Politics and Science

After the attack on Paul Pelosi, I must condemn violence, especially political violence. I understand that people think there are threats to democracy, from both the left and right. However, I don't think that violence is the answer. I am not a pacificist, but I believe that the use of force belongs to governments, not private corporations or individuals.

            Bayesian statistics asks the question, given what I observed, what is the probability of that thing happening? For example, if a person has never been in a car crash, that person might think that it’s impossible that they’ll ever be in a car crash, and so they underestimate the probability of being in a car crash. On the other hand, if someone has been in a car crash, maybe they’re really worried about being in car crashes and overestimate the probability.             Emile Durkheim described the idea of a society’s collective conscious. I consider it to be the sum total of a society’s memories and values. Consider the Glass-Steagall Act. It was put in place in response to the Great Depression to prevent normal people’s saving being wiped out by a financial crisis. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, when the Great Depression had left our collective conscious. Very few people who ex...

             The certain moral belief that, I am a good person, and this other person, they are a bad person, has justified some of the most heinous crimes. For example, consider the Holocaust. It was founded on the belief that the Jews, they are bad people. Take torture during the Global War on Terror. It was founded on the belief that these radical Muslims are bad people, so they were tortured. The certain belief that I am a good person, and this other group of people, they are bad people, has justified some of the heinous crimes. What Hannah Arendt said was the banality of evil, how ordinary people commit horrible crimes. This is also the story of Stanley Milgram's prison experiment. People who don't have the self-awareness that they might be evil or do something bad or who believe themselves morally superior, commit some of the most horrible crimes.             I have at times thought that I ...

            I value liberty, but as I have discussed positive and negative liberty written about by Isaiah Berlin, I do not believe in the positive liberty of the slaveowner to do whatever he wants, when I talk about liberty, I mean the liberty of the slave to be free. I do not mean the liberty of the corporation to pollute the environment or exploit workers, I mean the liberty of the people to be free from pollution or exploitation.             I value democracy, including US democracy. Not a democracy ruled by the wealthy or special interests or white people or men, but a true indirect democracy that values equality before the law regardless of identity characteristics, equality of opportunity, equity for those who are disadvantaged, and the rule of law.             I believe in tolerance and multiculturalism, within limits. Karl Popper described ...