I wrote yesterday about the information war. We’re bombarded with so much information if we are tuned in it’s impossible to think. But I don’t think the long-term solution is total retreat from the world at large, or what Venkatesh Rao calls Waldenponding.
Tag: control
Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment
Gun control is predicated on the belief that private citizens cannot be trusted with firearms. That the state should have a “monopoly on violence” because it is less violent than individuals. And that firearms should be taken away from private citizens because only the state is responsible enough to handle them. There is, however, a major problem with this: States are statistically far more violent than individuals. After all, in the 20th century alone, 262 MILLION people died at the hands of their own governments.
What I’m Thinking
1. Getting people to be rational about politics is an uphill battle during the best of times. During a global hysteria, it’s hopeless. 2. Due to this doleful realization, I refrained from discussing the lockdown when it first emerged. The best course, I deemed, was to wait for readers to simmer down. 3. Since many have now simmered down, here’s what I was thinking three months ago.
Flemming Rose: Censorship and Self-Censorship (1h34m)
This episode features a discussion with Danish journalist Flemming Rose from 2017. Twenty-five years ago, the pioneers of the Internet believed that they had created a tool to do away with censorship once and for all. Today, anyone with a smartphone is able to publish and communicate whatever they want, and yet, censorship still exists online. Just as the printing press, radio, and TV that came before it, while the Internet promised to be a breakthrough for freedom of speech, the government has found ways to control and limit our ability to freely disseminate information online. What does censorship in the 21st century look like? How does digital technology affect the way we communicate today? Is outright censorship easier to deal with than soft censorship and self-censorship? In this lecture, Flemming Rose explores these questions and more.
Technocracy is Evil and Inhumane
Fuck the cold metallic gloved dead hand of human chess playing technocratic ghouls who want to squelch and contain and document and track and sterilize it to death.
Why Logic is Unpopular
The ancient Greeks spoke of three perspectives: pathos, ethos, and logos. From a pathos perspective, emotions and feelings take center stage. From an ethos perspective, reputation and tradition are what really matter. From a logos perspective, reason is what guides to wise action.
The CDC’s Guidelines for Back-to-School Under COVID Sound Traumatizing
When schools reopen in the US amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they will be even more restrictive than they already were. Schools have long controlled students’ movements and imposed constraints on where they can go, when, and with whom. With virus concerns, those controls will increase in quantity and intensity.
“Liberty is good, but…”
It’s as though they are desperate to be taken seriously by government-supremacists for some reason. Maybe to be allowed a place at the table. Or for a patronizing pat on the head.
Harvard’s Latest Attack on Homeschooling Abuses Reason and Justice
Harvard University publications continue to present a skewed perspective of homeschooling, spotlighting Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet’s call for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling while failing to provide an accurate picture of American homeschooling.
Coronaggravation
It would be one thing if this were a natural disaster and there were actual reasons businesses couldn’t open or that people couldn’t gather, but this is a natural event turned into a disaster by politics. Politics makes people stupid!