rag

Politics by other means

There are two key social movements in modern society: the movement to make society more subject to politics and the movement to make society less subject to politics. The former movement is called socialism (it would be better called “politicism”). The latter movement has no single name but is called conservatism more than other names. […]

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Principles of table manners

It is recognized that manners are culture-bound, however, there are principles that are similar in different cultures and make good sense. 1.  Show respect first to the host and then to the other guests. Defer to the host. Let the host go first or wait until the host asks you to go ahead. Sit up straight

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Justification of tradition

Like many people born after World War II, tradition doesn’t come easily to me. We’ve prided ourselves on making our parents justify every practice they tried to pass on to us. If it didn’t make sense to us, it was oppressive or foolish and should be stopped. Automatic acceptance of tradition was unthinkable. Tradition was

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Assertions

Motivating Example According to the Gospels, there was an inscription above Christ on the cross which said (in English translation): Matthew (27.37): “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. ” (ABD) Mark (15.27): “The King of the Jews.” (D) Luke (23.38): “This is the King of the Jews.” (AD) John (19.19): “Jesus of Nazareth,

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Dissident scientists

There is a curious paradox about the science community. On the one hand scientists have a reputation for independent thinking but on the other hand the science community likes to present a solid front. The latter is closer to the truth: most scientists are conformists. It is well known from the history of science that dissent

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Uniqueness and uniformity

If everything were completely unique, we would have no way of identifying them as to what they are. If everything were completely identical, or uniform, we would have no way of distinguishing them. We conclude that the world is somewhere in between: everything is a combination of the unique and the uniform. If all events

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Science and statistics

Here is a story about two statisticians and two scientists. They are given a problem: what are the frequencies of the letters in English texts? The junior statistician has no research budget whereas the senior statistician has a modest research budget. Similarly, the junior scientist has no research budget but the senior scientist has a

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Superseded science

Science is an iterative process and so theories that were once widely accepted may later become superseded, but what does that entail? A superseded theory may be thoroughly undermined by its consistent failure to match expectations. Contrary to falsificationism, it usually takes more than a few anomalies to bring down a theory. Theories are part of

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Dangers of extrapolation

The naïve conception of the figure of the Earth as a plane is locally correct everywhere on Earth but globally false. Observers in every place on Earth see evidence of a finite plane that ends at the horizon. The simplest generalization of these observations is to say they are all seeing the same plane of

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