Nobody asked but … I didn’t want to create the impression in my recent post that I disbelieve climate change. All I’m saying is that it is highly improbable that the data is being gathered in an honest way. And I don’t mean honest as opposed to deliberately fallacious. Just as period music should be…
Tag: science
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics
My latest Words Poorly Used blog made reference to a WAG (wild ass guess) number that attempted to purport that a large percentage of undocumented immigrants did not cross a border on the ground, but rather flew into the US, and then stayed after the visa expired. This has several takeaways, but the one that sticks with me is the problem with statistics.
A Thought Experiment in Voluntaryism
The goal of the present thought experiment is to explore how much of existing social institutions, practices, and human relationships depend upon physical violence or the threat of it in order to function or exist.
Mystery All The Way Down
We are constantly told that we are only a click away from a nearly infinite amount of information and that scientific inquiry is pushing out the frontier of knowledge at a breakneck pace.
Nativists Don’t Know the Future
Acting morally means treating every person as he deserves, not treating every person as a perfect representative of the average person in a certain group. Doing the latter commits the sin of collectivism, which is the very thing that many anti-immigrationists pretend to fear if immigrants are allowed into the USA.
Sit-ins
I scarcely noticed in 1960, when I was a sophomore in high school, and it happened so fast. All of the lunch counters and soda fountains in Frankfort, KY’s drug stores and dime stores disappeared overnight.
Ignoring Bad Questions
Many times I see people ask questions which only demonstrate they have no clue what they are even talking about; they don’t even understand well enough to know what to ask. Not only about liberty, but regarding science and other things I actually know a little about.
My Theory on Democracy
While reading the first few pages of Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy recently, the idea came to me (not directly from what I was reading, mind you) that the advent of modern democracy may have been the result of a desire by the landowning class to control the means of expropriation.
Authorities They Are Not
Political discourse is an open-access activity. Anyone can have a say. Among those whose opinions and allegations receive the most notice are celebrities — especially entertainers, actors, TV news figure and pundits, athletes, and people who are famous only for being famous — and politicians. The prominent attention that these persons’ statements garner is unfortunate, to say the least.
Maintaining Victim Fluidity
The difference between crimes and non-crimes is that with the former, you have a real, identifiable victim, but with the latter, you don’t. Therefore, the government stands in place and assigns itself victimhood in order to bring charges. The more charges it brings as a victim (eg. The State vs…), the more revenue it generates. The more dynamically ambiguous it identifies itself as a victim, the richer and more entrenched in the fabric of society it gets.