Do you know why talking heads never progress intellectually or pragmatically? Because they don't understand simple logic.
The current discussion about Caroline Kennedy's "qualifications" to be a New York Senator provides a paradigmatic example.
Caroline Kennedy is smart, decent, charismatic, compassionate, intellectually honest, and accomplished.
She is also part of an amazing family.
What experience is it that she lacks? Wheeling and dealing with slimy lobbyists? Wheeling and dealing with other hacks to pass legislation which weakens the American economy?
Hitler and Stalin had a lot of experience. So do Cheney, Mugabe and Rod Blagojevich.
Strom Thurmond and Wilbur Mills had a lot of experience.
On the other hand, it was claimed that Barack Obama, John Kennedy and George Washington lacked experience.
The tragedy is that when political hacks blather on about lack of experience, our great free press representatives just sit there like deer in the headlights.
Why couldn't we hear something like the following just once?
Representative Slimebag, you say Caroline Kennedy is not qualified to represent the State of New York. Which of the following is in your chain of logic:
1. All experienced people are intelligent and just.
2. Caroline is not experienced.
3. Therefore, Caroline is not intelligent and just.
Well, we can see several flaws here...
Many experienced people are neither intelligent or just.
Caroline Kennedy is experienced, just not in the way you care about.
Since 1. is false, 3. is meaningless.
Let's try again.
1. Only experienced people can be effective senators.
2. Larry Craig and Ted Stevens are experienced.
3. Therefore, only people like them should be senators.
Well, you get the idea.
What we need is a Federal Department of Logic to beat down all the sophomoric opinions which pollute the airwaves. Anytime there is a debate over something that matters, war, social security, education, health, agriculture, bailouts, welfare...we subject the various arguments to fairly rigorous testing, including:
1. Is your logic fuzzy, classical, boolean, quantum, or some other mode?
2. Do you follow Frege, Cantor, Russell, Turing or Hilbert?
3. Did you use truth tables or truth trees in developing your argument?
4. Did you check for tautologies, contradictions, inconsistencies...?
5. Did you use the six easy sentential logic statements or the ten hard ones?
More later.
Lee
Showing posts with label Blago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blago. Show all posts
Monday, December 22, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Christmas 2008 Huffington Post Stories
What a blog...
US joins other third world countries in global ban of homosexuality...
Goes along with recent Anti-Reproductive Freedom and Anit-Environment initiatives.
Rick Warren does the invocation and Paul Weyrich dies...
Obama and Biden stuck with a global economic collapse and last minute Bush anti-human, anti-envoronment rules...Oh, and a $60 trillion budget deficit if you do the math.
Of course we can talk about Blago and Spitzer, the latter having sent all types of "criminals" to the slammer for using complicated government approved accounting and tax rules...
And then there's The House of Saddam, New Orleans, SEC Porn, Limbaugh, Paulson, Franken, Haggard, Lieberman, Madoff, GM and global warming...
Ken Starr is back to fight another battle in his war against sex. Bristol Palin's Mother in Law continues the family tradition of promoting good values.
Neocon Frank Gaffny continues his battle against truth and fairness...
Africa seems to be continuing to do well. Mugabe hangs in there (shades of Blago)...Violence rocks Kenya...
On the optimistic side, Caroline may become a Senator, Obama is nominating some real scientists to help move the country into a future lit by wisdom, and our New Secretary of Labor is a Profile in Courage...
As George Bernard Shaw (and Bobby and John) said, "Some people see things as they are and say why. But I dream things that never were and say why not?"
Lee
US joins other third world countries in global ban of homosexuality...
Goes along with recent Anti-Reproductive Freedom and Anit-Environment initiatives.
Rick Warren does the invocation and Paul Weyrich dies...
Obama and Biden stuck with a global economic collapse and last minute Bush anti-human, anti-envoronment rules...Oh, and a $60 trillion budget deficit if you do the math.
Of course we can talk about Blago and Spitzer, the latter having sent all types of "criminals" to the slammer for using complicated government approved accounting and tax rules...
And then there's The House of Saddam, New Orleans, SEC Porn, Limbaugh, Paulson, Franken, Haggard, Lieberman, Madoff, GM and global warming...
Ken Starr is back to fight another battle in his war against sex. Bristol Palin's Mother in Law continues the family tradition of promoting good values.
Neocon Frank Gaffny continues his battle against truth and fairness...
Africa seems to be continuing to do well. Mugabe hangs in there (shades of Blago)...Violence rocks Kenya...
On the optimistic side, Caroline may become a Senator, Obama is nominating some real scientists to help move the country into a future lit by wisdom, and our New Secretary of Labor is a Profile in Courage...
As George Bernard Shaw (and Bobby and John) said, "Some people see things as they are and say why. But I dream things that never were and say why not?"
Lee
Sunday, December 14, 2008
December Sunday
It's Sunday again...Home of the talkingheadosphere. The blogosphere is becoming the Blagosphere.
Who knew? A crooked politicican. Next thing you know we'll find a greedy businessman. Or a stupid athlete. Or an entertainer with a drug problem.
As we watch the wizards of pontification droll on about the being and nothingness of the political sphere it is interesting to raise our heads to listen to a more promising group of thinkers.
The January 2009 Discover issue about the Year in Science has articles about medicine, physics, energy, and astronomy. These people actually back their arguments with relevant facts.
Take the physicists (please:).
Turns out that The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which debuted in the fall of 2008 is looking for the God Particle. One can only imagine that this is harder than finding a crooked politician.
In addition to possibly swallowing us all into a massive black hole, the LHC may find supersymmetric particles That would be a huge step toward a Theory of Everything (TOE).
Now that seems like something worth a little time and money.
Of course, the Bush Administratoin is so busy trying to implement the vision of Tim Lehaye that it has no time or resources for such drivel. They even want to cut back on such basic research in places like Fermlab, Argonne and Los Alamos.
This of course is not the first Bush Administration to take on such waste. Daddy killed a facility in Texas which might have already found the secret of the universe. Apparantly it was too close to one of the landing paths he wanted to preseve for his subsequent skydiving.
Many people only care, of course, if they think a TOE would help them personally. They have perhaps forgottten (or God forbid never know) that reseach like this has been responsible for much of the advance made by the human species in recent years.
Health, wealth, the environment and defense are all beholden to advances which have been made in esoteric areas like quantum mechanics and complexity science.
Anyway, like you, I'm ready to settle in and start to absorb the pearls of wisdom which will be offered today by such scholars as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and Mitch McConnell.
Lee
Who knew? A crooked politicican. Next thing you know we'll find a greedy businessman. Or a stupid athlete. Or an entertainer with a drug problem.
As we watch the wizards of pontification droll on about the being and nothingness of the political sphere it is interesting to raise our heads to listen to a more promising group of thinkers.
The January 2009 Discover issue about the Year in Science has articles about medicine, physics, energy, and astronomy. These people actually back their arguments with relevant facts.
Take the physicists (please:).
Turns out that The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which debuted in the fall of 2008 is looking for the God Particle. One can only imagine that this is harder than finding a crooked politician.
In addition to possibly swallowing us all into a massive black hole, the LHC may find supersymmetric particles That would be a huge step toward a Theory of Everything (TOE).
Now that seems like something worth a little time and money.
Of course, the Bush Administratoin is so busy trying to implement the vision of Tim Lehaye that it has no time or resources for such drivel. They even want to cut back on such basic research in places like Fermlab, Argonne and Los Alamos.
This of course is not the first Bush Administration to take on such waste. Daddy killed a facility in Texas which might have already found the secret of the universe. Apparantly it was too close to one of the landing paths he wanted to preseve for his subsequent skydiving.
Many people only care, of course, if they think a TOE would help them personally. They have perhaps forgottten (or God forbid never know) that reseach like this has been responsible for much of the advance made by the human species in recent years.
Health, wealth, the environment and defense are all beholden to advances which have been made in esoteric areas like quantum mechanics and complexity science.
Anyway, like you, I'm ready to settle in and start to absorb the pearls of wisdom which will be offered today by such scholars as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and Mitch McConnell.
Lee
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
