Monthly Archives: August 2015

The Pastor that went rogue

We don’t see this often.

After Year Of Atheism, Former Pastor: ‘I Don’t Think God Exists’

‘At the start of 2014, former Seventh-Day Adventist pastor Ryan Bell made an unusual New Year’s resolution: to live for one year without God — this reflecting his own loss of faith. He kept a blog documenting his journey and had a documentary crew following him.

After a year, Bell tells NPR’s Arun Rath, “I’ve looked at the majority of the arguments that I’ve been able to find for the existence of God, and on the question of God’s existence or not, I have to say I don’t find there to be a convincing case, in my view.

This is a remarkable thing – primarily that a human can change a, I would think, deeply held belief, as religion is in its formal and more explicit forms is most often something that is indoctrinated into children by their parents or pushed onto a person by his social circle which makes it awkward to be the lone nail standing out, which induces people to conform (ie. school clique social influence), but moreso that he went full public with it. My hat is certainly off to him.

One of his biggest lessons from the year is “that people very much value certainty and knowing and are uncomfortable saying that they don’t know.” Now he thinks certainty is a bit overrated.

Which is exactly the message that Nicholas Nassim Tabel brought to us  in his ‘Black Swan’ – people are SO afraid to say ‘I don’t know” (and to a lesser degree “I’m not certain”)… because it, in our times, implies ignorance, and in a world where people want certainty, both for the peace of mind in a chaotic, incompassionate world, as well as not wanting to be the nail standing out.

Ryan Bell is that lone nail sticking out – and, in my opinion, for the better.

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/27/373298310/after-year-of-atheism-former-pastor-i-dont-think-god-exists

Another misconception of market prices

From Cafe Hayek I read (and comment on here since the site does not allow such there):

The two shillings of a poor man are just as good as the two shillings of a rich one; and, if we interfere to prevent the commodity from rising out of the reach of the poorest ten, whoever they may be, we must toss up, draw lots, raffle, or fight, to determine who are to be excluded. (Malthus)

Market prices are not arbitrary.  Prices are determined by the forces that economists comprehend with the theory of supply and demand.  An attempt by government to change a price or wage from what that price or wage would be without government price controls at best masks the true price or wage – in the way that dressing up a woman to look like a man at best changes the woman’s outward appearance without altering her chromosomes.  (Many proponents of minimum wages and other price controls – those proponents who deny that such price controls generate negative effects – are victims of the primitive superstition that the superficial appearance of something is the essence of that something.) (Cafe Hayek)

First. Malthus is talking about that the purchasing power at the present moment, next touching upon rationing in the case of a price ceiling put on a good. Initially it is true in that is the purchasing power of two whomever the party that holds those two shillings, though the equal value of these ends there: For the poor man, there are immediate needs to be met – acommodation, food, clothing. This means that for a person with meagre or no savings, the money is his hand is likely to be gone very soon. On the other hand, the rich man (what that word means precisely I won’t go into here, lets just go with ‘loaded’) has his needs well covered, and the money is his hand does not immediately need to cover life necessities, which means they are likely to go into investments, yielding stock dividends, sales profits and other capital income. In short, the money for the poor man will be consumed away rapidly while that of the rich man will accumulate and likely result in linear or even power-law returns (for the while there are no precipituous market crashes).

So no, the two shillings are not the same for two different men (or, I’m afraid to say… men of different classes).

Second. Dan Bordeaux (the owner of blog CF) says that market prices are not arbitrary. That much is true. How goes on to say that prices are formed by laws og price and demand, which is likewise true, but treading into fuzzy terrain, since the immediate snapshot of the D-S curve is that of a continuum (sounds so ice, that word), or you can visualize it as a stretched box whith two lines dancing about within it.

And on the border, and outside that box are conditions and forcings (swiped i from climate science 🙂 upon it that are not known to the experts studying the economic observables inside the box, or the forcings are not well percieved or improperly understood by them.

As for the true price – what is true in the economic sense? The equilibrium price in a world where government influence completely wiped away? So, in the present moment or an arbitrary time in the future How about a government-less world where a monopolist/cartel has attained enough market power to be price makers instead of both sides of the D-S world being price takers (the idealized free market)?

(There is of course the case where government has too much influence on price and where it itself, if not actively becoming a supplier of a certain good, ie. direct market participation, becomes an external price maker. It is this state of affairs that the Austrians object to, and often they are right, but that’s me digressing)

As some of you may know, the Austrians do no take into consideration the economic singularity of natural resources: That they are exhaustible and that those who sit upon them are price makers, ie. have an inordinate market power – or one ultimate so, as shows in the notion of hydraulic despotism.

So that is the free market. To even out these inordinate amounts of market power is not just preventing government from overreaching, or prevent excess capital accumulation amongst the superrich, but it is indeed to prevent the ‘free market’ from turning the world and its population into a free-for-all for the diminishing resources, in which an increasing population (again very Malthusian) will fight harder and more frenetically for lesser and lesser scraps thrown in a calculated manner from the hands of those at the top of the pile.

The freed market will be ones where these (destructive) imbalances are more or less evened out.

Whereas the free market is essentially devoid af an activist government (or any at all), and the population reduced to mere economically-acting (ala Rand’s “Galt’s Gulch”) entities, the freed market needs some degree of intereference from government, and activism and collective action of its citicens. (While it is unpalatable for me to say so, the interference on government level does most likely not be limited to evening out the common resources.)

In closing, Dan makes the same mistake that Thomas Schelling commented on in 1978*, which is that an equilibrium isn’t particularly attractive, which is to say that just because there is an equilibrium achieve for a given good, does not necessarily mean that it is exactly godd, purposeful or satisfying, ie. that it serves a specific purpose (well) for either exchanges in that particlular good, or in the economic environs  surrounding, and perhaps dependent on that.

As for mistaking an apparence for the essence, I’d say Don has fallen into that trap, as well. The free market is that – on the surface.

*Micromotives and Macrobehavior, page 26, Norton Edition.

CC news #1

Twenty-two world-leading marine scientists have collaborated in the synthesis report in a special section of Science journal. They say the oceans are at parlous [sic] risk from the combination of threats related to CO2. They believe politicians trying to solve climate change have paid far too little attention to the impacts of climate change on the oceans.

It is clear, they say, that CO2 from burning fossil fuels is changing the chemistry of the seas faster than at any time since a cataclysmic natural event known as the Great Dying 250 million years ago.

They warn that the ocean has absorbed nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide we have produced since 1750 and, as CO2 is a mildly acidic gas, it is making seawater more acidic. It has also buffered climate change by absorbing over 90% of the additional heat created by industrial society since 1970. The extra heat makes it harder for the ocean to hold oxygen. (This is where the ‘missing heat’ that CC skeptics constantly complain about has gone – there was never a warming hiatus – there just weren’t looking, if looking at all.)

…They warn that the carbon we emit today may change the earth system irreversibly for many generations to come.

It is a certainty, not a possibility.

The marine food source (and sustainability in itself) is being shredded, and with it the the societies and communities that depend on it on this globe.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33369024

 

 

#geek #oldfag #nostalgia

It would seem that on ~this daydate, 25 years ago, I got my first computer, a Commodore Amiga 500. Commodore croaked in ’94, but the Amiga lives on in a quiet alley of the computechnical world… of significantly more gravitas, the works of visuals, music, sheer creative madness and achievement of all these people brought into the world… and its manifold derivatives that made it onto other platforms and modes of human impression and expression… will live forever. Or at least – for a very long time.

A current example of subtotalitarian ideology

This is a case-in-point of the poison that ‘feminism’ has become:

On Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported that a school in Oxford has become the first to introduce “Good Lad” workshops, in which boys are singled out for sessions that teach them about “the scale of sexual harassment and violence aimed at female students” and how they must stand up for women’s rights.

…      In November last year, The Times reported on a programme in London Schools in which two American women, one a former sex crime prosecutor, “re-programme teenage boys’ sexual manners so they are fit for a feminist world”.

…       By all means, let’s teach children about healthy relationships, but that’s not really what these campaigns are about. Instead there is an overwhelming emphasis on imposing an ideological worldview that first and foremost sees young men as potential abusers and perpetrators, while routinely ignoring and minimising the very real threat of violence, both physical and sexual, that boys and young men face themselves.

This is what feminism has slowly become over the past half-century. ‘1st wave feminism’, a term that the most recent feminists have coined to appropriate the laurels of those who took the first, dangerous, steps to enable women to live and experience life more freely, the equal-francise agitators of the 19th century, and the 2nd wave feminists, the ones that pushed to further increase female participation in society through educational institutions and workplaces.

The 3rd wave ‘feminists’ however, is a camp of toxic madness dressed up in decent attire – with a core of pretentious writers and ‘cultural personalities’ that popped up and after in the cultural-sexual revolution post-1967, where sexuality (incl. pornography, which was incidentally legalized in Denmark in 1968 as the first country in the world) was not only freed, but was used as a political tool, which Frankfurt-school sociologist Herbert Marcuse noted it had to become, since the traditional revolutionary ideologies had failed miserably.

..which leads me to note that certain ideologies that are so well-meaning, and intend to change the whole world for the better, end up doing horrifying messes.

(That one specific umbrella of ideologies that rose in 1848 had a lighter face that gave rise to significant good for millions of people, but its darker face ended up being the worst scourge the world had ever seen in terms of lives lost, crushed under the iron-clad weels of the machine that pushed towards progress.)

So, the feminists of today as alwas say they have good intentions of e.g. reducing violence again women. The claims we’ve heard for over 20 years are that men are the violent scourge of the earth – we are violent, brual, caveMEN, we are the sole cause of the wars in the world, and most of all, rapists (the #1 bogeyman and beserk-inducing dark effigy of modern feminists.)

However…

You’d never know it from the rhetoric, but a man – and particularly a young man — is around twice as likely to be a victim of violent crime as a woman. And it’s not just drunken street violence either. A 2009 NSPCC report into domestic violence in teenage relationships, showed teenage boys suffer comparable rates of violence from their girlfriends as do teenage girls from their boyfriends.

As you may have heard, violence against girls and women, even rape, is something men won’t do if only they are taught no to do so. Thus, men, and in particular, buys are put into the grinder of being ‘taught’ not to be violent and rape.

In the same year another report, this time by Childline, found that of the children who called to report sexual abuse, a total of 8,457 were girls (64pc) and 4,780 were boys (36pc). The charity also found boys were more likely to say they had been sexually abused by a woman (1,722 cases) than by a man (1,651).

What comes to mind is the somewhat recent, very large number of female schoolteachers in the U.S. that end up in criminal court due to having sex with their male pupils. Are these cases rape? Are these boys  entirely aware of what is happening, and what they are getting into? If it is not fully-informed consent, is it not rape, according to the feminists? Would not male teachers that pushed younger female students into having sex with them be shown publicly and branded as a rapist to not only his enormuous shame, but at a great danger to his life, since targeted violence againt men that have comitted sexual abuse is common. (Many have to do a namechange and relocate to live safely and unburdened from their past).

Usually the girls/women (and many guys as well) snicker a bit at these going-ons. After all, men are those brutish a creatures, always wanting sex, so getting sex with your teacher must be good, though awkward (as women that have sex/go into relationships with younger men stand out, as the typical female desire is to choose a male partner older than herself.

In March, the Government announced the introduction of new consent classes for children aged as young as 11*. The plans were launched on International Women’s Day and the PSHE guidelines repeatedly state they are primarily part of the Government’s A Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls strategy.

According to a “Fact Sheet” published by one of the guidelines’ key contributors, a top priority for the lessons is “challenging notions of male sexual entitlement” and the lessons should be seen “in the context of a society in which gender inequality is the norm… and girls and young women are subjected to high levels of harassment, abuse and violence – overwhelmingly from men and boys they know”.

*) Get ’em while they’re young. As it happens, totalitarian movements and ideologies all ahev in common that children must be indoctrinated as soon as possible, last they develop free identity and notions counter to the exalted ideology.

What impact must all this be having on boys and young men, who are themselves at one of the most vulnerable stages of their lives? Last year, insideMAN published findings of a focus group of young male students, which gave a disturbing glimpse into the ideological classroom climate faced by boys, this time told by young men themselves.

They told us that when it came to expressing any view that contradicted feminist orthodoxy, they were shouted at and publicly humiliated. They said their motives routinely came under immediate suspicion simply on account of their gender. And they said they wanted to be protected against fundamentalism by prominent and leading figures in the campaign for gender equality.

Bullying is the usual tactic of cliques, and bullying on this scale is intense and abusive in a way that leads to mental scars that will take years to heal.

After visiting a classroom … Doris Lessing …  told the Edinburgh Book Festival, “I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.

“You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.” Lessing expressed deep concern that what she had witnessed was just a glimpse of an increasingly pervasive culture of toxic feminism in schools that was weighing down boys with a collective sense of guilt and shame.

Which it quite what it is – toxic feminism, which is causing and will cause untold harm to buys and men, moreso in that this feminism, like any other ideology engaging in entryism, has been creeping into the institutions of both government and education; purportedly seeking doing-good and further liberation of women will get you far in this age of progress and equalization, and once in the positions of influence and power, the fair garb will be cast off and the dark being beneath will come forth and do its deeds.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11747413/We-must-stop-indoctrinating-boys-in-feminist-ideology.html