Miscellaneous thoughts about miscellaneous matters
There are a few simple tricks that one can use to supplement the check of Occam’s Razor, when one is looking at an argument. If one is trying to show causality, then remember that effects follow causes. If your presumed cause follows the presumed effect, then you can be thoroughly certain that you are mistaken in your presumption of causality. If something happened in the past when something else did not exist, then the thing that did not exist did not cause that ...
I had been wondering exactly people were meaning by “sustainability”, so I looked around the internet, and I still don’t know, but I get a general impression that some people think that the world should be preserved as the exact thing that they love. It appears that they think that if they can get everyone to act the way they want, then the world will be nicer. The EPA has this on its website, and it is a set of pleasant pap. Yes, in an ideal world things would be nice. ...
On another forum to which I belong there recently was a question about propaganda. A request was made for information about how to write propaganda. After some initial comments about advertising and ordinary public relations writing. People started suggesting real world examples, such as the jingoism and appeals to greatness that Hitler and others have used. And it was pointed out the heavy-handed propaganda that some have used isn’t as effective as the subtle propaganda that has become popular ...
Religious discrimination Here in the U.S.A. we are guaranteed the right to practice the religion of our choice, which is interesting, and we are further guaranteed that there will be no establishment of religion, but this part has been completely ignored. Organized religion has been established as official and even granted tax exempt status. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This was applied to ...
Or believing versus knowing It has come to our attention that religious thinking has been spreading to other matters. By religious thinking I mean opinions that are believed or claimed as fact, without question and with nothing more substantial that a nudist’s pants to support them. Such unsupported ideas have appeared in politics, diet, clothing, and just about everything else, even in the hard sciences. It might be easier to say that it appears that more people are taking their ...
Updated 03-17-2014 at 01:24 PM by PeterL