BAGHDAD - October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths and Americans commanders say they know why: the U.S. troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al-Qaida and Shiite militia extremists.This is AP, so not one of the more "right wing" sources. Reading the whole article is worthwhile-lots of military and Iraqi discussion on WHY the surge is working and how we can get to overall success. Expect this news to be generally buried in the MSM as it has during the whole surge process and resulting improvement in Iraq. The MSM and the Democrats decided "Iraq is hopeless", and it isn't likely that they will give up on that track since anything like success could be quite positive for Bush and therefore negative for Democrat prospects in '08. I expect their general control over the sheep is too great, and we are still headed to a Democrat landslide and the most damaging withdrawal they can arrange. Seeing Iraq as a "Fiasco" is central to their thinking, and having facts get in the way has never been a weakness of the Democrats or MSM. When one is a liberal it is NEVER either too early or too late to declare hopelessness and defeat in any endeavor!We all have emotions, one of the cleavages between left and right is if we believe that the world MUST match our emotions. Those of the left tend say "absolutely"-the world owes them behavior that matches what they feel, both positive and negative. Those that they hate need to fail, and the one that they love the most (self) needs to always be seen as "good or victim". Those that they "love" are those that make their world view seem more real. Those on the right, believing that the highest functions are logical rational have desires, but understand that these may or not be met. Results that match with desire often require lots of effort, time, thought, flexibility and just plain old "luck". Success is never assured for anything worthwhile, and failure is always within reach by just quitting. Such is the world, Iraq is a great example of the difference between the two types of people.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Power Line: Best line of the campaign so far
"In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend one million dollars on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."I'm not a McCain person, but it is very hard to beat this for humor in politics!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Wicked
My Son's marching band performed to music from this musical, and the Sophomore-Seniors had went down to Chicago to see it last spring while my son was yet a freshman. We journeyed to the Oriental Theater in downtown Chicago to see it Friday evening.
First of all, in entertainment value, acting, music, etc, it was a great evening. They did a find job and I loved the play. At the human emotional level, it draws you in, and you identify with the "Wicked Witch" and come to understand at least a bit how things could have gone so wrong for her.
My guess though is that the author of the book and the developers of the play would like one to get a whole lot more out of the tale than just "a nice evening". Most artists would. The original is a classic morality play-Good / Evil, and good wins in the end. Like many a modern portrayal, the update is a lot more complex. Modern artists find that to be much better, more "realistic". I find that a bit interesting-do we need our art to be "realistic" in that way, or is that even a reasonable concept?
We are all well aware of the complexity of the real world-sometimes good people suffer and die horribly and the worst of the evil prosper. Like everything else, modern art wants to let us know that there is no transcendence -- the evil aren't really evil and the good are at least not as good as they seem, and maybe not even good at all. Many things aren't what we think they are, and maybe there are no answers at all. We who are alive and have some even slight level of life examination know that. Do we need art to try to drive it home as well?
First of all, in entertainment value, acting, music, etc, it was a great evening. They did a find job and I loved the play. At the human emotional level, it draws you in, and you identify with the "Wicked Witch" and come to understand at least a bit how things could have gone so wrong for her.
My guess though is that the author of the book and the developers of the play would like one to get a whole lot more out of the tale than just "a nice evening". Most artists would. The original is a classic morality play-Good / Evil, and good wins in the end. Like many a modern portrayal, the update is a lot more complex. Modern artists find that to be much better, more "realistic". I find that a bit interesting-do we need our art to be "realistic" in that way, or is that even a reasonable concept?
We are all well aware of the complexity of the real world-sometimes good people suffer and die horribly and the worst of the evil prosper. Like everything else, modern art wants to let us know that there is no transcendence -- the evil aren't really evil and the good are at least not as good as they seem, and maybe not even good at all. Many things aren't what we think they are, and maybe there are no answers at all. We who are alive and have some even slight level of life examination know that. Do we need art to try to drive it home as well?
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The Smartest Futurist On Earth, or at least Bill Gates thinks so.
If legendary inventor Ray Kurzweil is right, the future will be a lot brighter - and weirder - than you think.I've enjoyed his books and I've been lucky enough to hear him speak. Ray may be "out there", but it is great to hear someone positive once in awhile in this world where everyone has way more to be happy about than at any time in history, but most find a reason to be negative anyway!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Consilience
Wilson has the vision that it COULD all be linked together so that we would truly understand our universe. He strongly laments the "post modernist" view that "all points of view are equally valid" - not surprising for a scientist. He seems much more willing to entertain the potential for divinity than many scientists, even though for himself, he is a materialist. He DOES seem to realize at least part of the horror of a universe where there is no transcendence, but he sees the risks of transcendence as too high -- mostly on the environmental front. He sums up the materialist vs transcendent views as "The uncomfortable truth is the the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure".
That is an interesting statement in that I would question whether any human will acquire a "full measure" of EITHER of those areas separately either. However, to come to a conclusion of what that which completely transcends the physical can do, seems a bit presumptuous. Man is so quick to set limits on what it is that God can do, it is good God has us around to lock those limits in on infinite power since we are so "intelligent" (just ask us). While we seem good at providing limits for the infinite, it is strange that we seem less inclined to limit ourselves.
He makes a good comment on the state of knowledge and information in the world; "We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it and make important choices wisely". I think he is right on that at some level, and he also points out in the book how important it is to place the information into context with other knowledge, and even make it into a "story". He does seem to have some real insight into human nature.
He waits until the very end of the book to get into environmental doom and gloom. He sees us as rushing headlong to destruction of the planet, and has decided that "somehow" man needs to "morally" pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and see vast control on development and technology as "the only moral thing to do".
A neat trick for a strict materialist to come up with, apparently a new form of human brain will somehow "evolve" and suddenly operate with this "environmental moral imperative" in the next few decades? It seems unlikely to me that randomness should have bequeathed us with this function, and in a materialist universe we are just going to have to wait around for a few million years of "survival of the fittest" and hope that the right kind of "morals" for environmentalism randomly fall out the back end of the random process.
If such doesn't happen, that must mean that "the right kind of morals" just didn't randomly arise at "the right time" and the great roulette wheel of randomness will just keep spinning along without us. Small loss in a cold godless universe!
It is nice to see that even strict materialists have "hope" -- I'm thinking that he may want to invest more in lottery tickets with his faith in the great god of the dice. It seems so strange that a random process would generate a brain that questions the outcome of the random process (the existing state of the world), yet somehow believes that one of the outputs of that random process (us) is somehow responsible -- and soon to be "morally mandated" to "fix it".
Goracle Peace Prize
Al is a Nobel Prize winner! He invented the internet, provided the model for "Love Story", personally flew down to the Texas fires with James Lee Witt, but now he has a a real win to go with some of his imaginary ones.
Given the list of people below, I think he fits right in.
2005 MOHAMED ELBARADEI -- Fantastic UN nuke inspector. Iran, North Korea, you name it, it keeps them all under control!
Given the list of people below, I think he fits right in.
2005 MOHAMED ELBARADEI -- Fantastic UN nuke inspector. Iran, North Korea, you name it, it keeps them all under control!
2004 WANGARI MAATHAI. A Kenyan ecologist who teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the industrialized nations.
2002 JIMMY CARTER JR., Was apparently an OK peanut farmer, but that was the peak of his ability. Has never met a foreign policy situation he couldn't make even worse.
2001 KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Managed to preside over Saddam lining various pockets with something like $20 Billion from the UN "Oil for food" (or more accurately "Palaces for Saddam") program
1994 YASSER ARAFAT, A guy that never met a Jews he didn't want to provide as painful a death as possible.
1992 RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Wrote the fake but not even close to true book "I, Rigoberta Menchu."
1988 THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES, Great group of folks that couldn't stop a sorority pillow fight, but are darned competent at various forms of rape and child abuse around the world.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Democrats Attack Turkey
Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Turkey has recalled their ambassador since the Democrats have decided it is time to label a pre-WWI action in Turkey as "genocide". I'm sure the fact that Turkey is one of the only allies in the region in the War on Terror with 70% of the air cargo and 30% of the fuel going through there has NOTHING to do with it.
The Democrats are real "bridge builders", in this case to Armenians that have been dead since before WWI. Just a small harbinger of the kind of inciteful foreign policy that we can look forward to when they take over completely in '08.
Oh, and on CNN, the HEADLINE was some Iraqi families sue Blackwater ... this did make the side headlines if one looked, but we DO know what CNN considers important. Nobody would ever accuse the MSM and the Democrats of overtly working to assure defeat in Iraq would they? No, deciding that a time when we have troops in harms way that depend on supplies through an ally is a GREAT time to "get the record straight" on something that happened 100 years ago!
The Democrats are real "bridge builders", in this case to Armenians that have been dead since before WWI. Just a small harbinger of the kind of inciteful foreign policy that we can look forward to when they take over completely in '08.
Oh, and on CNN, the HEADLINE was some Iraqi families sue Blackwater ... this did make the side headlines if one looked, but we DO know what CNN considers important. Nobody would ever accuse the MSM and the Democrats of overtly working to assure defeat in Iraq would they? No, deciding that a time when we have troops in harms way that depend on supplies through an ally is a GREAT time to "get the record straight" on something that happened 100 years ago!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Selling to the Lowest Bidder
Powerline has a good post on Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell. It contains one piece of logic on the idea of "Uncle Tom" Blacks, a charge variously leveled against any Black that claims a conservative position at any time; Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell ... all of them.
"You don't sell out to the lowest bidder". All of these people are extremely intelligent people, they are well aware of the price they pay to hold a conservative position. Given the society that we live in, accomplished Black people of their level of ability are nearly certain to be highly successful, AND, if they hold the "proper" political views, popular to the point of canonization.
Instead, people like Thomas have the strength of character to hold the positions that they believe in and face countless cruel attacks, usually with generally good humor and a lack of anger. Meanwhile, liberals and the MSM repeat like a mantra that "they have sold out". Clarence Thomas is far more intelligent than I, he knows the price he pays. I don't even have the intelligence to see through the most simple of MSM scams it seems-thanks to Powerline, I now see this one.
"You don't sell out to the lowest bidder". All of these people are extremely intelligent people, they are well aware of the price they pay to hold a conservative position. Given the society that we live in, accomplished Black people of their level of ability are nearly certain to be highly successful, AND, if they hold the "proper" political views, popular to the point of canonization.
Instead, people like Thomas have the strength of character to hold the positions that they believe in and face countless cruel attacks, usually with generally good humor and a lack of anger. Meanwhile, liberals and the MSM repeat like a mantra that "they have sold out". Clarence Thomas is far more intelligent than I, he knows the price he pays. I don't even have the intelligence to see through the most simple of MSM scams it seems-thanks to Powerline, I now see this one.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Best Economy Ever?
Powerline asserts that the current Bush economy may be the "Best Economy Ever". Is it? I don't have the time to go do research, but I can bet that the MSM won't be giving us any information on it if it was doing well, and they certainly seem to be avoiding that. Lots of job growth over a long period, lots of income growth and the stock market back at record highs.
In August as the sub-prime mortgage meltdown impacted the market and the Fed took actions though, the media had quite a lot to say. I notice that they never went back into the origins of the sub-prime mortgage market-a short perusal of the web looks like it showed up as a major option in the late '90s. I wonder who was President then? No doubt the whole deal was a very good idea, just "poorly executed" by the incompetent Bush.
I love how adding liquidity to the FEDERAL RESERVE system, which is "government banking" (something that one would think that liberals would LOVE) is viewed as "helping the wealthy". Avoiding a recession is pretty helpful to most everyone, and it appears that we have avoided it for at least the moment. No cause for celebration in the MSM though-keeping Clinton in was critical to the late '90s economy, even though it crashed in March of 2000, with him still in the White House. In those days though, the loss of $6 Trillion of internet bubble bursting stock market capitalization and all the econimic indicators sinking like rocks was no news story at all. In those days, only good economic news was worth printing.
I suppose if one is a liberal, it is difficult to figure out what changed.
In August as the sub-prime mortgage meltdown impacted the market and the Fed took actions though, the media had quite a lot to say. I notice that they never went back into the origins of the sub-prime mortgage market-a short perusal of the web looks like it showed up as a major option in the late '90s. I wonder who was President then? No doubt the whole deal was a very good idea, just "poorly executed" by the incompetent Bush.
I love how adding liquidity to the FEDERAL RESERVE system, which is "government banking" (something that one would think that liberals would LOVE) is viewed as "helping the wealthy". Avoiding a recession is pretty helpful to most everyone, and it appears that we have avoided it for at least the moment. No cause for celebration in the MSM though-keeping Clinton in was critical to the late '90s economy, even though it crashed in March of 2000, with him still in the White House. In those days though, the loss of $6 Trillion of internet bubble bursting stock market capitalization and all the econimic indicators sinking like rocks was no news story at all. In those days, only good economic news was worth printing.
I suppose if one is a liberal, it is difficult to figure out what changed.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Winnie
I'm sitting in the Hilton Austin now on business, but last week I was up at Williams Narrows Resort on Lake Winnibigosh in NE MN on the annual fall fishing trip. Fishing was "fine" from Saturday through Monday night with a reasonable number, some keepers and some in the slot at 17-20", but just average. The weather those first few days was GREAT though, so it was a lot of fun to be away from work and outdoors having fun.
Monday PM the cold front came through and there was rain, but as sometimes happens in the fall, it turned them on and the action picked up for Tuesday and Wed. Most of the fish were on bars in 15-20', but some were caught up to 30' deep and as shallow as 5'. Some action on the N shore of the main lake, but most of the action was in Cutfoot Souix.
My new 80lb thrust trolling motor worked GREAT. I've never felt that my Tyee was controllable in wind with my old troller. This one plays with it and I can put the boat exactly where I want when I want it there ... and I can pull it around to troll cranks. All agreed it was the best upgrade that I've ever put on the boat in it's the 15 years I've had it. In combination with the onboard charger and the glass mat batteries, it just worked completely like a charm.
Very odd to be out fishing from Saturday-Thursday, home Thursday night and Friday night, and now out on the road and not getting back until Friday evening. Guess I'm getting to be a homebody.
Monday PM the cold front came through and there was rain, but as sometimes happens in the fall, it turned them on and the action picked up for Tuesday and Wed. Most of the fish were on bars in 15-20', but some were caught up to 30' deep and as shallow as 5'. Some action on the N shore of the main lake, but most of the action was in Cutfoot Souix.
My new 80lb thrust trolling motor worked GREAT. I've never felt that my Tyee was controllable in wind with my old troller. This one plays with it and I can put the boat exactly where I want when I want it there ... and I can pull it around to troll cranks. All agreed it was the best upgrade that I've ever put on the boat in it's the 15 years I've had it. In combination with the onboard charger and the glass mat batteries, it just worked completely like a charm.
Very odd to be out fishing from Saturday-Thursday, home Thursday night and Friday night, and now out on the road and not getting back until Friday evening. Guess I'm getting to be a homebody.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
The New Hillary Clinton
Powerline picked up a great little quote here:
Whenever I grow soft on the new Hillary Clinton -- the termperate, moderate, responsible senator who does her homework, ably represents her constituents, and respects those who may disagree with her -- it occurs to me that maybe I'm just engaging in the willing suspension of disbelief. I used to fall for every new Nixon, too.That may be where we have seen her before. The "Zelig like" personality changes-radical in College, lawyer, doting Governor and Candidate's wife, firebrand firing the White House travel staff and running the secret healthcare talks, etc, etc. ... is she Hillary Rodham, Hillary Clinton, or Hillary Rodham-Clinton today? The laugh that sounds like it comes from some house of horrors tells us; both, all, and none of the above.
Discriminating Traveler
Sitting in the Starbucks at O'Hare out on a business trip for the first time since my '01 trip to Germany. It seems amazing to consider, I used to travel a ton for a few years, and probably prior to '01 averaged 3 to 4 trips a year. Most of it is "corporate austerity"-in the age of management of all the numbers on a quarter by quarter basis for stock price, every dollar counts. I've been convinced a number of times that it also leads to the phenomenon of "penny wise and pound foolish". We often struggle along with e-mail and telecons when a face to face could really speed things up, but of course that leads to the other reason for less travel. The fact that we CAN travel less. We have the technology. It may not be the best choice, but it can be done. Technology always requires us to be more intentional in what we do-it allows us to do more things, but where and how we make use of it is up to us!
O'Hare hasn't really changed a lot in the 30 years that I've been passing through here from time to time on personal or business travel. The laptops, iPods and high quality coffee are new. The other thing that is new getting into the system of course, the security. Sometimes our system of government really does create the "worst of all worlds". We end up with a government employed, unionized, slow-motion, minimum service TSA cadre of people and EVERYONE has to "go through the system".
It is pretty amazing to see them taking the shoes from a very elderly lady in a wheelchair. The odds against a plane crash are high, but they are pretty much a "dead certainty" compared to the odds that she is a terrorist! Does constant exposure to that level of stupidity corrupt the mind so that the MSM and the "general view" make the common public sheep unable to think critically? It may; it also increases the chances falling into the relativism that would equate something relatively innocuous like "sex sells", or "3.99 seems less than $4.00 more so than it really is", with a complete perversion of logic AND human nature that says "profiling is bad".
From the materialist point of view, the ability to discriminate on predictive patterns is very close to a complete and optimal definition of intelligence! To assert that "discrimination" (profiling) is "wrong" is to subvert everything that we have determined about intelligence in the service of postmodern nihilism. Sadly, most of the sheep can't tell the difference between what IS required (better airport security), and what is NOT required (taking granny's shoes)! The discussion about what is in between can be long and contentious, but at least it would be a RATIONAL discussion, and those are a significant part of what it is to advance as opposed to decline as a civilization.
Since I broached the subject, our world is loaded with countless little idiosyncrasies that we may or may not notice because they are in general "human oriented". No matter how much any of us may believe that we are somehow more observant or more cognizant, or deeper analysts than our fellow man, we remain fully human with all the characteristics that entails. For example, humans are wired to notice sex, and human males are especially adept at picking out a female form from virtually any background. A man was on a news show while I was up fishing had his sight restored after 40 years of being blind. When someone asked him something that he would like to see in another interview, he had blurted out "a topless beach" - which Dianne Sawyer brought up much to the chagrin of his wife.
He was honest about something that our socialization trains us to not be honest about-and this is one origin of the error of Rousseau's and many liberals thinking. We ARE, certainly human, BUT, happiness doesn't result from deciding that all human whims are to be honored. Being blind through adolescence the blind guy no doubt missed out on a ton of socialization training related to bare breasts and thus fell prey to making an inappropriate public comment. Pretty easy to understand and forgive (although it didn't appear that it was quite so easy for his wife).
The socialization works, but the wiring is still there, so marketers take advantage of this.
Similarly, we are "bad with numbers"-- we relate to numeric "milestones" in irrational ways. We don't have as large a celebration for 49th or 51st birthdays than we do for 50, even though given the passage of a half century of time, a year of age is much less significant. We PERCEIVE 49 to be "40's" and because of it, think far differently of 49 vs 50 than we should from a purely numeric view. Likewise, we see "less than $4" as a boundary, even though $3.99 is a lot more trouble than just rounding it up to $4.
The "error" is taking something that "doesn't make logical sense" -- preferring a female form to frog, or seeing $3.99 as more significantly less than $4.00 than it is, and seeing that as "the same" as saying "no profiling". Recognition that we are human and have human thought and emotion patterns is VERY rational at a secondary level.
It is in fact TRUE, we ARE human. Once we know that we are "being taken advantage of" because of our nature, we can decide to be more wary, but in MANY contexts, we will still see "human oriented" as VERY good. It will make products easy to use, because they are "natural". When we think a product is well-designed, it is ALWAYS from the human perspective (the only one most of us have --although those that work with computers also have a pretty decent handle as to what makes sense to a computer, eg. powers of 2).
This discussion quickly moves back to the discussion of transcendence. If human nature is to be "the highest good", then our answers to life are going to be radically different than if we arrive at the view that reason, and potentially spiritual insights can be an IMPROVEMENT on human nature. The line between "rational transcendence" and "social truth" is however a key cleavage to be aware of. Deciding to not profile says that "society" can and should make judgements that are both "anti-human" (they short circuit one of our basic abilities, the ability to "improve our odds" through discerning and applying predictive patterns) and "anti-rational" in that they are simply illogical and ineffective.
Pricing something at $3.99 vs $4.00 is certainly not rational in a scientific or ease of use sense -- but it is very much oriented to how humans see numbers from a marketing view.
Taking the shoes off an old lady in a wheel chair is fundamentally against any human orientation as in "respect for elders", "treating those less fortunate with added deference", and simply that everyone watching at a fundamental human level knows this is foolish! It of course makes no rational sense either; it is ineffective, it wastes the time of all concerned. The only "value" is to the left-leaning elements of society that are able to impose their will in a way that is fundamentally nihilistic in nature. It signals us all that we are under their power and it teaches us to COMPLY.
"We prohibit you from doing what is rational and human in the name of our abhorrence of a natural human characteristic (like prefers like), that we have decided to negate. In the same breath, we choose to honor as supreme many other characteristics simply because they are human".
This is an answer that in the final analysis leads to a decision that "there is no objective truth; all truth is a social construct". This is the cutting edge in post-modernist relativistic thought. Rousseau was one of the seminal thinkers in this foolishness. They believe reality is a state constructed by the mind, not perceived by it, so everyone's "truth" has merit.
There have always been two kinds of thinkers; one sees disorder and tries to create order, one sees order and seeks to create disorder. The nice thing is that the last 300 years especially have shown us that in the end "order always wins", BUT, since we are still human, the "order" has to be put into a "good story" (narrative, "myth"), or we won't be able to really understand it as humans. We are also prone to see order where it isn't and to falsely correlate things that are similar but different, and of course we are very capable of just being wrong.
All that comes with the limitations of our nature, BUT, when we expose ourselves in explicit mass to irrationality, I suspect that the overall effect on the population is quite corrosive.
O'Hare hasn't really changed a lot in the 30 years that I've been passing through here from time to time on personal or business travel. The laptops, iPods and high quality coffee are new. The other thing that is new getting into the system of course, the security. Sometimes our system of government really does create the "worst of all worlds". We end up with a government employed, unionized, slow-motion, minimum service TSA cadre of people and EVERYONE has to "go through the system".
It is pretty amazing to see them taking the shoes from a very elderly lady in a wheelchair. The odds against a plane crash are high, but they are pretty much a "dead certainty" compared to the odds that she is a terrorist! Does constant exposure to that level of stupidity corrupt the mind so that the MSM and the "general view" make the common public sheep unable to think critically? It may; it also increases the chances falling into the relativism that would equate something relatively innocuous like "sex sells", or "3.99 seems less than $4.00 more so than it really is", with a complete perversion of logic AND human nature that says "profiling is bad".
From the materialist point of view, the ability to discriminate on predictive patterns is very close to a complete and optimal definition of intelligence! To assert that "discrimination" (profiling) is "wrong" is to subvert everything that we have determined about intelligence in the service of postmodern nihilism. Sadly, most of the sheep can't tell the difference between what IS required (better airport security), and what is NOT required (taking granny's shoes)! The discussion about what is in between can be long and contentious, but at least it would be a RATIONAL discussion, and those are a significant part of what it is to advance as opposed to decline as a civilization.
Since I broached the subject, our world is loaded with countless little idiosyncrasies that we may or may not notice because they are in general "human oriented". No matter how much any of us may believe that we are somehow more observant or more cognizant, or deeper analysts than our fellow man, we remain fully human with all the characteristics that entails. For example, humans are wired to notice sex, and human males are especially adept at picking out a female form from virtually any background. A man was on a news show while I was up fishing had his sight restored after 40 years of being blind. When someone asked him something that he would like to see in another interview, he had blurted out "a topless beach" - which Dianne Sawyer brought up much to the chagrin of his wife.
He was honest about something that our socialization trains us to not be honest about-and this is one origin of the error of Rousseau's and many liberals thinking. We ARE, certainly human, BUT, happiness doesn't result from deciding that all human whims are to be honored. Being blind through adolescence the blind guy no doubt missed out on a ton of socialization training related to bare breasts and thus fell prey to making an inappropriate public comment. Pretty easy to understand and forgive (although it didn't appear that it was quite so easy for his wife).
The socialization works, but the wiring is still there, so marketers take advantage of this.
Similarly, we are "bad with numbers"-- we relate to numeric "milestones" in irrational ways. We don't have as large a celebration for 49th or 51st birthdays than we do for 50, even though given the passage of a half century of time, a year of age is much less significant. We PERCEIVE 49 to be "40's" and because of it, think far differently of 49 vs 50 than we should from a purely numeric view. Likewise, we see "less than $4" as a boundary, even though $3.99 is a lot more trouble than just rounding it up to $4.
The "error" is taking something that "doesn't make logical sense" -- preferring a female form to frog, or seeing $3.99 as more significantly less than $4.00 than it is, and seeing that as "the same" as saying "no profiling". Recognition that we are human and have human thought and emotion patterns is VERY rational at a secondary level.
It is in fact TRUE, we ARE human. Once we know that we are "being taken advantage of" because of our nature, we can decide to be more wary, but in MANY contexts, we will still see "human oriented" as VERY good. It will make products easy to use, because they are "natural". When we think a product is well-designed, it is ALWAYS from the human perspective (the only one most of us have --although those that work with computers also have a pretty decent handle as to what makes sense to a computer, eg. powers of 2).
This discussion quickly moves back to the discussion of transcendence. If human nature is to be "the highest good", then our answers to life are going to be radically different than if we arrive at the view that reason, and potentially spiritual insights can be an IMPROVEMENT on human nature. The line between "rational transcendence" and "social truth" is however a key cleavage to be aware of. Deciding to not profile says that "society" can and should make judgements that are both "anti-human" (they short circuit one of our basic abilities, the ability to "improve our odds" through discerning and applying predictive patterns) and "anti-rational" in that they are simply illogical and ineffective.
Pricing something at $3.99 vs $4.00 is certainly not rational in a scientific or ease of use sense -- but it is very much oriented to how humans see numbers from a marketing view.
Taking the shoes off an old lady in a wheel chair is fundamentally against any human orientation as in "respect for elders", "treating those less fortunate with added deference", and simply that everyone watching at a fundamental human level knows this is foolish! It of course makes no rational sense either; it is ineffective, it wastes the time of all concerned. The only "value" is to the left-leaning elements of society that are able to impose their will in a way that is fundamentally nihilistic in nature. It signals us all that we are under their power and it teaches us to COMPLY.
"We prohibit you from doing what is rational and human in the name of our abhorrence of a natural human characteristic (like prefers like), that we have decided to negate. In the same breath, we choose to honor as supreme many other characteristics simply because they are human".
This is an answer that in the final analysis leads to a decision that "there is no objective truth; all truth is a social construct". This is the cutting edge in post-modernist relativistic thought. Rousseau was one of the seminal thinkers in this foolishness. They believe reality is a state constructed by the mind, not perceived by it, so everyone's "truth" has merit.
There have always been two kinds of thinkers; one sees disorder and tries to create order, one sees order and seeks to create disorder. The nice thing is that the last 300 years especially have shown us that in the end "order always wins", BUT, since we are still human, the "order" has to be put into a "good story" (narrative, "myth"), or we won't be able to really understand it as humans. We are also prone to see order where it isn't and to falsely correlate things that are similar but different, and of course we are very capable of just being wrong.
All that comes with the limitations of our nature, BUT, when we expose ourselves in explicit mass to irrationality, I suspect that the overall effect on the population is quite corrosive.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Stunning Democrat Change
I have to agree with Chris Dodd that I'm stunned that Hillary, Obama, and Edwards would all not commit to having the troops out of Iraq by 2013. This is an excerpt from that CNN article:
I'm also a realist however, they are politicians and I remember Bush Sr's "No new taxes" pledge. Even worse, they are Democrats that know that they will not be held to what they say ... their statements happened the middle of last week, and other than this little item in the CNN political ticker, it has been hard to find that they even said it. The MSM and most Democrats still realize that there is no way that terrorists could defeat a united America-they also know that a defeat in Iraq is better for their political power. I'm afraid that in the final analysis, that is what will win, BUT, I would love to see it be true. That is the weakness of the right, even though we know the odds are against it, we believe in redemption, and hope that even a Hillary Clinton can come to see the wisdom of persistence and strength.
STORM LAKE, Iowa (CNN) – At a campaign stop in rural Iowa Saturday Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said he was stunned by the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina, would not commit to having all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by 2013.Since I'm convinced that we are likely to have Hillary and Obama as President and VP, such rationality would be a wonderful thing if true. I'm an optimist, so I like to be hopeful, it COULD be that they have far more in statesmanship than it has appeared so far, and they have come to realize from the progress that there is no reason that Iraq has to be a costly defeat for America.
I'm also a realist however, they are politicians and I remember Bush Sr's "No new taxes" pledge. Even worse, they are Democrats that know that they will not be held to what they say ... their statements happened the middle of last week, and other than this little item in the CNN political ticker, it has been hard to find that they even said it. The MSM and most Democrats still realize that there is no way that terrorists could defeat a united America-they also know that a defeat in Iraq is better for their political power. I'm afraid that in the final analysis, that is what will win, BUT, I would love to see it be true. That is the weakness of the right, even though we know the odds are against it, we believe in redemption, and hope that even a Hillary Clinton can come to see the wisdom of persistence and strength.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Myth of the Rational Voter
Stupid, Ignorant or Biased? President Franklin D. Roosevelt's closest adviser and architect of the New Deal, Harry Hopkins, advised, "Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference." Professor Bryan Caplan, my colleague at George Mason University, sheds some light on Hopkins' observation in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies."
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FDR perfected the idea of buying votes, but never paid the cost because he was smart enough to use devices like Social Security that wouldn't explode until decades after his death, and he was lucky enough to have WWII to end the depression. The full article here is WELL worth reading so I'll copy it in, and it looks like the book will be as well.
We live in a country where the advantages of market vs government control and greater individual responsibility and choice are very evident. We don't need to take our own experience, we can look at England, Ireland, China, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and others and see the same rules play out. No small set of people in a centralized government can be as smart as the votes of millions and billions of people acting in a market. One wouldn't think that actually required as much thought as it seems to, but apparently it does. Since most of the basic biases discussed here are simply liberal biases and the MSM tends to agree with that point of view, the general public hears them stated as "fact" day in and day out.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's closest adviser and architect of the New Deal, Harry Hopkins, advised, "Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference." Professor Bryan Caplan, my colleague at George Mason University, sheds some light on Hopkins' observation in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies." Caplan is far more generous than Hopkins. Instead, he says people harbor economic biases, several of which he discusses. There's the anti-market bias, the failure to believe that market forces determine prices. Many believe that prices are a function of a CEO's intentions and conspiracies. If a CEO wakes up feeling greedy, he'll raise prices. They also believe that profits are undeserving gifts. They fail to see that, at least in open markets, profits are incentives for firms to satisfy customers, find least-cost production methods and move resources from low-valued to high-valued uses.
Caplan is one of George Mason University Economics Department's up-and-coming young scholars. In fact, I'm proud to say, he was hired during my department chairmanship. "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies" is a highly readable and interesting political-economic discussion of why we choose bad policies. Those policies are harmful to the general public but beneficial to particular interest groups who gain from restrictions on peaceable, voluntary exchange. Maybe that's why our founders loathed a democracy and gave us a republic -- which we've lost. |
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