Thanks to Michael for the post and commentary.

 –

Forbes Advice to Young Entrepreneurs from self made billionaires

It is interesting to note that all workout 5 days a week, read at least two hours per day, and remember major failures they learned lessons from.  A few key concepts dominate this advice.  Be true to yourself and your own ideals and values, start small and grow, work very hard and intelligently toward your goals, focus only on areas you know, analyze and question common conceptions, and take failures as lessons giving you a more accurate description of reality.  Perseverance, dedication, integrity, and honesty to one’s self.  – Michael

– 

What is your advice to young entrepreneurs?

Arthur Blank - Find and follow your passions; develop a culture and live it. Positive financial results will flow from that.

Tim Blixseth - You are the next wave, and all of our shoes will be filled by someone. It may as well be YOU. Never give up trying.

Franklin Otis Booth Jr. - Identify where you have or can create an edge over the rest of the world and doing something you enjoy. Then push that advantage to extremes.

Mark Cuban  - Everyone has the will to succeed, only those with the will to prepare do.

Gerald Ford  - Never give up, and have a positive reaction to failure

Kenneth Hendricks  - Learn the business from the ground floor up – not from the top floor down.

Wayne Huizenga  - Have a passion for what you do, work hard, have great people with good personalities, enjoy the ride, but balance work and family

George Kaiser  - Identify and affiliate with creative talent. Brainstorm concepts and analyze constantly, but at the conceptual level, not the spreadsheet level

Michael Ilitch  - Ask lots of questions! And, when and if you get the chance to travel, always look for new ideas to bring home! Set your goals and never give up!

William Moncrief  - Accumulate a lot of singles and gradually get into the doubles and triples before you try for the home runs.

Phillip Ruffin  - To succeed, you have to put in the hours and when you think you are there, put in more

Jorge Perez  - Have great focus, set high but achievable goals and work EXTREMELY hard at achieving them. Be flexible and ready to adapt to change.

James Sorenson  - Listen to yourself. Be guided by your real passions and convictions, not just by what you think might get you ahead in life.

What motivates you?

Mark Cuban - Competition. I love to compete and business is the ultimate sport. The level of competition in the business world blows away anything I have seen in professional sports.
The competitive fire of successful businesspeople blows away anything I have seen from athletes.

Danny Gilbert  - Finding a better way to do just about anything. There’s nothing that can’t be improved. You just need to be curious, aware and go deep below the surface to find those 1,001 little things that can be the difference between mediocrity and greatness

George Kaiser  - Meeting up with an interesting, novel (for me at least) problem and generating an unconventional and successful solution. Making a difference.

What is "success" to you?

Danny Gilbert   - Create. Build. Give. Being able to effect positive change for the most people I possibly can at any given time. Growing our companies and the culture of "It’s about WHAT is right, not WHO is right" remains as strong as ever.

Kenneth Hendricks  - Success gives me the ability to continually pursue new ideas and opportunities and sleep well.

William Moncrief  - Making a successful trade where both parties are happy.

The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism

C. Bradley Thompson*

In 1994, American voters elected Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in forty years. This ascent to power gave Newt Gingrich and his colleagues the opportunity to launch their “Republican Revolution” with its signature “Contract with America” platform. The election was said to mark the end of an era—the era of big government liberalism that had dominated American political life since the New Deal. After struggling for almost half a century to gain political power, the conservative movement finally seemed to have reached the political promised land.

In theory, the “Republican Revolution” proposed to “relimit” the powers of the federal government and to restore some of the basic principles and institutions of free-market economy. The preamble to the “Contract with America” pledged to the American people that the GOP would put an end to “government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money.”1 The political goals of the Gingrich “revolutionaries” were not revolutionary in any meaningful sense, but they did promise to begin some necessary reforms. As a rule, the Gingrich Congress preferred less to more government controls.

In practice, the Republicans began to whittle away at the welfare state. Their first post-election budget proposed to eliminate three cabinet agencies (the Departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy) and more than 200 federal programs. Within a year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives had reduced federal spending by almost $14 billion.2 Such early successes led even Bill Clinton to declare in his 1996 State of the Union address that the “era of big government is over.”3 A Republican Congress passed and Clinton signed far-reaching welfare reform legislation that promised to end “welfare as we know it.”4

By the end of the 1990s, America’s political fault line appeared to have moved considerably to the Right for the first time since the early 20th century. The advocates of limited government faced an historic opportunity to begin the process of dismantling the welfare state and deregulating the economy.

So how goes the Republican Revolution twelve years later? What is the state of the American political Right in 2006?

Judging by electoral results and political appearances, the Right is flourishing. For the first time since before the New Deal, the Republican Party controls all three branches of the federal government. There is a Republican in the White House surrounded by conservatives; Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Senate; and seven out of nine justices on the Supreme Court are appointees of Republican presidents. Republican grand strategist Karl Rove and several conservative pundits say that prospects look good for the GOP to become America’s “permanent majority.”

It is not just Republicans but conservative Republicans who are driving this train. As William Rusher, co-founder of the modern conservative movement, reports, the “conservative movement has come to dominate the Republican Party totally.”5 In other words, the Republican Party has finally purged itself of the moderate, non-ideological, country-club, Rockefeller Republicans that once dominated the party in the 1950s and ’60s. The conservative moment—the moment when conservative Republicans become America’s ruling class—has arrived.

For over forty years, ever since the Goldwater election debacle in 1964, conservatives have methodically pursued ideological control over the GOP. Now that they do control the Republican Party and all three branches of the federal government, what exactly have conservatives bequeathed to America?

Here are some hard facts. Government spending has increased faster under George Bush and his Republican Congress than it did under Bill Clinton, and more people work for the federal government today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. During Bush’s first term, total government spending skyrocketed from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, an increase of 33 percent (almost $23,000 per household, the highest level since World War II). The federal budget grew by $616.4 billion during Bush’s first term in office. If post 9/11 defense spending is taken off the table, domestic spending has ballooned by 23 percent since Bush took office. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, federal spending equaled 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, but by the end of the first Bush administration, government outlays had increased to 20.3 percent of the GDP. The annualized growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland-security outlays has more than doubled from 2.1 percent under Clinton to 4.8 percent under Bush.6

Increased spending inevitably means increased taxes. Thus, despite President Bush’s much vaunted tax cuts, Americans actually pay more in taxes today than they did during Bill Clinton’s last year in office. The 2006 annual report from Americans for Tax Reform, titled “Cost of Government Day,” sums up rather nicely the intrusive role played by Republican government in the lives of ordinary Americans. The report says that Americans had to work 86.5 days just to pay their federal taxes, as compared to 78.5 days in 2000 under Bill Clinton. In other words, the average American has worked 10.2 percent more for the federal government under George Bush than under Bill Clinton. When state and local taxes (controlled in the majority of places by Republicans) are added to federal taxes, Americans worked for the government eight hours a day, five days a week, from January 1 until July 12, meaning they worked full-time for the government for more than half the year. As Tom Feeney, a congressional Republican put it: “I remember growing up and reading in some school textbooks that if more than half your paycheck went to the government, then you were living in a socialist society.”7 Just so, Mr. Feeney.

Two generations ago, conservatives denounced the growth of government and called for a revolution to roll back the Leviathan State created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1994, conservatives, with their Republican Revolution, rode into power on just such a platform of limited government. Yet today, the conservative intellectual movement and the Bush administration are engaged in a very different kind of revolution—a revolution for big-government conservatism.

What happened to the idea of limited-government conservatism? Have the conservatives been corrupted by power, or is there something in their basic philosophy that has led them to embrace big government? Why have conservatives moved to the port-side of liberalism?

To answer these questions and to understand the split personality of the conservative movement, we must examine the various ideologies that now dominate it. To set some context, however, let us first recall the basic ideals that have traditionally been regarded as the gold standard of true conservatism: the ideals associated with Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, which, in turn, point to the principles of America’s Founding Fathers.

In The Conscience of a Conservative, regarded by many as the political Talmud of conservatism, Goldwater explicated the principles of conservative government. He wrote that the “ancient and tested truths that guided our Republic through its early days will do equally well for us.” The challenge of conservatism, he continued, is “to demonstrate the bearing of a proven philosophy on the problems of our own time.” He defined the Founders’ “proven philosophy” in the following terms: “The legitimate functions of government are actually conducive to freedom. Maintaining internal order, keeping foreign foes at bay, administering justice, removing obstacles to the free interchange of goods—the exercise of these powers makes it possible for men to follow their chosen pursuits with maximum freedom.”8

Enabling men “to follow their chosen pursuits with maximum freedom”—this is the proper purpose of government; this is the ideal that American conservatives have long claimed to be conserving or restoring; and this is the ideal that animated the American Founding. As Thomas Jefferson eloquently summarized in his First Inaugural address: “A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

The Founding Fathers created a free society grounded on the moral sovereignty of the individual. They recognized that the only legitimate function of government is to protect each individual’s right to act on his own judgment—so long as he does not violate the rights of others. Accordingly, the Founders established a government limited to the protection of individual rights—that is: limited to making and enforcing objective (i.e., rights-respecting) laws, to resolving civil disputes, to protecting private property, and to enforcing contracts.

While this is the ideal that defined the American Founding—and the ideal to which Goldwater conservatives have long claimed allegiance—it is not the ideal to which today’s conservatives subscribe.

To what ideals do today’s conservatives subscribe? What are their political goals?

In recent years, the conservative intellectual and political movement has become strained and divided. Political analysts now speak of the great conservative “crack-up.” At the heart of the ideological wars now engulfing the movement are two putatively conflicting philosophies: a moral philosophy called “compassionate conservatism” and a philosophy of governance known as “neoconservatism.” To understand the state of the conservative movement and where it is headed, one must understand the nature of these two conservatisms, what they have in common, and how they shape today’s Republican Party.

 
Continue the article at The Objective Standard

*C. Bradley Thompson is the executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.

A compilation for future use, and public reference

Transcript of the ID trial Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
     - Of particular interest, and public value, here is the examination of Kevin Padian on day 9. It’s long, and there are typos, and he was using a slide presentation, but for a mostly plain-speaking presentation of what modern evolutionary biology has to say on a lot of "hot" topics is presented. Transitional forms abound, even when the fossil record sucks.

     - I should also say that I think KP misstated a couple things, in terms of the science content, but that they are not essential for the concepts presented. I also diverge from KP, the NCSE, and many/most other scientists in thinking that consensus of a group (of experts, in this case) does not by itself validate an idea (though it can be a gambler’s rule of thumb), I think that truth and certainty are contextual and therefore possible to science (and elsewhere in life), and other important points. The value of his testimony (which I view as considerable) is as a resource of facts, which is the place to start in all this. That "Tasmanian  Wolf" marsupials share more physical similarities (by the dozens) with other marsupials than with regular dogs and wolves is a numerical fact. That the main textbook of ID has morphed, by known and observable steps, from a special creation textbook to an intelligent design textbook is a fact.  And on and on. If you seek to begin at the beginning in the matter, this is a good place to start.
     
     -The public’s (even the educated public’s) understanding of what is meant, understood, entailed by, and in support of evolution as a phenomenon and process is … beyond paltry. This is for several reasons, I think. First, and most importantly, schools and teachers have been either prohibited from teaching evolution, told what limited portions they may teach (many of which are inaccurate and/or outdated by at least half a century), intimidated into discussing evolution as little as possible, and/or forced to include ‘alternative viewpoints’ that unnecessarily confuse students about the nature of the questions, the methods of investigation, and the state of knowledge. There is so, so much more to it than "random mutation" (a terrible term, by the way, and hugely misunderstood) and natural selection. More later on this.

     - Secondly, evolution as a concept, and as a science, is far removed from the perceptual level. It subsumes spans of time, and stretches of space, and numbers of organisms that far exceed what your eyes or your mind can hold at any instant. We organize all this raw data by forming concepts, by carefully building a chain of progressively more abstract concepts in your mind, that subsume more and more. That doesn’t mean the more abstract concepts are less right, it just means it’s more difficult to form them quickly and accurately (thus: take your time), and it’s farther removed from immediate observation.

     - In this sense evolution is closer conceptually with particle physics and astronomy, in terms of the amount of mental effort required to hold all the relevant concepts in your mind, understand their relationships, and how those concepts trace back to reality. Jumping straight to the concepts, without building the chain, practically guarantees a broken chain (which may or may not concern someone). This is largely how modern education proceeds, unfortunately. You’re told about subatomic particles, or processes best characterized in terms of millions of years (in the case of evolution) or even billions of years (in the cases of astronomy, I presume). Then you memorize information about them, crunch through the formulas and work the practice problems. But where those concepts came from, and how they trace to reality in person, personally, by your own observation is usually left aside, or only given short treatment. Then you stare at reality and try to see how it all hangs together. Most people try to  stitch stuff together in their minds, as best they can, if they’re interested in how whole fields relate. (A lot of people don’t really care, which is of less concern to me.) This is what educators should be helping students do, not what they leave them to do solo. The guideposts for stitching ideas together are not something you’re born with. The odds of doing it correctly, off the cuff, picking up tips and ideas here and there from whatever cultural or intellectual soup you live in, are quite low, if you look at it probabilistically. Again, this is the role for educators, and exceedingly good ones at that. I don’t know anyone at my school who teaches in this manner. That’s the kind of bar, standard, I’m talking about.

I’m soap-boxing again. Back to the task.

Here’s a good article, though with a very delimited focus (unlike my endless tangents and addendums and clarifications).

The Bait and Switch of Intelligent Design. - why ID is irreducibly about supernaturalism and faith.

Arguing for an accurate understanding of ID. A pro-ID article. Interestingly, Dembski is quoted as saying that ID isn’t an anti-evolution statement/position/method/whatever. Bet you didn’t know that. Which begs the question - what is it? Ah, it’s a method - an epistemology, as I said before. There’s a whole post coming on that one. 

     - Check out the irregularities in argumentation - in both the article itself, and in the authors the article quotes. The primary point of argumentation is never stated, and it’s this: can science ever scientifically identify the existence of something not amenable to science? That is, the article vehemently points out that ID has nothing to say about the nature or identity of the designer (apart from the fact that it is supernatural, it is undesigned itself, and it is not amenable to scientific study - that sounds like a ‘nature’ and an ‘identity’ to me; a proper name is not the be-all and end-all of identity).

     - Even given this self-contradictory point, the argument fails - because the question of ID’s scientific status does not center on the alleged identity of the designer, but the existence of the designer at all. Not what it is, but that it is. That point alone is not a possible conclusion of science. Science, honestly conceived, cannot conclude that something is beyond science, that is, beyond nature. It’s a contradiction and violation of the rules (epistemology and metaphysics) of a scientific worldview. (Another post on that later). A phenomenon may be beyond our technological or instrumental capabilities - temporarily or permanently - but that doesn’t render it unnatural or supernatural, much less intelligent (and intelligence requires consciousness, so the designer must also be conscious). The phenomenon itself would just be naturally intractable given our capabilities. (And the odds of this ever happening are remote, in my view, and certainly don’t crop up surrounding the concept of evolution. The odds are better for sub-particle matter, if such thing exists, in the far-distant future.)

I just heard the most brilliant, powerful demonstration of free will I’ve ever seen. Utterly new, and beautiful, and explains more than all the others combined. And it’s amenable (though not dependent on) material/scientific demonstration. It doesn’t flout existence or consciousness, but is a natural consequence given perceptual information (i.e. non-evaluative observations; a kind of sense-perception, in fact, though different from the percepts derived from the five sense). I just need a fleet of diverse and highly able scientists, and sufficient time and money. I think we can show the mechanistic/process nature of free will physically, experimentally, evolutionarily, psychologically. That is, we can show it materially, though philosophy (via the observation of free will) does not require it. It’s a tractable phenomenon for scientific investigation and demonstration, though it’s not the kind of concept open to "proof" - because any process of inquiry (and proof) presupposes it.  All from a tweak of perspective in philosophy, grounded in an existence-oriented metaphysics. (See below). A solar system from a grain of sand. It’s fantastic. And now I must study it, really learn it.

Homework, discussion, and thought-provocation. I won’t tell you how long it took me to achieve a diagramatic level of clarity on this.

Numbers in the diagram explicated below. 

1 & 2. Existence is identity. That which exists has identity; that which has identity, exists. This one fact can be viewed from two perspectives:
     1. Existence. "It is." This concept differentiates a thing from nothing. This is the primary identification of consciousness.
     2. Identity. "It is." This concept differentiates one thing from another. A second step in cognition.

The context and purpose of the two concepts differ, but they name the same fact.

3 & 4: To talk of things (which exist), requires awareness of them.
     3. This is the fact of concsiousness. Consciousness exists.
     4. Consciousness is awareness of something which exists. Consciousness is awareness of existence. As a part of existence (#3), and dependent on it (#7), consciousness is and can only be conscious of that which exists. Consciousness exists (#3), and it is an awareness of something that exists (#4).

5. Because consciousness exists, and because existence is identity, consciousness has identity. Its identity is: awareness of existence.

6. Because consciousness has an identity, it exists.

7. Consciousness implies existence, but existence as a fact does not imply consciousness. Thus, existence is prior to and independent of consciousness. Conversely, consciousness is existentially (and functionally) dependent on existence. See #1.

You can also visualize #7 by collapsing all the double-sided arrows, which function as equals-signs, leaving the one up-ward vector going from existence to consciousness.

Alternatively, I could have drawn a circle-diagram, with a little bubble labelled "consciousness" nested with a big bubble labelled "existence," showing that the existence of consciousness is a sub-set of all that exists, and it participating in the fundamental properties of existence - namely identity. If existence = identity, then we can swap labels, from "Existence of all that exists" to "Identity of all that exists". And from "Existence of consciousness" to "Identity of consciousness." Both the existence and identity of consciousness are seen to flow from, and be dependent on, existence as such.

No surprises here, though I am tired of typing the word ‘existence.’ 

My mom sent me a newspaper clipping a while back about Jonathan Wells - an intelligent design proponent with a new book out - and asked me if I’d heard of him, and what I thought. Well:

Yes, I know of Jonathan Wells. My advisor has written at least one review article on the man. I’ve read a couple of his scientific papers, in preparation for the Dover Trial last fall. Wells is full of bunk. His legit science papers in no way admit of intelligent design, much less supporting it in opposition to evolutionary viewpoints. Naturalistic explanations far and away account for what he’s shown; in fact, his paper on the microstructure and function of microtubules and centrioles in cells, is utterly indistiguishable from something another scientist, accepting evolution, would write.

He and Michael Behe and Dembski like to make an "argument from complexity." Basically they haven’t got past the 3rd grader’s observation of "Wow, the world is complicated! How do things do what they do?" But instead of listening to their 3rd grade science teachers, or picking up Dad’s "The Way Things Work" book, Wells and Behe and Dembski then suspend any inquiry and conclude that it "must" have been intelligently designed.

Really, the Argument from Complexity is an Argument from Wowness. And if the Argument from Wowness is to stand as a conclusion (rather than as the motivation for inquiry), it presupposes a view that humans are either incapable or not allowed to mentally dig beyond the Wow Observation using the same mental tools as before. The supposed intractability of such Wow Observations ("It’s just too complex!!") implies that we’re either supposed to be omniscient, or that we’re intractably retarded. And it conveniently ignores how many Wow Observations preceded this moment in history, resolutions of which enabled the culture, technology and standard of living we currently enjoy - one that is unprecedented in the history of the known universe. Chew on that one for a minute.

ID is not just an alternative viewpoint, or an a-scientific position, it’s an anti-scientific concept, because if it’s accepted as a valid way of investigating the world… all investigation stops! You don’t get past the point of wonder. Nobody - not Aristotle or Newton or Darwin or the Wright Brothers or Louis Pasteur or anybody - could have done what they did with such an approach. Put away your calculators and test tubes, lock the lab door behind you and go to church. That’s all you can do. There’s nothing deep or hard or new that can be done with such an approach to thinking.

Now try to imagine a world without the achievements of the giants on whose shoulders we stand. Now think of all the existing scientists - the highest percentage and the greatest raw number to date, and with more funding and knowledge and opportunity than ever before - but each requiring a very specific mental protocol for successfully engaging with reality at the boundaries of knowledge. What if you effectively deleted all these people, or tried to commandeer their work, replacing thinkers with saintly nuns or day laborers? That is what is at stake. Nothing less.

ID proponents claim that ID is compatible with science, but basically they’ve just worked hard to explain away all the methods and knowledge that already exist. Apart from their explanations being logically, scientifically and philosophically wrong (and they’re very good at selling these invalid arguments, preying upon subtle and common errors in thinking and language), this sort of approach doesn’t let you do anything truly new. You’re also not allowed to significantly revise anything. You just have to do more of the same. Describe a new species of mold or look a little closer at the process of cell division - but not too closely. And god help you if you are intrigued and baffled and amazed by the stuff you study - the moments when science is pure adrenaline, and nothing can keep from diving in and figuring it out - cuz that’s the point at which ID people say you can’t do your work any more. Science stalls, knowledge stops, thinking vanishes.

And it’s those moments of heady discovery, as a student or researcher, that are the irreducible reward of the scientist - of any thinker, in fact. It’s the thing you can’t take away, or ignore, or mask. The free and capable exercise of one’s mind, and the positive internal feedback of sheer happiness when you’ve done it well - that is the motor of knowledge-expansion. And without it, the downstream applications and technologies will slow down, stagnate and dry up if we stifle any thinker’s mind. As with anything - just give it time.

It is essential to think of all the times you’ve cracked open a problem, when the "irreducible complexity" of the initial task starts to give (because it does, time and time again). Only by daring to assail the confounding, petulantly resistant problems can a thinker - the scientist within all of us - reach into the black box of reality, and pull out handfuls of treasure. And, as a principle of a free market, enterprising individuals pick up this new knowledge, and make novel applications and products, improving our capabilities and standards of living, and changing humanity’s worldview time and time again. Science - that is, principled and uncompromising application of reason - as a method of thinking, is responsible for getting us out of the jungle, and getting us out of the Dark Ages and into the Information Age. That is the single largest, and irrefutable, testament to the singular importance - and efficacy - of a free mind.

And there it is: the secret ingredient of civilization. Free use of your mind, with reality being the ultimate judge, is the foundation for knowledge production and, through industry, for economics. And through economics, for politics. (Economics and politics being the principles underlying acceptable human interaction, whether in monetary or interpersonal relations). Stifle one, you stifle them all. Throttle back the human mind - and what have you got? … Nothing that’s essentially human. Just as a dog wouldn’t be what we understand a dog to be, if it didn’t have its jaws and teeth and bark, or a horse wouldn’t be a horse if it didn’t have long legs, hooves, and succeed in killing grass - a human isn’t what a human should be if he can’t use his mind freely. Not all dogs win fights, not all horses are the fastest, and not all humans are always right in their judgement - but it’s the use of these capabilities that has to be uninhibited, for everyone, in every line of inquiry. Then, as a lovely side-consequence of people freely thinking and acting to the best of their abilities, in the heat of the crucible of reality, the best of the best rise to the top, and take us all with them.

I know I sound like I’m ranting and pushing things to their extreme, but that’s the best way to expose crappy ideas: put them through their paces, and see who comes out in the long run. ID is not about evolution. It’s not even about biology. It’s about how to think, and that applies to all branches of science, all areas of intellectual activity, all human action. Just as a cancer, with enough time, will pervade the entire body, so an invalid method of thinking in biology is not ultimately confinable to biology, and it spreads to all science, all thinking. This is especially true in a society like ours, that looks strongly to precedent - in its laws, culture, norms, and values. Compromise a principle once, and you have to work ten times as hard to get that little bit back - if you can at all.

ID is nothing less than a veiled advocacy for a return to the Dark Ages. And while I can have sympathy for the Average Joes of the populace getting hoodwinked by ID, who have only mediocre levels of science education or intellectual agility, I haven’t the slightest shred of patience or the remotest hint of respect for Wells and Behe and Dembski - at least 4 PhDs among them - who have been twisting creationism into palatable versions for the scientific community, while preying upon the sympathies, feelings, and ignorance of a majority of the population. They’ve slipped cyanide into the potatoes we live on. And few people will call them on precisely what they’re doing. We hear platitudes that, in effect, potatoes are outside the province of nutrition, or that just a little cyanide isn’t bad for you, or that it’s a novel and under-appreciated approach to human health, one that is wrongfully marginalized by the elitist, institutionalized, narrow-minded potato industry.

Inocculations against these predators of poor thinking are, however, in short supply. Because ID proponents prey on people’s thinking skills, the only way to really get rid of the problem - to remove the fuel instead of putting out countless fires - is to supercharge people’s ability to wade through complicated arguments. That is, the ability to accurately identify and evaluate ideas, and see past all the frills and facades that obscure the heart of an idea, and see what makes it tick, and to judge it appropriately. I’m just learning how to do it myself. I’ve been evaluating ideas for a long time, but it’s almost always been by non-essential points - just whatever I could get a handle on, mentally, sometimes better and more right, sometimes decidedly less so. And even if I was right, I wasn’t sure how to go about proving that it was right. Vehement argumentation is no substitute for watertight logic based on reality. That much I knew, but I didn’t know how to do it.

Now, the antidote to this is not dogmatism. That’s just an even more extreme form of un-thinking. What this problem requires is unabridged thinking - showing people how to think accurately, usefully, and cumulatively about the world. The thing is, they often already do it. It doesn’t require omniscience, but the kind of mental growth and progression that comes with experience, and honest  reflection on that experience. Most people do this intuitively, but because they don’t have a name for it, they can’t call it up in their defense when someone attacks the base of knowledge. And most people don’t recognize the attack as one of terrorism against the mind, but instead see it as an isolated incident by well-meaning, if pitifully confused, people - that is, if they don’t already buy the terrorists’ arguments and fund them on the side.

Thinking well is no small task - for an individual, or for a society. I know first-hand the challenge of re-learning how to think at the age of 25, and the mind-warps and growing-pains - and the thrill, pride, and leaps forward in ability and success - that go with it. I have no illusions about how tall the order is - for me to complete, or for other people. Or how long it will take.

All this is, in fact, the task of philosophy. At the end of the day, ID is an assault on epistemology, not evolution. Evolution is the convenient voodoo doll through which ID is trying to kill the human mind. Which is one of the many reasons I am an Objectivist - it’s the one group of people I’ve found that recognize this problem for exactly what it is, and know how to solve it. But they know you can’t solve it for another person. You can’t think for another person. Don’t tell people how to think - why would they listen now? - show them. Show them how to do it, and why it works, and why it’s this method of thinking that underlies human growth, potential, achievement, security and happiness.

But, at the end of the day, each person has to choose for himself - more or less knowledgably, it’s still a choice, though not equal in strength or in responsibility. And that’s why I hold the most knowledgeable people - the Wells and Behes and Dembskis of the world - explicitly culpable. They hurt people in the long (and not-so-long) run, and they have the ability and experience to know better. So, whether they think of it directly or not, by their actions they are harming people, and in the uninhibited exercise of my judgement, I will freely and knowledgably denounce them to the ends of the earth, in defense of my own mind and the world in which I live.

An academic news bulletin, for us academically-inclined Objectivists, and those interested. Univ. of Pittsburg is a very good school for philosophy. Philosophy of science in particular, I think, but I could be wrong about that. I am very excited to see this, and desperately want to attend, but can’t.

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This weekend (September 22-24, 2006) there will be a unique conference for philosophers, organized by Allan Gotthelf and Tara Smith. The conference, to be held at the University of Pittsburgh, is sponsored jointly by the Pitt and Texas Fellowships for the Study of Objectivism. The topic is "Concepts and Objectivity: Knowledge, Science, and Values."

The conference speakers include both Objectivist and non-Objectivist philosophers from around the world, including some quite prestigious names. Several of the sessions directly address Ayn Rand’s theories. For instance, Harry Binswanger will be chairing a session Friday on "Ayn Rand on Concepts, Definitions, and Objectivity," a session which will feature Allan Gotthelf’s paper and comments thereon by James Bogen, Professor Emeritus, Pitzer College.

A full list of the participants and papers.

Affective immediately too.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

- PKD 

A passing thought from elsewhere…

It occured to me that philosophy, being the widest of the sciences and the broadest form of knowledge, encompasses all of life, all of living, every single aspect of it. Much as a life contains all the experiences of the person whose life it is. And, as important and productive and instructive as I think our conversations here are, and the books that we read that in part fuel them, I think that medium - this medium - is a sort of isolation and concentration of a part of a wider whole. Obviously. And with purpose.

However, the best way to get at philosophy, sensu lato and en toto (and in vivo - my little Latin is running away with me), is through something that approximates life. We could just say ‘life’ or ‘living’ but then it would be the same thing as that - reducible - and so pointless to give two names. And something that is not the same as life, but encompasses all that life does, and yet manages to concentrate and highlight the elements directly pertaining to philosophic concerns, to stylize and emphasize them and bring our attention and consideration to them - is art.

A way of living a life that isn’t yours and isn’t real or tangible, but deals with all of it, and demonstrates to the mind the things to be instructed (for I think the best instruction is demonstration, not pontification). A painting or sculpture that sucks you into a moment, a feeling, an experience, a *value*, as a mirror held in front of you. A book that follows the lives and relations of people, their thoughts and choices and feelings, and how they intersect against the backdrop of reality. It’s like living several lives, all at once, in the span of a few hundred pages and a couple days. How powerful is that? How instructive is that?

It’s incredible.

And it’s useful, for - in my book - the point of philosophy broadly is as an aid to living. If it takes your entire life’s resources to learn what you need to know to live, you have expended your life in trying to attain it. In principle, that is, in the best of all possible circumstances. I am by no means against professional philosophy, or philosophic professionals (in fact I think the truly honest person cannot help but be one, even if Philosophy is foreign to him as an enterprise). But ideally philosophy should not per force consume those who seek it in order to do something else.

Ah, ideally…

Yes, ideally. And really, and realistically. I think they are all one in the same, when properly situated and related. Just as I can touch neither consciousness nor time, but experience both, and I can disrupt those tangible things that physically (dynamically, by a process) enable the conception of both.

If you got to teach a class, what would you teach? Not "have" to teach a class, got to teach. Captive audience, wisdom of (your) ages.

I’ve got to design a syllabus for a semester-long hypothetical class. Two years ago I picked comparative physiology as my subject. Today? I’m drawing a blank. So, talking myself through it, I reasoned: you should only teach what you already know. What do I know?

umm…

I know a lot. But what? What sort of knowledge that’s not a cookbook class, like human anatomy? It’s so structured I won’t learn much designing a syllabus for it. Of the other stuff I know, it’s both fragmented and integrated - bits and pieces of a huge diversity of topics, scattered around all manner of tangential information and experiences, all lumped into the integrated sum of my brain. One semester, 13 weeks, 26 lectures, and 3 tests? What do I know that fits that format?

I think what I’ll do is take a cook-book class, like anatomy (which I utterly love) and recast it. Why is it so difficult for students to wrap their heads around a class like anatomy? They learn more than that, and on the fly without effort, in other areas of their life in less time. It’s not the mass of the content. It’s conceptual development, cognitive hierarchy, setting the stage and ordering the players and dialogue to make a coherent and memorable play.

I’m a science nerd, it’s no secret. I think science rocks. And yet I’m very excited to see these titles in the "books received" (i.e. "somebody please write a review") section of one of the premier journals: Science. (This description being based solely on circulation numbers.) Because the scientists have to be the ones most ready to pounce on and reveal bad science. Why? Because that’s what pushes science forward, and keeps it going forward. Cheerleaders for Science may foster lots of growing acorns, but they’ll never trim the saplings, many of which turn out to be noxious species, thereby inhibiting and harming the saplings of promise, and then we get a sickly, overcrowded, stunted forest - if one at all. And apart from being in scientists’ best interest to rigorously police their own ranks, it also turns out that they’re the only ones qualified to do it. Someone who’s not neck-deep in the hairy, unruley details of a science can’t distinguish essentials from non-essentials, and will either weed the saplings randomly and non-discriminatingly, or by non-essentials (such as personal favors, fundability, media appeal, or feel-good brownie points). This latter one is especially bad, because it changes the competitive landscape of science by changing what’s valued and what can ‘get ahead’. Instead of the winners being those ideas that have withstood an inferno of testing, assault, critique, re-evaluation, and successful application, instead the winners become the ideas - mongrel or non-essential - of the people that are best at ‘playing the game’ with the bureaucrats doing the selecting. And even if everyone agrees on the same end-point ("good science") how you go about acheiving that goal determines both the short- and long-term products of that endeavor. Garbage in, garbage out. Bureaucracy in science generates good bureaucrats, even if they don the mantle of ’scientist.’

Because science has a moral code, too. And I don’t mean impartiality, ethical conduct on animal and human subjects, be "disinterested", service to the department, etc. I mean intellectual integrity. Utter and ruthless honesty, and it begins first with yourself, and then extends rationally into every aspect of your life - and no less rigorously or rationally into one’s social, professional, and recreational activities. Silence on a matter of quality, a failure to judge and to speak up about it when you are able to judge, amounts to tacit consent. And a scientist who pretends bad science doesn’t exist, or is harmless, is as bad as a businessman who doesn’t distinguish between the clients he serves, the people he hires, or those appointed to manage the enterprise. Or a mother who doesn’t distinguish between good food, bad food, and poison when feeding her children. All have a moral responsibility to look out for their own interests, and their interests are tied up in the health of their fields. A man who doesn’t protect the things which are the means to his livelihood - and presumably things of value to him - does not fundamentally value his own life. He’s handed his life’s steering wheel to others - and no one in particular at that - and no one drives your life better than you. Indeed, no one can. Flip the light on - no one’s behind the wheel. 

The Trouble with Physics  The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin.

 - Smolin is an ex-string theorist. I’m interested to hear how he changed his mind on the subject. And even though I haven’t read the book, I’m happy to see someone concerned with the future directions of science, and not afraid to say they look bleak precisely because of the sexy new "cutting edge" research. Science doesn’t crash when its backwaters get slow, mucky or misdirected (although that’s not a good thing; better to keep everyone to as high a standard as possible). It’s when your shining star is empty - that’s bad. Is string theory the Peter Keating of physics? A "brilliant career" ahead, indeed.

The Kantian Legacy in 19th Century Science by Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordmann, eds.

- I’m interested to read this one, though by the dust jacket I’m sure they will be lauding Kant’s influence. The historical details are of interest - they just got the evaluation wrong. And I bet they start with the premise that 20th century physics is the epitome of the entire scientific tradition. At which point their argument (if it’s an argument at all; it might just be a happy after-dinner story) becomes circular and therefore utterly expected.

A fantastic article from Investor’s Business Daily:

His Actions Saved Thousands