Quoting from Greek Ways: How The Greeks Created Western Civilization, by Bruce Thornton, ch. 5, p. 117-118, which is quoting Creon's son Haemon from Sophocles' Antigone:
For whoever think that they alone have sense, or have a power of speech or an intelligence that no other has, these people when they are laid open are found to be empty. It is not shameful for a man, even if he is wise, often to learn things and not to resist too much.
I recommend the Greek Ways book.
From VDare: 93% Of Democrats Think It's Important That Fewer Whites Be Elected.
The article leads with a chart, which says that 75.1% of Democrats believe that "Whites are favored". The chart repeats later in the article. Problems:
The chart has no source.
The author falsely claimed that he always gives sources. Actually he had to be asked the source on Twitter because he hadn't given it. The source is these CNN exit polls.
To get the chart, the author did math on the CNN exit poll data. He did not show his work.
I checked what math he did by asking him on Twitter, since he didn't document it. His math was wrong. Where he got 75.1%, the correct answer was 75%. He added an extra significant figure to exaggerate how good his data was. He admitted I was right, but thought the matter deserved the comment "lol" rather than saying e.g. "My mistake, I will fix it."
The chart was brought to my attention by khaaan on Twitter, who questioned its sourcing.
Am I a globalist? I thought I was because I want global free trade, though I never really used the word or cared about it. I want businesses to operate internationally instead of having a bunch of borders hampering commerce. That's part of (classical) liberalism and free trade! I'm not much of a nationalist. I think all human beings are created equal and I want social cooperation to be escalated, via the market mechanisms, to the whole globe.
So I've been uncomfortable when hearing some right wing people say how they are nationalists and the left are evil globalists.
I still think they're partly wrong, but I realized the word "globalist" is ambiguous. Part of what they mean is something that, of course, I do oppose: one global government, one power structure controlling the globe like a much more powerful United Nations.
I am, of course, an individualist which is, in a way, the exact opposite of a globalist.
I think human cooperation and interaction are great – as long as it's free. I want good things, like free market, the internet and educational materials, to have global reach and availability. But I don't want global government or global power. I want power and force to be distributed, decentralized, and no one to have a monopoly. Even the U.S., my favorite country, I wouldn't want to actually rule the world.
I'm still not interested in calling myself a globalist or anti-globalist. Why use the term? I didn't find it useful even before I clearly identified this particular ambiguity.
Jordan Peterson has signed up with the Creative Arts Agency. CAA is a big lefty media company which represents famous names like Joe Biden, Lady Gaga, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence and David Beckham. Peterson is officially a CAA speaker who you can book on the CAA website. CAA has a "social responsibility" page with the kind of attitude that Jordan Peterson got popular for opposing:
Diversity & Inclusion
More diverse voices, from diverse backgrounds, provide a richer and better experience for audiences worldwide. CAA has long focused on ensuring that historically underrepresented groups within the talent community are assured equal opportunity for success. To this end, we have created events, workshops and conferences to help generate opportunities – and address the challenges – for emerging and established talent; conducted research and reported findings on the correlation between diversity and business success; focused on increasing the diversity of our own client base; and advocated directly with marketplace buyers on the value of diverse voices.
In case you don't know what Peterson used to say about ideas like these, here's an example:
Jordan Peterson - Diversity, Inclusivity & Equity. I'll transcribe the first 16 seconds of the video:
And here are the hallmarks I think of the pathological left. I think that if someone is pushing this quaternity on you then you should be very suspicious of them in every possible way, and you should resist it as much as you possibly can.
On screen you can see a slide with the "quaternity" he's talking about. It reads:
The Unholy Trinity (plus one)
- Diversity
- Inclusivity
- EQUITY
- White Privilege
It also has an image labelled "EQUALITY vs EQUITY" with some people (drawn as not much more than stick figures) with their arms raised, and it has a "DIE" bullet point nested under "EQUITY" on the list of 4.
Less than a year ago, Jordan Peterson was a vocal opponent of diversity, inclusivity and equality propaganda. He said to resist it as much as you possibly can. Now he's signed up with a lefty agency with a hallmark diversity and inclusion statement.
Before publicly signing with CAA, Peterson tweeted that:
If confirmed Kavanaugh should step down.
This extreme-left, partisan statement alienated tons of Peterson's fans. The complaints were so vocal that Peterson wrote a long semi-apology, semi-retraction that made excuses.
This all goes to show that Jordan Peterson should not have been invited to the Objectivist Conference. (The link is the video I made analyzing the conference video and arguing that he shouldn't have been invited.)
Previously I had criticized Peterson as an intellectual: for disinterest in addressing criticism, for his new book being lightweight crap full of bullshit appeals to "science", for his mistaken views on antidepressants and for being a second hander. I also liked some of his work and wrote some positive things about him, so it's a shame that he's betrayed his former self that I partly liked. My favorite Jordan Peterson material is his psychology lectures, particularly the analysis of The Lion King and Pinocchio.
Hat tip, Roosh. I found out about the CAA deal from Roosh's podcast. The podcast also gives a good summary of what happened with the Brett Kavanaugh tweet. Roosh says that working for CAA basically means having a handler who tells you some things you can't say, and in return you get to make more money.
Turgot (1727-81) was a French liberal (free trade, limited government) thinker. William Godwin read and liked him. He commented on criticism and children:
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, On Some Social Questions, Including the Education of the Young, France, 1751, in The Turgot Collection (emphasis added):
The best advice that can be given to persons living together is to be quite frank with each other in dealing with any serious difference as soon as it appears; this arrests at their source many of the annoyances often proceeding from mere prejudiced dislikes. But this must be done with full sincerity; we must habituate ourselves to criticise, to examine, and to judge others with a perfect impartiality. I do not speak of tempering our criticisms by giving to them some agreeable turns, and of seasoning them with some mixture of praise and tenderness. How difficult this art is! … It is true that, even with the best tact used by us to soften reproaches, there are persons who do not know how to receive them; advice they mistake for scolding, they imagine always to see in him who gives it them an assumption of superiority and authority which repels them. It must be admitted that this is a defect belonging to many givers of advice. I have often met with persons who say in self-defense: “I am so made, and I cannot help it.” These are persons whose self-love embraces even their defects. This bad disposition proceeds, perhaps, from the manner in which we have had advice given us in childhood, always under the form of reproach, of correction, with the tone of authority, often of threatening. Hence a youth when once free from the hands of his masters or his parents places all his happiness in having no longer to give account of his conduct to anyone, and the most friendly advice appears to him an act of domination, a yoke, a continuance of childhood. Ah! why not accustom children to listen to advice with sweetness by our giving it to them without bitterness? Why exercise authority? I would that children really felt that it is from our affection for them that we reprehend them; but how can we make them feel this if we do not express it in our own softness with them? I have no sympathy with Montaigne when he censures the caresses given by mothers to their children. Who can know better than mothers themselves? It is the instinct that Providence has given them. It is the seasoning which reason teaches should be added to instruction in order to give it genial growth. We forget that it is the caresses of a courageous mother that inspire courage, that they are the most powerful medium of opening the young soul to the inlet of all fine and pure feelings.
I have seen parents who taught their children that “nothing is so beautiful as to make people happy.” And I have seen the same rebuff their children when they wish to invite some young friends. These, perhaps, might not be quite suitable, but the parents should be careful not to intimidate the rising sensibility of their children, they should rather encourage it, and should make evident the pain they feel in refusing their children’s request and the necessity there is for refusing it. But only the present moment is thought of. Again, we reproach children for having been foolish in making some generous gift, as if they would not be corrected of that soon enough! … Thus we contract the heart and mind of a child. I wish, too, that we could avoid exciting in them a shyness when doing a good action, and that we did not believe in inducing them to do it by praises. These repel a timid child; they cause him to feel that we are watching him, and they throw him back upon himself. It is the perfection of tact to bestow praise appropriately. We should teach our children to seek out and to seize occasions of being helpful to others, for this is an art which can and ought to be taught. I do not speak of the delicacy to be used with the unfortunate while we relieve them, for which natural benevolence, without some knowledge of the world, is not sufficient. But above all the great point in home education is to preach by example. Morality in the general is well enough known by men, but the particular refinements of virtue are unknown by most persons; thus *the majority of parents, without knowing it and without intending it, give very bad examples to their children….*
I think Turgot is correct that nasty parental criticism alienates children from criticism, and then when they are free adults, they avoid criticism because it reminds them of childhood and feels pressuring (as it was when their parents really did pressure them).
I discussed induction and perception with an Objectivist and a Bayesian on the Fallible Ideas Discord (join here):
Murray Rothbard rejects induction! An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (emphasis added):
This prolific statesman and writer [Francis Bacon], with great fanfare and self-advertisement, in a series of books from the 1600s to the 1620s, set forth a series of injunctions about the proper method of scientific inquiry into the world, including social as well as natural sciences. Essentially, Bacon wrote numerous exhortations to everyone else to engage in detailed factual investigation into all life, all the world, all human history. Francis Bacon was the prophet of primitive and naive empiricism, the guru of fact-grubbing. Look at ‘the facts’, all ‘the facts’, long enough, he opined, and knowledge, including theoretical knowledge, will rise phoenix-like, self-supporting and self-sustained, out of the mountainous heap of data.
Although he talked impressively about surveying in detail all the facts of human knowledge, Bacon himself never came close to fulfilling this monstrous task. Essentially, he was the meta-empiricist, the head coach and cheerleader of fact-grubbing, exhorting other people to gather all the facts and castigating any alternative method of knowledge. He claimed to have invented a new logic, the only correct form of material knowledge – ‘induction’ – by which enormous masses of details could somehow form themselves into general truths.
This sort of ‘accomplishment’ is dubious at best. Not only was it a prolegomenon to knowledge rather than knowledge itself; it was completely wrong about how science has ever done its work. No scientific truths are ever discovered by inchoate fact-digging. The scientist must first have framed hypotheses; in short, the scientist, before gathering and collating facts, must have a pretty good idea of what to look for, and why. Once in a while, social scientists get misled by Baconian notions into thinking that their knowledge is ‘purely factual’, without presuppositions and therefore ‘scientific’, when what this really means is that their presuppositions and assumptions remain hidden from view.
I wonder what, if any of this, Rothbard got from Popper. The book is from 1995, decades after Popper had explained this.
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