Far be it from me to divide humankind in two, but were I so inclined, I’d divide it into those who love reason and those who are indifferent if not outright hostile to it. Members of the first group adore the reasoning process and their own reasoning faculties. The others find the process burdensome and discomforting, something that threatens long-held beliefs and intuitions.
Tag: knowledge
The Voluntaryist Premise
Once a person adopts the label of voluntaryist (or the like) for their political identity, they assume, with good reason, the following premise: human suffering is terrible and should be prevented; aggression and coercion necessarily create human suffering. This premise leads the voluntaryist to hold a number of hypotheses with varying degrees of accuracy in some form or fashion within their minds at all times. Here are several of those hypotheses.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
We don’t even know where to start, but the idea of making machines like humans is bonkers. There at least 3 disparate ways to go. Shall we replicate the way that the human brain works? Shall we fool disinterested observers into mistaking a machine for a human? Shall we quit playing games and get on with a peaceful coexistence between homo sapiens and the machines that she builds?
What’s Wrong with Due Process?
If there is the slightest question that wrong has been done, only full due process can establish whether the claim is wrong or right. The court of political sentiment is mute. The processes of public opinion are inappropriate. Partisans cannot possibly know what the issues look like from within Mueller’s domain. Even POTUS cannot know.
With Great Blessings Come Great Challenges
The most important lesson of the age of abundance is that unprecedented wealth goes together with unprecedented ingratitude. The most important lesson of the age of mobility is that unprecedented opportunity goes together with unprecedented idleness.
Two Worlds—Politics and Everything Else
Political discourse itself is enough to make even a person of moderate intelligence run away screaming. So much ignorance is on display, so much viciousness, so much ill-disguised envy and malevolence, such unscrupulous attempts to take what belongs to other people and redirect it to those who have no just right to it. The stupidity, therefore, is not only an inability to connect real causes and effects, but also moral stupidity, an inability to do what is obviously right and decent, as opposed to predatory and criminal, albeit legal.
The Delusion of a Win-Win Trade War
The foregoing considerations are only a few of the many that weigh against the initiation and continuation of a trade war. Trump says such wars are easy to win. In this regard, he apparently doesn’t even understand what winning means.
Trump and Putin – How about Getting Rid of Your Nukes?
I was disappointed in the summit because it apparently gave no great urgency to what should be the priority by the standard of security for all the people of the world: the two powers’ alarming arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Free Migration is My Jam
Justin Faber, who I had a chat with on the podcast and has published at EVC, wrote recently, “You: Open borders are incompatible with a welfare state. Me: A welfare state is incompatible with open borders.” And therein lies the difference between libertarian types who disagree on the borders question.
10 Habits for Crushing It in Stressful, Uncertain Times
Change can bring wonderful opportunities if you notice what’s happening. And there are some habits you can develop to be better prepared to notice those opportunities, and to ride the wave of change. Here are a few I’ve been developing.