Kennesaw, Georgia "America's Safest City" Requires Gun Ownership!
There has not been a single reported crime of domestic violence in Kennesaw since the law was passed. There have been no injuries to children involving guns since the law was passed.

Absolutely brilliant video by a British (sounding) teen on the topic of atheism, agnosticism, and theism!

I've long hated the idea of agreeing to disagree. Doing that is simply intellectual laziness. Nothing more and nothing less. It means that the mental effort of following the paths of reasoning and examining the evidence are more than you are willing to exert. In typical disagreements, there is a stronger weight of evidence for one proposition over an opposing one. In that case, if agreement cannot be reached, one or both parties are acting irrationally.

Fortunately, I just discovered someone who agrees with this position and wrote a whole post on the subject.
You both should understand that "agreeing to disagree" is a sign of mutual disrespect and contempt. Rationality imposes a strong imperative to reach agreement and this must drive your interaction.

Sensational titles FTW!

Stumbled upon this video which shows at least the other side of vaccination from what the government and medical profession tells us.

The downside to this video is that it favors homeopathy as a potential way to heal the damage from vaccines. See James Randi on homeopathy for why that's a bad thing.

Are some vaccines helpful? Probably. Are most more harmful than helpful? Probably. Will my children be getting vaccines? Unlikely.

Vaccination - The Hidden Truth

Edited 1 month, 3 weeks ago: *shrug*
My buddy Scott brought up an excellent point that certain vaccines do protect against debilitating diseases and may be more worthwhile than others.

why guns are civilization

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

I won't add anything to the source post other than my own recent acquisitions.

This one took me a bit longer to read than some of the others. It's a pretty philosophically demanding book. Tremblay does a fine, and French toned, presentation of the ideals of Market Anarchy and, perhaps more importantly, a beautiful and optimistic look at the future evolution of society.

One of my favorite ideas from "But Who Will Build The Roads?" is one which I originally rejected: That the moral value of a choice can only be analyzed in reference to the values of the individual making that choice. At first glance, this would appear to be a relativist stance, but upon reflection of what it means for something to be a value, it is not.

My long standing theory of morality is that morals are derived from the evolved nature of the human species. This turns out to be fundamentally the same as Tremblay's version of morality, if differing in the details. Tremblay's morality takes into account family, cultural and evolutionary values, weighted accordingly, where my own fails to account for the former two.

To see how this does not lead to relativism, we need only remember Maslow's hiearchy of needs. All human beings have certain needs in common and, as such, will value certain things. This in turn will lead to largely common moral principals. Those behaviors which aid in satisfying needs are largely good and those that do not are largely bad.

The practical benefit of Tremblay's presentation is that it allows those who are in society with each other to make certain moral statements about actions which are not dictated by evolved nature. If a person is in society with me by choice, then I can expect that they value that relationship. Given this, I can make a statement such as "his action was wrong in as much as he values our association." On the face of it, this may seem like a weak statement, but it brings the forces of the market to bear on morality. If a person values the society of people who value clean air, it becomes a practical, moral decision whether to pollute or not.

I've probably spent too many words on the topic of morality, so I'll let that be the end of it for now.

The true beauty of Tremblay's ideas didn't hit me until late in the last chapter of "But Who Will Build The Roads?". Here, he presents a compelling argument for the possibility of market anarchy replacing state not through violent revolution or catastrophic failure, but through simple replacement to irrelevance. My friend Frank had already primed me for some of these ideas by his argument that post-state we would see communities composed of like-minded, self-regulating groups connected by high-speed communications networks (such as the Internet). Tremblay seems to portray a future where increased self-regulation and self-policing among people, communities and businesses will eventually render the state without a job to do. At some point, a state police person will order a "citizen" to do something and the "citizen" will simply laugh, knowing that his own contracted protection agency and that of the street he is paying to use are far more widely accepted as authorities than this laughable state peon.

I may be misrepresenting Tremblay here slightly, but that's the vision that his writing evoked. The idea may seem laughable, but we need to remember that gated communities, large businesses and private security companies already do a fair amount of self-policing. Moreover, the state has more and more been contracting with private companies to wage its wars (Blackwater).

I (obviously) don't know what the future holds for freedom, nor for the state, but I remain quite confident in my (not previously expressed in this blog) prediction that the "United States of America" as an entity will no longer exist by 2025 (90% confidence date). Tremblay's vision gives me actionable guidelines for what to do in the meantime (other than stocking up on food an ammo). If we want to see a stateless society thrive then we should invest in private alternatives to state run monopolies. Ship UPS and FedEx; if private roads exist in your area, use and pay for them; use private arbitration rather than state small claims courts; etc.

I seem to be working hard at digging down my non-fiction reading list lately. My most recent read being Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence". For those who don't know, Jeff Hawkins brought us both the Palm Pilot and the Handspring Treo; but it turns out that his first interest has always been thinking and brains.

"On Intelligence" is his treatise on how the human mind works -- how thinking works. He attempts to elucidate what exactly differentiates human thinking from all previous attempts at building truly intelligent non-human computers. I personally think that he succeeds.

You will be pleasantly surprised by the ease with which Hawkins' theories mesh with how you perceive your own thoughts. While he acknowledges that some of his specific functional theories will most likely be disproven, the overall hierarchy for thought that he presents seems hindsight-intuitive and highly probable. Hawkins' is the first theory of thinking that correctly applies evolutionary theory. He looks for how incremental creation of the higher brain functions would incrementally aid survival and therefor select for animals who have the cortex and then incrementally for those that have more and better cortex tissue. As with any evolved feature, intelligence didn't spring fully grown from the sands of time.

There is no magical thinking in chapters 1-6 of "On Intelligence". In the last two chapters, I found that some of Hawkins' arguments and theories got a bit on the magical side, but it's alright, he warns you that they are less founded in reality. Chapter 7 attempts to answer the age-old questions about consciousness and humanness and Chapter 8 attempts to make forward looking statements. Interestingly, I found these later chapters to be harder to read than the highly technical Chapter 6.

I can definitely see why Hawkins attempted the last two chapters of the book. After reading and stewing on the earlier chapters for some time, I too found my views on the uniqueness of human thought and the future of non-human computers being irrevocably altered. On the other hand, I think that they may have detracted from the overall credibility of the book by being so far less grounded.

One interesting thing that I was able to learn from this book and immediately apply to my own life was exactly how to remember to perform simple tasks. In general, I have always tried to remember to perform some desired action on some object by envisioning the object and describing the action. At least for me, this has been largely unsuccessful. The verbalizing of the action does not form a full mental prediction of its occurrence and therefor does not setup brain-wide alarms when it doesn't happen. On the other hand, envisioning the desired action happening causes significant incongruity when the context in which I wished to perform the action occurs and I do not take the action. Concrete example: I see a trash bag by my door. If I say, "I should take the trash out this morning," it is not very likely to happen. If, on the other hand, I envision the trash bag in my hand as I leave for work this morning, I have setup my mind to do that and if I attempt to do the similar action (leaving without the trash bag), alarms will fire reminding me that some part of what I was expecting is missing. Try it, srsly.

Long and short of this rambling post is that it's a damn good book and I highly recommend that you read it.

Interesting idea. I'll bite.

Well, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" came out at nearly the same time as "The Revolution: A Manifesto" and I, being the little revolutionary that I am, have now read (or heard) them both.

Where "The Revolution" was full of hard economics, constitutional scholarship and carefully constructed arguments, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" was full of down-to-earth realities, anecdotes and accessible language. The two books could hardly come from two different people, one an MD and constitutional scholar, the other a professional wrestler and actor from a blue collar family. Despite these surface differences, the central message is the same; Two paths diverge before the American people: On the one side we have the path of restoring liberty, restoring financial responsibility and accountability, dismantling the military industrial complex and eating crow on the international stage. On the other side we have a path that can only lead to the collapse (peaceful or otherwise) of the United States of America.

While these two possibilities are clearly evident in both books, where Dr. Paul comes down both favoring and believing in the possibility of the former, Jesse "The Mind" Ventura seems to have declared the latter the only path left open to us. Given the contents of both books, I find myself much more in the latter camp. While Dr. Paul's hope is noble and beautiful in its own way, I don't think that it's possible. The entrenched political interests are entrenched.

The story-telling journey style of "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" is something that I really enjoyed. It reminded me quite a bit of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (only without the complex and hard to follow philosophical syllogism) and added quite an element of credibility to "The Mind"'s conclusions. He didn't just suddenly become a revolutionary; he saw the "body politic" from within, he did battle with the beast on its turf, he even battled _for_ the beast. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea; it's the reality that's at our doorstep, whether we want to accept it or not.

Revolution is coming to this country and the more we accept and embrace that, the better the outcome will be.

Damn fine book. Downloaded the audio last night and have spent most of this morning listening to it (just a few tracks remaining; I love audio books). Just to be clear, I ordered my own physical copy from Amazon on its release day, and eagerly await its arrival on Tuesday.

So far, this book has only improved my view of Dr. Paul. I've always questioned his views on abortion and immigration, but listening to this book has proverbially cleared the air between us on these topics.

Dr. Paul has written against immigration repeatedly during his campaign and this has concerned me. Fortunately, it appears from listening to his book that he is only against immigration in so much as we have a welfare state. In the absence of the welfare state, all of the costs of immigration dissolve and we can "welcome immigrants who want to come here, work hard, and build a better life".

Dr. Paul is also personally very anti-abortion, which I consider to be a morally questionable view at best. In his book, he reveals the emotional origin of his position, but also reiterates his stance that the decision about the _legality_ of abortion should be delegated to the states and to the people (as almost all powers should be). I personally would never encourage the abortion of a fetus to whose conception I had been a party (how's that for a description of sex?), but I cannot justify enjoining others against so doing.

The moral argument goes as such: There are two (or three, if you include the father) moral entities involved in any choice regarding abortion. I think that we can easily conclude that in any case where a choice must be made between the life of the actual moral agent (the mother) and the potential moral agent (the fetus), the actual moral agent's rights absolutely win out. I think that even Dr. Paul would agree with this.

The waters (understandably) get muddy when you look at elective abortions. Dr. Paul would suggest that the right to the potential life of a fetus wins out over what amounts to the property rights of the mother (an actual moral agent). I don't think that this is such a clear cut distinction; we consider ourselves morally righteous when we shoot a dog who bites. We generally consider ourselves morally righteous when we eat the flesh of animals to sustain our own lives. Both of these cases are intuitively comparable to abortion to me. The fetus is an active burden on the nutrition and health of the mother, but is a potential life with some level of moral standing. I think that it is morally wrong to take the decision of abortion lightly, just as I think it is morally wrong to hunt for sport alone (with no intent of making the utmost use of the animal's flesh). In a free society, we must accept that we cannot judge the mental state of someone and can only judge their actions, therefor it can certainly not be said that all abortions are always wrong. If you are a poor woman who has found herself pregnant unintentionally and has great difficulty making ends meet as it is, you are morally justified in having an abortion in order to avoid further hardship for the next 9 months _as well_ as the emotional hardship of having to add another infant to an overburdened foster care and orphan care network.

I fear that Dr. Paul's religious beliefs cloud his judgement on this topic. If you believe that there is some "soul" which is unique to humankind and which is instantiated at the instant of conception, without regard to moral agency, then you will have a very difficult time justifying elective abortion. If, however, you see moral agency and membership in society as what is uniquely human then you can see elective abortion for what it is: A reasonable but difficult moral choice.

After that long diversion, I want to reiterate that _despite_ our differing moral positions on abortion, Dr. Paul and my views on the federal government's role in deciding the legality of abortion differ not a bit. As a difficult moral decision, I cannot imagine that any group of people larger than a small town could possibly agree on a proper rule governing abortion. How then can we imagine that a group of two-hundred sixty-five million people could possibly be governed by one single rule?

This is, I think, the reason that so many diverse people have gotten behind the Ron Paul campaign, and why I am now feeling a bit of a pang for having not backed it earlier. Any person who advocates freedom as strongly as Dr. Paul is unlikely to suggest legislation which will go contrary to anyone else who seeks freedom, regardless of their values or moral system. It is also interesting to note that these exact principals are the same ones which our founding fathers envisioned in creating the government of this nation. They knew that the only thing that the colonists had in common was a shared dislike of oppression, so they avoided wherever possible legislating anything beyond protection from oppressions into the constitution.

I, of course, Dr. Paul fails realize (or at least fails to state) the full implications of his moral principals: If it is wrong to tax, then it is wrong to tax. Any government necessarily requires funding and any funding acquired other than through voluntary donations or contracts is a tax and is wrong. It is possible, perhaps, to have a small body of social experts, maintained by consulting fees; a corresponding small body of adjudicators, maintained by mediation fees; and a small security force, maintained by insurance fees, which might resemble a government, but no constitionally declared government with salaries and taxes can ever be morally justified, given the beliefs that Dr. Paul espouses.