I don’t know, and am not going to claim to know, whether we’re being visited by extraterrestrials and if so what they’re up to while they’re here. I don’t have strong opinions on which sighting and abduction stories are true and which aren’t. I’m just exactly smart enough to understand that I don’t have the information I’d need to reach such conclusions. What I do know is that it shouldn’t be the government’s prerogative to conceal such information from the rest of us indefinitely, tell us tall tales about weather balloons and swamp gas, and offer lame “national security” excuses when caught out.
Tag: culture
Lead a Life That Confuses the Archaeologists
Nonconformity is a lifelong task. But there are simple ways to bootstrap uniqueness, break out of your culture’s “zeitgeist”, and make some future historian’s job exceptionally hard.
CPI Bias and Happiness
CPI Bias is alive and well, so we’re materially much better off than we think. “There is no Great Stagnation” – say it non-ironically, as you should. On reflection, however, there is a shocking implication. Happiness researchers – yes, even Justin Wolfers! – have almost uniformly found little effect of income on happiness. If official statistics understate real income growth, what should we conclude?
Buddhist Anarchism and Nonviolent Communication
Here are some pieces that I wrote up for two episodes of the Anarchy Bang podcast. One episode was about buddhist anarchism and the other episode was about Nonviolent Communication & anarchism.
Why so Many College Students Are In Mental Distress—And What Parents Can Do about It
More supervision and less autonomy, combined with social media influences, could be making college students more prone to anxiety and depression.
Codifying Our Worst Impulses: The Ideas that Started World War II
Today (9/1) is the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, the deadliest violent conflict in human history. Death tolls vary, but often reach 80 million souls. What caused it? Lists of proximate causes never end, but the only credible “root cause” is simply: ideas.
Dominance: Material vs. Rhetorical
Do the rich dominate our society? In one sense, they obviously do. Rich people run most of the business world, own most of the wealth, and are vastly more likely to be powerful politicians. In another sense, however, the rich aren’t dominant at all. If you get in public and loudly say, “Rich people are great. We owe them everything. They deserve every penny they’ve got – and more. People who criticize the rich are just jealous failures,” almost everyone will recoil in horror.
The History of Private Schools: How American Education Became a Political Battleground
Public schools being an arm of the state are indoctrination centers. This becomes increasingly true as basic skills such as the old “three Rs” of “reading, writing and ‘rithmatic” are jettisoned in favor of climate change, critical race theory and gender ideology – all of which are now part and parcel of a public education in the United States.
Why Culture Matters
The word “culture” comes from the latin cultura referring to the care, development, and protection required to develop something, as in “cultivation” and “agriculture”. The weeds and rocks have to go and the soil has to be prepared in order for precious seeds to be carefully planted and become a beautiful garden that bears fruit and is worth preserving.
Ethical Consistency, Does it Really Matter?
To the best of my understanding, the lack of ethical consistency in today’s culture has led, and continues to lead people toward further social, economic, and foreign policy disasters. For this reason, I wanted to go over the concept of ethical consistency as I see it, the definition of the term, and some examples of how it’s applied in real world scenarios.