Friday, November 9, 2018

Jordan Peterson.

Jordan Peterson is a lot to take in.  He appears to ramble, but that is because he has much to say.  He looks at humanity on a kind of systems level, which is how do people function together and what values do they have?  He ties this to how mythology reflects the values that make society work.

It takes effort to understand Jordan Peterson, but he is fascinating to listen to.

Sunday, September 2, 2018

The Truth About Untruth | Postmodernism Exposed


I thought that this long video is a very good critique of Postmodernism, until the end when he brought up race and IQ, which is one of his favorite topics.   I think that the following video is a very good counter to this prejudice:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE9jiPyLYZA

In response to Stefan Molyneux's video I wrote the following:

I would love to share this extremely good presentation, but the moment you bring up race and IQ you make it unpresentable, because others will dismiss you as a racist.  In fact, claiming that one ethnic group on average is significantly smarter than another is still racism.  David Duke said the same thing.  Like you, David Duke said that he was for European culture.  Where is the difference between the two of you?

You may think that this is based on sound science, but there are many reasons to think that this is questionable.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE9jiPyLYZA   Even if you could refute some of the things in this video, I think that we can't adequately test for culture and environment.   It may never be clear, or maybe it will more clear in 50 years, because as people rise out of poverty some or even all of the discrepancies will disappear, which is shown by the Flynn Effect.

Because of this, we put too much faith in IQ scores.  It is true that IQ scores are a great predictor of success, but we have a chicken and egg problem.  Successful people produce environments for their children that lead to financial and academic success.  They instill ambition and work ethic in their children, which by itself might account for the higher scores by Asians and Jews.  Environment and values will affect IQ scores.

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Discussion: Sam Harris, the IDW and the left

The last minute and a half of this video makes Jordan Peterson sound bat shit crazy.  At least he does not clarify what he means in a way that people can understand and relate to.

He was pretty interesting up to that point, although he has a certain vagueness about his core beliefs that seem less rooted in concrete reality and more rooted in mythology.

He does his best work when he sticks to science, which in his field he is a very interesting speaker.  He became famous by trying to defend free speech against certain laws in his country of Canada.



Sunday, July 29, 2018

If There Is No God, Murder Isn't Wrong

In response to:


I wrote:

Religious morality is also an opinion.  People accept one faith over another.  The morality of certain religions, if not most religions, justify murder on a mass scale.  How is it that the Bible has "Do no kill" and then the supposed God commands people to commit genocide multiple times, and even describes the supposed God as a mass murderer himself?  Hypocrisy is not a sound moral system.

I prefer morality based upon the reason that says that we respect of the rights of others because we want our own rights respected.  This is a morality that is inherent to human nature because we understand it naturally.  There are going to be those who violate it, because that is also human nature, so we need institutions that protect rights.

Friday, July 27, 2018

​Nietzsche on Democracy, Christianity and Decay (Prof. Stanley Rosen)

Some regard
Nietzsche as kind of crazy.  For others he has
an intellectual appeal. 
I think that Nietzsche wanted to tear down all the old institutions and morals.  He is kind of the opposite of Jordan Peterson who says that we need some sort of moral base to function as a society.  Jordan Peterson seems less concerned about whether or not religion is actually true than he is about what religion means to us as a society.

One thing I found interesting in the video is the notion that all structures are eventually replaced by something completely different.  This is kind of scary thought.  This is what the Marxists want.  We don't know what will eventually replace Western values, but it seems likely whatever it ends up being could be much more authoritarian.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Jordan Peterson - The Problem With Atheism


Interesting.   

The argument that I have heard is that people who don't know the difference between right and wrong aren't lacking religion, but empathy.  Although correct, there are always going to be some who do lack empathy.  This also assumes that your society values empathy, which I suspect was deficient in the Nazis, the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union.  Therefore, I see no guarantee that a society would value anything beyond individual or national self interest.  Many would, but some would not.  You can make a convoluted argument for morality, but some would find these arguments too deep and discard them.

Of course, the atrocities committed under slavery in this country, and others, showed a complete lack of empathy, and religion was often used as the justification.  Sam Harris claims that good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but if you want a good person to do bad things then you need religion.

I am not taking sides here.  I just think that the ideas are interesting.

The World Is Better Than Ever. Why Are We Miserable?

Monday, March 5, 2018

Youtube censorship

Re: Learned a new word

Larry,

Seems to me that there is a continuum, from a very oppressive society that tries to regiment all behavior, to an anarchist or nihilistic one where people lack any sense of purpose.

In my view, society should regulate and encourage behavior that is respectful to the rights of others.   By this, I mean we should teach children about civil liberties and respecting freedom.

As a logical extension of this, I also believe in courtesy.  

Since we do not share the same religious beliefs, I assume that we would disagree on what is moral and what is not.  I draw the line at respecting the rights of others.

​One of the many reasons I do not believe in anarchy is that there has to be some standard way of defining, for example, what is property ownership and what rights are.​

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On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36 AM, utahtrout  wrote:

Anomie



From this article describing social anomie...





Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Fwd: Core Values

FYI, this is an email I wrote to someone I know.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Core Values
To:


Ryan,

There are a great many varied positions that people hold, but all those positions should be traceable to some sort of belief that is in effect the cause of all causes.  I have a friend in Salt Lake City, who around 2001 was trying to pin me down on what my core values were, because I was refusing to take absolute positions.  I told him that I didn't believe in absolutes, but judged individual issues on their merits.  However, he pressed me further saying that even if so, there must be some value or values that I hold dear in order to make those judgements?  I responded that I wanted to do the most good, while doing the least amount of harm.

When I question people about their core values, I almost always get the negative instead of the positive.  People are more likely to tell you what they are against instead of what they are for, and therefore it seems to me that people get excited about politics because they are against something.  For example, truly happy people have little need for politics.  When it comes to being against something, I think that there is the concept of "the oppressor" where people blame some specific thing for the misery in the world or their personal misery.  The oppressor for Republicans and Libertarians is government, and I'm pretty sure that the oppressor for the left is the wealthy.  This kind of thing gets people quite agitated about politics, but in reality there is very little that politics can do to improve a person's life, because people improve their life through personal responsibility, good judgement, hard work and perseverance.  For this reason, politics can be a waste of time, because it is unlikely that public policy will change one iota because of an individual's efforts.

It is my observation that the further people are on the political left, the more likely they are to are to tell you what they are against instead of what they are for.  This is because true socialism is untenable to the majority of the Americans, so those on the extreme left tend to hide what they really believe in, and instead choose to attack enemies or bad things that are easier targets.  I don't think that Bernie Sanders is electable as President in the United States because he is pretty much honest about what he believes in.  However, someone like Barack Obama, who was the considered the most liberal person in the United States Senate, could get elected because he spoke in more general and less specific terms.

People who mostly talk about what they are against tend to confuse the political argument, because it is less clear what they stand for.

When it comes to my political positions, I hold two core values which I will elaborate on, one of which is generally Republican, and the other is generally Libertarian.

I take it as a given that as the amount of government increases, the level of economic growth declines.  Even the most casual of observation shows that places like Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, China and even India have suffered because of their socialist policies.  The places with the least amount of government, like Lichtenstein, Hong Kong, and Luxembourg, have prospered, sometimes even more than the United States.  Even though I take this principle as a given that should require very little proof, I have seen studies that put all the countries in the world on a graph, and there is a pretty clear inverse and almost linear relationship between prosperity and the amount of government.  Logic gives further support to this position, because we can see the effects of government.  It becomes pretty clear that excessive government burdens the economy, and wastes resources, both capital and labor.  Bigger governments tend to be more corrupt and more easily manipulated, causing further waste.

So the economy works best when people are free to pursue their goals with minimal government interference.  Freedom works.

However, this assertion is usually met with arguments about the Scandinavian countries, where people claim that these countries prove that Socialism can work.  I find this interesting, because the leader of one of the countries denied that they were a Socialist country, but instead claimed that they were a free market economy.  I think that the argument that the Scandinavian countries are proof that socialism can work is flawed for many reasons:  Most of their prosperity came before they adopted socialist policies, they still try to maintain a healthy free market, and when their economy stagnated, they had to lower their tax rates to give it a boost.  In fact, at least one country for awhile had a lower top tax rate than the United States.

My favorite Milton Friedman quote is:   "The enduring lesson of the 20th century is that socialism is a failure, and free markets are a success. But the politicians keep advocating just a little more socialism."  Governments Keep Turning to Socialism, Even Though It Always Fails.


The non-aggression principle, which I think is sometimes referred to as The Libertarian Principle, says that people have the right to do whatever they want so long as they don't interfere with the same right of others.  There is an expression that says, "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins."  I agree with this in principle, but there are practical considerations where I might differ.  Pure Libertarians see all taxes as theft, and almost all regulation as an infringement on people's freedom.  Most government actions use theft, force, or the threat of force to achieve its aims, so these government actions are a form of tyranny. 

I think that if you take this principle to its logical extreme then you can't have any government at all, and a small percentage of Libertarians are anarchists who see Libertarianism as a path to anarchy.  However, I think that anarchy is completely unworkable.  Although some people might think that Rights are self evident, I think that there could be widespread disagreement over what is a right and what is not.  You need government to define what the rules are to prevent people from aggressing against each other.  Property can only be defined in a legal context, otherwise you could have two or more people laying claim to the same property without a clear and just resolution.  In anarchy, not everybody is going to agree to the same rules.  Finally, it should be self evident that we need government to protect us from foreign enemies.  Without government, we would be taken over by people who are far less considerate about our well being.

I am so very far from pure Libertarianism, which I also think is not practical.  I think that we need some minimal regulations to prevent people from harming each other, just like we need traffic signals to prevent people from harming each other.  I see examples around me of extreme poverty, and therefore conclude that we need some social programs, at least for the moment.  However, I think that in an ideal world we could phase out social programs as the free market increased prosperity.  

It seems to me that the left never wants social programs to end, nor decrease, but only to increase them, which raises the question in my mind of how much is enough?  In an ideal world you would need less social programs over time.  If you take the position that you always need more social programs, then isn't that admitting some kind of failure, because the social programs aren't solving the problem of poverty, but possibly making the problem worse?

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