The Communists Have Landed

I have to say that I am weary of looking in the news and seeing socialist / communist rhetoric spewing forth from Lord Obama and his cronies. Not only is the government buying out US companies on the cheap (a de facto nationalization strategy as illustrated by act such as this: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aqOyfIA14XQ8&refer=us ) but the very question of the propriety of nationalization is a total non-issue in the current political discourse. All that the so-called defenders of capitalism can do is equivocate on the practicality of doing so. All they can do is equivocate on the potential harm to the people. Nobody at all seems to be concerned with whether such action is morally right. Nobody at all seems to remember a little thing like human rights, rights which our nation was supposed to believe are INALIENABLE. Admittedly, most of Obama's supporters probably don't even recognize what the word inalienable even means, much less what the concept of human rights entails. No, they equate rights with an open-ended hunger. Their concept of rights is an infinite demand on what they percieve as a mystically infinite supply of naturally growing wealth. Shake the tree all you want, there'll still be more fruit on it tomorrow, right? But they don't seem to realize that if you cut down the tree, haul it over into your yard and prop it up against a shed--it will not yield fruit next year.

Now, don't get me wrong, I thing Wagoner was a fruitcake. He went crying to the government for help, and sure enough they gave him the help he so desperately deserved--a solid kick in the ass. But the point is that the free market would've sent Wagoner packing anyways and without sacrificing taxpayer money and without setting a dangerous precedent for the arbitrary government nationalization of American industries. Let the idiot CEOs fail, let the brilliant ones prosper, and let us all work to fill the jobs created by the ingenuity and excellence of the very best productive minds around us. The only jobs a government can provide are those which enable it to file, index, sort, encage, punish, and monitor the rest of us. This is because a government's sole function is to maintain and enforce the rule of law. All it can do is threaten, fine, and imprison people. A government doesn't create wealth. It produces nothing of value. It's function is to maintain an environment where people are free to produce freely. By constraining that environment, by bringing it's legislative violence into the private sector, the government in effect becomes a totalitarian force with it's eyes and hands on everybody's life, and the net result is that people are not allowed to be as efficient as they could be were they simply allowed to pursue their own happiness.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness used to be more than just words, they were a dream and an ideal worth fighting for, worth dying for, and more importantly--worth living for. And yet we find ourselves tied down in an age where the last flailing remnants of American idealism are being skinned alive, where the stillborn dream of an American society was sacrificed on the altar of "God and Society" with the self-defiant neurotic cry "For the good of the many!" What is America with no right to one's own life? What is America without the freedom to know your own mind and to act upon the values you decide for yourself? What is America without the moral conviction that one's happiness is an end in and of itself, that one's values have value, that one's dreams mean something? Those dreams mean something, Damn it! They mean something because they are fragile and isolated and occur only fleetingly in the minds of individual men and women all over the Earth. Those dreams that become generators. Those dreams that become companies. Those dreams that become the lifeblood of those who couldn't dream as well or as hard or as thoroughly. Ideas mean something, and the more fragile and fleeting, the more precious those ideas become.

The laughing dreams of children do not have to become the discarded carcasses of compromising adults. For the sake of us all, for your own sake, and for the sake of decency, don't sell out the American dream for a smile and a handshake and the burning coals of "good intentions". Vote libertarian or Vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Protest, speak out, scream out for Obama to stop his systematic, methodical butchering of the human spirit.

Why I'm an Objectivist

Well, I guess that Ayn Rand's books are experiencing a surge of interest due to the economic crisis. But amidst all the pundits weighing in on one side or the other, I'd simply like to talk about why I'm an Objectivist.

A lot of people point out that Greenspan was an Objectivist (he even wrote several of the essays in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). But the policies and decisions he pursued in his career make him anything but. How can the chief of the Fed, who sits in unilateral judgment over the arbitrary outlay of interest rates and the monetary supply, possibly be supportive of the government deregulation of the financial system? No, Greenspan isn't an Objectivist.

A lot of people get hung up on that deal with the Brandens, or with the Peikoff-Kelley split. The former is a sideshow bearing no relevance to Ayn Rand's philosophical ideas. It is akin to discrediting the Declaration of Independence because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Somebody can make mistakes in character judgment, or bad choices and still have good ideas. That's why there is a logical fallacy devoted to just such an error, ad hominem (meaning against the man). The latter focuses on a very relevant issue, the proper moral response to dissent. I'm honestly not sure which side is correct in their assessments, as I've recently stated, I'm not sure myself how to properly discern between evasion and deception and whether or not there should morally be a different response for the two, or if they deserve to be lumped together. This jury of one is still out on that subject, and until I reach a verdict, I will be hesitant to condemn either side unilaterally. After all, error is a very real occurrence. To deny the capacity for error is to assert that we are all granted a priori knowledge of the universe, an assertion closer to the philosophy of Plato than that of Rand. And I don't believe in patently accepting orthodoxy from any source if I don't fully understand the principles involved.

Some people assert that Rand has a utilitarian value, that she provides the moral justification for capitalism. Well, she does. But that isn't a reason to believe in Objectivism. The only viable reason to believe in Objectivism is this: is it true?

To ask this question of most philosophies is to encounter a Cartesian loop of circular reasoning. Most philosophies demand that you accept either a God, or social force, or some vague and inexplicable internal sense as the final arbiter of morality. Only Rand came forth to say that what is moral is based solidly in the tangible reality and tangible demands of our physical existence. The reason philosophers scoff at Objectivism is because it is fully comprehensible. The reason why it isn't taken seriously is because it does not rest on a leap of faith, a "feeling" that something is right or wrong. It rests on reason. Philosophers have spent generations arguing about whether they can know that reality exists, how they can know anything if they can't assume anything about existence, endless wormholes of uncertainty and referenceless abstractions based on clouds of air where they simply try to rationalize their own assumptions about morality by any means necessary. There is a very real reason why we tend to think of something as "deep" which is completely incomprehensible or bizarre. It is because what many of our philosophers have presented to us as deep and fundamental truths of existence have in fact been nothing more than incomprehensible or bizarre all along.

Rand was the first one in modern history to come out and say "The Emperor has no clothes...and this is why." She stated that some assumptions are necessary, that they are in fact assumed by anyone who would attempt to disprove them: Existence exists, Consciousness is conscious, A thing is itself (A is A). Her philosophical system anticipated significant developments in cognitive science (such as the embodiment of cognitive experience and the necessity for a hierarchy of concept formation for information processing) and linguistics (such as examining the concealment of agency realized by transitivity and passivization as a technique for encoding hidden ideology). Objectivism has ramifications for economics, political science, morality, law, and education. All of these fields are traditionally presented to us as decontextualized, incomprehensible forces of nature to which we must simply react, but can never hope to comprehend or to influence.

Objectivism makes explicit the underlying mechanisms of all of these processes and shows how we are the center of all of these systems, that we are not just passive receivers of some arbitrary destiny; that we have the power and indeed, the responsibility, to act upon those systems to make them better for our own sakes. And that by working to make these systems more productive objectively, that by striving to attain our own individual rational self-interest, by seeking to attain the best that life has to offer over the entire span of one's life, that the net result is an immeasurable benefit for everyone. But that the justification is not in the benefit to all but in the benefit to one's self. That we are born into this life as ourselves, that we experience only the life that we have as ourselves, and that the pursuit of happiness is not a pragmatic end, but a moral pursuit in and of itself.

Objectivism offers HAPPINESS, whereas the other varied philosophies and ideologies of our age only demand SACRIFICE. Sacrifice to what? For whose benefit? Will my children be the happier for me having sacrificed their economic well-being today? Will I truly have any greater guarantee of security by demanding that they pay for my retirement, when in fact the economic necessities of the system will mean that social security will most likely not even exist by that time? Will they be the better educated by demanding that they be constrained to the lowest common denominator of educational quality made possible by averaging the resources of the community as opposed to what I could provide for them unfettered by the economic burdens imposed by the government? No. No. No.

Opponents of Objectivism need to make an explicit stand, one that they cannot ultimately justify and thus why they always resort to ad hominem attacks or dodge the issue. Objectivism ultimately stands for the rational pursuit of your happiness over the span of your life. It holds that as a moral virtue, the highest moral goal. To say that Objectivism is evil, is to say that the pursuit of happiness is evil. To say that Objectivism is wrong, is to say that it is wrong to be happy, it is wrong to want the best for your children, it is wrong to receive greater pay for greater work, that any attempts to advance your position in life is evil and the most we can hope for in our imperfect lives is to beg for the mercy of those who hold incontrovertible power over us, whether they be thrust into that position by design or the vagaries of the political process.

I refute this view of life. I cannot accept that I was born to be the tool of others, that I was born to be used, manipulated, milked of whatever capacity I have and then to be cast aside with the fruits of my productivity to be dispensed according to the whims of a lunatic mob. I believe in the principles that America was founded upon. I believe in this nation of principles, the only nation ever founded by philosophers. What Ayn Rand represents is not a radical divergence from American values, she represents the soul of American virtue unabashedly claiming its rightful distinction as the only moral system which does not treat humanity as sacrifical animals to be slaughtered for the sake of anyone's whims, whether they be the dreams of one man, or the dreams of us all. This virtue can only be fully realized if we accept the objective basis of morality, the objective determinants of justice and just law.

And the final reason that I am an objectivist is not just because the logical arguments makes sense to me, but that I can see the principles that Objectivism makes clear in operation in every aspect of life around me. When I see the way people react to politics, or economics, or education. When I see the things that are easy to teach or are easy to learn. The more I discover about the processes of the human mind, and society. Everything that I learn from science and my experience with other human beings in society. Everything makes sense when viewed from an Objectivist perspective. Where before, there was only a chaos of competing voices all crying for power, all crying for pity, all teetering on an uncertain foundation rocking on the waves of public opinion, I have now come to see the levers which operate those systems, and to understand the motivations driving the forces in our society. When I see the accuracy with which the themes in Ayn Rand's works play out in the news around me and even in my own personal life, I cannot refute the predictive power of her model. No other philosophy I have studied has come anywhere near as close in terms of precise clarity and comprehensive explanatory power.

And that is why I am an Objectivist. If I were to find a proof, whether it be logical or practical which invalidated the propositions of Objectivism, I would surrender the title of Objectivist and set about constructing a revised philosophy incorporating that proof. But I haven't yet. Despite all the ranting on the internet. Despite all the spite and condemnations of Rand's work. Despite all the insults and some outright lies. Not a single detractor has been able to provide a significant counter-argument. So I ask openly: if you (anybody out there at all) have an objection, bring it forth. Let's talk about this here and now. If you can show me the error of my ways, then do so. But I only ask one thing in return. That if your arguments prove to be the weaker, will you be as willing to change your views? If you are, then you're probably closer to being an Objectivist than you may think.

The End of Public Education

I've chosen the title of this article as I have, because I intend to address several points relating to the "end" of public education. First, what is the "end", or goal, of public education? Second, I intend to address the failure of public education as it nears it's practical end, or finality. Finally, I want to address the benefits of fully-privatized education and why we should advocate it's adoption as well as what we will need to consider in the conversion period. For the most part I don't think these arguments are new, and I don't believe they were originated by me. But I do believe in their validity, their urgency, and their relevance. I will do the best I am able to do justice to these arguments, but like always, I urge people to go back to the original sources and check the arguments for themselves. I am not an expert in most of the fields concerned, although I do have credentials and experience in education and finance, and have personally studied philosophy for most of my life. So, I am not an expert, these are simply the views of one man trying to express them in as clearly and concisely a manner as possible. I will be the first to admit that there is still a lot I don't know. But based on what I do know, I have confidence in the validity of my stances on these issues. I welcome any critiques, and I will respond to any valid criticisms with as reasoned a response as I am able. If I am wrong, please try to prove me so. Perhaps we can learn something together.

In that interest I would first like to clear up a concern that Keahou has brought to my attention in a comment here.

First of all, the advice that Pinochet decided to follow resulted in the "Miracle of Chile". That is, that a military junta adopted free-market reforms which drove Chile's economic growth and laid the foundations for a strong democratized society that eventually ousted Pinochet. Pinochet was a murderer and a despot. But he happened to have some good economic sense, which put his nation into a leading role in South America. Now, it can't be said to have been a free government at the time, because free governments don't allow the government to go around murdering people. But comparatively, in that Chile was more laissez-faire than other South American countries, it proved that the freer the market, the stronger economic growth. But as China has also proved, economic growth is not necessarily specific to democratic systems. The long-term democratizing effects of free-market reforms on the social status of China will, however, be interesting to observe. I don't think they will be able to oppress human rights with impunity forever. I would bet that, like Chile, the source of their prosperity will ultimately lead to the dissolution of their centrist government. Either that, or they will choose to crush the source of that prosperity and fade into the background like we are doing in America. The miracle of Chile is that the military junta opted for it's own obsolescence to preserve the country's economic prosperity, something which would seem to defy expectations.

Now that has been cleared up, we can get on with the privatization of education. What is the goal of public education? Simply put, it is to ensure a uniform standard of education to all students from elementary to post-secondary education. Now this hinges on two critical points. What do we mean by education? Also, has public education been effective in meeting that stated goal?

Education has several meanings depending on its context. The dictionary doesn't provide much more than a circular definition, although this is largely due to what Rand pointed out was the epistemological errors of lexicologists who try to define a word independently of its referents. Practically speaking, there are two basic interpretations of what is meant by education. One has as its goal the accumulation of a certain list of facts and formulae. The other has as its goal the acquisition of skills and processes. The former measures its success by the ability of students to answer questions correctly. The latter measures its success by the ability of its students to actually do things with their knowledge. The former is relatively simple to test quantitatively. The latter can only be assessed qualitatively by analyzing the child's productions. For ease of reference, then, let's define the former interpretation of education as the Textbook & Testing Approach (TNT) and the latter as the Cognitive Development Approach (CD).

Now regardless of whether a school system is public or private, teachers can tend to be attracted to either of these approaches. However, in a public, standardized system, the emphasis is systematically placed on the standardized testing, which means that the emphasis is consequently placed on the list of facts presented in the test. Now, the criteria that the test-makers use to select those facts is largely irrelevant. If the standard of measurement is simply a list of facts and formulae, then the success of teachers, schools, and methods are based on a measure of the ability of children to have memorized those facts. Whether or not they can actually use that information is not as clearly testable in a quantitative format. If school funding is based on quantitative performance measures, then schools which are the best at TNT will be the most funded schools. While it can be successfully argued, I think, that CD approaches would result in ultimately higher attainment on TNT measures, the practical upshot is that unless a school has at the very least a mixed system of CD and TNT, students still won't do very well on the quantitative tests. (They will still have to remember the specific facts and formulae on the given test.)

The problem with qualitative tests is that they don't produce results which can be easily assessed by non-specialists in education. A public system is ultimately responsible to the least specialized authority, the elected government official. Their interpretation of test results is bound to be based on the number crunching of quantitative assessments. Especially, the less autonomy schools and teachers have in making relevant educational decisions, and the more dependent they are on government for support, the less they can afford to concentrate on their students' cognitive development, if it will risk even a marginal decrease in their performance on TNT testing. If you doubt this, please come to Japan and visit a junior high school English class.

Japan is the model of top-down education. All the things I've just proposed are, in Japan, a stark reality. Despite the awareness of teachers that the methods they are constrained to use are widely accepted as being ineffective, the pressure to conform to and produce quantitative standardized results in the testing system, prohibit them from initiating the very innovations that would serve their students best. Japanese students are very good at memorizing a certain list of terms, short-term, for the purpose of passing a test, without understanding the rhyme or reason very well. But, even after 6+ years of English study under this methodology, most Japanese adults can't speak more than a few words that have been incorporated into Japanese as loan words or some memorized set phrases. If anything, it teaches students that they can't ever understand the subject, that it is hopeless, and that the best they can do is to try to stuff as many of the facts and formulae into their heads as possible so that they can pass the entrance exams into high school and college, facts which are promptly forgotten. Everyone involved understands this, and yet nobody can or will change it, because the people in charge of those decisions are the ones most removed from the process, the politicians. The people sacrificed? The children.

But of course, it's only appropriate to view the children as being sacrificed, if the standard of success of education is functional ability. If the standard of success is simply obedience and rote memorization, then these public schools would seem to be a great success. Or are they?

Even in a system of largely TNT dependent teaching and increasing standardization, the measure by those testing standards indicate that public schooling costs more per student and produce a lower quality of education. Just look at what's happening in Washington, D.C. since they instituted the voucher system. Of course, since the democrats are on the rise, that'll soon be eliminated. After all, who wants the ugly evidence of the comparative ineffectiveness of socialist educational practices to hang around under the advent of a socialist regime?

I don't think the failings of our current educational system are debatable. Pretty much everyone understands that private schools offer better education (even Obama's children aren't going public) and that maintaining teacher quality standards is well nigh impossible in a system that doesn't adequately reward competent teachers (watch the second part). The main objection to privatization, I think, is the potential cost.

So, what, really, would be the cost to parents of phasing out public education into privately run schools? As it is, parents are all taxed to pay for education. For example, in Washington D.C. the cost per student for education was about $12,979 a year making it #3 out of the top 100 largest school districts in the nation. Despite this fact, they ranked pathetically low compared to the national averages. 33% is the national average for 4th graders who lack basic skills in math, in DC, the percentage was 62%. 49% is the average nationally for 8th graders who lack those same basic skills, in DC it was more like 74%. That's why they instituted a voucher system to try and get these kids into higher quality educational programs. Those vouchers are good for $7,500. The average cost of going to a private school in the DC area is currently $4,500. Only 39% of private schools in the DC area are more expensive than $10,000. That means that, if the tax burden for parents was reduced by the amount the government would no longer need if the system was privatized, parents could easily afford the price of private education.

Students would receive better quality education. Teachers would also have to be more accountable, because private enterprise will be less tolerant of teacher incompetence then socialized unions. Standards will have to produce children who are capable of using their knowledge to further their goals, because that will be the product that parents and children will notice the most. Parents will be more involved in school, because they will want to make sure they're getting their money's worth. If anything, parents would be saving money, getting more for it, and everyone would be happier.

Vouchers are not an end in themselves. They are a means of privitizing the educational system without causing a massive system shock. As public schools become progressively outmoded in pace with the development of a private infrastructure, the schools could be absorbed into private organizations. Once the public funding and relevant taxes have been replaced by a privitized system, then there will be no more need for vouchers and no more need to make it a political issue.

Inner city schools are suffering as it is, and a critical problem is the lack of incentive for talented teachers to go to those schools, or for people to send their children there. People who can afford to move to a more affluent region, already do, taking their tax money with them. If the government's coercive monopoly on education was relaxed so as to stimulate private investment in education and the efficiency of free markets, then private schools could be instituted to compete with the faltering inner city schools for those temporary vouchers and thus raise the standard of education for all who live in those areas. It would effectively remove one of the constricting influences which drives money out of those areas. As education improves, the social climate will improve, and those abandoned areas will become revitalized.

As Keahou says, there are indeed "so many practical issues to be considered".

So, to sum up, privatized education should be cheaper, more efficient, allow teachers to develop innovative techniques in an environment that will offer incentives for efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation, will encourage the revitalization of impoverished areas and increase the competitiveness of our children in the global market place by effectively raising their comprehensive abilities in reasoning skills (the foundation of math and the sciences.) Either that, or we can continue to squander money on the floundering system that we have now, where everybody recognizes that the emperor has no clothes, but love Obama too much to tell him. I wonder what practical considerations I'm leaving out? Well, I hope somebody will let me know so we can continue this discussion.

Error, Evasion, and Deceit

I've been reading through Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (IOE) and in the interest of trying to work through some of the ideas in there, I've decided to put my thoughts into writing on this blog. Let me just say that this is not definitive Objectivist orthodoxy. This is just me working through some of the ideas presented by Objectivism. I welcome criticism from anyone, Objectivist or not, who may think there is an error in this reasoning. However, so that we don't get bogged down too much in re-explaining definitions and so that we're not arguing about misinterpretations, I would like to ask anyone who would like to contest the points I'm making to have at least read the book first. Then, we'll know where we stand and can move on with discussion from there.

In IOE Ayn Rand presents the basics of her epistemology, or how we know that we know things and what it is we know. Rand says that consciousness starts at the perceptual level. Initially, we are born with sensory apparatus that just wheels blindly sending a stream of undifferentiated information into our brains. That is, of course, within the parameters set by our biological hardware. Sensations are instantaneous responses to external stimuli but have relatively little longevity. It isn't until we have acquired enough exposure to a certain sensation that it becomes integrated into a percept. For example, we may be exposed to a whole variety of things but we are unable to focus on any one quality or any one object until a percept has been formed. Then we can be said to perceive something. This is where consciousness begins--where we begin to integrate our multitudinous simultaneous sensations into perceivable somethings, differentiations in the chaos. It is only later, after we have developed the capacity to conceptualize and abstract, that we can analyze our perceptions and reduce them to their component sensations.

Similarly, after we acquire a sufficient level of perceptions we can integrate them into concepts, integrate concepts into abstractions and integrate abstractions into higher-level abstractions. I don't intend to go into the whole process here in detail, I just mention this as a starting point for the discussion. Basically what this model of knowledge says is that anything we know is ultimately founded on concrete existents in an objective reality. Even our highest level abstractions, to be valid, must be based on a chain of conceptualization that is ultimately reducible to the concretes from which it has been derived. This of course holds true for inductive as well as deductive reasoning. If there is a break in the conceptual chain, then the following concepts and abstractions and any actions based on them must be in error. A break in the conceptual chain must essentially be a contradiction, some point at which the linking ideas are not truly linkable, where definitions have been mismatched, where reality and proposition do not coincide.

Consciousness is simply a fact. That there is something that is thinking is implied by the act of thought. As such, the concept of self is implicit in consciousness. Our concept of consciousness is the integration of numerous perceived mental actions, or "actions of consciousness". An action of consciousness consists of the concepts under consideration and the conclusion drawn in regards to those concepts. Our internal, or introspective knowledge is based on the integration of our first level extrospective, or external, concepts (not unlike prototypical lexis) and awareness of the difference between consciousness and tangible existence. That is to say, it is the integration between our conceptualization of objects and our evaluation of them. The combination of our prototypical conceptualizations and our first concepts of values form the base of our introspective knowledge.

So, for either objective or conceptual existents, the same rules apply. Higher abstractions must be connected in a chain of conceptualization down to the first root concepts that are perceivable in reality. Breaks in the chain must invariably be contradictions, links which represent the combination of two ideas which cannot possibly both be true at the same time. As such, morality is ultimately reducible to concrete existents, or more properly, it is derivable from them. For a more thorough derivation of such, I would recommend Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness in which she details the Objectivist ethics. However, the main gist is this: Every is implies an ought. Every fact of existence indicates some choice that humans must make in order to either enhance their survival or undermine it. Everything moral is ultimately reducible to life and death, because without life, moral judgments have no meaning. The ultimate basis of morality is an individual life. There is no such thing as a mass life, or social entity. These concepts are merely approximate aggregations of the cumulative effect of millions of individual decisions. They represent a sociological calculus of abstracting mass trends, but have no relevance to a moral argument. The moral argument must always start from the concrete and move towards abstraction, not the other way around. SOCIETY is a rather vague concept, what is denoted by it varies depending on what you're trying to prove. A "society" goes on, it changes, but the notion of life or death doesn't have much relevance to it. However, life and death are of paramount importance to it's constituent members. Any social system which ignores the life and death ramifications of it's moral prescriptions is bound to succeed only through misery, privation, and bloodshed visited on the individuals which constitute it.

Now, things like morality, justice, virtue, etc. are complex concepts understood only through a long chain of conceptualization and abstraction. At any point in the process, there is the potential for something to go wrong. I can see only three potential ways in which someone may integrate a contradiction into their conceptual system leading them to sanction or participate actively in evil: error, evasion, and deceit.

ERROR is simply when someone has made an honest mistake. Understanding the minutiae of these conceptual chains requires a painstaking combination of introspection, validation, verification, argumentation, etc. This is primarily what professional philosophers should be doing--walking along the chains of our abstraction and verifying their veracity. Now when a mistake is encountered, an honest person would try to fix this mistake.

A mind cannot hold two opposing propositions to be true at the same time, provided that the mind recognizes the opposition. So, how can the mind not recognize the opposition?

One possibility is that the opposition stems from a place deep in the conceptual chain and having been subsumed and automated are not consciously apparent as being in conflict: ERROR. The solution for ERROR would seem to be to examine the conceptual chain until the contradiction is revealed, resolve the conflict and then reconstruct the conceptual chain in accordance with the corrected premises. Correcting these errors would seem to be the proper mandate of psychology. Preventing these errors would seem to be the proper mandate of education.

The next two possibilities, EVASION and DECEIT are difficult to distinguish from each other, but are distinguishable by a very subtle difference. Whereas ERROR can be distinguished by the situation where a person has simply just not thought of something in a certain way, or has not sufficiently examined their ideas, evasion and deceit both imply an avoidance of recognizing error. However, determining what is evasion and what is deceit is ultimately a very subtle difficulty.

If a contradiction is ignored by one's mind, how is this accomplished? The mind cannot consciously hold a contradiction as true. So the only alternative is not to consciously hold it. This is what Ayn Rand calls the "blank-out". In other words, a "blank-out" is the avoidance and/or repression of a point of conflict between one's premises. To willfully ignore a contradiction is a form of deceit. So for evasion, as such, to be distinguishable from deceit, then evasion must be an automated process, where the person is no longer aware of the fact that they are evading. Their psyche has been programmed, so to speak, to actively evade the contradiction--to avoid focusing on the point of conflict at all costs. It actively works to keep them unaware of the fact. I think it is safe to say that evil men don't think of themselves as evil. They think they are doing the right thing. They think they are misunderstood. But the truth is that they are active participants in their own failure to realize the contradictions which lead to their evil.

Now, I reject unilaterally the idea of things like memes, which would imply that ideas just happen to infect our consciousness and spread like a virus. No, once one has reached an age where one's conceptual apparatus is fully matured, we concsciously process what we choose to believe and integrate into our lives, and reject that which we don't. The only time when a belief, a contradiction could be integrated without being subject to our conscious filtering is if that idea is integrated before that conceptual apparatus is fully formed. In short, if, when a person is still vulnerable and formative, a person's mind is conditioned to ignore contradictions, then they will develop the ability to evade points where contradictions are in conflict. This conditioning can come from either inside or outside, I think. From outside, it would be realized by what I call cognitive abuse.

Cognitive abuse would be the systematic disorientation of concepts in young people before they have achieved the ability to integrate and revise their own conceptual system. In effect, it would be a systematic training in a conceptual model of the universe which embraces contradiction and does not support the growth of coherent chains of logical correspondence. I happen to think that an awareness of cognitive abuse and its ramifications would inspire drastic reforms in modern educational methodology.

The internal source would be an active choice made to actively maintain opposites in pursuit of a hypothetically and arbitrarily ascertained "greater value". A commitment to religion, altruism, collectivism, nationalism, etc. are all predicated on the existence of a "greater good" and that this overrides any considerations of individual perspective or welfare. The conditioned or conscious adoption of this principle would have the effect of programming one's mind to reject objections in favor of this over-riding principle. In short, believing in a greater good, overrides ones ability to be aware of their own evasions, it shorts out one's decision routines.

But, a conscious decision to override one's mind and to actively embrace contradictions effectively entails responsibility. An adult with a fully-formed conceptual apparatus who decides to evade contradictions in their mental processes, is effectively consciously choosing falsehood over truth, good over evil. An active choice to avoid contradictions in one's thought processes is a conscious deception, a conscious evil. This would place voluntary evasion in the category of DECEIT. The distinction being that one is aware on some level of the fact that they are lying, even to themselves, that they are aware of the contradiction but have made a choice not to acknowledge it. Involuntary evasion, or EVASION proper, is the result of cognitive abuse where a person has been conditioned in their pre-cognitive stages of development to undermine their own cognitive operations, to turn their conceptual system against itself by means of an implicit decision rule smuggled into their social orientation as they grow into adults. Evasion is only possible to children who have been systematically indoctrinated to evade through cognitive abuse. Deceit is an active choice to evade, or an active conscious choice to pretend there is no contradiction in spite of the knowledge that there is.

The distinction is subtle, but important. Someone who is guilty of involuntary evasion can be viewed as being afflicted with a psychological disorder. Someone who is guilty of deceit is guilty of a intentional moral transgression.

Error is discoverable. If two people disagree, they present their opposing arguments, working back through the chain of their reasoning until they arrive at an error. If both people are honestly seeking the truth then the resolution of this error should mandate that one or both of the parties must change their standpoint when all contradictions have been resolved.

Evasion is discoverable. Since the evader can not allow themselves to be aware of their own evasion, they cannot monitor themselves to keep from exposing it. Therefore, they will straight-forwardly state what they believe. Their errors will then be apparent. It may be possible to force a catharsis by bringing the object of evasion into concrete terms and forcing a resolution, but it is more likely than not that the subject would just blank-out/repress the potential cathartic influence/demonstration. It would also not be surprising if persistent exposure to the conflict point would elicit rage and or violence. The underlying principle is that to be successful at evasion, the evader cannot bring the conflicting points into their mind simultaneously, otherwise they would have to acknowledge the impossibility of their stance, if only in the confines of their own mind. From that point on, they would either have to realign their stance to resolve the contradiction, or actively choose to pretend that they never realized the impossibility of their view, leading them into deceit.

Deceit is trickier. I'm not really sure how to determine the difference in symptoms between deceit and either evasion or error. Once again, they will act as though there is a contradiction in their conceptual systems, by advocating conflicting propositions. Even upon having that contradiction brought into focus, they may refuse to acknowledge it, thus emulating evasion. The place where they can be caught out is if they were to actually acknowledge the contradiction and continue to advocate it anyway. This is clearly deceitful and a sure sign of intellectual malignance. But I also think this is rare. A liar will generally try to slip away from the responsibility of their lie, by covering it as error or evasion. The question of how to determine intentional deceit is still one with which I have some trouble. But I think it can be dealt with in the same manner as either of the other two.

I think the method for overcoming error, evasion, and deceit is fairly similar. Present your views in as concise, rational, and clear a manner as possible. Ask opponents to do the same with their views. If they don't even attempt to describe their reasoning, if they flee from the issue, or just resort to bullying or taunting strategies, then it will be clear to anyone else involved that they have the lesser justification for their views. In this way, it can serve to educate others in the logical wormholes which can suck people in if they're not careful. Educational reform in general, with an emphasis on developing critical thinking skills, of refining young people's "art of non-contradictory identification", and helping to foster the development of fully integrated epistemology are also long-term approaches to correcting or preventing cognitive error.

Evasion can only be treated by exstensive therapy and then probably only when someone is aware that there is something wrong with themselves and they want to change it. Of course the depth and severity of the breach would warrant a proportionately greater necessity for counseling. The form of such counseling should be targeted so as to help a patient to uncover the break-downs in their conceptual system which are causing disturbances. More scientifically defining cognitive abuse, defining it's systems, causes, and of course scientifically validating whether or not there is in fact such a thing possible are tasks for cognitive scientists as the field matures. Once a more concrete model has been developed, methods for treatment and prevention can be better ascertained.

As far as I know, the line between evasion and deceit can only be made as a personal judgmnet call based on a long span of interactions, or a healthy volume of evidence. Consciously maintaining any lie takes a certain amount of conscious effort. Eventually, deception makes itself known. All it takes is for someone to let down their guard and admit it. But until that happens, if it happens, may be a very long time. As such, those who we suspect of evasion/deceit should be dealt with cautiously until we're in a better position to judge their motivations. If they cannot be helped or dissuaded, then the only civilized response is that they should be ignored as much as possible. In any event, whether it be error, evasion, or deceit, those who for whatever reason are supportive of evil should not be sanctioned. Their activities should not be supported except where they don't create a conflict with one's own values. If possible one should try to help them, to explain to them the root of their error, if they are so amenable. If not, then one can only walk away. At least that's the best I've been able to come up with.

There are not very many Objectivists that I know personally, but from what I've seen on the web and read of the Objectivist canon, this seems to be the best way of dealing with problems between people in today's society that I can come up with. I'd be very interested in what others may have to say about this. So please feel free to comment on this posting as you like.

Apples, No Apples, Apples: The Sleight of Hand of Obama Inc.'s Elite Economic Corps of Dunderheads

OK. Now I had to read this a couple of times to make sure I got it straight. Now, I thought that I wasn't reading it correctly. I mean, circular logic has some famous adherents. Just look at Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy...or Sam Harris' justification for torture. But this circle is the most striking for how clearly circular it is. You don't have to dig too deep to see the sleight of hand going on in this one. For the whole article, you'll have to check out this link here.

But the part that floored me was this quote:

""I do think the American people in the past have shown an excellent ability to respond to adversity," Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told members of the Senate Budget Committee. "And I believe it's going to happen this time and that we're going to see a much stronger economy, not that far in the future."

To hasten that day, the Fed and the Treasury launched their long-awaited program to jump-start the market for consumer loans, including financing for small businesses, students and car buyers.

Under the program, known by the acronym TALF, the Fed will provide loans to investors who buy securities backed by newly issued consumer loans. The idea is to revive the market for asset-backed securities, which provides funding for a large portion of consumer lending.

"In our system, banks are important, but typically 40% of lending comes through the securitization markets. And those markets are not functioning well," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee.

"So we're going around banks . . . by doing something only the government can do, which, on appropriate terms to protect the taxpayer, is to try to get those credit markets opening up again," he said." "

OK. TALF. This is the system as it appears to be presented here. The government will now encourage more lending to groups which are high risk in a recession and which the markets recognize as such: students, small businesses, and car buyers. (It may be for that reason that the banks aren't loaning as much to these groups right now..duh....)

But of course, Obama Inc. and his party of looting neanderthals, think that the answer is to give more money to people who probably won't be able to pay it back. (AIG, GM...etc, etc, etc...)
In this case, they will subsidize the extension of credit to high risk groups by sponsoring securities based on packages of volatile debt. They will use the security of the United States Treasury to guarantee that debt and sell shares in it to investors. Not only that, but it will loan money to investors so that they can buy those securities. So, technically, the government will be making it look like it's selling financial instruments when really it's just handing out taxpayer money again.

If the initial loans go into default, the securities become worthless. That means the government can't collect the money from these loans, which means that the investors also don't get anything from the securities either, except that they have to pay back the loans to the government that they used to buy the now worthless securities. Which means that the government will in effect be paying for it's handouts to high-risk lenders by convincing credit-worthy investors to commit to paying for them over the long-term.

Housing fiasco redux.

What Obama and his geniuses are assuming is that the people who will receive these loans will actually pay them back. Now here's the catch. If any financial institution was reasonably confident that the people who are the potential beneficiaries of these loans could actually pay them back, then the financial institutions would loan them the money in the first place.

Why? Because that's how financial institutions make money. By lending to people who pay them back plus interest. Nobody makes money by lending to people who don't pay back. As the housing fiasco and its consequences have effectively demonstrated.

So what will happen to investors who buy large amounts of these securities, if the securities go into default (as they probably will)? Well, their balance sheets will have a sudden gaping hole where their assets used to be, and an equal amount of now unsupported debt. In short, I think that any investor who takes a heavy interest in these derivatives will be staking a lot on the dependability of the federal government to lend responsibly. And if the federal government doesn't, then we will see even more investors taken down in this thing. That will further damage the economy, destroy even more wealth (or "redistribute it" as Obama likes to say), and almost certainly cripple our nation for decades. (That is, decades more than these kind of policies have already crippled us...)

Now, now, I'll be fair. The current crisis isn't Obama's doing. It was caused by Bernanke, Greenspan, and the hypocrites at the Fed and in Congress on both sides of the aisle who have been supporting centrist government-controlled markets. That was the problem with the Republicans. They talked free markets, but they were busy getting their hands deep into the guts of it, so they could grease their own pockets, and the pockets of their buddies. That and they were spending so much time preaching about God that the secular conservatives out there didn't feel very comfortable supporting them either.

The Democrats are idealogues. I seriously believe that they think that they are helping people by sacrificing us all to the hunger of the disenfranchised mob that has been created by generations of irresponsible governance. (Although I think it's telling, how many of Obama's picks have a problem paying their taxes...)

The answer is to stop this madness, not to keep trying more of the same thing.

Cut spending, cut taxes, cut social programs and privatize them.
Privatize education.
Dissolve the Fed.

Introduce a staged retreat from social security so that we can support those who have already paid their way in, but so that we can phase it out as soon as possible. Phase out medicare and government intervention in insurance premiums.

Stop the senseless bailouts of companies that shovel out lifetime-guaranteed retirement policies to workers who retire at 48?! (Like GM....)

Stop the war on poverty. The supposed enemy in that war is the only group that can even remotely provide what is needed to alleviate the problem, by pursuing that war we intensify the poverty.

Stop the war on drugs. 1 in 32 Americans are in jail. 25% of them are there for drugs. Only 5% of homicides were narcotics related. Educate your children to keep them off drugs. I agree, they suck. They are NOT good things to have around children. But neither is tobacco or alcohol, and we have managed to keep them in control without making them into the dangerously uncontrolled illicit multi-billion dollar global industries that illicit drugs are today. In a way, the war on drugs is paying for the war on terror....paying our enemy's wages. Not unlike Prohibition and the mafia...Remove the profit, make them legal and regulate them like any other drug or intoxicant.

And, no, we don't need the self-inflated pompous rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh to rally around. What we need is a return to fundamental principles, like those advocated by Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater and the generation of conservatives who really lived up to that name. The crisis we are experiencing day by day in our sweat, our fear, our blood, and our lives...this crisis is a moral crisis. The moral superiority of laissez-faire capitalism, the objective moral reality of rational self-interest as a life-generating force, the moral supremacy of reason as opposed to the bulwarks of religion or the frantic paranoia of the social relativist---the denial of these truths is what we are experiencing tangibly, and visibly and undeniably this very moment.

This country is headed in the wrong direction, and we're speeding it up! You can't defend freedom by destroying it. You can't defend liberty by enslaving yourselves. You can't increase prosperity by punishing it. You can't inspire innovation by stifling it in bureaucratic red tape. You can't broaden minds through education by stifling teacher creativity. You can't heal bad debt by creating more of it. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality -- you who have never known any -- but to discover it." --Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)