In other words..like most of this list, we REALLY REALLY have to work hard to fight against these things, dredge them up and examine them consciously rather than let them quietly build delusions for you.</div>
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CONJUNCTION FALLACY: The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.</div>
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An example spells this out best:</div>
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"Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.</div>
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Which is more probable?</div>
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A. Linda is a bank teller.<br />
B. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement."</div>
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Answer is A, but the probabilistically naive vastly favor B. Whew. A combination of attributes is ALWAYS less likely than each attribute separately.</div>
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This is a hard one, so give this a serious think. Try to ignore the intentional political/social smoke screen this question raises in your face (which leverages another common bias) and get to the meat of the thing...</div>
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This fallacy can be taken advantage of in a number of subtle ways, including suckering people into accepting short-cuts in arguments that are not logically valid, or are inconsistent with reality.</div>
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Conspiracy buffs are great practitioners:</div>
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Which is more probable?</div>
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A. Traffic cameras are used to enforce traffic laws.<br />
B. Traffic cameras are used to enforce traffic laws and spy on private citizens.</div>
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Hmmm?</div>
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CONGRUENCE BIAS: The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.</div>
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Very, very common with 'purchased research' that is unlikely to be subjected to heavy peer review. Basically, you set up an experiment (or test a product or idea) only to verify that the positive result is valid (e.g. push the button, the door opens), without testing whether an alternative might also yield an interesting results (e.g. hit another button, or no button, and the door still opens).</div>
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Drug trials are major benefactor of this bias, esp. since the placebo effect can cause a false correlation between the effectiveness of a drug and the (possibly ephemeral) alleviation of the illness.</div>
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CLUSTERING ILLUSION: The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).</div>
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Yup. Another illustration of how poorly equipped we are to handle the world as it is.....and why the gambling industry exists.</div>
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CHEERLEADER EFFECT: The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.</div>
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Hmmmm. Not sure how one would go about avoiding this one. This is a probably a combination of vanity and a desire to be part of a group...?</div>
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CHOICE-SUPPORTIVE BIAS: The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.</div>
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There are many related biases going on here as well, including hindsight bias, selective memory, and failure to remember neutral or negative outcomes...remembering things accurately is hard or impossible, and unless you are simply trying to become less deluded, it is probably pointless to worry about what has already happened.</div>
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So the takeaway from this should probably be: Don't depend on your brilliant judgement for the next big decision you make on this subject...you may have been lucky, or you may have made the right decision for the wrong reason. Certainly don't expect to have learned everything already! Get all the data you can, every time..if you have time.</div>
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BIAS BLIND SPOT: The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.</div>
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This is the main (valid) complaint against the 'liberal elite'. Ahem.</div>
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BELIEF BIAS: An effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.</div>
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Captain Obvious strikes again! Dishonesty starts at home....</div>
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BASE RATE FALLACY: The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).</div>
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Example:<br />
A group of policemen have breathalyzers displaying false drunkenness in 5% of the cases tested. However, the breathalyzers never fail to detect a truly drunk person. 1/1000 of drivers are driving drunk. Suppose the policemen then stops a driver at random, and force them to take a breathalyzer test. It indicates that he or she is drunk. We assume you don't know anything else about him or her. How high is the probability he or she really is drunk?</div>
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Many would answer as high as 95%, but the correct probability is about 2%.....think about it: out of 1000 drivers, 50 (5%) will fail a breathalyzer. Only one of those thousand is probably drunk, so it is at least FORTY-NINE TIMES MORE LIKELY that the policemen will 'fail' a sober person (assuming the drunk is caught and tested).</div>
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This is a tricky bias to get the head around, but very, very common. People are terrible at estimating probabilities, much less comparing them. And as you might guess in the example above, people will tend to fudge their estimates in the direction they expect them to go....</div>
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BANDWAGON EFFECT: The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.</div>
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Well...this one SHOULD be obvious. But amazing how often people forget it. A little bit of solitary mulling-over is all important.</div>
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BACKFIRE EFFECT: When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs.</div>
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Another one that seems obvious...until you find yourself doing it. Again...question your fundamentals whenever you think you can stand the pain of it.</div>
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AVAILABILITY CASCADE: A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").</div>
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I could hardly wait for this one. Merciful Jeebus. Do I really have to give any examples for this, or explain how incredibly damaging this kind of thing is? Let's have fun with this one, campers! Name your favorite item of topical, shrilly repeated gibberish.</div>
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ATTENTIONAL BIAS: The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.<br />
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.</div>
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Slightly different causes, same general effect, here. PTSD would be a very good example, probably a mix of both tendencies.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">'You are what you have been.' Intentional cultivation of empathy, perhaps by immersing oneself in the thought processes of different or even opposing points of view, can be of help here. Sink yourself into someone you are not....</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">ANCHORING: The tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information that we acquire on that subject).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Again...don't get lazy about the information you use (do you even know where you got it?).....find more than one source for your information, and try to use good judgement about the value of each source. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This is one of the most common traits of TeaBaggers: they fixate on one issue and dogmatically defend their narrow view of that issue to the exclusion of others; even ones they share with their fellow circle-the-drainers...</span><br />
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AMBIGUITY EFFECT: The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem 'unknown'.</div>
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For example, people will be slow to adopt new methods if they lack information about the outcome. Ignorance is bliss.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-8939085360466727942018-01-09T14:55:00.003-08:002018-01-11T17:11:10.946-08:00Economic Just-So Stories<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from the Pendleton Book Blather Facbook group, circa 2014) </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The capitalist dude: Bob invents a toothbrush; everybody realizes or is told (by people with lots of resources that enables them to do that) that a toothbrush would be a great thing to have. I (with all my nice property) build a factory to make Bob's toothbrushes, and...hmm...I have to give Bob something for the idea as well (dammit!). Then I le</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">t everyone (since I have some resources to do that) who wants a toothbrush know I've got 'em. I sell them as dearly as I can, trying to make sure that I cut out any competition that I can, so as to amass the maximum amount of personal resources for the next big thing. Never know if another opportunity like THIS will over come again!</span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">I am happy, at least. I have lots more resources than I started with, which makes me important, and allows me to enjoy some luxuries that less important people can't have. Bob may or may not be happy; people are using his invention, but he sees my luxuries and may realize that he didn't get as much as he might have out of the deal. The purchasers of toothbrushes may or may not be happy, either. Toothbrushes certainly make them healthier, but they have neighbors who are sick or even dying because I didn't want what they were able to give me for my toothbrushes.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">[Nowhere, in any of this, is any decision made about whether the resources used for this enterprise might be better used somewhere else, or whether, indeed, if the value of these things matches the resources needed to acquire them. Until my toothbrush factory has some competition, I could care less whether my toothbrushes are useful or if my new factory in Bum Fuck Egypt will use up all their water. I don't care! I have lots of stuff to keep me happy in any case. If competition does manage to surface, I'll drop toothbrushes like a hot rock and take my toys home. Maybe I can talk Bob into inventing something else people might want....]</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">The anarchist dude: I know Bob, who invented a toothbrush just for fun. He gives me one and makes another for himself. They are cool! We feel so much healthier! Other people like the idea, too, so Bob and I agree to make some more for them as well. People are so much healthier and happier with their toothbrushes we give them that they don't at all mind letting us visit them at the farm for dinner, as long as we pitch in with the dishes. Rumour of the improvement this invention makes in the lives of people spreads.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">Several months later, another person (Fred) hears of a toothbrush, and would really, really like one. Sheisse, how the hell will he get one? Bob and I don't even know he wants one! Bob and I have never heard of the dude! Fred pulls up stakes, hops on public transportation, and visits Bob and I. He hangs around long enough to learn how toothbrushes are made. He notices that we are using way too much water to make them; in his home province, a very dry place, our process would be impossible to duplicate. He helps us modify our manufacturing process to be much more water efficient. He moves back home in a month or two, starts making them there.</span><br />
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I, Bob and Fred are all happy; Bob because he is gratified that his invention is useful, myself because I helped Bob and encouraged him, Fred because he able to give toothbrushes to his neighbors AND make them without destroying the water supply in his home district. The farmer next door is happy, because his family is healthier and he is proud to feed and house the inventor and workers that make toothbrushes.</div>
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Lastly, the users of the toothbrushes are happy; they are healthier and the toothbrush cost them little or nothing. Attentive neighbors notice that some people of fragile health may become sick if they don't have one, and they travel to Bob and I's area to help us make some for them. No one who needs a toothbrush need go without one for long.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-83699622710826481202018-01-09T14:54:00.002-08:002018-01-11T17:11:27.944-08:00Other Mullings-over...<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica", "arial", sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(from Pendleton Book Blather, 2014)</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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"The skein of your life is already woven, your fate is fixed." - Herger from The Thirteenth Warrior</div>
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"...a person doesn't die when he should but when he can." - Col. Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude</div>
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"...Cassandra didn't get nearly the kicking she deserved." - 'Lazarus Long'</div>
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<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px;">
A person who is 'fey' is perceived to have a doom; one cannot choose to be fey, but rather it is a discovery one comes to during the course of life. One such is compelled by the nature of their experience and personality to cause a change in the way of the world, large or small. These are the iconoclasts, eccentrics, marchers-to-ones-own-drums, gadflies. But books only get written about people whose doom encompasses them and...therein lies the elbow room that allows free will to get a grip. Even the most glorious and awful persons of history made conscious choices that made them or broke them.</div>
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I got the impression from the attitude of Herger in The Thirteenth Warrior that, although the Norns had already created the tapestry of earthly life, it was NOT predictable or forseeable; there was room for manuever, and that made all the difference. One could not change the manner of one's death, for instance, but one could live one's life badly or well and let posterity judge it.</div>
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Buliwyf's (and by extension his companions') destiny WAS tied up in the quest to save Hrothgar's kingdom, but the Norsemen probably did not think that the witch was interfering with anyone's fate by pointing this out, but rather directing their attention to a more comfortable (and honorable?) way to meet it. A real Cassandra would have been extremely unpopular and justifiably so.</div>
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St. Augustine used the first half of this argument to explain (away) the apparent freedom mankind 'enjoyed' under God's omnipotence. This led to the poisonous idea that bucking God's will was pointless and ultimately damning... and it also aided the Church in convincing Christians to toe the line. The Jesuits had to come back later and remind Christians that what you do in THIS life is also important, because the Roman Church had been reeling under some pretty bad press and they thought it was probably a good idea to make the Church a little more appealing for people outside their usual clientele (i.e. not ignorant peasants). But nobody trusted them much and everyone figured it was just another cynical Counter-Reformation strategy.</div>
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Lastly, we come to Col. Buendia. He alone, of all the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude, seems to have realized what the Norsemen believed to be true; that life is what you make of it, and talented people owe the world a debt for their talent. A busy life leaves little time for an orderly death. Did Dante relagate suicides to such a deep circle of Hell because he considered it a kind of betrayal of humanity?</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-74453062134400336942017-06-14T07:54:00.001-07:002017-06-14T07:54:29.037-07:00More than bears...and other tales.<pre wrap="">Some inspiration from George Winter... </pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap="">in 1940 the year i was born
an older cousin of mine buried a jar with a dollar bill
dug it up yesterday
and guess what?
it had the purchasing power
it was worth 17 cents
this explains what give a pile of money
if you don't spend to stay alive
a life of live of its own
a life that produces greed </pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap="">--------------------------------------</pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap="">Saw a Pile of Money</pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap=""> SAW A PILE OF MONEY
coming down the street
was it the wall street parade
the free market economy
celebrating itself
the money pile’s executives, directors
the CEO, managers, stock holders
they were all there
coming along with their pile of money
well they thought it was theirs
but maybe it was the other way around
one pile after another
came down the street
looking for a place to invest
had to be more profitable than the rest
or their organization, their corporation
would weaken, get eaten
get gobbled up by the competitors
or if there was no good meat, no fat
just left to rust, combust, rot
or just to dry up and blow away in the wind
were was this most profitable investment?
who had labor to sell most cheaply?
the best part of the workers day to rape
Mother Earth to rip wide open
rich resources to plunder
and then market whats been taken from
taken from the earth that was once living
from your life as well
market every gram of whats been taken
to the point of selling more than is there
oh the consumer doesn’t get it
but that’s part of the take
but, but where is there to invest
everything profitable has been occupied
there’s more of everything than people can buy
invest in the air?
the air?
the water?
the soil?
even the toxics have been put up for sale
the pile of money comes down the street
its owners, its managers
come along with it
look what we own they gloat
the pile of money laughs
“who owns whom?”
but then sighs
“we have to speculate, gamble
build a bubble, trick others into joining us
get their money, boost the prices up
get out quick before it burst
leave them take the losses
by now the pile of money is exhausted
but so are the others
the owners are left where we have been all the time
with nothing
or to much money to invest
with nothing worth buying
nothing but our minds, bodies and spirit
which we refuse to sell
anymore
</pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap="">Thanks, George... </pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-42485889250550177032017-03-10T12:35:00.000-08:002017-03-10T12:35:06.152-08:00Y'all;<br />
<br />
Time to take this all up again...I've re-activated my 'Wyrdchao Kallisti' FB account again to poach all my<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases" target="_blank"> 'cognitive bias' </a>posts (see the<a href="ttps://www.facebook.com/groups/284941605021600/?ref=nf_target&fref=nf" target="_blank"> Pendleton Book Blather</a> group there for the entire history). I will do my best to repost the comments as well, and invite the people who contributed to join here.<br />
<br />
In the long term, I will try to take up where I left off in the cognitive bias list on Wikipedia; I think it all started when I was reviewing <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michail-bakunin-god-and-the-state.pdf" target="_blank">"God and the State"</a>, a long fragment of a an essay by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin" target="_blank">Mikhail Bakunin</a>, one of the founders of Rational Anarchism. We miss you, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress" target="_blank">Bob Heinlein</a>....Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-89688867504309805992016-08-16T18:25:00.001-07:002016-08-16T21:04:28.898-07:00'Black Lives Matter' Doesn't Matter?Yes....someday I will just quit talking to people. My teeth will be much the better for it. Beer, while pleasant, may not be a good long term solution. Maybe ranting is better....<br />
<br />
--------------------<br />
<br />
It's repulsive to have to repeat it, but..."any group of people has their assholes." This is a back-assed way of implying an unfortunately well-abused logical fallacy. A general class <b>cannot</b> be characterized by an instance of that class...no matter how loud and obnoxious and inflammatory that instance might be.<br />
<br />
Which could be said about the Nazis, right? But that's where the thinking, <i>reading</i>, man can earn his money. <b>Look</b> at the historical context, the aims, the acts, the means a movement employs to further its professed goals. Read behind the lines; do the results and the side effects have any relationship to the program? Look at the long term good and bad!<br />
<br />
All of which obscures the smaller, or larger, issue. Exactly what benefits are our oppressed brothers supposed to be enjoying; or, more realistically, what were they promised, if we agree that they are a member of the class of 'all men'? What are they being left out of? What are they missing?<br />
<br />
The 'assholes' might retort, caustically: "Nothing. Nothing we want from you, anyway." But surely, if the American Experiment means or once meant anything, it was that our radical version of democracy was supposed to promote (not ensure, certainly not guarantee) a more just, a more civil, a more benign Big Brother.<br />
<br />
And the Founding Fathers intended that this idealistic jihad would put a large burden on the citizen..every rational man/woman/hyphen-American has as "obligation to tolerance", a duty to think first and judge later.<br />
<br />
To wait for the facts to come in. For the results to be final. To be the last person to jump to conclusions. To detect and ignore the influence of the assholes. To cut through the facade of rhetoric and respired gibberish to the meat of the honest concern. To respect the force and inertia of a people's historical experience.<br />
<br />
Which is <i>hard</i>. We are going to bleed. We are going to hear the sticks and the stones. We are going to swallow our bile, our frustrated anger at the existence of idiots and loudmouths, whose existence and verbal flatulence obscures the real message and the real issues.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the Fathers expected too much of us, or of humanity; should it have taken 150+ years to decide that our not-quite-white cousins are human beings, and acknowledge that 'all men' includes them? Should we be surprised that they are slightly pissed, and vastly distrustful of us, considering the record of our individual and institutional past behavior, the machinery of which a few of <b>our</b> assholes persist in trying to popularize and revive?<br />
<br />
It is NEVER time to stop bitching. Our distrust in government and the status quo is not an aberration of recent ignorance or stupidity or perversity, but an ingrained attitude of the original charter of our country. The Constitution, in fact, promised us very little, only that it considered the individual liberties of its citizens its first and greatest concern, if far from its only one. While this sounds like a license to chaos, They didn't expect us not to exercise our common sense or ignore the facts of nature or hypocritically ignore the intent while pursuing the fruits of liberty.<br />
<br />
So whither civil disobedience? I am not going to trot out statistics and references at this point, but it can be easily demonstrated that peaceful civil disobedience is one of the best ways of effecting social progress; we owe many of the protections and comforts of our present existence to such 'outside the box' efforts.<br />
<br />
Nothing ruins the prestige of an action more quickly than avowed chaos and thoughtless and inflammatory public utterance; and nothing lends one more credit than blind and reactionary police oppression, knee-jerk brown-people-bombing, and 'I<i> told</i> about those people' bigotry.<br />
<br />
IN our current situation, where our plurality can or has already been purchased by reactionary forces, the usual chain of command is almost useless. Civil disobedience may be the only way of undoing the erosion of the American social contract, whatever that may be at this late date.<br />
<br />
When AIM made the plight of Native Americans impossible to ignore, when Dr. King captivated the world with his eloquence on behalf of its less-well-heard fraction, and now, when Black Lives Matter illuminates the pervasive and continuing existence of institutional bigotry and the tolerance of same...we should use every mental resource, every strand of emotional resilience, every impulse toward common decency, that our Founding Fathers expected us to possess and cultivate. We were tasked to separate the wheat from the chaff; to do our very best, as citizens, to finally build the kind of society we fought to conceive for ourselves. To break the cycle of adherence to the oppressive oligarchic systems of Europe that we so despised, way back when.<br />
<br />
And yet, here we are...well on our way to creating our own Empire. Do we want it? Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201026701914413546.post-44358047520518203592016-08-16T18:25:00.000-07:002016-08-16T18:27:07.221-07:00History for HillbilliesHere in Parochial Paradise, reading books, at least worthwhile ones, is a dependable way to endanger your sanity. There you were, snoozing happily in your puddle of beer, and some loudmouth starts polluting the air with a verbofecal ventilation fiasco that just didn't quite seem...*well thought out*, at least in your humble opinion. Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that blissful ignorance is not, for you, a worthwhile attainment. So, willynilly, you've got some work ahead of you.<br />
<br />
You wedge the silly twit's gibberish through a Google search box. After eliminating vitamin supplements, recipes, coupons, and porn, you appear to have a subject of study. You read the Wikipedia article (sideways). You read the bibliographies. You build a reading list. You fantasize about murdering your noisy neighbors and/or family in their sleep.<br />
<br />
Finally you've rammed enough facts into your head. You may even delude yourself that, as a result of that effort, you might finally be able answer the question that started the whole goddam thing. Neurosis sets in as soon as you are dumb enough to open your mouth, when you discover that no one else even understands why your subject is (was? might be?) important, or even what it is. They certainly do NOT care what your opinion of it is, although they feel qualified to advance their own.<br />
<br />
A surreal revulsion for critical thought sets in: you are vaguely aware that people shouldn't think those awful things, the country shouldn't run this way, the world doesn't WORK like that...and yet it everything bumbles along, day after day, assbackwards and oblivious. The very nature of chaos seems to ensure that history won't even repeat itself, since how do you know where you are in the cycle in the first place? A universal state of what George Carlin used to call 'vu ja de': the feeling that none of this has ever happened before.<br />
<br />
<br />
--------------------- <br />
<br />
A few weeks ago, during one of my regular attempts to kill off a few more overuseful brain cells, all of this once again came home to me. We were talking about the War(s). You know the one(s).<br />
<br />
"Cuz, afterall, yaknow dude, the President has messed the whole thing(s) up. We should been out long ago."<br />
<br />
I sprayed a bit of my Hef on the bar, then dug in to refute, thus: “Huh?”<br />
<br />
Not the best start. Maybe I should spit more of this stuff out, and drink less of it, right off the bat, aye? In any case....<br />
<br />
“Um...yes, we probably should have been out of th..those places, long ago. Why is the President specifically to blame, here?”<br />
<br />
“Well, he promised to...”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, he probably promised to try, at least, I'll concede that, but he didn't start this mess, he was stuck cleaning it up. Let's put this in playground perspective...do you think it's easier to break something, or to fix it?”<br />
<br />
“What the hell does that mean?”<br />
<br />
Sigh.<br />
<br />
"When a war is started, my friend, certain forces of human stupidity are deployed: there exist, in the real world, such things as: compulsive jingoism; compulsive apathy; the partisan echo chamber; political limitations; diplomatic inertia; commitments to allies; commitments to reparation (collateral damage); legal constraints; investment bias; bureaucratic inefficiency; conflicting mandates; emergent issues...blahdiblahdi....Winding down a war, particularly a [expletive deleted] like this one, is not as simple as starting it...”<br />
<br />
“Well, it just shoulda ended when he said it would...”<br />
<br />
“...and only naughty boys get mad and take their toys away before others have a chance to finish the game...I believe former President Gas Station Attendant wasn't exactly clairvoyant about that kinda thing hisself...”<br />
<br />
“At least HE got Saddam, though!”<br />
<br />
“And? So? Did we discover where he was hiding all those terrorist cells and WMD's while he was squatting in his cave? Did I get my cookie? Our current CIC 'got' Bin Laden, right? In schoolyard terms, I'd say we're even there, huh? Sure you want to stick with that answer?”<br />
<br />
“Your cookie...?...bbut Saddam was a bad man....urrrr....”<br />
<br />
“...that we put into power in the first place, along with the Saudis, and Diem, and Mobutu, and Guzman, and Somoza, and Pinochet, and Noriega...are you saying that, as a country, we have a special responsibility to depose, preferentially of course, the Bad Men we bankrolled originally?<br />
Is it okay to ignore OTHER Bad Men, who we may or many not be responsible for? Are we a little teapot, perhaps, that has boiled dry on the campstove of....”<br />
<br />
“Uhh, okay, okay...damn, we need another beer don't we...where is that book on the Battle of Leyte Gulf you were gonna loan me...”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11855497638784611552noreply@blogger.com0