Here is an expressive cartoon of Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein debating the reach of reason, It is followed by quotes and my devil's advocate.
How could a reasoned argument logically entail the ineffectiveness of reasoned argument? Look, you're trying to persuade us of Reason's impotence, but you're not threatening us or bribing us, suggesting that we resolve the issue with a show of hands or or a beauty contest. By the very act of trying to reason us into your position, you're conceding reason's potency.
Actually, I don't see any problem with reasoning that we shouldn't use reason. The object of our reason in each case is different. Maybe only sometimes we should use reason (like to reason that we shouldn't use reason on something else).
Suppose you hear me threaten my children. So you come up to me and you say, "you'd better stop it or I'll call the police." I arrogantly shake my head, "You're going to threaten me to stop threatening my child? Don't you see the contradiction in that?" Well, no, because the objects of our threats are different.
It's reason that has the push to widen that circle of empathy. Every one of the humanitarian developments that you mentioned originated with thinkers who gave reasons for why some practice was indefensible. They demonstrated that the way people treated some particular group of others was logically inconsistent with the way they insisted on being treated themselves...
I hear this idea a lot. Many have convinced themselves that compassion has somehow been rationally justified. That "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the solution to an equation. But it's really not. It's no more rationally justified than other moral tenants like anti-homosexuality, environmentalism, or adultery.
It is not a contradiction to want to be treated differently from how you want to treat other groups. I'm sorry, but it's not. If one human can be treated one way, it doesn't mean all humans ought to be treated that way as well. You'd have to assert some version of human rights or dignity and then assert that it matters in the respect we're talking about, but none of that is self-evident or reasoned for. It is taken for granted.
Steven Pinker, a favorite intellectual of mine and humanist, equity feminist, atheist, Jewish, psychology professor and linguist, has been the object of slander by the political left. Pinker's crucifiction is carried out by means of social media ignorance leviathan.
it’s actually a worthwhile episode to unpack, because it highlights a disturbing, worsening tendency in social media in which tribal allegiances are replacing shared empirical understandings of the world. Or maybe “subtribal” is the more precise, fitting term to use here. It’s one thing to say that left and right disagree on simple facts about the world — this sort of informational Balkanization has been going on for a while and long predates Twitter. What social media is doing is slicing the salami thinner and thinner, as it were, making it harder even for people who are otherwise in general ideological agreement to agree on basic facts about news events.
If you're the least bit familiar with Steven Pinker, you know that he's nothing close to being a right-winger. I mean, if Steven Pinker is "alt-right" then so is 80% of the population.
But Steven Pinker has also been known to stray from the left-wing script. But I guess if you're not a perfect liberal, you are no liberal at all.
Yeah, sure, why would you want this guy on your side?
Change doesn't come from on high. If you're waiting for congress then you're gonna be waiting a long time. Even a pretty capable well meaning president is only going to be able to take a country so far without ordinary people across the country being engaged, being involved, being active.
They also talk about atheists in politics, GMOs (where Bill Maher is rather uninformed), bias in the media. He is especially interesting on the military industrial complex.
A man has a machine with a button on it. If you press the button, there is a one in five million chance that you will die immediately; otherwise, nothing happens. He offers you some money to press the button once. What do you do? Do you refuse to press it for any amount? If not, how much money would convince you to press the button?
One in five million is pretty much your chance of dying from a car accident every five minutes that you're driving. Choosing to drive for five minutes is exactly equivalent to choosing to press the man's button. If you said you wouldn't press the button for fifty thousand dollars, then in theory if someone living five minutes away offers to give you fifty thousand dollars no strings attached, you should refuse the offer because you're too afraid to drive to zir house.
He goes on to talk about the implications on healthcare.
I've believed in the limited value of human life for a long time. It's assumed in the standard economic analysis of risk, and the implications of believing otherwise leads to insane decisions. But what's remarkable about SlateStar is how well he articulates it.
I've always liked Jesse Eisenberg. The guy oozes intelligence just in the way the guy speaks. After the interview I realized that it's not just outstanding acting, the guy is actually really smart.
I am an actor so I know the difference between a scene that't actable and a scene that is well written. Those are two different things. Of course, the best kind of scenes overlap and have both. But oftentimes there will be a scene that's really well written, or a play that's very poetic and interesting, but totally unactable. There's no way to get behind the psychology of the illusion of the creation of the character on the page.
He carves up the world into categories the way every smart person I've ever met would.
Jesse on Donald Trump:
I'm impressed by his flow in public speaking. It's a hard thing to do. He's able to speak in public in a way that feels natural, irrespective of the content, and that's really important. What I do as an actor is try to make fictional things seem real and natural. So I understand the difficulting with the nuance in that. Politicians can do it really well, and he does it well.
Jesse on work ethic:
As a Jewish person who feels like, "well I could have assimilated into the white hegemonic culture, and be totally comfortable, and go out to the hamptons and go golfing, I don't want to do that. Because I feel like I will, to quote Woody Allen, "Ripen and then Rot."
How does he keep himself from growing to comfortable and assimiliating into the "white hegemonic culture?
Making myself miserable occasionally. We don't go to country clubs, my family doesn't even go on vacation. It's just not in us to go to a place that's warm and sit down for a day. It would never occur to us.
Ezra Klein observes that Jesse absorbs the world cerebrally, and it really shows in the interview. Listen to the whole thing.
I frequently hear lamentations over celebrity politicians (Opera, Trump, Franken, Arnold). But it seems like the problem is that the qualities that make a great performer such a great politician doesn't translate to good governance. You could ban actors from politics and you will still get politicians that are both suited for acting and poor governors.
According to Genesis 1, God created something on each day and called it good. On the sixth day he created men and women and he didn't call it good, he called it very good. The popular Christian interpretation is that people are very different and very special in the context of creation. Maybe because people have free will, they have sentience, they have souls or immortality, but whatever it is, is an important distinguisher that makes us very good rather than just ordinary good.
I don't really have a problem with that. But let me propose something further.
When God creates people he also gives them a mission. He tells them to be fruitful and multiply, to have dominion over it, and subdue it. This is the beginning of the process of transformation, perhaps from the garden of Eden to a Kingdom of God. Christians call this the Creationist Mandate. The mandate is in this context that he calls this creation very good, implying that what he told men and women to do will transform creation from good to very good.
After all, it says that God saw all of what he had made and called it very good. All is an important word here. He's not just talking about people. The things that he formerly called ordinary good he is now calling very good after he creates man and told him what to do. It does not say all on any of the other days.
He created man, told them what to do, and he's like, "now, because of what man is going to do, this whole thing is going to be really awesome."
Of course in the biblical narrative, that process was interrupted by sin. But does it make sense for an all powerful creator to have to resort to plan B? No, that kind of God would solve the problem and still accomplish what he sets out to accomplish.
I haven't been blogging much the last 5 days. A part of the reason why is because I've been absorbed in Jordan Peterson's online content. Another reason has more to do with work.
(The “structural oppression” model is false, by the way. Homosexual male harassment is more prevalent than the percent gay men in the population would imply, suggesting that gay men harass men more often than straight men harass women. The obvious explanation for gender differences in harassment has always been that men constitute 80% of sexual harassers for the same reason they constitute 83% of arsonists, 81% of car thieves, and 85% of burglars. Since most men are straight, most victims are women; when the men happen to be gay, they victimize men. Men probably get victimized disproportionately often compared to the straight/gay ratio because society views harassing women as horrible but harassing men as funny. If this theory is right then it’s men who are the structural victims, which means it’s your harassment that doesn’t count and you’re the ones who shouldn’t be allowed to talk about it. The “it only matters if it’s structural” game isn’t so much fun now, is it?)
I think Bill Maher is right. The liberal brand has become whiny and preachy, and the best thing they can do is start talking about the issues again.
Content warning: it's HBO
The video hits it's high point with this point:
Cultural Appropriation, the idea that white people shouldn't adopt things from other ethnic groups. How dare you mix and match cultures to produce something new. Where do you think you are? Some kind of melting pot?
Trump voters who complain that liberals think they’re all a bunch of deplorable racists should maybe reflect on why the White House staff think Trump calling African countries "shitholes" will “resonate” with them.
The Republican position, as I understand it, is that Trump didn’t say Africa was a shithole whose people are all undesirables but it’s true that African is a shithole whose people are all undesirables and if he *did* say it that’s good because his base likes racist tirades.
The anniversary of the devastating earthquake 8 years ago is a day to remember the tragedy, honor the resilient people of Haiti, & affirm America’s commitment to helping our neighbors. Instead, we‘re subjected to Trump’s ignorant, racist views of anyone who doesn’t look like him.
The sheer racism of the comments would be shocking coming from any other president. The heartbreaking, and terrifying, thing is that it’s not the least bit surprising coming from Donald Trump.
Trump’s “shithole” comments were the most openly racist by a president in decades, historians say
The article goes on to quote 2 historians, but makes it seem like historians have some kind of consensus. Moreover, the article mentions how Trump made some "vague denial" of racism Friday Morning, when the president actually said, "I'm the least racist person." I've never heard a more overt and explicit denial of racism, but it never stops these people from using the word "openly."
So here we are again. Trump says an anti-politically correct thing, and the media whips themselves into a frenzy about it. Now more than ever you should read, You're Still Crying Wolf.
thanks to media coverage of President Trump’s alleged use of the word, they will from now on be aware that being called a “shithole” place to live is a racist insult, which will be a little confusing to the overwhelmingly white population. No matter, because Trump’s haters never lack the ingenuity necessary to define his every utterance as a racist rant.
I have no problems with the article whatsoever. It's moderate and thoughtful, and it's not like the Washington Post is conservative. But oh my god how the guy gets skewered in the comments section.
I do believe if I look up "sycophant" in a dictionary I'll find your picture.
are you truly a racist moron, or do you just play one to get your views published?
You are a clueless fool.
All these were taken from only the last hour of comments.
And I wonder, is this strategy? Is lambasting anyone who calls a not racist comment for what it is helpful to the Democrats? Because it seems to me like it's only making enemies out of would-be could-be should-be Democratic voters.
The way I see it, a whole bunch of people who would love to vote for another Barack Obama are put-off by this kind of slander. They're afraid to say anything because they don't want to get shouted at and called names like the Washington Post writer above. But they silently go to the voting booth and vote for Trump, or some third party, or don't vote at all, because they don't want to be associated with the angry hatefilled liberals.
Now, could we define shithole?
Because the way it's normally used it means it's poor and dirty. That seems like an accurate description of Haiti. It certainly isn't very presidential for him to say that, but Trump has been riding the anti-politically correct train since the election. It's what he does. I'm confident there are a bazillion people out there quietly thinking to themselves, "well, Haiti is a shithole."
That's why Trump's comments resonates so well with his base. Not because it's racist, because it's anti-PC. Trump is just a regular American guy callin' it what it is, not doing all this liberal ninny tip-toeing around issues. And they can call it racist, but they call everything racist. What was the last conservative presidential candidate that they didn't call racist? Still. Crying. Wolf.
Anderson Cooper of CNN refuses to acknowledge that it's a shithole, but then goes on to describe how much strength and courage you have to have to live in that... wonderful haven?
It very much seems like the left are so obsessed with taking on the diametric opposite views from Trump, that they spin Trump's contradictions into their own. Haiti is a shithole, that's why it takes such courage and strength to live there. The more of a shithole it is the greater the humanitarian imperative to allow immigration from there.
We all know that when the price of oil goes up it's due to greedy assholes in 10 gallon hats. When it goes down it's due to good fortune, or the stars being in the right place or something like that.
Point is, there's something wrong with the way people read oil prices. This allows for hyper-political sites like ThinkProgress to feed off the public's irrationality. In one article they write,
We can expect these companies, all of which rank in the top 10 of the “Fortune 500 Global Ranking,” to reveal billions of dollars more in profits, after earning $375 million in profits per day in 2011 ($261,000 per minute), and $368 million per day in the first three-months of 2012 — bringing their combined profits to $1 trillion from 2001 through 2011.
The U.S. government rakes in a $1 trillion dollars a year, and they're not even global. I'm not sure why liberals should be more comfortable with that than oil profits. It's not like people in government aren't greedy. It's not like they're omniscient angels that both the ardent desire and know-how to spend money in everyone's best interest. It's not like they have a great track record. And it's not like the political left are very fond of government right now.
I think the answer is they're comparing what they think of as a realistic view of markets to an ideal view of government. In some perfect world government probably could spend a $1 trillion a year pretty well. I would spend it on fundamentally new infrastructure, basic R&D research, and the poor. But I shouldn't be comparing the private sector to what I would do if I were king. I should be comparing the real life private sector to real life government.
I'll give you one really important reason why I'm more comfortable with oil than government, because it comes from consensual transactions, not coercion.
And I know life without gasoline is hardly a choice. You try riding a bike to work these days (Hi January in Canada). But there's this crazy option nobody thinks about, you could drive less.
Ultimately I have to believe that that's what people do when gas prices go up. If people didn't drive less in response to higher prices, the prices would go up. And if they still didn't drive less, they'd go up again. And I know gas prices do go up (more than we'd like them to). But I mean they'd go up right at this moment. If we're really, truly, totally at the mercy of the oil industry, prices would consume every bit of every excess dollar. That would be the profitable thing.
But the truth is, we do have a choice. Maybe not to spend some minimum amount on gasoline that it takes to survive, but we spend a lot more than that. This is altogether different from the "consent" we give government. You know, where you can say, "no no no no I don't want this. Leave me alone. I'm not interested. For the millionth time no. Please put away that gun, don't throw me in jail" but actually you're saying, "yeah, I totally consent to paying taxes." Because social contract.
For me, Econlog is about 80% Bryan Caplan and 10% Scott Sumner and David Henderson. The reason is that Scott is too about monetary policy, something I know nothing about. And David while his kindness shows through in his writing and I'm sure he's a smart guy, leaves me bored.
Tax policy
Immigration policy
appointment of judges
and
regulation
Unexpectedly, Trump hasn't been very influential in terms of International Trade. This is fortunate since it's one of the areas where Trump's rhetoric is awful. It causes me to suspect that perhaps his stated beliefs do not match his actual beliefs. I think many took Hillary as doing this. In debates she renounced things like NAFTA, but was unconvincing to those who were paying attention.
I don't think many thought Trump was telling noble lies when renouncing things like NAFTA. Since he has mostly left free trade alone, it makes me want to investigate how hard Trump has actually been trying to "protect American workers from China." If not, then that's reason to doubt how ardently he really believes what he was saying to get elected.
Cows are branded. Unhealthy drinks are branded. Toothpaste has 4 out of 5 dentists recommending it.
That 5th dentist ended up with a gag in his mouth, handcuffed to concrete at the bottom of the river. He had three kids. They miss him. If you see him call me.
"A dollar of poor dollar consumption is worth more than a dollar of rich person consumption," is the best argument for redistribution. In a more perfect world, this economic argument would replace completely the vague intuitions about fairness argument.
There's a popular video reporting that when you ask commonfolk what they think the fair distribution of wealth is, you get far more equality than what actually exists.
But I suspect that if you ask people what they think the top 1% fair share of tax burden is, they will give a much lower percent than what actually exists.
We are going to talk about this in a future post. But let me pose some questions that come to mind.
Is the gender pay gap the effect of men being different from women in important ways?
If it is, then is it unfair that men get paid more than women?
Is discrimination the right solution to discrimination?
If some men discriminate and some men are discriminated for, does that mean all men should pay the price?
Is it in the cafe owners rights to discriminate against men?
Is there a double standard for conservatives who aren't allowed to discriminate against gay people, and liberals are allowed to discriminate against men?
This episode of Econtalk gets feisty as the guest argues 2 things. First, the ability to make a living as a creator has been dramatically depressed by the rise of firms like Google and Amazon. Second, the homogenization and control of information by these firms is dangerous to freedom and Democracy.
If you're an author--and there are people that people used to make their living writing books, mid-level books. Bands, you know, are getting just savaged, it's more by YouTube more than by any of the others. What's happened is this whole mid-tier of the artistic, creative community whose livelihoods have just been shattered. And there are large numbers of books that have not been written because there's no money in it any more. And that's a massive loss to the free flow of ideas in America.
There are people who still make a living writing books. There weren't a lot of them before, and there aren't a lot of them now. I can say the same for bands. It's not like if you were a teenager in the 80s or 90s and wanted to skip college to join a band your parents would say, "well that's a totally viable option."
It was a horrible decision to try to make a living as a writer or musician back then, and it's a horrible decision now.
Amazon can choose, and does choose which books to put in front of you. So, they had a big fight with Hachette, where they just pulled Hachette's books off of their shelves. And, if you look for certain books, they will choose to promote other books in front of those books, through their recommendation engine. And so, they are manipulating the flow of information to you. They are manipulating the flow of ideas from author to reader in a way that we have never seen before. And that is incredibly dangerous. So, sure: If you are just looking at low consumer prices and your ability to just acquire books for cheap prices, you might say, 'What a great time to be alive!' Even though I don't think that Amazon's prices are necessarily that good. I think it's undeniable that they, as a consumer, it's an amazing platform. There are all sorts of aspects about who we are as a people, as a free people, as a creative people, as a people that have ideas, as a people that bring crops to market, that are incredibly disturbing. Amazon is not something that you want to see if you want to have a free society, if you want to have a democracy, if you want to have citizens who have any dignity.
An algorithm is going to decide which information is presented to you, whether that algorithm is designed and in a computer, or undesigned and formed by what books your local library happens to carry or what gossip trickles through your social contacts.
I suppose this is the today version of the yesterday worry that Tv advertisers were controlling the masses through their Sprite and Eggo Waffle commercials. The thing is, they are. Why else would someone spend $5 million on a super bowl ad? But consider 100+ million people watch the super bowl, so all the super bowl ad has to do is intice each one of them to spend an average of $.05 to be profitable. This is not mind control, or social engineering, or herding the masses of sheep. This is nudging.
And that's how I feel about what Matt Stoller is saying. The CEOs of the companies he's talking about; Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Puchai, and Jeff Bezos sure don't seem like Trump supporters. And even though Amazon controls what books they put in front of you, Facebook controls which news stories you see, and Google controls what Youtube videos are suggested for you, they couldn't stop Trump from getting elected, and it didn't seem like they tried, and it doesn't seem like if they had tried it would have worked.
I'm not saying that perverse manipulation of these algorithms has never happened. Matt Stoller has stories about times when they were discovered. But going from that to, "therefore it must be the most important thing in the world," is a leap I'm not willing to make.
When Stoller starts claiming all these undefined grandiose moral claims about freedom, Democracy and dignity or whatever, he really started to losing me. But he earlier in the interview he made some very good points that I want to take away with me.
One is that although Amazon historically has made little to no profit, because they invest back in, they could at any time they could spend a little less to show a profit.
Second, the point that maybe 3 firms have a database of information big enough to make a decent search engine. This is a great big barrier to entry that would predict a lack of competition and monopoly power. This point should have been emphasized more given that it's an economics podcast. Still, remember what Bryan Caplan said about potential competitionlong before Matt Stoller wrote his book; if firms raise their price above the competitive level, firms might start start springing up. So even when there is no actual competition, firms may act as though there were
Third, I learned the Russ Roberts is actually a conservative. After all these years, who knew?
So the motte-and-bailey doctrine is when you make a bold, controversial statement. Then when somebody challenges you, you claim you were just making an obvious, uncontroversial statement, so you are clearly right and they are silly for challenging you. Then when the argument is over you go back to making the bold, controversial statement.
Examples:
The religious group that acts for all the world like God is a supernatural creator who builds universes, creates people out of other people’s ribs, parts seas, and heals the sick when asked very nicely (bailey). Then when atheists come around and say maybe there’s no God, the religious group objects “But God is just another name for the beauty and order in the Universe! You’re not denying that there’s beauty and order in the Universe, are you?” (motte). Then when the atheists go away they get back to making people out of other people’s ribs and stuff.
Another,
The feminists who constantly argue about whether you can be a real feminist or not without believing in X, Y and Z and wanting to empower women in some very specific way, and who demand everybody support controversial policies like affirmative action or affirmative consent laws (bailey). Then when someone says they don’t really like feminism very much, they object “But feminism is just the belief that women are people!” (motte) Then once the person hastily retreats and promises he definitely didn’t mean women aren’t people, the feminists get back to demanding everyone support affirmative action because feminism, or arguing about whether you can be a feminist and wear lipstick.
The example above reminds me of when a feminist approached me in college. She asked me if I believed that women have the same rights as men. When I said sure she determined that I was a feminist too!
I remember walking away thinking that if I believed men and women had the same right to hire and fire whomever they want, according to her that's feminism. But of course it's not. It's not about whether men and women have the same rights. We have to get into the nitty gritty of what those rights are in order to determine who is feminist.
Environmentalists often speak about, "nature's intention," or "hurting the environment," or "respecting the earth" or the "balance of nature," or the "circle of life." When you point out that nature is neither a person nor holy, they start talking about... animals. You see, what they were really talking about was the animals that get hurt or displaced during mining, logging, etc. Or they talk about global warming. What they were really talking about is all the harm we cause by creating carbon emissions.
Then when you relax they go back to talking about the environment like it's a person or even a God; saying things that don't fit into the care for animals or global warming mold.
David Friedman has called nature worship the world's leading religion. I'm compelled to agree.
A game I enjoy playing while watching movies is How would this be played if these characters were genderswapped? Would a young, female dental hygienist being stripped and molested by her middle-aged, male superior while under anaesthetic be played for comedy? Would one of her friends asking in a strained voice due to barely controlled laughter to see the photos her boss took during such an incident be treated as a reasonable, if slightly insensitive, reaction? Would the same friend sleep with the rapist boss because he was ‘really hot’ and ‘eating suggestively in front of a window’ even after she knew of the boss’s history? Probably not.
I came upon the article above after thinking back to that old 2002 comedy, 40 Days and 40 Nights. It's the one where a man tries to go 40 days straight without having sex.
There's this critical part at the end of the movie where the man is on his 40th day of abstinence. His ex-girlfriend breaks into his home, and rapes him while his arms are tied to the bed post. And this is really funny because it's on the very last day of his pledge, so to watch him get raped is like, "oh man how could things get worse for this guy?" He dreams about his love interest while it's happening, but at the end he discovers he has just been raped. After the rape she says, "relax, it's over," and then leaves.
And that's it. The movie didn't take a dark turn or twist, it's not a crime and not tragedy, it's just an unfortunate thing; him getting raped in his sleep.
What other times have men been raped, usually for laughs?
And on Get him to Greek where Jonah Hill is raped. It very much feels like the apex of the laughs are when the man openly calls the thing that has just been done to them rape.
Disclosure: rape may be defined as looking at someone the wrong way
There are some off the deep end feminists who claim men can't get raped. I think the problem with this is both that pleasure is not a synonym with want, and want is not a synonym with consent. You need to really distort the language is weird ways to make this men can't get raped argument to work.
A healthy male's body responds 99% of the time when stimulated even if its against his will. A person could be yelling, kicking and screaming while being raped and still become aroused from stimulation. That stimulation may be pleasurable but doesn't mean he wants it.
Besides that, there are many things we want. Consent is about choosing between competing wants. I want an oreo, but I also want to lose weight, so wanting an oreo doesn't amount to consent towards your shoving oreos down my throat.
It feels stupid to say, because this is how we use language in literally every other situation. Heroin is also pleasurable, so when I force you to take heroin does that equals consent?
I've also heard that men can't be raped because men have patriarchy, or privilege, or structural oppression or something like this. Let me put on my fem-extremist accent, "Rape is nothing more than a vile act to exert social power and women have no historical or social power to offer up, being the victims of sexism for so long."
There argument contains more than one problem, but it seems to me that the person immediately above you in ranking is far more important than who the president is. Your boss has all the important effective power over you. They fire you, they hire you, they tell you what to do, they set your wages. While the authority very distant from you, some CEO or the president, only has some vague theoretical power. And when you start pulling century's past into the mix, the power gets even further and vaguer compared to the here and now powers.
So social power is irrelevant. What matters is the power of the rapist. Nobody is thinking about social powers while they're raping, they're thinking about sex. And their ability to take sex forcibly from another person has little to do with the powers the feminists keep talking about.
There is this way of thinking where every possible power is funneled through the narrow channel of gender oppression. This seems like epitome of narrow mindedness. I've never heard any argument like, "well, politicians have certain facial features, so there's structural oppression against all those who don't possess those facial features, so certain crimes don't count for these victims." It occurs to me that many people may not make every decision ever based on how it's going to effect some gender war that most people don't even agree exists.
Sometimes I hear a claim of special revelation you can only get by being a woman. This argument basically goes, "men and women have different experiences, their experiences inform their reason, and so you could never understand."
I don't know exactly how to deal with people who deny serious thinking and instead choose to embrace secret truth known only to them. But it reminds me of Joseph Smith, who received secret messages from God through a rock in his hat and ended up founding mormonism this way. This is the way most fundamentalist religions and cults grab their believers. They get you to believe some fundamental truth that can't be overturned by reason, and build an cockamamy theory from there.
Am I saying feminism is a cult? Maybe.
Maybe not. It bares repeating that these kinds of may not represent most feminism. I can't stress this enough. They may just an overly zealous subgroup that has hijacked the image of the main group. It's easy to take them as representative samples because they're claims are so unthoughtfully provocative that they stick in the mind, but there are lots and lots and lots of examples of feminists saying, "men can be raped too." And when I talk to feminists that personally I've worked with, they usually don't make these kinds of arguments.
I don't think people on the left like this take on things. They face cognitive dissonance when they hold to their Democratic Fundamentalism and have to face reality that Trump won. Trump's failure to receive the popular vote gave them the perfect opportunity to square those two ideas.
The problem is that elections are sports, and campaigns change depending on the goal of the sport. If the goal is, "get as many electoral votes as possible," the campaign will be different from if the goal were, "get as many popular votes as possible." It's quite likely that we would still be stuck with Trump even if the election were based on popular votes.
When you take your children to a public place, they should remain under your or your husband’s supervision at all times until they are aware enough that they can’t be lured away by a stranger, and big enough to fight off a predator.
Of course — and obviously — when kids are 5 and 3, it makes sense to keep an eye on them, mostly because if they wander off, it is a miserable experience for all involved. But the idea that stranger danger is ever-lurking has been debunked even by the group that put the kids on the milk cartons:
"The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is now encouraging parents to steer away from using the phrase “stranger danger,” a slogan that has been taught for decades to emphasize to children the potential threat posed by strangers."
I read that Dear Abby out loud to my husband (who promptly rolled his eyes, prepared for the tirade I was about to unleash) when my daughter, age 5, piped up, “Mom? Who would go get the bananas when you forget them if I can’t go do that? We would never have bananas in the house. And why would I have to fight anyone? That doesn’t make sense.” Thank you, kiddo, I rest my case. (And, in my defense, the banana thing only happened once. Or twice. Maybe three times…)
To want someone else's kids assumes a set of bizarre values. Children do not poop gold and even attempting to kidnap a child can land you 5-20 years in jail, or life in some states.
People often tell me that we have a system of checks and balances. When I ask why, they say that it's the way our founding fathers designed our system of government. That's really cool, but then I look around and notice the supposed checks and balances aren't working.
So when I dig deeper it seems like there is no reason why these checks and balances exist other than the founding fathers said they exist. It's very nice to have three different powers, but if they have no reason to check and balance each other then its useless. You have to explain why you have put it in the actors interest to check and balance the other actors, you can't just say it and walk away. Michael Huemer:
Americans are taught that they live under a system of ‘checks and balances’, whereby the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government each restrain the others from abusing their power. This idea derives from Montesquieu, who influenced the framers of the American Constitution. 45 Thus, the judiciary has the power to strike down unconstitutional laws, thereby serving as a check on the power of the legislature. The executive branch has the power to appoint judges, which the legislature must approve; thus, the executive and legislative branches act to ensure the integrity of the judiciary. The legislature has the power to impeach the president, and the legislature may thus check the power of the executive branch. And so on. No branch of government is supreme, and each has important powers over the others.
This theory is missing one crucial element. That is an account of why each branch of government should be expected to use its powers to prevent the other branches from abusing their powers rather than, say, to assist the other branches in abusing their powers or to prevent the other branches from carrying out their legitimate functions. Again, it does not matter what our theory labels as the proper function of government officials. What matters is the incentive structure. Do the three branches of government each have an interest in ensuring that the other branches function properly without overstepping their constitutionally prescribed bounds?
Many many people are looking at the words and actions of those on the left and when they ask themselves, "do I want these people to be in power?" The answer is clearly no...
I say "people on the left" because that doesn't include me any more. I used to consider myself comfortably on the left. My Facebook feed is 100% people on the left. But over the past couple of years I have been repelled from the left, because I just see too many stupid people doing stupid things; it's all about following a dogma, very little about critical thinking and trying to understand the truth. It is, at this point pretty far divorced from reality, which in part is what allowed Trump to happen.
And this goes along with what I think is Trump's super-weapon, trolling:
I suspect Blow would agree with what Jonathan Haidt is doing about viewpoint diversity.
The best part of this Capitalism vs Socialism debate was Nick Gillespi on Democracy:
Maybe it's worth defining what we mean by democracy. Democracy is majority rule.
How many of you are Republicans?
Silence.
And how many of you want absolute Democracy now that the Republicans own the white house, and both houses of congress?
Anybody out there? I'm sorry I can't hear you.
Because this idea that Democracy is some absolute good is bullshit, and we all know that. The single biggest achievement in 500 years of western political philosophy has been limiting the state.
Of course someone could say, "well Trump didn't win the popular vote." Which is true, but that doesn't really matter because he could have. If the election was won by popular vote, then we would have just barely escaped the Trump presidency, which is hardly an advertisement for Democracy.
At one point, they talk about why Christian art is so bad. Brian godawa explains:
The question is how well can you incorporate your worldview into the choices of the characters, rather than plopping it on top by having scenes where people explain everything. That's the problem with Christian stuff, they feel they have to explain things because if you don't it won't be clear. It's good intentions. They want the meaning and the message to come across clearly. But but in so doing, they don't understand how art incarnates meaning so you don't always have to be explicit in words.
