tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post7063922850656562862..comments2024-03-28T15:48:48.514-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Science Fiction and Science Fact Inspiration!David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-91232290580576423032016-11-01T15:27:55.218-07:002016-11-01T15:27:55.218-07:00Tacitus2:
Sheesh, the Dem-aligned media is in an ...Tacitus2:<br /><i><br />Sheesh, the Dem-aligned media is in an illogical and embarrasing flop sweat. <br /></i><br /><br />Tac, I have to call BS on the "Dem-alligned media". If the media were Dem-alligned, Hillary would be 50 points ahead in the polls. Trump does as well as he has because the media were building him up so much right up until the Billy Bush tape.<br /><br />I haven't seen a "liberal media" since the 1980s when news divisions became judged by profitability rather than by journalistic proficiency. Even MSNBC is dropping its liberal hosts one by one.<br /><br /><i><br />There are plenty of reasons for anyone, even Conservatives like 'lil 'ol me to vote against Trump. Journalists, to use the term loosely, who peddle crap like this demean a profession that has a long way to go to get back to respectability. <br /></i><br /><br />The profession has a long way to go all right, but what they have to do is stop being cheerleaders for the rich and corporate.<br /><br /><i><br />See also Donna Brazille fired from her CNN gig when it became known that she repeatedly gave HRC advance notice of specific questions she would be getting at upcoming town hall meetings.<br /></i><br /><br />Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a failing of hers as a DNC chairperson, not as a journalist. And when it came out, she lost her journalism gig. How does that reflect badly on the journalism profession? How does it reflect worse than the fact that Trump's first campaign manager still has <b>his</b>gig on CNN?<br /><i><br />You wonder why there is disgust out here in the Hinterlands?<br /></i><br /><br />No, just why the disgust is so misdirected.<br /><br />Among the standard bearers for the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Green parties, only Hillary shows any capacity for actually governing. And for this, we're supposed to <b>shun</b> her? Really?<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-59098119495492662882016-11-01T15:25:22.458-07:002016-11-01T15:25:22.458-07:00Tim Kaine for President!Tim Kaine for President!Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-3590369415474192432016-11-01T15:08:00.399-07:002016-11-01T15:08:00.399-07:00Hills to mountains is correct. I don't persona...Hills to mountains is correct. I don't personally subscribe to the policy that it's okay when "our" side does it. Throw them to the lions along with the rest. Just make sure the rest get thrown.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9476309222763860632016-11-01T14:06:02.984-07:002016-11-01T14:06:02.984-07:00"But light PLUS some social innovations will ...<i>"But light PLUS some social innovations will prevent it. Those social innovations are seen in almost every Hollywood film, in which the principal messages are : Suspicion of authority (SoA), Tolerance, Diversity, and Eccentricity."</i><br /><br />These social innovations are particularly prevalent in FoxCorp products, yet for all the enduring monetary value in the concepts, are they not easily, regularly, and consistently subverted?<br /><br />-SoA? This is Fox's key branding point! <br />-Yoda typifies both 'diversity' and 'eccentricity' - yet has been called here the 'most evil character in the history of storytelling'<br />-Fox, more than any other media outlet, obsesses over the nature of 'tolerance'<br /><br />I wonder how many millennials derive moral instruction from "The Hunger Games" (#7 most watched film in 2015): you can't trust ANY authority, so just execute both of them and retreat to the countryside. Hence, millennials believe it morally preferable to stay home and do nothing, thereby avoiding hypocrisy, rather than intervene.donzelionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05991849781932619746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-91932732293056277842016-11-01T14:04:08.174-07:002016-11-01T14:04:08.174-07:00Tacitus I agree that Brazile is a monster. Indeed...Tacitus I agree that Brazile is a monster. Indeed, this is the first HC scandal I have seen that rises from "absurd teensy molehill" status to a Genuine Foothill ... even more if HC proves to have been fully aware of the cheat.<br /><br />We are still comparing hills to mountains. In every category, including policy.<br /><br />onward<br /><br />onwardDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-78450210987662970772016-11-01T12:57:15.157-07:002016-11-01T12:57:15.157-07:00Jacob
Alternate explanation. There are a few thi...Jacob<br /><br />Alternate explanation. There are a few things that even a political heavyweight can get fired for. If and only if they get caught. The real take away is that this sort of egregious stuff happened at all and that Ms. Brazille has no ethical qualms about it.<br /><br />Shorter version. Has no ethics at all.<br /><br />TacitusTacitushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17007086196578740689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-65628339072435819902016-11-01T12:54:27.078-07:002016-11-01T12:54:27.078-07:00Donna Brazille getting fired for misbehaving is ev...Donna Brazille getting fired for misbehaving is evidence against Main Stream Media being a liberal bias engine not evidence for it.Jacobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10432722840081535430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22885758869901455582016-11-01T12:47:55.130-07:002016-11-01T12:47:55.130-07:00Here is a discussion of the "Secret Server&qu...Here is a discussion of the "Secret Server" which appears to have little to nothing to do with Donald Trump, Putin or Russia.<br /><br />http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/11/debunking-trumps-secret-server.html#more<br /><br />Sheesh, the Dem-aligned media is in an illogical and embarrasing flop sweat. There are plenty of reasons for anyone, even Conservatives like 'lil 'ol me to vote against Trump. Journalists, to use the term loosely, who peddle crap like this demean a profession that has a long way to go to get back to respectability. See also Donna Brazille fired from her CNN gig when it became known that she repeatedly gave HRC advance notice of specific questions she would be getting at upcoming town hall meetings.<br /><br />You wonder why there is disgust out here in the Hinterlands?<br /><br />TacitusTacitushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17007086196578740689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-61018566078086796152016-11-01T11:39:04.295-07:002016-11-01T11:39:04.295-07:00Raito,
You are, for the most part, right about bu...Raito,<br /><br />You are, for the most part, right about bubbles. Great example of how perception mismatch can have pretty dire consequences. But even though the industries usually survive the big pop, the pop ripples through the whole economy in some pretty dreadful ways, and often for years to come. I grew up near some old Gold Rush ghost towns. Gold mining still happens, but as an employer in places like Colorado, Alaska or California, it's way down from where it was. Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90142871617262701992016-11-01T11:35:17.543-07:002016-11-01T11:35:17.543-07:00Jeff,
Should we start calling Trump "The Sib...Jeff,<br /><br />Should we start calling Trump "The Siberian Candidate?" Sorry to be flip. This is serious, but it was too tempting... Having Putin trying to manipulate our highest office sounds like a bigger deal than a few emails that may or may not have anything to do with Clinton.Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-45885670542948765432016-11-01T09:58:24.780-07:002016-11-01T09:58:24.780-07:00Sorry to steer back toward politics for a minute, ...Sorry to steer back toward politics for a minute, but this is pretty serious: a Trump server was found to be repeatedly exchanging traffic w. a Russian bank w. ties to the Russian govt./Putin: <br /><br />http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html<br /><br />A lot of questions (some perhaps unanswerable) but... <i>interesting</i> in light of today's info that the FBI believes they've direct evidence of Russian attempts to meddle in this election.Jeff B.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68236322246209000332016-11-01T08:39:23.875-07:002016-11-01T08:39:23.875-07:00Laurence,
"school bullying - the capacity of...Laurence,<br /><br />"school bullying - the capacity of a majority to terrorise"<br /><br />It's not only the majority that can coerce, as in your example of school bullying. That's usually an individual or two (not always. When the majority is doing the coercing, it's really Lord of the Flies stuff...), but coercion none the less.<br /><br />Yes, the ideal solution involves having an enlightened population that doesn't much care what legal activities their neighbors indulge in. We're not exactly close to that idea of utopia.<br /><br />Paul SB,<br /><br />Bubbles often tend to follow innovation. So what happens is that some innovation spawns a new industry that expands quickly to fill its new niche. The 'bubble' pop because all too often the thought is that the expansion will continue past where its equilibrium lies. Somewhat ironically, when the bubble pops, the new industry isn't gone, it's just at a more steady state. There's still been a net gain.<br /><br />Re: Choice<br /><br />I don't find it particularly coercive to have someone say to me, "I think this is right, and here's why." Or even add, "And you should think so, too." That's called persuasion. And should be indulged in. That's how ideas spread around. Of course, I'm entirely free to disagree. I don't even find it necessary to articulate why. But when the name-calling starts, it stops being persuasion.<br />raitonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-14576182728724101972016-11-01T05:09:02.484-07:002016-11-01T05:09:02.484-07:00Alfred,
Was this a rhetorical question?
"I...Alfred,<br /><br />Was this a rhetorical question? <br /><br />"Is it possible the people making 'rational models of behavior' are simply confused and modeling a tiny domain of what we actually are?"<br /><br />It was pretty much Marshall Sahlins' thesis way back in the 70's, when he was writing "Stone Age Economics." Yes, at times fickleness serves a purpose, Romanticism serves a purpose, emotions serve a purpose. Burt then, getting drunk might seem to serve a purpose, too, up to the point where the drunkard crashes his car and kills innocent bystanders, or beats his wife to death and shoots the police officer who showed up on their doorstep, or deludes himself into voting for a dictator, assuming for no apparent reason that the dictator really cares about someone other than himself and will not rape the country. What constitutes rationality is far greater than what economists model, but that hardly denies the existence of irrationality.<br /><br />"The earlier one said people need Kings because we can't govern ourselves."<br /><br />That's the foundation of all elitism, whether it is aristocracy (based on assumed genetic superiority, or "superior breeding" to use their own term), religion (Calvinism and its offshoots, or Jehovah's Witnesses with their "little flock" are more blatant examples), business (Jeff Skilling and the Enron Boys being the poster-children for this form of hubris), intellectual elitism (so common in academic institutions - big surprise) or nativism (based on overvaluation of autochthony). I have the sense that much of the world is getting better in terms of accepting each other's existence and even value and rejecting elitism, and yes, genocide is a dirty word in the mainstream, but there are still a lot of throwbacks who admire Hitler (I just pointed out one of these a couple days ago) or want to use violence to suppress anyone who is not part of their group. We don't need kings or nobles, but we still do need some sort of referee, because there are still those - and probably always will be those - who will go to violent extremes and attack those who they see as weaker than themselves. <br /><br />"In the end, we are modelers making toys that have value only if they are useful."<br /><br />And there's a name for that. It's called /heuristic/. In some views it is a dirty word, but the more mature approach is to see a heuristic as a tool. It is useful when and where it is useful, and it is not useful when applied in inappropriate places. When a better tool comes along, a rational actor will discard the old tool in favor of the new (while some may cling to the old tool for various social, political and/or emotional reasons) Maybe /rational/ is not the best word to use here. Would /practical/ be better? <br />Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-88552028054062923942016-11-01T00:15:19.403-07:002016-11-01T00:15:19.403-07:00But this is not where it has to go. Light will not...<i>But this is not where it has to go. Light will not prevent this, all by itself. But light PLUS some social innovations will prevent it. Those social innovations are seen in almost every Hollywood film, in which the principal messages are : Suspicion of authority (SoA), Tolerance, Diversity, and Eccentricity.<br /><br />Watch the movies. The heroine or hero almost always exhibits some eccentric trait in the 1st 5 minutes! If you actually look, you can see a society girding itself to use light AGAINST conformity.</i><br /><br />The trouble is a society (or at least a subculture) can nominally endorse eccentricity while actively promoting conformity. Going back to my example of the conservative right versus the PC left, both sides imagine the other is "the establishment" and "the mainstream". Hence within their little communities both groups can enforce conformity while <i>claiming</i> to be against it. (for a less political ilustration of this phenomenon, think of the goths in South Park, I forget which episode it was) Laurencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15525214461529206205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-71908503561960177342016-10-31T22:43:42.809-07:002016-10-31T22:43:42.809-07:00@Paul SB: Too much government power and you have B...@Paul SB: <i>Too much government power and you have Big Brother, too little and you have majorities wiping out or enslaving minorities.</i><br /><br />David has already pointed to the false dichotomy, but I'd like to expand on it a bit. It is a memetic attractor similar to the one used before liberalism gained a foothold in NW Europe. The earlier one said people need Kings because we can't govern ourselves. Apparently we can, though, and we do a damn sight better job of it. If I thought I'd be around to collect, I'd bet serious money we can 'have too little' and not have majorities wiping out or enslaving minorities too. That we have in the past is not sufficient to demonstrate that we will in the future. On top of that, I suspect we've done less of that without Kings. Genocide has become something of an ugly word.<br /><br /><i>where the etic view of reality would fail to predict that kind of behavior (the key flaw in rational models of behavior</i><br /><br />Heh. One of the things physics taught me was to be skeptical of theories that carry claims to describing objective truth. Though my teachers went reluctantly into the philosophy behind physics, I loved the stuff. A theory with no philosophical rationale wasn't finished enough to be presented without a least a bit of embarrassment. Yet the more I learned at that level, the more I saw why my teachers avoided it. We couldn't really define probability let alone what it means to be objective. In the end, we are modelers making toys that have value only if they are useful.<br /><br />Of course rational models of behavior fail. Of course Keynesian models fail. The marvelous thing is that they work at all in the small domains where they are valuable. Truly amazing. We should make lots and lots of them. Collect them as if Called to do so.<br /><br />However, why would you say people are rational only at times? Doesn't that assume a model for what rational behavior is? Can you imagine a model for human behavior that has us being sane when we do what is best for us as individuals and as members of our social groups? Wouldn't such sanity be rational by definition? Emotions serve. Romanticism serves. Fickleness serves. Is it possible the people making 'rational models of behavior' are simply confused and modeling a tiny domain of what we actually are? 8)Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34956039920573525532016-10-31T21:47:45.627-07:002016-10-31T21:47:45.627-07:00Dr. Brin,
If I created a false dichotomy it was n...Dr. Brin,<br /><br />If I created a false dichotomy it was not intentional, but by omission. It can't be just one tyranny or another. I'm too middle class to accept that. These are more extremes, and are often intertwined, with politicians trying to incite riots on the one hand, or trying to garner votes by appealing to tyrannical constituents. But the point about values is always at the back of my mind - I'm just not so good at communicating it. All the cameras in the world will do nothing to stop injustice if people believe in Might Makes Right, or the Just World Fallacy (which is built into most religious faiths), that the victims somehow deserve what they are experiencing. Then those cameras become vehicles for hate porn. Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-80533401213719341162016-10-31T21:38:26.853-07:002016-10-31T21:38:26.853-07:00Donzelion,
I haven't known many writers, but ...Donzelion,<br /><br />I haven't known many writers, but I have known a fair number of artists and musicians over the years. Your comment to loci reminded me of them.<br /><br />"Dr. Brin is a fine writer, and his works are a lot of fun to read. But to suggest that a few comments on a blog will 'compel' people or 'forbid' them from anything is to ascribe magical powers of quashing human will."<br /><br />The people I have known who were in any kind of a creative career have fairly consistently told me that they don't expect to hit the big time or to have power and influence. Not too many of them would turn down fame, but it was a pipe dream, not a serious pursuit. And they weren't making a lot of money doing it. What they most often said was that if they play a gig and the people in the audience forgot their troubles for a little while and felt happy, or if someone looks at their painting, sculpture, enamel or whatever and grew a curious smile, the audience howls with laughter at their stand-up, they did their job, and that's satisfaction. This is why I have a lot of respect for artists. <br /><br />Sometimes, if politics is what's on people's minds, then that's appropriate, and maybe it might influence a vote or two (remembering the chorus from that old Depeche Mode song "New Dress" - You can't change the world, but you can change the facts. When you change the facts you change points of view, when you change points of view, you may change a vote, when you change a vote, you can change the world.) <br /><br />No real mind control, but I suspect that writers, whether they are willing to admit it or not, are a pedantic lot who hope that their readers with "get the message." Sure, song writers have written protest songs. Photographers have taken pictures that made a deep impression on society, but only fools take the words of one writer, or artist or book and build their lives around them (and Loci's little rant was no more than a specific referent for Trump's claim that "the media" is biased against him, and if he wins he'll accept the results, but if he loses it has to have been cheating). Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-85545003358900985892016-10-31T21:22:48.574-07:002016-10-31T21:22:48.574-07:00PaulSB I am afraid you are creating a false dichot...PaulSB I am afraid you are creating a false dichotomy. It is not between tyranny by elites and tyranny by mob. The latter always leads to the former. Transparency can eliminate the former. Transparency can eliminate the latter too… if the people have VALUES that make it unacceptable to judge others unfairly or to enforce conformity.<br /><br />Think about it. If you are trying to bully someone into conformity, and that is frowned upon socially, then light is the enemy of such bullies.<br /><br />Has any other human society ever accomplished this combination? I know of none. And it flies in the face of human nature. But westerners are voting for this trend in many ways… like the teens who post embarrassing things, knowing they are committing themselves to stand up for a civilization in which 30 year olds are forgiven for harmless idiocies they posted, as teens.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-38490294985871417052016-10-31T20:40:01.932-07:002016-10-31T20:40:01.932-07:00Alfred,
Ah, using multiple models here:
"Re...Alfred,<br /><br />Ah, using multiple models here:<br /><br />"Reality is probably a bit of both. There is little doubt that our confidence in markets greatly influences prices. There is little doubt there are feedback loops that make the system oscillate. Austrian models generally say what not to do, though, so most people don’t like them as tools for deciding policy. Keynesian levers are more appealing, but may have little to do with reality."<br /><br />Your choice of the phrase "...has little to do with reality" suggests you don't have an especially high opinion of Keynesian models, but then, you do accept that sometimes perception of reality can have a huge influence, where the etic view of reality would fail to predict that kind of behavior (the key flaw in rational models of behavior - people are only rational at times). Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-7047424361154670222016-10-31T20:17:35.408-07:002016-10-31T20:17:35.408-07:00Dr. Brin & Laurence,
"If we can shine tr...Dr. Brin & Laurence,<br /><br />"If we can shine true citizen sousveillance at elites, then Orwell’s Big Brother becomes impossible… but the next level failure mode is the one Ray Bradbury showed in Fahrenheit 451… in which tyranny arises from populist bullying by the 60% majority of “little brothers,” imposing conformity upon all. It is a truly frightening possibility..."<br /><br />What I see here is a need for balance, but political propaganda has been throwing that balance off for a very long time. Too much government power and you have Big Brother, too little and you have majorities wiping out or enslaving minorities. Having a Bill of Rights helps, but we saw with Jim Crow that if the "people" don't care to enforce it, it won't happen. <br /><br />In fact, this is a really ancient theme in human civilization. Are either of you familiar with the author Mary Renault? She is most famous for writing "The King Must Die," but in another of her novels, called "The Last of the Wine" which takes place in Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, she brings up the idea of the "tyranny of the majority" as a problem that dogs democracy, in one of humanity's earliest democracies. (Unfortunately is has been so long since I read that book, my fleeting memory of my point has already slipped my mind! I don't suppose anyone can help me out, here ... : / ) Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69194418338696411702016-10-31T20:15:01.956-07:002016-10-31T20:15:01.956-07:00@Paul SB: If you believe Keynes, bubbles come from...@Paul SB: If you believe Keynes, bubbles come from our animal spirits. They can be controlled (engine analogy in play here) by dampening irrational exuberance. Busts are their inverses and we try to lift our spirits with high velocity spending. Cycles are the result of confidence booms and busts.<br /><br />If you believe the Austrians, bubbles are the result of a bias that mis-assigns scarce resources. Busts are the corrections applied when we come to understand our earlier stupidity. The cycle of boom and bust comes about from an out-of-phase feedback loop that forces an oscillation. The engine analogy is only partially in play here, though, because evolving systems do this too.<br /><br />Reality is probably a bit of both. There is little doubt that our confidence in markets greatly influences prices. There is little doubt there are feedback loops that make the system oscillate. Austrian models generally say what not to do, though, so most people don’t like them as tools for deciding policy. Keynesian levers are more appealing, but may have little to do with reality.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-71488159259050175732016-10-31T20:02:47.130-07:002016-10-31T20:02:47.130-07:00@Donzelion: If supply-side theory were disposed of...@Donzelion: If supply-side theory were disposed of, we’d still have a ton more elephant and donkey dung to sweep out. There are strong arguments for why minimum wages do harm to the people they are intended to help. There are good reasons to address the underlying reasons for malpractice insurance rate inflation that are going to scare people when they are told the causes. There are good reasons to consign some of the Keynesian voodoo to the same dustbin.<br /><br />I sympathize with progressives who want the world to be fair and safe, but I’m an old school liberal with a strong sense of skepticism when I’m presented with magical thinking. Not only do I doubt a lever can be reversed, I doubt the lever is a lever at all. Back up 20 years and ask my younger self what the world would be like with US Treasury rates as low as they are and I’d have spouted something about inflation running amok. Heh. I was guilty of thinking there was a causal relation there. Apparently there isn’t, but who admits that nowadays? We are reduced now to knowing one CAN influence the other, but the relationship isn’t a lever with its convenient expectation that a small push should result in a small change. Is the solution space even differentiable? Models assume so, but the map isn’t the terrain.<br /><br />Believe conflicting models in large enough numbers and we might even ask if consolidating the Supreme Court is a good idea. Obviously we don’t want THEM in control, but precedents are powerful in emergent systems. What happens once two opposing groups of people get used to an idea and then trade who gets a chance to govern? Progressives won’t always be ascendant. Neither will the liberals or conservatives always be. Someone will be, though, and they get to use every precedent.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68624557285036334122016-10-31T19:40:30.090-07:002016-10-31T19:40:30.090-07:00Larry,
Where you said that people have the electi...Larry,<br /><br />Where you said that people have the election on their minds and politics is most of what they want to talk about, I agree, especially this close to election day. It's like picking at a scab - we all feel the election fatigue, but at the same time it just feels so important we can't put it down. However, I doubt it is going to be over after Nov 8. Regardless of the outcome, the discussion will keep going. We could take little loci as a somewhat extreme example. If Trump wins, he will gloat for the next 4 years, and if Trump loses, he will piss and moan for the next 4 years, his screed becoming more shrill and screeching the closer his years bring him to the grave without the satisfaction of seeing all them damn liberals burn in Hell. (I still say the rhetoric he uses is exactly like all the preachers and ministers i grew up listening to out on the Great Plains - twist words and logic any way to win, no matter what. It's okay to lie when immortal soul are at risk. It's even okay to kill if the souls in question show no sign of being persuaded to follow the One True Path. His latest about equating progressivism with anti-democracy and believing in Freedom is no different from the abortion debate, where the pro-lifers think everyone on Earth will agree that murder os wrong and evil. The mental gymnastics are impressive, but only in that flabbergasted "can you believe anyone can really come up with shit like that?" way.)<br /><br />People who are 100% sure of themselves just aren't going to shut up. It is too important to their petty egos to never admit defeat, never entertain the possibility that they might not be perfect. Such pitiable creatures are these! And every time he or one of the other trolls chimes in, many of us get sucked in. Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-75471115644909109702016-10-31T19:20:15.657-07:002016-10-31T19:20:15.657-07:00Donzelion,
I like this you wrote here:
"Alf...Donzelion,<br /><br />I like this you wrote here:<br /><br />"Alfred has a good point here: it's absolutely unclear that pushing one lever will reverse course. The post-WWII era is over. The post-Cold War boom is over. The Hothead War of 2016 isn't a shooting war, so I'm skeptical about a boom...and Obama and Clinton are not trying to blow bubbles."<br /><br />The part I especially like is that last phrase, though I appreciate the rest of it as well. The idea of "not trying to blow bubbles" seems to be beyond most people, because we have been trained to believe that vitality = rapid growth, so an economy is only good if it is growing by leaps and bounds. But an economy that is growing by leaps and bounds is a bubble, and a bubble will pop, with huge and devastating consequences. It seems to me that much of the dissatisfaction many people have with President Obama - those who are in that group that are not really partisan but are easily persuaded (the Waffle Constituency) expect the economy to be going like a runaway train. The recovery from the Bush Bubble has been slow and steady, so from many people's perspective, this has been no recovery at all. No matter what the news is, they expect streets paved with gold or it isn't good enough. But not blowing bubbles is exactly what we need. Any growth beyond maturity is either obesity or cancer. But then, America has among the highest rates of both of these in the world.Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-77056357418281326662016-10-31T16:58:03.972-07:002016-10-31T16:58:03.972-07:00Laurence said: “You suggest that so long as citize...Laurence said: “You suggest that so long as citizens can observe the state as keenly as the state observes them, an Orwellian scenario can never develop. However, this assumes that all opression comes from above. While state-led censorship and tyranny are the most powerful and most well known forms of opression known, ordinary citizens also subjgate one another, from homophobia and mysogyny on the right to PC bullying and "no-platforming" on the left, through to simple school bullying …”<br /><br />Yes of course I deal with this in The Transparent Society.<br /><br />If we can shine true citizen sousveillance at elites, then Orwell’s Big Brother becomes impossible… but the next level failure mode is the one Ray Bradbury showed in Fahrenheit 451… in which tyranny arises from populist bullying by the 60% majority of “little brothers,” imposing conformity upon all. It is a truly frightening possibility and the means for using this in state control are being developed in large Eurasian states.<br /><br />But this is not where it has to go. Light will not prevent this, all by itself. But light PLUS some social innovations will prevent it. Those social innovations are seen in almost every Hollywood film, in which the principal messages are : Suspicion of authority (SoA), Tolerance, Diversity, and Eccentricity.<br /><br />Watch the movies. The heroine or hero almost always exhibits some eccentric trait in the 1st 5 minutes! If you actually look, you can see a society girding itself to use light AGAINST conformity.<br /><br />Notice how, in order to uphold and proclaim his own eccentricity — his viciously insane need to strawman other people and try to portray them in ways diametrically opposite to their values — our locumranch must appeal to liberal values! He can’t proclaim “I am better and deserve to oppress others!”<br /><br />No, he must proclaim: “You liberals are oppressing me and making me conform to your non-conformity and tolerance! You are repressing my right to repress others!”<br /><br />Now if he had put it that way… then… well, damn straight.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.com