Because of rationalization, prediction is a good test of theories. One can always with sufficient cleverness find a hundred and one explanations of past events that fit your model. Wrong predictions indicate indicate false models, and right predictions indicate true models, but retrodiction is always suspiciously accurate. Correct retrodiction is sometimes valid evidence for the truth of a model when it makes sense out of phenomena that were formerly arbitrary, …
Current news
We in Flight 93. The plane is headed directly to the ground. Trump is in the cockpit fighting the hijackers, but even if he wins, that is no guarantee he can pull the plane out of the dive. I normally don’t pay much attention to the latest political events, nor cover them in this blog, because it is mostly a distraction, intended to confuse and mislead. It is more important …
Creeping coup
Doing illegal acts and getting away with it due to state power is a creeping coup. If one side in a struggle for state power can do illegal things, and the other side cannot, the illegal things eventually escalate till the political leadership of side that cannot commit crimes flees the country or goes into hiding. We are in hiding, and people in the military with dangerous ideas get prosecuted …
A merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to all men of goodwill
Impeachment
Trump: This Witch Hunt must end NOW with a trial in the Senate, or let her default & lose. Trump wants a trial in the Senate at which Democrats get to call witnesses, Trump gets to cross examine their witnesses and Trump gets to call witnesses, and they get to cross examine his witnesses. During which he gets to put on the greatest show on earth, unlike the ratings killing …
Libertarianism
Libertarianism is classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is, or was, the Puritan sect known as the Levelers, who opposed aristocracy, Kings, and Bishops, but supported private property in the means of production, supported natural inequality, opposed socialism and communism, opposed them for a mixture of religious reasons(God ordained private property and capitalism in the fall) and quite modern reasons (price control and debasing the currency has the consequences that it does, …
Don’t use enemy words, you will not be understood.
Enemy words are always understood as enemy meanings. And they will always be understood in this sense even if we hold the megaphone, because their official definition always conflates two very different and incompatible natural kinds. Don’t use the words “racist”, “psychopath”, “sweatshop”, “sociopath”, and “pedophile”, among many others equally evil. When someone says “Democrats are the real racists”, he is using the word “racist” correctly and in accord with …
The namefag problem
In today’s environment, it is impossible to speak the truth under one’s official name, and dangerous to speak the truth even under any durable and widely used identity. Therefore, people who post under names tend to be unreliable. Hence the term “namefagâ€. If someone posts under his true name, he is a “namefag†– probably unreliable and lying. Even someone who posts under a durable pseudonym is apt show excessive …
Good and Evil
Good people cooperate to suppress evil deeds and exclude evil men, drive out evil men, kill evil men. If no words for good and evil, no extended large scale cooperation. If no extended large scale cooperation, we are not truly human, and we perish. Unless we can speak of good and evil, unless we can speak of good people and evil people, we will perish. The words “Good†and “Evil†…
Draining the Swamp
Trump made three big promises. To bring the jobs back, to build the wall, and to drain the swamp. Bringing the jobs back was effective almost immediately. He reversed a bunch of Obama presidential orders that had shutdown coal fields, oil wells, and pipelines, or prevented new ones from opening, and they immediately opened and started hiring at the stroke of his pen. Overnight, or rather over three months, America …