Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, Black Swans, etc.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a trilogy of books about the sort of human tendencies (and/or tendencies of our culture) that helped  bring about the financial meltdown and the current recession.

Feel free to order from these links. Doing so will help support Truthology 101 / Practical Epistemology

The kernel of truth in postmodernism

The kernel of truth in postmodernism, with its obsession with the modern "gaze" and "master narratives" is, if you look at the world from a Gods-eye point of view (as the universal observer as opposed to just you - in whatever weak position you happen to be in) -- whatever solutions you may think of to the worlds problems will tend to start with "STEP 1: Get control of everything".  Step 2 may be "Nationalize all wealth", or it may be "Reduce government to the functions of preventing crime and enforcing contracts", but you will never get to step 2, but be stuck making a mess of step 1 forever.

On Smart Division of Labour in a Propaganda Enterprise

 Here is an email I wrote to a historian friend in February 2012 concerning the current (back then) "last nail in the coffin of the AGW Hoax"

I've never seen a time when so many normal seeming people readily swallow so much totally unjustified and worthless nonsense.  My mother showed me a letter to the editor of her newspaper which started out characterizing Obama as a Marxist ex-street hustler and was telling me it had some good points, and not blinking at the crazy characterization.

I had one insight the other day when my wife passed me an article which seemed to say that a credible climatologist had shown there was no increase in carbon dioxide in the last 150 years.  Ever heard of this? At the time, it was hard to miss in popular "conservative" blogs, where the followup discussions were full of language like "final nail in the coffin of climategate".

Where to Begin (a "Truth Project" worthy of the name)? (#5)

Over the years, my thinking on why I should bother have developed and gotten clearer.

Theoretically,  with the Internet, we have immediate access to almost infinitely more "information" than was at our fingertips even 30 years ago.  But most people will probably agree that "most people" (but a different "most people" from themselves) are systematically mislead by information sources they trust.

Where to Begin (a "Truth Project" worthy of the name)? (#4)

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book I, v, 8. [Link on the right is to a free Kindle version - help yourself]

Over the years, my thinking on why I should bother have developed and gotten clearer.  Like most pithy sayings, Francis Bacon's overstates the case.  Still, I like it.

Where to Begin? #3

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

--Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820.

Where to Begin? #2

The vast majority of people would prefer a simple comfortable life.  Why are so many diverted into some radically different, destructive and self-destructive path?