31–34 of 34 posts
Paul Feyerabend argues as much in [Against Method]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method ), that "science is an anarchic enterprise." Our greatest innovations were created by people who were claiming "irrational" things against the backdrop of the knowledge of their time.
Yes but it also fuels failure. The lines that separate what we know is possible, what is actually possible but we don't know it and what isn’t at all— are very very fine. Fools often rush in and are successful because they didn't know they shouldn’t have been able to do something. But more often than not, I think they’re met with disaster simply because the skillset they lack is the same one they need to be successfu…
However, the bigger impact is the effect of their marketing on the public.
It should worry you about the more complicated things that are being marketed by the financial industry.
One of the reasons radicals have amassed so much power in the middle east is because they were the only ones willing to stand up to the west as the more reasonable people realized they couldn't do anything. A bit of craziness can create very unexpected results, with a destabalization wave having many orders of effects. The strong become weak, the weak strong, the poor rich, the stupid "smart". So much of the status q…
I agree with another comment that your last sentence goes against most of the rest and I think it makes an otherwise very poignant comment fall a bit flat. I'm not saying that there's no truth to it, just that it's flawed and doesn't explain as much as the rest. Each human doesn't provide the 'same value'. However, I believe value creation is much more chaotic than what economic praxis will try to make it appear. Any…
People in poorer countries often work harder for much less as if they were less intelligent, less creative, less deserving etc.. In the U.S., lines were drawn on the basis of innate intelligence to deny slaves rights and wealth, and even internally to their own people, lines are drawn based on "deserving-ness", like hard-work, despite, as previously mentioned, you can be working harder but making less.
To use an analogy, a point may move in many directions on a piece of paper. The distance from the origin would be knowledge and ability in that direction. Some points may spiral around only increase this distance very slowly, some may go in a straight line, increasing ability at the most rapid pace possible.
I don't mean that each point is equidistant from the origin, but that certain "ink colors" have advantages and disadvantages in certain directions and that these advantages and disadvantages are actually man-made. That is, it's not the innate troughs and valleys of the paper, but the other ink paths that impede/boost other ink paths. To use slavery as an example, an lot of effort was spent by white ink to encircle black ink so the max potential of a black point was very low. So many years later, the descendants of the black ink are still struggling and working harder (with some become jaded at the unfairness and rebelling) while the white ink can cruise with the momentum amassed by their ancestors. The situation is unfair because both white ink and black ink have the same "value". The environment has shifted to value one ink color above another despite the equal value at the beginning.
Affirmative action says "This is unfair, we need to manually take steps to address this." While libertarianism says "It is what it is, the troughs and valleys may have been dug by man but there is not point in reverting them, just pretend they are natural."