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CrowEpistemologist

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Everything posted by CrowEpistemologist

  1. I don't know if this has been said here already, but the point I made a while ago about the absurdity of bringing up our chromosomes is that most of them are used once and then forever ignored. In other words, a chromosome might say, "when it comes time to grow the ear, make it an attached one". Then, for the next 100 or so years of the organism's life, that chromosome has nothing to say about anything. It's just there. Hence it's idiotic imagine that chromosomes are these active things in your body like midi-chlorians or thetans. The fact that they are in every cell is completely meaningless in practicality. Their powers are not magic.
  2. Exactly. You couldn't have made my point any better for me. Yes, the intellectual change necessary to affect real change in our society is going to take a long long time. It will start in Universities. The "Austrian route" is a dead-end, and ultimately makes things much worse in the long run. It reinforces the premise that economics should drive politics, which in turn will only lead to totalitarianism because, given that premise, you cannot win an argument for freedom with anybody with half a brain. Now, none of this stops latter-day Republicans and t-partiers and Libertarians from trying. Insofar as they try, they look like unreasonable idiots--which in turn makes us all look like unreasonable idiots... If you read Paul Krugman (and I think people should) you will see that his only problem is his basic premises, and he is remarkably consistent and rational otherwise--far more so than virtually all of those who oppose him qua economics. This is making Paul look very very good in the eyes of anybody with a dedication to reason, which for the long term cause of freedom is very very bad.
  3. Let's talk about another philosophical subject: evasion. I think it's obvious to everybody that LP (and his idolateurs) knows nothing about biology despite the fact that he felt the need to talk about it at length. Now, it's not above any of us, I think, to talk out of our ass occasionally. You oversimplify a subject based on only a smattering of knowledge, make a bunch of assumptions that turn out to be wrong, and end up in a place that's completely and utterly disconnected from reality. Often this is driven by a narrative of disconnected abstractions telling you what the reality must be like in order to coincide with that narrative. In this case, the floating abstraction is, "transgenders are immoral", then "facts" were brought in to support this narrative--including facts from various and complex areas of science including physiology and biology. Now, the more honest among us would simply fess up and say, "sorry, talking out of my ass". The less honest simply keep digging a deeper and deeper hole...
  4. Fascinating. I don't know much about molecular biology, but I know enough to know you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I mean, yes, you've definitely explained to us that you've read all of the works of Rand and Peikoff and obviously that background should give you a very strong education in molecular biology, but you haven't demonstrated it here. Yes, you have chromosomes in every cell. No, they generally don't do anything by just sitting there--the cell needs to ask the question and almost all of the cells in your body "don't care" what the answer is. Also, there these things called "mutations" which generally speaking make chromosomes completely non-predictive at the margin. Anyhow, I suggest you re-read all of Ayn Rand's works on molecular biology. It won't take very long, I promise.
  5. Well, note that even if you prove Keynesian economics will "work" forever, they would still be wrong because they depend on the idea that people owe their neighbors a living. This is the problem I have with many Objectivist discussions about economics: there's a defense of Austrian economics where none is needed and an equally pointless attack on Keynes qua economics. I think this sort of thing gets Objectivists in a lot of trouble. Proper economists need to start with the idea of individual rights and work from there. Arguing from the other direction is like using an argument for the gold standard to "prove" the existence of gold.
  6. @Snerd: Krugman has bitched and whined about the original stimulus being way too small since before they even passed it. I'm sure he too saw what you are pointing out here. When I run all the scenarios, I see Obama squeaking a win in Nov. (mostly because Romney is just so horrendously weak as a candidate and he has nothing significantly different to offer the voters). As for fiscal policy, it's worth noting how Grover Norquist has built a water-tight big dam around the flood of new taxes--but of course has done nothing whatsoever about the water coming in (he assumes that Congress will "do something" hardy har). What does this mean? Visualize all Republicans who signed his no-tax pledge breaking their vows all at once as they will have no choice and there will be safety in numbers. Then that will be the end of Grover Norquist as a political force. Then we'll be back to the world where Republicans will raise taxes just like Democrats do. Fiscally--Ron Paul and the t-partiers notwithstanding--I don't see any significant difference between the Ds and the Rs. If the Rs take power they will want to stay there--which means doubling down on the hand-outs. We've just seen What well have when this is all over is the "Christian Redneck Party" and the "NYCali Elitist Party"--the overall difference being more to do with personality than ideology, which each picking narrow hot button issues to side on for all the special-interests.
  7. The core problem with this exchange is that Krugman is right and Paul is wrong--if you cede Krugman's core premises that it's okay to appropriate other people's money are true. The problem is, Paul doesn't go there. The easiest way to get rid of Paul Krugman is to bring up another economy that "worked" really well such as Egypt under the pharaohs--no unemployment there! Amazing! The other problem with refuting Krugman the way that most latter-day Republicans do is that he's absolutely right when he says that austerity (lower government spending) will tank the economy as a whole in the short (or even medium) run. Coming off years of crack cocaine in the form of stimulus spending is never never going to just be a lot of fun like the Republicans would have you believe. My fear here is that the Krugmans of the world are going to have their day (and they are having it now in terms of all of the current numbers) when they show that all of the promises of immediate recovery turn out to be false. Krugman remains quite confident even given a political climate that has turned against him and a giant PR disaster for Keynesian policies with the failed $700b stimulus package...
  8. You should also mention valuing someone as important as Aristotle, too. Oh yes, and Copernicus. And Pascal. And Darwin. And Einstein. And Paul Revere. And Bill Gates. And Marie Curie. And Abraham Lincoln. And George Carlin. And Ray Kroc. And Issac Newton. And Cesare Beccaria. And the Write Brothers. And....
  9. I've never loved Jesus. I met LP, though. In person, about 25 years ago, I had a long conversation with him about many things. Seemed like a nice enough guy, and we talked about theory of music as it relates to aesthetics--but it was a short conversation. He knew very little about the subject and said so. I guess that was "before" he discovered that, "an Objectivist philosopher or even a long-term Objectivist can give one the principles to guide one in how to think about the facts prevalent to the more specific issues". He then had a certain grounded reason that he is showing to me that he does not have anymore. Based on the evidence I've read here that thing I once observed he had is lost--which is what I meant by "it". The one enormous caveat to these conversations however is that we are not having them with LP himself but rather his idolateurs. Based on what I observed long ago directly and based on reading LP books and hearing almost every taped lecture of his, these conversations would go very differently if the genuine article were here arguing his own points, I think...
  10. @Wrath: Yep, Bush assumed that after we "liberated" Iraq they would drop 1000 years of traditions and become a moderate middle-class country. How did that go? You bring up a good point that I left an implied one: insofar as the rights of our citizens is the correct yardstick, the actual implementation of how you secure those rights in the most advantageous way possible might be a tad more complicated than, "bomb the shit out of everybody". In other words, not attacking an enemy does not imply sanction, it merely implies that you don't find the trade-off worth while at that particular moment--and that "moment" might last decades or even forever. More subtle still is going beyond ceasing the attack and simply paying people off or trying other measures. This too might be a viable tactic that is more advantageous to us than war. Here too you are not doing it as a moral sanction, but for the purely selfish reason that such a course is the easiest way to dispatch a threat. And yes, this might backfire. Might. The answer is found in the particular context, not in some limitless generalization. Philosophy only tells you what is and is not an enemy, not how to fight it.
  11. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/04/26/471730/paul-ryan-ayn-rand/ He apparently just noticed that she didn't believe in God... The Republican war on reason continues...
  12. Clearly agents Peikoff and Miovas are on the job now. I feel so much safer... They should weigh in on how principles of philosophy should interact with current events, as I did above. Most of the time philosophy alone fails to offer a comprehensive solution, but rather only the basis of one. Ayn Rand, for instance, advocated an entire form of government to which she offered almost no implementation details as she considered this not in the realm of philosophy but rather law. Yet she found ways of occupying her time, for instance these experts from TNL/AIR, The Chicken's Homecoming (I encourage readers to get the full context): "If movie stars give out interviews criticizing military tactics, no one takes it seriously. [...] The nature of our foreign policy is a proper concern of philosophy; the strategy of our military operations is not. [etc. etc.] " I'm sorry you find your stated profession boring. Perhaps you should look for a new one.
  13. I've always sorta done this myself... It's a good idea... My writing method for a longer post or email etc. is to write down a "stream-of-consciousness" and then go back and summarize it my head and edit it down. The whole process--for me at least--is faster than trying to write it correctly the first time...
  14. The other day it was medicine, now it's national security. Yes, the old Doctor was a wise one once, and I have listened to his lecture series in its entirety. But he is now, plainly, losing it. The issue with Islam and our national security is not a philosophical issue itself. Sure, we all agree that you have a right to your life and our government should protect that right. Nobody disputes that. Now, are there an infinite number of ways of going about that protection? Yes. And deciding those ways is up to interpreting and incredibly complex context--wherein you take the sum total of your current knowledge and make a decision based on that knowledge. What LP seems to have lost track of is that he doesn't have more knowledge than every being on the planet. He is not omnipotent, etc. Yes, if you ask me I will give you an opinion on things like the Islamic Mosque near Ground Zero, but my opinion would be an assessment of the physical risk based on facts. That these are Islamists is something I'd take into account, yes. There are many other things that should be taken into account as well--including many that I personally don't know--and perhaps some experts do. Those experts are known as, for instance, the FBI. If the FBI says that the Mosque (or whatever else) is a threat--and they present a rational case for that--then abolish it. If not, not. I'm not going to weigh in any further than that until I feel I can go toe to toe with the sum of knowledge of the FBI in this context--to do so would be foolish, and or if you like, dishonest.
  15. The bad part of the Republicans arguing in this fashion is that they are often in the most obvious terms, wrong. Taxing the rich in many cases would make the economy "better" in some narrow ways, and when the Republicans make up falsehoods to deny this (while maintaining the same false premises), they simply distance themselves further from reality and reason. They basically find themselves at war with reason, and the Democrats appear to be the reasonable rational party. We don't want "lower taxes for the rich", we want a government that is paid for in ways that are as voluntary as possible and we want to eliminate the idea that you owe others a living. The Republicans seem a million miles away from this. Speaking of reality though, I sometimes think Objectivists need to "get real" as well when it comes to the Republicans. The fact is that they are not going to carry out the request of the above posting any time soon. In a war, you fight on fronts where you can win and abandon fronts where you can't. Turning the Republicans into Objectivists is, in my opinion, not feasible in the next 20 years at least. However, a war on reason is even more fundamental than a war on our pocket-books. Reason is the only thing that's going to get us out of this mess in the long run. We cannot lie our way into freedom. As such, my own affinity is the side which looks the most reasonable, which may at any given time be either democrat or republican, but with Fox News and Rush and Glenn and Mama Grizzly being the spokespersons for the Republicans, the brains seem to have shifted to the Democrats for now...
  16. So we (they) all think we're $700T richer? That's in US dollars, right?
  17. Interesting. Can you explain who, exactly, are the counter-parties to this debt? You're saying the Federal government owes somebody $700T: who is that somebody? Where do they live? What are they going to do with all of that money? Maybe those super-beings will be nice to us and loan us some of it back? Seriously though, (because nobody here was being serious before, to be clear), you have to remember that the "national debt" is not at all like your own credit card debt, its more like borrowing some of your own money from savings. Our "national debt" is money we borrow, collectively, from ourselves for the most part (yes, a lot is borrowed from other countries but we also balance that with loaning them a lot of money so for the most part its us borrowing from us). Again, none of this is to say that things are hunky-dorey, but its just retarded to get out doomsday numbers like this...
  18. Me? No... I think I said above, the $700b stimulus didn't work in that we're not out of what seems to continue to be a broad-based contraction. Insofar as it didn't work, that makes the idea of "stimulus" look bad. Again, compare this to the way FDR ended up looking (and yes, I know, it was about WWII and lowering our standard of living to near-slave status, but the perception at the time was that FDR and his stimulus put everybody back to work and saved the day). And meanwhile, the European response (remember those socialists over there across the pond?) as been austerity for the countries that have held it together (a notable exception is Hungary, but that is plain-old crisis-driven dictatorship as the "socialist" message there is not being used to much effect there).
  19. Not in any huge way, no. Recall that the response to this Depression, unlike the last one, had a relatively lukewarm response from the stimulus perspective. It was much smaller than the leftists wanted, and it basically didn't work--making the whole idea of stimulus look very bad and making people very adverse to trying it ever again. Contrast this, for instance, with the absolutely massive changes across our entire society that FDR imposed (SS and Medicare aka 50% of the Federal budget, and 95% of the part we actually don't want ). The response in Europe to the latter-day downturns there has been austerity, not massive government stimulus and expansion. So no, based on the responses to the crises, I'd say the response shows a pretty significant shift toward smaller governments if for no other reason than the "default" response has not been implemented. To be sure, I'm not in any way trying to say everything is fine, but rather trying to be a bit more accurate about where and what the enemy is... Fighting the last Depression's war will only lead to defeat...
  20. That's just insane. Maybe I'm taking everybody too literally? Maybe it's like we're in totalitarian dictatorship, but by that you mean "much worse than it really ought to be"? Personally I like to use my terms exactly. When I think of the term socialism, I think of actual government ownership of the means of production, not a system so annoying and inconvenient that it seems that way sometimes. If you call what we have now socialism, what do you call what Hungary or Venezuela or Cuba has? Ultra-ultra-ultra-super-duper Socialism? What we have, defined correctly, is a mixed economy, or a welfare state if you like. We can argue about where it may go in the future if we don't stop it (and if, for instance, we all decide to live in a fantasy land where terms no longer have meaning), but the reality of the here and now is that this is not totalitarianism, and insofar as things like the iPad and the Tesla car and Facebook are allowed to come into being, there's no way we can call this "socialism".
  21. Yes, our privately-owned corporations are in varying degrees or regulation, some heavy, some almost not at all. That's a far, far cry from government-controlled and/or owned. Get real. I find people throwing their hands up and saying, "we're under socialist dictatorship now" defeatist. Success in this battle will come from laser-focused correction not blurry-eyed despair.
  22. You really don't? Can you name one major industry in the USA that has been nationalized? If so I must have been in the can while that happened, because I missed it. Folks, over-blowing our problems is just as false as any sort of falsehood, and falsehoods are the enemy of truth, and it's only the truth and reason which will lead our country to freedom. Imagining that we are somehow Soviet Russia or that Obama is some sort of Communist that will soon nationalize everything is just lame. There are plenty of things to be concerned about right now in our country without making up a bunch of problems that don't exist.
  23. ... they felt a need to weigh in on this retarded stuff. In the case of: "People With Brains vs. The T-Party", the defense rests....
  24. Most t-party people I've seen on TV couldn't possibly understand the first thing about the Constitution and "freedom" in any rational way. For them representing that cause of liberty which apparently consists of being unable to perform simple math. How does this further the cause? There's nothing "common sense" about wanting lower taxes for yourself yet the same exact government. It's just moronic blabbering, and insofar as it occupies the same space as real advocates for liberty, it is very much a setback for liberty, and does more damage than any organized call for socialism could ever do. The t-party people are absolutely the same as the "occupy" people in terms of their effect. Neither have any sort of ideology at all--but at least the Occupy people have the (albeit bizarre) honesty to proclaim they stand for nothing in particular except "anger". T-party people are Occupy people with better costumes. Neither have anything fundamental to say, and both are either desperately pointless or looking to cash in on the same. One is vaguely democrat and the other is vaguely Republican. I've alluded to this in (another thread), but I'll reiterate: these days I have much more hope for real rational change coming from the "left" side of the world than the "right" as the latter has turned decidedly against reason in any form. If I have to choose between higher taxes with reason still existing and lower taxes but we have to all pretend that squares are round, then I'll choose reason any day of the week...
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