tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post6550365541542694338..comments2024-03-21T03:55:51.565-07:00Comments on Omniorthogonal: 2013 Blogyear in Reviewmtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-53740055588310922012013-12-30T11:46:37.769-08:002013-12-30T11:46:37.769-08:00"Both seem to spent inordinate effort reading..."Both seem to spent inordinate effort reading and engaging with writings that they declare to be worthless."<br /><br />I can speak for no one else, but the reason I do it is that even bad ideas have consequences, which are inevitably evil. Bad ideas therefore need to be read and engaged in order that they may be rebutted.Crawfurdmuirnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-87695008176953212802013-12-29T16:57:52.951-08:002013-12-29T16:57:52.951-08:00Mike: Happy New Year!
I just took a look at Engine...Mike: Happy New Year!<br />I just took a look at Engineers of Human Souls. Facebook seems like an epitome of a very broad trend of letting the culture go on autopilot -- the culture as a whole behaves like a scatterbrained adolescent, attracted to shiny and exciting and "hip" (whatever that means at the moment) things, and producing feedback loops with the creators of such goods -- the more we give ourselves over to them, the more we feed the industry broadening its base to grow and become more sophisticated and ingenious at capturing us, and the more the mentality seems to infect everything, and politics in particular.<br /> Stanislaw Lem's Solaris seems a good metaphor for the state we drift into - highly recommended if you haven't read it - and I generally find little value in science fiction.<br /><br />"Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity" Ha! easy for him to say; he'll never have to worry about losing employment due to something he wrote or did in High School or College. Integrity is more than saying "Here I am for anyone to see, not hiding anything"; I see it as something consciously - probably painstakingly - constructed.<br /><br />Is "scw" the same person as "crawfordmuir"? Both seem to spent inordinate effort reading and engaging with writings that they declare to be worthless. No references (in this set of comments) to John Randolph though. If there were any I wouldn't have to ask.<br /><br />There are those who insist the best way to tame government and avoid tyranny is to make sure the <i><b>only</b></i> tool government has is force or violence -- i.e. the "monopoly on legitimate violence". The trouble with this theory is that old saw that "to the man with only a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail" (http://whatwasthecoldwar.blogspot.com/2010/05/man-with-only-hammer.html).<br /><br />Few people want to face how difficult democracy is (If I were to say what I think is really needed to get beyond blundering around and doing OK if we're lucky - as we have been so far, most people would gasp and think I'm crazy to contemplate such possibilities). So people dream of some magic autopilot (like the "invisible hand" or the "dictatorship of the proletariat") that will save us.<br /><br /> In all of this I see potential resonance between pico- and macro- economics. Truly of all the things you've written about (that I've read) that interests me the most.<br />Hal Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08662079870429206811noreply@blogger.com