Category: Philosophy

Opportunity in the Academic World

Three academics conducted an experiment. See video below.

They created a fictions author and a non-existent institution- The Portland Ungendering Research Initiative. They took the most absurd ideas and retrofit them into today’s politically correct dogmas. Here is a sample:

“Sometimes we just thought a nutty or inhumane idea up and ran with it. What if we write a paper saying we should train men like we do dogs—to prevent rape culture? Hence came the “Dog Park” paper. What if we write a paper claiming that when a guy privately masturbates while thinking about a woman (without her consent—in fact, without her ever finding out about it) that he’s committing sexual violence against her? That gave us the “Masturbation” paper. What if we argue that the reason superintelligent AI is potentially dangerous is because it is being programmed to be masculinist and imperialist using Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Lacanian psychoanalysis? That’s our “Feminist AI” paper. What if we argued that “a fat body is a legitimately built body” as a foundation for introducing a category for fat bodybuilding into the sport of professional bodybuilding? You can read how that went in Fat Studies.
We used other methods too, like, “I wonder if that ‘progressive stack’ in the news could be written into a paper that says white males in college shouldn’t be allowed to speak in class (or have their emails answered by the instructor), and, for good measure, be asked to sit in the floor in chains so they can ‘experience reparations.’” That was our “Progressive Stack” paper. The answer seems to be yes, and feminist philosophy titan Hypatia has been surprisingly warm to it. Another tough one for us was, “I wonder if they’d publish a feminist rewrite of a chapter from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” The answer to that question also turns out to be “yes,” given that the feminist social work journal Affilia has just accepted it. As we progressed, we started to realize that just about anything can be made to work, so long as it falls within the moral orthodoxy and demonstrates understanding of the existing literature.”

These papers got peer reviewed and published. Even hailed. The dog park paper got special recognition from the journal “Geneder, Place,and Culture”. The data and empirical evidence they used to backup their claims was pure nonsense and made up. No one bothered to even look at the references or raw data they were using. No one even bothered to research their institution to see that it was fake.
The academic world is digging its own grave. I suspect over the next few decades these colleges will loose their audience. Consider this, it was less than 20 years ago the main stream media was the only outlet to get news. Due to the internet and the decentralization of information, they have lost credibility. Alternatives have popped up to replace their monopoly.
Some entrepreneur will become filthy rich doing two things. One, making a better college curriculum. Two, marketing it to parents and students. There are many curriculum’s online that are excellent. Some are 100% free. However, they have failed in marketing. Very few parents or would be college students take the idea of an alternative to mainstream college serious. You can quiz out of college by taking CLEP exams. Most students do not due this. They would rather go to one of these colleges. The parents have this mentality: “It is not that bad”. It is very bad. The marketing campaign should focus on how bad it is.

Kavanaugh has Been Confirmed

I file this event in the “I don’t care” bin. 50 percent of the country is very upset. Most people can not even name the last 10 cases the supreme court ruled on. Most people can not even name 10 cases the supreme court has ruled on going back to the founding of the country. The right is gloating. The left is whining. This is a battle for power. Since I want to destroy these power hubs, I have no fight. I am sidelined. The conversations is so far removed from what I want to talk about. Namely, why do these nine people have so much power to determine law for 320 million people? The country is divided on issues that have no meaning. On issues that matter, the country is united. The sacred cows, known as entitlements, are going to bankrupt the US federal government. No one wants to cut these programs. The public truly believes the US government debt is going to keep going exponential.
When a commentator talks about “how divided the country is”, just ignore them. They are clueless.

Harassing Uber and Lyft

NYC council passed a regulation on the ride sharing apps, capping the number of vehicles on the road.

If you were to look closely at supply and demand curves, you will see that when you restrict supply, prices will rise (All other things being equal of course). Mayor Bill de Blasio had this to say:
“Our city is directly confronting a crisis that is driving working New Yorkers into poverty and our streets into gridlock. The unchecked growth of app-based for-hire vehicle companies has demanded action – and now we have it.”
As a native New Yorker, I can be the first to attest that NYC had a traffic problem long before Uber was ever even thought of.
The problem with Uber and Lyft in the mind of government officials is this:
It threatens their legitimacy.
Remember their is a lie by governments. That is, all of these laws passed by them are supposed to keep us safe. The government must licensee people! This will keep you safe!
If any of this was true, Uber would have been very dangerous when it first hit the market. I can also attest that yellow cabs in NYC are far more dangerous than Ubers. When Uber came out, there was no regulations on it. You could travel around NYC for cheap. Over the years NYC has passed more and more laws on these ride sharing apps. The results have been steady increases in prices.
Someone should show Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYC council a supply and demand curve.

The Distribution of Knowledge

“The creation of wealth is not simply a physical process and cannot be explained by a chain of cause and effect. It is determined not by objective physical facts known to any one mind but by the separate, differing, information of millions, which is precipitated in prices that serve to guide further decisions.”
-Freidrich Hayek

On Presidents “Running a Country”

Jeff Thomas sets the record straight:

For eight years (2008–2016), the US liberal media touted the brilliant accomplishments of the liberal president, whilst the conservative media groused that nothing he did was of value.
Today, the conservative US media are touting the brilliant accomplishments of the conservative president, whilst the liberal media grouse that nothing he does is of value.
So, which is it? Who is correct here? Well actually, neither is correct.
Neither president is the Great Oz. Neither one is in fact, “running the country.” Behind the scenes, the great machine of government churns along, often in complete disregard to the president or his stated policies.
However, the media credits or lambastes the president of the day as though he and he alone is in charge of the country. Whatever happens is treated as his accomplishment or failure.
And, typically, presidents play into this—taking personal credit for perceived accomplishments within the country and disavowing blame for perceived failures.
At present, the conservative media is emphasising low unemployment as an achievement, just as the liberal media did during the Obama Administration.
And yet, since the Clinton Administration, the unemployment figures have been consistently fudged. Those who work only part-time are defined as “employed.” Those who have given up pursuing employment are removed from the unemployment equation. If those numbers were plugged back in, US unemployment would be in the double-digits—during both the Obama and Trump presidencies.
The conservative media also touts Mister Trump for the increase in the stock market. Of course, the liberal media did the same in Mister Obama’s time. Stocks have been on the rise in both administrations.
But, wait. Is this a barometer of America’s economic health? The debt levels in the US are far beyond anything that has ever existed in the history of the world. The stock market is not reflective of sound investment, but of a bubble—one of epic proportions. And of course, bubbles always burst. The bigger the bubble, the worse the crash. Therefore, we are on the cusp of history’s worst crash.
And yet, the conservative media are blindly crediting Mister Trump for the expanded bubble. And when the crashes do come, the liberal media will, of course, blindly blame Mister Trump for them.
Recently, the conservative media has gone all-out to shine a light on the perceived success of the “Trump tax cuts.” Of course, Mister Trump was most certainly not the only cog in the wheel of creating tax cuts, yet, he is credited for it.
It’s quite true that the tax cuts will provide an uptick in business activity, much in the way a shot of amphetamine provides a quick boost to the human body. However, the benefit will not be sustained. Tax cuts only work if there’s a corresponding cut in government spending.
Unfortunately, Congress (both republicans and democrats) is voting for large increases in spending, which will result in an economic downturn after the brief amphetamine rush of tax cuts. As any housewife knows (or should know), you can’t cut your money supply and increase spending at the same time. You end up broke.
Just as many liberals were falsely buoyed up by Mister Obama’s mere presence in the White House, many conservatives are falsely buoyed up by Mister Trump’s presence. Unfortunately, neither president is “The Great Oz.” At some point, Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal that it’s the folks behind the curtain who are creating false images of prosperity and providing misinformation to the media.
In reality, neither president is deserving of either the extreme praise nor the extreme criticism that they receive. The machine of government goes on as intended, regardless of who happens to be in the White House. The rest is a mere distraction.
Mark Twain famously said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
Quite so. It might be wise to view the media (both conservative and liberal) with a jaundiced eye. And, in the bargain, refuse to be a cheerleader for any political leader.
The political agenda in most any country carries on no matter who the latest elected figurehead is. In order to see the ongoing shell-game more clearly, it might be best to recognize that government, in its entirety, is the problem—not whoever happens to be playing the role of the Great Oz at the moment.

Stulta and Puera

Frédéric Bastiat tells a tale of two cities, Stulta and Puera. This destroys the idea that because a foreign country puts tariffs on US goods, the US should retaliate and put tariffs on their goods.

There were, no matter where, two towns called Stulta and Puera. They completed at great cost a highway from the one town to the other. When this was done, Stulta said to herself, “See how Puera inundates us with her products; we must see to it.” In consequence, they created and paid a body of obstructives, so called because their business was to place obstacles in the way of traffic coming from Puera. Soon afterwards Puera did the same.
At the end of some centuries, knowledge having in the interim made great progress, the common sense of Puera enabled her to see that such reciprocal obstacles could only be reciprocally hurtful. She therefore sent an envoy to Stulta, who, laying aside official phraseology, spoke to this effect: “We have made a highway, and now we throw obstacles in the way of using it. This is absurd. It would have been better to have left things as they were. We should not, in that case, have had to pay for making the road in the first place, nor afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining obstructives. In the name of Puera, I come to propose to you, not to give up opposing each other all at once — that would be to act upon a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do — but to lessen somewhat the present obstacles, taking care to estimate equitably the respective sacrifices we make for this purpose.” So spoke the envoy. Stulta asked for time to consider the proposal, and proceeded to consult, in succession, her manufacturers and agriculturists. At length, after the lapse of some years, she declared that the negotiations were broken off.
On receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of Puera held a meeting. An old gentleman (they always suspected he had been secretly bought by Stulta) rose and said, “The obstacles created by Stulta injure our sales, which is a misfortune. Those we have ourselves created injure our purchases, which is another misfortune. With reference to the first, we are powerless; but the second rests with ourselves. Let us, at least, get rid of one, since we cannot rid ourselves of both evils. Let us suppress our obstructives without requiring Stulta to do the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to know her own interests better.”
A second counselor, a practical, matter-of-fact man, guiltless of any acquaintance with principles, and brought up in the ways of his forefathers, replied: “Don’t listen to that Utopian dreamer, that theorist, that innovator, that economist, that Stultomaniac. We shall all be undone if the stoppages of the road are not equalized, weighed, and balanced between Stulta and Puera. There would be greater difficulty in going than in coming, in exporting than in importing. We should find ourselves in the same condition of inferiority relatively to Stulta as Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon, London, Hamburg, and New Orleans are with relation to the towns situated at the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the Mississippi, for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to descend a river. (A Voice: Towns at the mouths of rivers prosper more than towns at their source.)
“This is impossible. (Same Voice: But it is so.) Well, if it be so, they have prospered contrary to rules.” Reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly, and the orator followed up his victory by talking largely of national independence, national honor, national dignity, national labor, inundation of products, tributes, murderous competition. In short, he carried the vote in favor of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at all curious on the subject, I can point out to you countries where you will see with your own eyes road makers and obstructives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable.

The Crowd

Gustave Le Bon on the masses:
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim”

Rationalization of Mass Murder

The book, “Ordinary Men”, is a story about the Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. Thousands of Jewish men, women, children and infants were murdered. The book is dark and depressing.
At Józefów, Major Trapp made an offer for men to step forward who wanted to excuse themselves from the atrocities they were about to commit. Out of five hundred men only twelve stepped forward. Why only twelve? Later reflections indicate there was no time to think. It was all too sudden. Additionally, no one wanted to abandon their comrades.
The rationalization given by a thirty-five-year old metal worker is astonishing:

“I made the effort, and it was possible for me, to shoot only children. It so happened that the mothers led the children by the hand. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her, because I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer. It was supposed to be, so to speak, soothing to my conscience to release children unable to live without their mothers.”

The author points out that the German word for “release” also means to “redeem” or “save” when used in a religious sense.
The people who committed the mass murder at Józefów were not sadist. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were metalworkers, barbers, salesmen, etc. The book details the physical and mental anguish these men suffered for the rest of their lives. It also gives insight into the psychology of man.
It is wrong to say every citizen in Nazi Germany was pure evil. We all like to think we would have been Oskar Schindler. We would have hid Anne Frank and put our entire family at risk. Statistically, you would have not been those people.

#METOO

Movements have ideas. Ideas have consequences. A simple accusation can now destroy a mans career. What will be the consequences of the #METOO movement?
1- Employers will be less likely to hire women.
2- No one will meet with women alone in the business world. A chaperone will need to be present for each meeting.