SapereAude

I disagree. How do you explain puns and wordplay, then? Have you never found a pun to be funny only after analyzing the content of the joke? That happens to me relatively regularly.

To use an example, tell me your thought process with this:



My point is really that humor is heavily reliant on analysis, the most fulfilling kind of humor to me being the kind that is the most complex. I see humor as merely a *style* rather than an art form in itself.

By softwareNerd from Software Nerd,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Lots of people decry the supposed inequality of income in the U.S., and claim that the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. For instance, one web-site says the following:


The top 1 percent of Americans received 21.2 % of all personal income in 2005... a big jump from 2004, when the top 1 percent's share was 19 %, and slightly above the 2000 figure of 20.8 %
The bottom 50 percent of Americans got 12.8 %..., down from 13.4 % in 2004 and 13 % in 2000. The problem with this type of analysis is that it is not measuring the same people. Those who were the "top 1%" in 2000 are not the same as those who are the top 1% in 2005. The same for the bottom 50%.

The bottom 50% in any year consists of many people who are earning less for some temporary reason. The analysis above was done from tax-returns. Many of those in the lower 50% were fresh out of college in the first few years of their career. When we look at the lower 50% from 2005, many of the 2000 folk have moved into the upper 50%.

The figures expressed this way can only be of interest to those who are interested in equality as a primary; but egalitarianism in the aggregate is simply pointless. If one wished to figure out whether individuals are truly able to work hard and increase their incomes, then the way to do that is to follow a fixed group of people, from various income groups, across a series of years. This would give one a picture of if and how people are able to progress economically.

The WSJ (Nov 12th, 2007) reports on one such study, that tracked over 90,000 from 1996 through 2005. Here are some of their findings:

The lowest 20% group, were earning 90% more in 2005 than they did in 1996
Over half of those in the lowest 20% group of 1996 had moved to higher quintiles, with almost 25% moving above the median
From the second-lowest quintile, 17% moved down, but over 50% moved to a higher quintile
The article has more.

Yes, I saw one girl being interviewed saying something like this: "We were told to pursue our dreams and to do what we loved doing. So, I did English, and now I cannot get a job, and I have all this debt."
It is sad. Still, that girl ought to look inward and say "What a fool I have been! Shame on me for not teaching myself about what credit is. Shame on me for me for taking a loan that made no economic sense. Shame on me for not educating myself about the type of world in which I live"

Just replace 'philosophy' with ingenuity, creativity, industriousness, whatever, and I think you've got what the death of Steve Jobs means. None of this Wotan gobbledygook.

This replies to just the initial post.


It’s a most peculiar stability where goods that twenty years ago took 100 dollar bills to purchase today take 170.

One could say relative stability, but it would be relative to an even worse performing currency, say one in South America.


This is our standard of stability? If you aren’t wiped out – unadorned with Make-Light Of-It quotes – everything’s OK? Not having been completely wiped out, just robbed somewhat – a mere 40%.

From the linked-to article:
“As 17th-century Latin American silver production dropped, debtors flooded the Dutch economy with debased foreign silver coinage, creating a stagflation risk. The [Dutch] Bank experimented with a bullion standard, converting different coins to paper at fixed exchange rates, but it could never get the rates right for long, triggering Gresham’s Law events where bad money drove out good.”

First off it wasn’t the fault of gold or silver that some crooks debased it – meaning filing off the edges of coins or counterfeiting them using mostly tin or lead.

Second, comparing paper money to coins, paper money is no harder to debase, easier in fact per unit value.

Third, the Dutch Bank didn’t really experiment with gold as money because then there would have been no set rate of conversion to a quantity of paper money. Using gold as money means the users (buyers and sellers) decide how much of what goods an ounce buys, not a government bank.

A bank (or the bank, if it’s a government monopoly) can still issue paper money in this system, but the piece of paper saying “1” on it must mean there really is 1 ounce of gold in the bank’s vault payable to the bearer. (A bank – or the bank – issuing more paper than gold on hand, in this system, would be defrauding each bearer. His loss would be inflation.)

Fourth, only the author of the linked-to article knows what he meant by bad money drives out good when all the paper money is the same. Maybe he meant people abandoned the money in favor of gold, or vice versa. It’s hard to believe vice versa.

I didn’t read much more, so many hours in the day, just skimmed. The introduction is loaded with emotional, over-the-top phrases: “otherworldly purity,” “stomach-churning,” etc. The style of writing is obscure, the above quote about debased coinage is typical.

Just noticed: The article is published by the American Enterprise Institute, a hardcore neoconservative think-tank, if anti-Americanism masquerading as Americanism can be called thoughtful. John Yoo of torture infamy is there, and Michael Ledeen (author of Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago – I’m not making this up) used to be. In 2003 they hosted a dinner celebrating Irving Kristol.

Now they’re debunking gold backed currency. Makes me want to buy more gold, at least in the short term. Even if gold’s a bubble it looks like it has a way to go before it bursts.

I personally enjoy the genre of "difficult to watch" movies. Haneke is a skilled filmmaker although I find his politics loathesome.

A very interesting thing about the Funny Games original and remake is to note the differences in tone despite being reshot frame for frame. Most remarkably- the husband is played differently (again, just in style- the substance is all the same) in the American remake. My personal theory on this is that American audiences would be unlikley to be sympathetic to such a weak man as portrayed in the original.

If you like Haneke I would suggest Gaspar Noe's Irreversible and Lars Von Trier's Antichrist.

There will always be stupid and bigoted people doing stupid and bigoted things.
It is very important when one gets angry at such as this that you can't just be against something.. it is much more powerful to be for something.

If you're looking to counteract or negate the effects of people like this, I'd say the first step to take is to stop thinking in terms of fighting against religion and to begin thinking in terms of being for individual rights and reason.

I'd take it a good deal further and say that if a company could be shown to be causing a neighbor direct physical harm they should be responsible for any and all costs associated with returning the individual to their original state or compensating them directly when that is not possible. In fact, that is was our legal system does. Of course, you need to actually prove your case against an individual entity. So this is only accomplished in a specific and objective way.

What you seem more interested in, though, is to avoid the impossible task of tracing actual harm and lump all businesses into one category and label it "damaging to our health." This would affect software companies with 15 employees and virtually no "carbon(or any other) footprint" and large car factories with thousands of employees bunches of smokestacks responsible for this same harm. Doing so, vaguely holding all businesses and wealth producing individuals responsible for every harm that occurs to anyone is capricious and myopic in nature.

This could be fair, but first you would need to add up all of the values they produce and subtract the cost from them. So for example, the car factory where you purchase your car might be able to be shown to produce enough poisonous fumes to take 5 years off of your average lifespan. So if that was determined to be 100 years based on your healthy lifestyle and long lived grandparents then they would be responsible for compensating you, at least financially for 5% of your life...or roughly $165k in the US plus some reasonably determined amount for the emotional cost of that lost year. But then we would need to factor in your gains from being able to drive a car rather than walk to places which would amount to around 14 years of your life or around $462k. Also we would need to add in the lessened cost of all of the material items you consumed due to the mechanization of jobs over your whole life so, maybe $974k for that. Also some reasonably determined amount for the emotional value gained by having access to so many products and services that would be unavailable without those dirty factories. We can just say that those cancel out, for the sake of argument. So...$1.436 million - $165,000 comes out to $1,271,000 that you would owe to them. You know, if you wanted to be fair.

As a side note, this myopic-ness is one of the most frustrating things that I routinely come across in interacting with leftists. Opportunity cost is impossible to measure and always massive. So taking 50% out of everyone's pay has a cost that will end in being orders of magnitude higher than those actual dollars because there is no telling what businesses may have gotten started, what ideas could have been pursued, or what technologies invented had that money stayed in the capable, productive hands of them that created it.

There will always be stupid and bigoted people doing stupid and bigoted things.
It is very important when one gets angry at such as this that you can't just be against something.. it is much more powerful to be for something.

If you're looking to counteract or negate the effects of people like this, I'd say the first step to take is to stop thinking in terms of fighting against religion and to begin thinking in terms of being for individual rights and reason.

In logic, we can discount certain ideas immediately because they commit the fallacy of self-exclusion. This idea, no doubt having good intentions, after all you are only trying to preserve freedom and the prevalence of liberal ideas, excludes itself because you are advocating violating rights in the name of protecting rights. Expropriating property in the name of ensuring that property is protected doesn't make any sense, and therefore abandons the use of reason it was supposed to instill in the populace.

But there are further problems. The main idea itself seems to stem from a mistrust that the market can provide education or that market education will lack in liberal ideas. But if the market can't provide a populace educated in the use of reason and instilled with a liberal culture, why is it assumed that engaging in a policy that explicitly flouts the laws of logic and the consistency very liberal ideas it is supposed to protect is going to result in the very liberal culture that was otherwise assumed to be impossible? If the populace doesn't embrace liberal ideas, it's hard to see why engaging in explicitly anti-liberal ideas is going to change their minds. Are we to believe that the public would be entirely unable to "use their consciousness to reason" unless you take their money from them and spend it for them? If the public is incapable of making rational choices, then how this same public is expected to suddently be able to make the right choices in running a public education system is unclear.

In addition to the false assumption that engaging in illogical and anti-liberal policies would fix these perceived defects, the original assumption itself that (1) we would all be stupid, irrational, and incapable of making choices without public education, and that (2) the public will embrace anti-liberal ideas without public education, is not justified. It comes from the Marxian doctrine of historical development of capitalism, in which there is a growing number of poor, uneducated, unemployed proletariat, continually pushing against the verge of starvation as wages fall lower and lower, and all wealth is centralized into the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists. The dissatisfaction with the capitalist mode of production increases as "class consciousness" develops until such a level is reached that the working class demands social change. But this is nonsensical pseudo-science, as it is based on the fallacious economics, such as the "iron law of wages," and incoherent philosophical mumbo-jumbo, such as dialectical materialism. There is no reason to believe either (1) or (2), nor that the market is incapable of providing education services, nor that this in itself would result in more anti-liberal ideas being prevalent.

Not to stop there, we can further criticize its method. You say that school choice is necessary, that privately owned schools are a necessary, and that the current curriculum is unacceptable. Well, if you plan on retaining choice in competition between producers, then how are you going to allocate your tax funds? You can't give it to any of the producers of education services, because that would be choosing for the consumers, and favoring one producer over another. Suppose, you say, let's give it to the consumers of education instead, and let them use it as a voucher to choose. But this doesn't make any sense. You are taxing the people, i.e. taking money away from them, then giving them the tax money back in order to spend it on education. What is the point in that? Why not just let them keep it in the first place and spend it themselves?

But they might not spend it on education, or they might not spend it on education in liberal ideas, you say. But, you say choice is a must. This, again, contradicts itself. They are free to choose, but not to choose something you don't like. Suppose some Muslims send their children to strict Islamic schooling. Suppose some Christians send their children to orthodox schools. No, in the name of liberalism and freedom of choice, I am going to forcibly redirect your values and choices to where I want them to go. There will be less money for each individual's values, and instead the money will be taxed and redirected towards Nigel's values. But I only want to ensure liberal ideas! You say. "We are for free enterprise!" Dr. Ferris screams. But this amounts to saying that you want to seize money that doesn't belong to you, in order to dragoon the children in government run, or government approved schools, for the sake of instilling in them liberal ideas. I'm going to brainwash your children to be free, damn it! Whether you like it or not! In the name of freedom! Pay up or go to jail! The manifest incoherence and self-contradictory nature of this idea, should be readily apparent.

Parents, in their role as consumers, are as sovereign as they are in the software and computer industries. A system in which families decide the best educational vehicle for each of their children and in which entrepreneurs, eager to earn profits, compete to best satisfy the demands on them is the only kind of education system compatible with the liberal ideas of freedom and choice.

People could. And we would all be free to disassociate ourselves from them, to publicly let it be known that they are abusers of defenseless animals. To warn people to not let those others take care of their children or to watch their pets. We could privately censure them for those despicable acts, we could organize and boycott their business if we so choose; because although their acts would be permissible in a free society, they are still morally reprehensible, disgusting, and cruel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/opinion/the-new-resentment-of-the-poor.html?_r=1&hp

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

She also supported legalized abortion, which you oppose, and unlike her pronouncements on homosexuality she considered abortion a central issue in Objectivism, going so far as to urge her readers to vote against Reagan in 1976 because he opposed abortion: "I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him...This description ["a conservative in the worst sense of that word"] applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion."



Neither are your views on abortion.



You disagree with Ayn Rand on abortion yet consider yourself a defender of her work and beliefs. You should extend the same courtesy to those who disagree with you about homosexuality.

[Edited to add link.]

Sexual attraction is problematic. Even heterosexual men do not agree on what is sexually attractive. One often sees some of the oddest couples. I've seen guys that weight 300 pounds with beautiful young women who weigh 100 pounds. Or very tall guys with petite girls. Who can explain the attraction?

In my view, most women are bi-sexual. Women do things that "straight men" would be very reluctant to do, like kissing, holding hands, sleeping in the same bed, trying on each others clothes and shoes, etc. Women consider this touchy-feely stuff to be normal, and many experiment with doing lots more. At the same time, many men who are in declared heterosexual relationships are messing around with gay men, and even gay prostitutes. Sexuality, like most behaviors, falls along a continuum. I think that there are blatant male homosexuals that one can identify as they walk by and who are open about their lifestyle, while others are more subtle. My tennis partner is gay, but not blantantly so, and I have had meals with his partner and his friends some of whom are real screamers. I wondered what the gay guys were thinking about me being the only straight guy at the table. I don't think that it is valid to generalize about lifestyles and roles. I don't have firsthand knowledge of what gays do, and I'm not in the least bit curious about it either. I also don't go to clubs and pick up women because night life doesn't appeal to me, and I don't drink alcohol. Different strokes for different folks.

If the act of male homosexual behavior is perverted, why then are so many men and women into anal sex? They are doing what male homosexuals are doing, just with different gender partners. Homeosexuality: what is it? Is anyone who ever had a same sex experience a homosexual or a latent one? Personally, I think that if one experiments that way one is bi-sexual, and I wouldn't even think that that might be something interesting to try. I also wouldn't climb a mountain or visit underdeveloped countries. Those experiences do not appeal to me. So, who is the normal one? Most people like to go to the beach. I don't. Most people drink alcohol. I don't. Most people wants kids and pets. Not me. So, do we say that the norm is just a statistic? The answers are not readily evident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onthology

The Internet: use it.

Check your local Rite Aid bargain bins...

In serious though, Googles are my friend: all internet points to this fall, and amazon.com will notify you if you sign up:
http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Part-Taylor-Schilling/dp/B004Z29XAC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1312836224&sr=8-3
http://www.prweb.com/releases/AtlasShruggedMovie/DVD/prweb8626359.htm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/07/atlas-shrugged-part-i-coming-to-dvd-and-blu-ray-in-the-fall.html

I fear that the normalcy bias will be the undoing of America.

I don't know whether to be horrified at the ignorance of this statement or to congratulate you on having managed to live a life that has left you unaware of what physical agony is like.

"Rational" is the word you keep missing when Objectivists talk about self interest. The self interest of a plant is less than the self interest of an animal, the self interest of an animal is less than the self interest of a human. When Ayn Rand talks about a man she is talking about a rational consciousness. The self interest necessary for the “Rational” to survive.

A human being is not a natural resource, he is not coal to be mined, he is not a crop to be harvested, he is not to be taken out of context of his nature. His nature requires freedom in order to live up to his highest potential, his mind can not function as a slave. The concept of slavery has only been eradicated in the last hundred years. The concept of being egomaniacal and the concept of altruism are remnants of that slave mentality. A man who is interested in himself does not need to enslave, he does not need to allow anyone else to enslave him. Why should Objectivists leave the word self interest in the custody of slave drivers?

Objectivism is not for those who wish to be slaves, nor for those who wish to enslave. It reveals to a Rational Man that unearned guilt, unjustified fear, and his consent are the only things a parasite needs to keep him a slave. It teaches man that he is not a helpless plaything of forces beyond his control, he is responsible for feeding his own destroyers.

What you may be wondering is if it is worth your time to read about Objectivism. An Objectivist doesn't want you to take anything from any authority but the rationality of your own mind. I could tell you that the 64 pages of “This Is John Gault Speaking” in Atlas Shrugged are 64 of the most important pages written in human history, but why should you take it on my authority?

I am wondering if it is worth my time to encourage you to read one book, no one can read the book for you, and no Objectivist wants to waste their time on someone who doesn't want to invest their own time on Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand said it so eloquently, and thoroughly, and she already spent her time saying it, it seems redundant to spend our time saying it.

The six books I have read of hers over and over again have expanded my consciousness. I am so much more powerful and alive, it is tragic to me to remember the time before I had them. No one can give that to you, it is something you have to earn.

As a soldier there are certain things that come to mind with regard to conscription.

1. Although some conscript armies are fairly skilled they still rely on a corps of professionals to make it all work. There is no such thing as a purely conscripted force. In the end the Conscript = cannon fodder and the skilled trades and backbone (leadership) of the unskilled trades rely on a professional troops.

2. In the Canadian Forces it takes about 1.5 years to produce a "trained" armoured Trooper. The period of conscription for most armies is between 2 and 3 years. So by the time the soldier is trained he has already served 3/4 to 1/2 of his service... He does not and will not ever become as proficient as the volunteer.

3. Weapons systems continue to get more and more sophisticated requiring a higher and higher level of training.

From a political/philosophical POV:

1. The populace that does not think it necessary to support the freedoms it enjoys through voluntary service does not deserve to enjoy the freedoms it has.

2. If you have to force people to support the state then the state does not deserve to exist.

3. When it comes down to bullets and bayonets you can not force a man to fight for his country, this is true if he volunteers or if he is forced to volunteer, though obviously more so for the latter.

Conscription is a tool of the statist, of the nationalist and of the tyrant. It has no place in the lives of free men on in the ideals of a country founded on the principal of individual rights... ever.

If a nation is going to exist to champion individual rights first and foremost, then it must do so with not only the consent of the governed but with their action and will as well.

I don't believe that total objection to the fundamentals of Objectivism qualifies as "honest disagreement."
If a person reads Rand at all, he should understand Rand's positions on fundamental principles.
Presenting counter arguments presented by opposers of Rand's philosoophy should be considered out of place here.

I can't get behind Ron Paul.

How can I seriously believe that a man who doesn't believe I have the right to my own body will stand up for my other rights?
Obama doesn't believe I own the fruits of my labor, therefore doesn't believe I own my body.
Ron Paul doesn't believe I own the functions of my body, at least as they pertain to how a woman may experience them, so again, I am left with no right to my own being.

They can both go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

I can't get behind Ron Paul.

How can I seriously believe that a man who doesn't believe I have the right to my own body will stand up for my other rights?
Obama doesn't believe I own the fruits of my labor, therefore doesn't believe I own my body.
Ron Paul doesn't believe I own the functions of my body, at least as they pertain to how a woman may experience them, so again, I am left with no right to my own being.

They can both go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

I can't get behind Ron Paul.

How can I seriously believe that a man who doesn't believe I have the right to my own body will stand up for my other rights?
Obama doesn't believe I own the fruits of my labor, therefore doesn't believe I own my body.
Ron Paul doesn't believe I own the functions of my body, at least as they pertain to how a woman may experience them, so again, I am left with no right to my own being.

They can both go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks for the replies.
Welcome any further references anyone can think of.

I've been reading a bit of Hume lately and while he is wrong about a great many things I really do enjoy the way he writes.