Reason, Egoism, Capitalism—spreading
underground
QRN snippets:
Jan 98
This page is more like a kitchen drawer than a professional's tool
chest: it's hell to find a particular item, but if you rummage around,
you can probably find something interesting. My favorites are marked
with a !, or maybe
more than one !!
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| QRN Background Canadiana
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998
The response to QRN has been gratifying indeed! Thank you all! QRN is about one day old, and a quick check with a globe shows that I'm only about 20 degrees of longitude from the boast that the sun never sets on the Quackgrass Roots Network! Since Canadian (and even Albertan) material will surely dominate QRN, at least at first, here's a quick scene-setter for non-Canadians. If you keep it for reference, it may make some future posts less mysterious to you. (Before Canadians jump on me for simplifying drastically, please remember that that's my aim here: details and fine points are left for those who want to look them up.) BASICS Neglecting the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory, which are north of 60 degress latitude (cold!! therefore sparsely settled) Canada is made up of 10 provinces. For general purposes, they are grouped into 1. The West (4 provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) 2. Central Canada (2 provinces: Ontario and Quebec) 3. Atlantic Canada (4 provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.) The main fault line in Canada is between (largely French-speaking) Quebec and (mostly English-speaking) everybody else. Quebec has a potent separatist movement, and the separatist Parti Quebecois holds provincial power in Quebec. A 1995 Quebec referendum on secession failed by less than 1%. With trivial exceptions, allegedly federalist Quebeckers have held the Canadian Prime Ministership for about 30 years. A secondary fault line runs between the West and "the East," which mostly means between the West and Central Canada. Central Canadians tend to regard Westerners as loutish hayseeds; Westerners tend to regard Central Canadians as arrogant, bossy SOBs. Federal voting strength is distributed roughly one-third to the West, one-third to Ontario alone, and one-third to Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Ontario, BC and Alberta have growing populations; Quebec doesn't. This implies that Quebec's domination of federal politics is precarious, and contributes to nervousness in Quebec. SALIENT IDEOLOGICAL FACTORS The Western province of Alberta is viewed as the home of free-wheeling, "cowboy" capitalism. The southern Alberta city of Calgary (a.k.a. Cowtown, my home) is viewed as the free marketeer's own heartland. Present company excepted, there is rather less to these stereotypes than meets the eye. :-) Still, Alberta and Calgary are distinctly different. In my view, this is the residue of a popular movement here in the early 30s called Social Credit. Despite its name and its whacko economics, it strongly promoted individualism and genuine populism in Alberta when collectivism and faith in experts were all the rage elsewhere. Hard core leftism never flourished in Alberta: the Social Credit movement smashed it flat. I'm duly grateful. The other salient ideological feature of Canada is Quebec's attachment to the ideas and trends of Continental Europe. There is a deep fault line between British and Continental ideas. You could symbolize this fault line by the difference between the American and French revolutions, or in philosophy, between the "British empiricists" and the "Continental rationalists." In general, Continentals are more statist. Quebec has lined up on the Continental side of that line, presumably because the French language has been a convenient pipeline for Continental ideas. In my view, a desire to protect this Continental strain of thought is the deeper root of the Quebec elite's separatism and obsession with language--and also of the English-Canadian establishment's eagerness to appease Quebeckers. CURRENT POLITICAL BACKGROUND The outstanding new feature in Canadian politics is the Reform Party of Canada, led by Preston Manning. Over the past 15 years, Reform has grown from a few stray radicals and annoyed Westerners meeting in Calgary hotel rooms to become the Official Opposition in Parliament. (I attended some of these early meetings, but never became deeply involved; I thought a new "right-wing" party was hopeless. Pray let that be a lesson to you; it has been to me!) Reform has been spreading its electoral base eastward, it finished second in many Ontario ridings in June 97. A few vague signs suggest it may even one day become attractive to Quebeckers. Reform has the traditional parties, indeed the entire establishment, terrified! Reform is no radical capitalist's ideal of a political party, but it is a dramatic improvement over the traditional parties. The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are the tweedledumb and tweedledumber of the welfare state establishment. The New Democrat Party, long the perpetual bridesmaid of Canadian politics, is now an asylum sheltering the remnants of the hard core left. (Forgive me, but some metaphors deserve to be mixed!) For interesting details, see Gord Gekko's "A Nation of Four Solitudes" at: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3078/article12.htm. It will be up till the end of January. Also, my report "What the heck happened" at: /roots/election97.html. Also, the Reform Party website at: http://www.reform.ca/. If you're a real political junkie, you can find enough Parliamentary speeches collected there to keep you reading until the sun rises on the dark side of the moon! I hope this scene-setter dispels some of the mystery which will otherwise surround Canadian political items. Cheers, Mike QRN: Please! Don't insult Canada and Canadians! Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 Here's a post I sent to Canadian Firearms Digest. I don't know if it will be accepted. Its principles are readily generalized far beyond gun owners and far beyond Canada. Over the year or so I've been subscribing to CFD, I've noticed a disturbing problem in many posts. I mention it now because I've just learned that it helped to drive a very good, active, rational lover of freedom from the list. This person is a bona fide friend of all individual rights, and would have become an ever more potent ally of the firearms community by a continued exposure to the valuable knowledge offered on CFD. But no more. The problem that annoyed this person to the point of giving up on CFD is sure to annoy many, many others. The problem is the "dis-ing" of Canada and Canadians. Eg., the allegations that Canadians are inherently timid, wimpy, passive, sheeplike followers who never had a thought in their lives. Eg., the allegations that Canada is a dreadful place, a place from which to flee. The fact that these allegations are false is only the beginning of their mischief. They insult all Canadians! They are no way to win friends and recruit allies among--wait for it--CANADIANS! Yet Canadians are the very allies we need, and we need lots of them. We take no offense at these insults because we hold the tacit doctrine of "present company excepted," but they whack newbies right between the horns! Possibly even worse, they counsel despair. If Canadians were as bad as they are often made out, the only sensible thing for us to do would be to give up--to emigrate or crawl into a hole and pull it in after us! Canadians are a mixed bag. We will reap more success by appealing to Canadians of better natures--of bolder, more rational, more independent, more vigorous natures--than by complaining about those who are useless. By appealing to the better, we won't insult potential allies, and we won't dismay ourselves. We will _attract_ the better kind of Canadian, and in the long run our appeals will create more of them. Please! Let's extend the principle of not fighting among ourselves to Canadians in general, and let's reserve our venom for the few who are actually our enemies. Cheers, Mike QRN: Re: Please! Don't insult Canada and Canadians! Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 My post on insulting Canadians appeared on CFD, where it drew a couple of thoughtful replies. One of them raised a basic point of logic, which allowed me to continue the thread into deeper waters. Stan wrote: Stan, you've zeroed in in the core of the issue, but I don't agree with your position on it. As usually stated, these characterizations _do_ imply that all Canadians are wimps. They're usually in the form "Canadians are slugs." This is an "indefinite" statement. Before you can do anything logically with an indefinite statement, you have to decide whether it means "All are" or "Some are." Logical doctrine says that, if you have no other evidence of the speaker's views, you should interpret an indefinite statement to mean "All are." The reason is that it is hardly _ever_ worth saying merely that "some are, and some aren't." Since the speaker bothered to say something in the first place, and didn't bother to limit it, he should be taken to be speaking universally. And that _is_ how most people take indefinite statements. Even you, I bet! Suppose a perfect stranger were to tell you--right out of the blue, without explanation--that "Gunners are pot-bellied, beer-drinking slobs in baseball caps." You would understand _perfectly_ how to to interpret his indefinite statement! And you'd be justifiably suspicious of his honesty if he later pleaded that all he _really_ meant was that "some are, and some aren't!" > However, you have to accept that national characters are different. I certainly do accept that! One of my continuing ambitions is to find ways to usefully identify national characters, without either falling into collectivist over-generalizations, or being reduced to tedious head-counting. It ain't easy; I welcome help! > The allegations you deny are in fact true for a comparison of the Canadian character with the American character, with respect to the terms of this mailing list. The facts presented bear this out. Canadians are less involved in their political organizations, which relegates them to follower status, and less patriotic (or at least less willing to display patriotism). I agree with your gist Stan, but I think that these differences in character and patriotism are largely _caused_ by the different characterizations which the citizens of these countries throw at their compatriots. Eg., "freedom-loving American" vs. "spineless Canadian sheep." I'm as frustrated by today's dominant trends as anyone. But we'll do a better job of changing them if we take care not to insult potential allies, even by implication. Indeed, I favor a policy of "relentless friendliness" to all but declared enemies. Cheers, Mike QRN: Monopoly and anti-trust: an old fraud re-visited Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 A QRN subscriber wrote: > I found your Quackgrass site refreshing. I am an old fan of Ayn Rand, having read her back in the fifties. I think that your site is contributing a much needed point of view, one that has been sorely lacking. Thank you very much! > However, I do have some serious misgivings about Bill Gates and Microsoft. You're certainly not alone, to judge by my mail! Even many of those who, like yourself, generally like Quackgrass Press disagree with me about MS. You do a fine job of presenting what I think to be the usual reasons for these disagreements among allies so I'm taking the liberty of sending this reply to all of QRN. Consider this a labor-saving device! Here's the gist of my reply: You're a victim of a century-old fraud akin to the current global warming hoax. Like the global warming hoax, this fraud is not one error, but a whole cluster of mutually contradictory lies. They can be recognized as lies because, although they contradict each other violently, they all lead to the same conclusion--more government power--and they all came from the same ideological circles. Those lies were never properly answered and, a century later, they have become fossilized as "what everyone knows." Almost everyone takes them for granted, and they continue to warp the thinking of honest men. They've passed into folklore. The source of all this is the turn-of-the-century trust-buster movement. Now some details. [your paragraph] The first sentence is the core of the trust-busters' credo. [First sentence:] > It seems to me that untrammeled competition is not always healthy, especially if a company uses its monopoly position to unfairly keep out competition. This assumes that there can be untrammeled competition and monopoly at the same time. It says that, under conditions of competition, a monopoly can be unfair to its potential competitors. Hello!? The fallback position from this contradiction is the claim that competition leads to monopoly. But how? In the real world, market share varies directly with competitive excellence. To achieve more than a few percent share of an industry requires major efforts. To approach the level of dominance that is usually called monopoly requires superlative performance. Those who claim that superior performance often loses in competition are merely announcing their disagreement with the standards of judgment of the suppliers and customers of the dominant firm. (This is highly relevant to the disputes surrounding Beta vs. VHS tape formats, and to MS vs. Mac operating systems: the critics of VHS and MS adopt narrowly technical standards that don't mean much to actual customers.) Finally, there is the claim that a monopoly which (impossibly!) operates under untrammelled competition can keep out potential competitors. None of the mechanisms proposed for a dominat firm to do so will work. More below. [continuing with the paragraph] This short answer to this is that the trust-busters' friends, allies and dupes wrote most of the history books! The notion of robber barons is pure myth! For a cleaner view, see "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," especially:
> They sold their goods well below cost in the specific areas to drive out competitors, while gouging customers elsewhere to finance this practice. This is a formula for going broke fast--unless your costs are very much lower than those of your competitors. And in that case, your competitors are doomed anyway--and no customer would have cause to weep for them! For an excellent, detailed account of this notion of "predatory pricing," (and much else related to this issue) see "Monopoly versus Freedom of Competition," Ch. 10 of George Reisman's "Capitalism: a treatise on economics." (If you buy Reisman's Capitalism using this link, I'll earn a referral fee! Cost: about US$68.) For material more directly related to MS, check out the following links. http://www.capitalism.org/microsoft/faq.html -- FAQ, good place to start http://www.capitalism.org/microsoft/home.html -- links to articles. Cheers, Mike QRN: Robinson homeschool curriculum Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 A QRN subscriber wrote: > So many worth while sites and so little time! Tell me about it! You might find my paper on leisure relevant to this dilemma. (/leisure.html) It doesn't directly offer solutions, but it offers a word to name exactly what we're short of! :-) > The education links are of special interest to me, as after spending 1 & 1/2 years teaching some while back I determined that I wouldn't sentence my children to that prison of the mind. They are being home schooled, and very successfully I'm pleased to say. That's great! Have you seen Dr Arthur Robinson's homeschool curriculum? It's a massive library on 22 CDs, with suggestions on how to use it. He's homeschooled(ing) his six (?) kids, also with excellent results. He's taken over Access to Energy since Petr Beckmann's death, and is doing a fine job of it. Art is religious, and has some uncommon views on nutrition, but don't let that put you off. He's also an honest scientist (chemist). <paw, rummage, search, click> Ah, here it is! Check out: http://www.oism.org/robinson.htm! Art recommends Saxon math books (http://www.saxonpub.com/), and purchasers of his self-teaching curriculum are entitled to a discount from Saxon. Art will also cut some financial slack for those who are hard-pressed for money. Cheers, Mike QRN: Underground Grammarian newsletter Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 Jkaxiom3 wrote: > Can you tell me more about the Underground Grammarian newsletter? Hi Joseph, UG was started as a one-man operation by classicist Ritchard Mitchell in (I believe) the 70s. He was horrified at the atrocities being committed against language--and therefore against thought. One of Mitchell's great strengths is that he fully grasps that connection. I'm not sure of his philosophical views, but surmise that they're pre-Kantian and, therefore, rather better than today's run-of-the-mill. Richard Mitchell published UG for a number of years, and collected many of his thoughts into books. He no longer publishes UG, but collectors like Mark Alexander--who runs the site I link to--are finding back issues and posting them to the WWW with Mitchell's approval. _DO_ read the first issue, now on that site! Richard Mitchell, like so many who wage war on vile intellectual/cultural trends, has become discouraged. He seems to to have concluded that his work was wasted. If you like his work, it would be an act of justice to tell him so. (And I _will,_ just as soon as I get around to it! :-( Perhaps cc'ing this post to him will serve!) Richard Mitchell's address is mitchell@jupiter.rowan.edu. Cheers, Mike You May Write to Richard Mitchell Richard Mitchell has kindly written: "What you have done seems just fine to me. Let it stand. You may, if you like, add my email addresses to your web page, warning readers that I am slow and klutzy on the net, but I do eventually get around to answering. My e-mail address is mitchell@jupiter.rowan.edu. I often muse on the fact that the UG has had no influence whatsoever, but who knows? Your enterprise, and a couple of others that I know of, may have some effect." from: http://members.aol.com/hu4wahz/ug/index.html QRN: Through the eyes of a 10 year old Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 Brace yourself for a TREAT! Don't let its clarity and humor obscure its subtlety from you! Forward it hither and yon! [I am saddened to report that this was Don Petro's last polished work; we lost Don to a sudden heart attack, Sat. Feb.7, 1998. Don was one of my oldest and best friends. Don was also my unoffical editor from the founding of Quackgrass Press, and he contributed mightily to the readability of my articles. I sorely miss our editorial conferences at his kitchen table.] Mike Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 23:05:16 -0700 Hi Mike, You said write, so I wrote! -- THROUGH THE EYES OF A 10 YEAR OLD Son: What does it mean to own something? Father: Well, it means that you have it honestly. You paid for it, or worked for it, so you can use it, sell it, or just take it apart. Son: Is trade the only way you can own something? Father: No. You can make something out of things you already own, pay to have someone make it for you or, like the bike Grandma gave you, someone can just give you something. Son: Oh goody! I want Billy's glove. I'll get Frank to make Billy give it to me. Father: You can't do that! If Frank makes Billy give you his glove, what's to stop Frank from making you give your toy truck to someone else? Son: Not a good plan huh? Then I wouldn't ever have owned the truck. Father: You got it son! If Billy can't own his glove then you can't own your truck. It's much bigger than that. It would mean that we don't own our house, our car, ... well it would mean we can't really own anything. Son: The same as me getting Billy's glove only bigger? Father: You're pretty smart. Only if you respect the right of others to own property can you own property. If others don't have property rights then you, ... well, er, ... sort of rent everything you have. Son: Gee that's simple. All I have to do is work for money then trade that money for whatever I want and nobody can take it away unless I want to sell it. Father: Well, yes. Except for the Government. Son: What's Goverdment? Father: It's like a Frank-----only much bigger! Son: Can Goverdment get Billy's glove for me if it wants to? Father: Yes, but I doubt it would bother with something so small. Son: Can Goverdment take my toy truck? Father: Don't worry about it. If it doesn't take Billy's glove it won't bother with your truck. Son: Can Goverdment take our house? Father: It can, but we pay money in taxes each year so it won't. Son: Just like Frank! You know what he did last year? He made every kid in school give him a nickel just so he wouldn't take our pencils and books. Father: (silence) Son: What does the Goverdment do with all the money? Father: It buys us stuff. Son: What stuff? Father: Stuff like the Language Police, the Metric Police, Gun Registration, CRTC, CBC. The Government tries to raise cucumbers, build cars, hands out grants, and it promises retirement--all on a Visa card that has your name on it. With what's left over it tries to provide health care, educate you, build a few roads, and pay a few Generals, Judges, and Policemen. Son: Did you ask the Goverdment to do all this for you? Father: Did you ask Frank for all the favors he has done for you? Like Frank, the Government is big and strong. You may as well take what he offers you or somebody else will. Son: Daa--aad? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO OWN SOMETHING? QRN: Spruce pollen Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 There are a lot of spruce trees. The boreal forest alone circles the entire Arctic, through Canada to Scandinavia and on through Siberia to Canada. This mighty forest is largely the work of spruce pollen. Spruce pollen is wasted in immense quantities. At the right season, every mud puddle in the foothills west of Calgary is painted bright yellow. Spruce pollen is abundant because it is small and cheap, like photocopies and email forwards. Spruce pollen is effective because it is _alive._ Under just the right conditions, it can produce another tree which produces more spruce pollen. There's a principle here! In deciding whether it's worthwhile to forward a post or to photocopy an article, just ask youself whether it contains a live _idea._ There are a lot of spruce trees! Cheers, Mike QRN: Robinson, Broad climate articles online Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 Two excellent articles on climate! Online! Same page! =========== Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth The Wall Street Journal December 4, 1997 ARTHUR B. ROBINSON and ZACHARY W. ROBINSON The Robinsons' WSJ piece is based on the November 97 AtE (available from a link on my Outside Links page), but it has its own merits. ================== Another Possible Climate Culprit: The Sun By William J. Broad, The New York Times (September 23, 1997) Broad's NYT piece is a fascinating survey of work which links climate fluctuations to variations in solar brightness, and has sparked a scientific gold rush. Much is being learned, fast. Sally Baliunas, astrophysicist, a frequent speaker at the meetings of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, is prominent. Amusingly, only when satellite data showed that more (dark) sunspots mean a _brighter_ sun was enough bafflement cleared away to let the research roll. Until this was grasped, all the correlations between climate and solar activity looked upside down! (The reason is simple, and is explained in the article.) BOTH ARTICLES AT: http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a42239.htm#top (Scroll down about halfway to find a readably formatted version of Broad's article.) The greenhoaxers are losing the global warming debate! What will they flog next? The signs favor a hoax about "estrogen-mimicking chemicals," "organochlorines," "endocrine disrupters" and the like. "Endocrine disrupter" stories sound like they're written by the sleaziest kind of Hollywood creep, on acid! Alligators with shrunken penises! Lesbian seagulls! (I'm not making this up!) Coming soon to a green-infested newspaper near you! Or they might settle for more sedate "nitrogen pollution" scare stories. Or, conceivably, they'll surprise us. But whatever the new hoax, they'll offer the same old solution: abandon freedom and industrial civilization. Cheers, Mike QRN: Deep wisecracks: roll your own! Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 Churchill once described a political opponent as "a modest man, with much to be modest about." This devastated his opponent, but it also devastates the usual, bloated regard for modesty! Millenia of pretentious moralizing slain by a one-line wisecrack! Imagine trying to offer an alleged proof of the alleged virtue of modesty, with Churchill's crack still ringing in your ears! Heheheh! Some wisecracks have a logical sting in their tail. They're fun! So they spread everywhere, like, er, like quackgrass! They're potent! And deep thinkers can mass-produce deep wisecracks! The trick is that their humor lies in their abrupt, implicit exposure of concept stealing. Wherever there's a stolen concept, you can devise a crack that exposes it humorously! There is a whole class of devastating cracks that, like Churchill's, expose the stolen moral concept of "esteem." One could lay out the logic thus: "Modesty is a virtue, and virtue entitles one to esteem, but modesty is based on a _deficient_ claim to esteem." Hello?? It's easier and more fun to say, "Modesty is nothing to brag about!" Nor is humility anything to be proud of! We need not limit ourselves to stolen _moral_ concepts; there are plenty of stolen _epistemological_ concepts. Skeptics may disagree, but what do skeptics know? Deep wisecracks are the guided missiles of philosophical warfare. They fly on their own. They home on the gravest flaws in the enemy's armor. There they detonate! You can mass-produce deep wisecracks! Roll your own! Have fun! Cheers, Mike QRN: Fountainhead most popular book among UCB freshmen Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 ==================== "A survey at the University of California at Berkeley found that today's freshmen ... are reading a bit higher-brow works than their peers of 10 years ago ... . "... The most popular book this year was ``The Fountainhead'' by Ayn Rand, as opposed to ``The Color Purple'' by Alice Walker a decade ago. "Rand made the top-10 list both times. 'I think there's something in her books very appealing to students who are just forming their ideas about the world,' Tollefson said. 'My only solace is that I think they get smarter here at Berkeley and outgrow her.'" [Tollefson is "a lecturer and faculty development coordinator who has been teaching freshman writing at UC for 25 years."] Excerpted from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/01/14/MN71151.DTL ===================== The times they HAVE a-chang-ed! Ayn Rand's documented popularity at UCB spans a full decade. It is no flash in the pan! It is yet another rosy streak in the eastern sky, hinting of the new Renaissance. If you're old enough, you'll recall that in the mid 60s, UC Berkeley was a focal center of the "student rebellion," home of the "Free Speech Movement" and then of the "Filthy Speech Movement." Back then, students were reading existentialists like Sartre and Camus, modeling themselves on the 50s' beatniks, and supporting the New Left politically. No more; not for a long time! Of course, the faculty is stuck in the same old rut. As in Adam Smith's time, most academics are slow learners. Academe remains, as then, the sanctuary of "exploded systems and obsolete prejudices." The students who were freshmen 10 years ago will soon be the new faculty, and The Fountainhead was their second favorite book. In another 10 years, today's crop of freshmen will be moving into faculty jobs, and The Fountainhead is at the top of _their_ list. So, the times they are STILL a-changin'! Cheers, Mike QRN: Filling the ranks Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 Here's a post I sent (under another subject line) to Canadian Firearms Digest. Enjoy! "Young, Rick" <YoungR@mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca> wrote: Thanks for mentioning that, Rick! It's funny and instructive. I think it's from Clausewitz, even though he was never noted as a comedian. Maybe, being Prussian, he meant it as serious theory. Here's a full version. Everyone is either industrious or lazy, and either bright or stupid. So we have 4 classes with which to man an army. Those who are bright and industrious, we make junior officers. They'll keep everybody busy, and solve the many problems of detail. Those who are stupid and lazy, we make grunts. We can rely on the junior officers to keep them directed and busy. Those who are bright and lazy, we make generals. They'll figure out the easiest way to do things, and explain it to the junior officers. Those who are stupid and industrious, we cashier! That combination is intolerable in any rank. Cheers, Mike QRN: Reverse engineering Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 Men are baffling and illogical, right? Wrong! They're only baffling to those who think they're illogical. Men are merely interesting puzzles to those who grasp how logical they really are. Like the famous character who discovered to his amazement that he'd been speaking prose all his life, men use logic day in, and day out, whether they know it not. You can use this elementary fact to probe your own mind, and the minds of everyone around you, to find out what they're made of. By learning a simple little trick, you can easily learn more about the contents of a speaker's mind than he knows himself. If you reveal your findings, they can earn you a reputation for profound insight, or they can earn you a bloody nose. It depends on who you analyze! The simple little trick that opens the hidden recesses of human minds to your scrutiny is THE REVERSE ENGINEERING OF ARGUMENTS. Most men think of logic merely as a way to determine whether a given conclusion follows from given premises. In this pattern, the conclusion and premises are clearly laid out; the only job for logic is to decide on validity. This has valuable uses in science, but there are few opportunities to use it in everyday life. Men rarely lay out their premises and conclusions in formal syllogisms. But men do assert _validity_ all the time! Every time someone says "so," "therefore," "because"--or any of the other words expressing a logical connection--he is claiming validity. He really means validity; he "feels" validity; he is sincere about validity. His claim of validity is a window into his soul; reverse engineering lets you peer within. In reverse engineering, you take him at his word! You accept that his implicit argument _is_ valid, and construct the premise which would _in _fact _and _in _logic, make it valid. That premise is the real core of his thinking, whether he knows it or not, and whether he cares to admit it or not. For example, when people say "X is bad because it is selfish," reverse engineering exposes the implicit premise, "All things selfish are bad." Most of the premises you will unmask by reverse engineering will be baseless or absurd. Don't let this fool you into thinking that you must be "doing it wrong." (I made that blunder for more years than I care to think about!) Nope, all the damfoolishness you will uncover is real. It accurately reflects the garbage with which most men stuff their minds. (The mother lode of this damfoolishness is, of course, bad philosophy.) Many men, when you confront them with the premise you've reverse engineered out of their argument, will swear up and down that they didn't mean it. Don't be fooled. They're lying! They _did_ mean it, if only for that one moment. That's an unshakeable data point about them. [They may look startled, and say something like, "Oops, damn!"--and proceed to amend their thinking--or they may bloody your nose. Either way, you've learned something about them!] On the brighter side, by applying reverse engineering to the arguments of honest thinkers like Aristotle or Ayn Rand, you can learn a great deal more from them than they ever got around to stating explicitly. By reverse engineering your own arguments, and the arguments of good and rational friends, you can make deep new discoveries. Have fun with reverse engineering! Just keep in mind that it can earn you bloody noses from those who become horrified and furious when you throw their most secret thoughts back at them! Cheers, Mike QRN: The story behind the Clinton story! Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 I was going to remain mute about the Clinton sex scandal which is now rocking the Oral Office, but there is an angle that's too important to ignore. Why did the poodle press bite their buddy President Clinton? When the scandal erupted about the beginning of last week, there were coy rumours in the poodle press that the Web was somehow involved. I asked a few friends if they could turn up more about this. After a week of mousing about the Web, Don Petro hit the jackpot! THE SLATE.COM STORY HE TURNED UP HAS IT ALL! Dates, names, links to the original web postings by The Drudge Report, the way those reports were posted hither and yon through the newsgroups, the growing pressure on the poodle press to admit what they knew--the works! So, why DID the poodle press bite their pal? Their alternative was to remain silent about a story that was rapidly becoming common knowledge. If they had, that would have threatened the last shreds of their credibility! The Clinton story is merely ordinary sleaze. The story BEHIND the Clinton story is a victory for truth. It puts all orthodoxies on the defensive. And internet continues to flourish; you ain't seen nothin' yet! Subject: GOT IT! Hi Mike The whole nine yards, with links, on what the web was doing before the poodle press bit Clinton! http://www.slate.com/TangledWeb/98-01-22/TangledWeb.asp QRN: "Self Help" An overlooked masterpiece? Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 This item should be of interest to everyone interested in the spread
and influence of ideas. H. Roy Stephens wrote: Hi Roy, Thanks ever so much!! I thought I had Project Gutenberg bookmarked, but it turns out that the URL I had has vanished. I found their new home, http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/gutenberg/, from your link. Now here's the fun bit! It's a fine example of finding rare and possibly wondrous things on the internet. When I checked the URL you gave me, I routinely looked under "S" to see if they have Adam Smith (they don't), when WHAT TO MY WONDERING EYES SHOULD APPEAR, but SAMUEL SMILES!! I've been looking for him for about a quarter century! Here's my story. While browsing in the U of C library in the mid 70s, I hit upon a marvelous scholarly work called "Japanese Enlightenment," which details the transformation of Japan--lickety-split!--into an essentially Western country. The Japanese went to extraordinary, fully conscious lengths to import Western culture because they knew they'd need it in order to adopt Western technology. The author of "Japanese Enlightenment" stressed the popularity and influence in Japan of a book called "Self Help," written by one Samuel Smiles. It occurred to me that "Self Help," through its work in Westernizing Japan, may be one of the more important documents in the history of thought. It further occurred to me that a whole genre of Western literature may be named after Smiles' volume. Yet Smiles is virtually unknown in the modern West. This was highly intriguing! There the trail went cold. I managed to turn up brief, dismissive biographical references to Smiles in Encyclopedia Brittanica, but couldn't find hide nor hair of his works. And then I got your post! Now I've got my reading cut out for me! (Just as soon as I finish Churchill's "Second World War.") I can hardly wait to see if Smiles is as important as I surmise. Thank you again, Roy! Cheers, Mike |
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