Comments on: On doubting everything

By: om

om — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:57 +0000

There is politicized science and trendy science (chasing the hot grant money) but they aren’t trying to turn lead into gold (that’s a crypto currency thing).

Politicians, regimes, juntas, twist science towards their ends. Scientists go along, they are human after all. Not as if Lysenko has been forgotten, or Aryian vs Jewish science for that matter. But you know these things. Now stan seems to imply that all science is utterly corrupted. I guess there is nothing new to learn about anything.

By: Miguel cervantes

Miguel cervantes — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 23:45:54 +0000

Alchemy and divining is what is being practiced

Genocide by starvation is not a new thing mengistu did it ethiopia in part and our response was live aid sarc sometimes you have the more cold blooded blood bath like kagame who was a rebel leader in the congo at the time of the rwandan massacre and is now president for life

By: neo

neo — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 23:30:30 +0000

stan:

I repeat: condescension is not a winning argument for you. Or for most people, actually.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:32:21 +0000

Also, at least in his Twitter response, Jones misses Andreessen’s main point, which is that something said by a person *who has a personal stake in actually getting it right* is more likely to be correct than something said by a person who has no such stake.

People rely on experts to give answers to normative questions, something they’re ill-equipped to do. As a result of the judgment of ‘experts’, we now have a subindustry devoted to poisoning people with hormone treatments and mutilating them surgically. As a result of the judgement of an adjacent set of experts, setting up a counseling practice to help people break free of the gay world is unlawful in one state after another.

It isn’t just the mental health trade. We’ve discovered in the last three years that the purveyors of ‘public health’ are largely peddlers of rubbish.

By: om

om — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:25:50 +0000

stan longs for the good old days of alchemy and astrology. Because “he’s mad as hell and he ain’t taking it any longer.”

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:06:21 +0000

re Marc Andreessen’s tweet on Experts and the response from Garrett Jones (almost the same as that of the truthful reporter on the Soviet Union), all experts are not the same. I would assign a level of credibility in his field to a holder of an Airline Transport Pilot certificate or a Civil Engineer certificate that I wouldn’t necessarily assign to someone with an advanced degree Political Science.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:00:16 +0000

Hubert…glad you like it. For anyone else who might be interested, my review is here:

https://ricochet.com/871838/book-review-year-of-consent-by-kendell-foster-crossen/

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:58:41 +0000

What Gringo said, re Muggeridge, who was an honest man.
(Would just point out the following quibble: that Muggeridge “…[QUICKLY] got disillusioned by what he saw…” and from that point on became a determined anti-Communist, on the level of Robert Conquest and others.)

By: Hubert

Hubert — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:36:39 +0000

David Foster: somewhat OT, but I’ve been meaning to let you know that I bought an original paperback copy of Kendell Foster Crossen’s “Year of Consent” last year on your recommendation and have just started reading it. Very relevant to our current situation (universal surveillance, AI-driven social credit systems, a Potemkin political veneer etc.). I see it’s been dinged by critics for stylistic deficiencies, failures of scientific prediction, and “casual sexism” (some people might call that a feature, not a bug–I couldn’t possibly comment), but I’m enjoying it. If enjoy is the word. I’m a sucker for pulp thrillers, so may check out his Milo March series.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:04:56 +0000

Ray

Malcome Muggeridge traveled to the USSR in the 1930s posing as an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution. He told the truth and called Walter Duranty a big liar, but nobody wanted to hear it. He was ostracized and couldn’t find work afterwards. Eugene Lyons became disillusioned with communism and became a fierce critic.

I have read Malcolm Muggeridge’s 2-volume autobiography. He wasn’t “posing as an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution” when he first came to the USSR. His father was a Labour MP. He was related to Sidney and Beatrice Webb- IIRC Beatrice was his aunt- who wrote the horrendous book and updates on “Soviet Union- a New Civilization.” Malcolm Muggeridge came to the USSR as a True Believer, just like Eugene Lyons, but like Lyons got disillusioned by what he saw.

Eugene Lyons’s Assignment in Utopia and The Red Decade are well worth the read. (Web Archive has them.) The Red Decade has an excellent refutation of the lefty put-down of “red-bating.” As he pointed out, no one considers “brown-baiting” to be an effective put-down of condemnations of the Nazis,