A MarketPlace of Ideas                        

Logic can be a tricky tool to use.  There is art involved.  You can watch the following embedded video that makes an entirely self consistant case as to why we should talk a certain route with regards MMGW.  However since it is self consistant should we run screaming for mercy from High Priest Al Gore?

No. You see self consistency is an important feature of all cases made logically but it is not the whole story.  You see self consistency can be thought of as a donut of logic.  You start at any point of the donut and travel along it.  Sooner or later you end up at the place you began at.   For example:

• I am a wonderful person - smart and good looking, and humble enough to admit it !
• since I am wonderful then its easy to see I always tell the truth
• since I always tell the truth well gee darn I must really be good looking, smart and humble

Now you see this all self consistent if you allow me enough room to be humorous in my demo case.  Yet clearly there are cases where people fit the complete description and there are cases where people totally do not match the description of wonder, attractive,humble truthful.  Thus self consistency is not enough by itself.  It needs something more!   It needs some objective measurable truth or logic that is ABOVE the whole issue.  That is to say am I really attractive or is that just what my mother tells me?!

In the following video a rather nurdish fellow goes on about MMGW.    He tries to corner you into "acting" on MMGW by a logically self consistent argument.  He appears intelligent however he only thinks he is smart.   While you watch the video mentally replace every reference to "global warming" with one of the following

• alien invasion and that we should all be building spaceships to attack the aliens first
• or better yet send Freemon SandleWould a million dollars - I like this better because Freemon is likely to share with me if you mistakenly still think you must act.

When you mentally replace with one of these phrases you see the blatant flaw!   If his argument was correct you could substitute topics until infinity !!   And quickly do you run out of time, money and attention span to deal with the issues!

http://view.break.com/311805 - Watch more free videos

Hole duly punched in argument.  You sir need to go back to organizing your pop can collection because thinking is not your strong suit.

Likely you have heard this old adage about security and liberty.  The security they talk about is economic.  Things are likely to get tougher in the near future.   We are shipping too much money out of the country for oil.   We are too dainty to allow it to be drilled on our coasts and in ANWR.   Thus things will deteriorate more until the pain threshold is found. 

Many people will want to vote for the politician that says it will be ok if we only regulate this or tax that.  These are the unDemocrats who will say anything to get elected.  Say anything to get the power.  I would like to think you as an electorate will have the sense not to listen.  But I’m doubtful about this.  You listened in the past and you likely will in the future.   The problem is this sort of thing never helps economically and in fact damages something much more precious than your temporary economic circumstances and that would be your liberty.  I know this is true.  My favorite home away from home country is Brazil.   As currently constituted Brazil has a fully implemented form of government that the unDemocrats want to have here.  The people know their government and changing it is hopeless.  Nothing will ever change in that area and the Brazilians know it.   With liberty you can improve your economic circumstances.   With economic wellbeing you can not necessarily do diddly squat about your liberty.  I know its tough to be a good soldier.  You have to be brave.  And clearly about 50% of the population lacks any impulse toward liberty. Quite the opposite.  They lick their chops at the thought of another round of incremental carving up of liberty for the sake of financial gain. 

Remember losing a job is temporary.  Living in a land of curtailed liberty is pretty much for your entire lifetime.    So don’t be dour Gus Halls who secretly long for a beer, a recliner and a black and white television.   For an inspired life you have to dream of liberty.

A joke told by Bernie Mac shows a Twain-ish twist that illustrates the high art of communication.  When you take it to this sort of level like Twain and Mac it pays.

His joke was as follows:

My little nephew came to me and he said, ‘Uncle, what’s the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?   I said I don’t know … but I’ll tell you what you do. Go upstairs and ask your mother if she’d make love to the mailman for $50,000.   Mother saying she’d sleep  with anyone  for $50,000 — and daughter hypothetically answering the question in the same way.  Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000……….. But realistically speaking we live with two hos.

This joke is at its core very intellectual.    His illustration of wishful thinking versus realistic thinking contains a clarity hard to explain to people in normal language.   

It shows people who act out of motivation of wishful thinking to be the clowns that they are.( read liberal voter here ).  We conservatives have these laughs at you liberals expenses everyday.  When a liberal starts going on about global warming.  When you go on about raising taxes as a good thing.  We laugh at you.  We laugh hard.  And we wonder how can anyone be so damned square as to believe it.  But that is the "power" of wishful thinking.  It is the power to make use more powerfully brained conservatives laugh hysterically at your clumsy antics.

Summary:  If a ridiculous Bee implies an impossible See, an impossible See implies your Bee is ridiculous.   Thus Don’t Bee ridiculous. Proof by contradiction is an essential tool of thought that everyone should know.  However it is quite evident to me most people do no know it.  Let me see if I can explain it. Steps: -1- assume an item to be true.  You usually suspect it to be false and use the method to prove it. -2- follow the logical results of this assumption to an absurd conclusion -3- since the logical result is absurd the assumption must be false. You can negate the assumption. Be careful when you do this.  Taking the negative is not as straight forward as many non mathematical people would think. Example:  Prove I am not George Washington.  -1- Assume I am George Washington the first president of the USA -2- my face should match the face on the front of the 1 dollar bill ….does it?  Clearly no. -3- the conclusion my face matches the face on the front of the dollar bill and thus the negative of statement 1 is true = I AM NOT GEORGE WASHINGTON. Sound absurd.  Read the next example and see how the very same method applied to something that sounds more official makes the proof alot simpler than attacking it directly !!   Theorem. There are infinitely many prime numbers. Proof. Assume to the contrary that there are only finitely many prime numbers, and all of them are listed as follows: p₁, p₂ …, p_n. Consider the number q = p₁p₂… p_n + 1. The number q is either prime or composite. If we divided any of the listed primes p_i into q, there would result a remainder of 1 for each i = 1, 2, …, n. Thus, q cannot be composite. We conclude that q is a prime number, not among the primes listed above, contradicting our assumption that all primes are in the list p₁, p₂ …, p_n.

Since the supreme court has ruled we must give rights to enemy combatants there is only one solution.  Take no prisoners.  Shoot to kill.

You own and business and you want to encourage gym usage on the part of your employees.  What is the optimum method?  Do you pay the total cost of the membership? The smartest solution is how the owner of EFDATA Bob Fitting handled gym memberships. Gym memberships were subsidized but not free. His explanation was if its free EVERYBODY signs up and they 1 in 10 uses what his company paid for. His solution? It was to charge a nominal fee large enough that you had to really WANT to use the membership or it made no sense. It was like 20 bucks a month. Just enough to make them make a decision. This is a flip side view of the same idea that people do not respect things they get for a low cost.  For example if you are too nice unless the person(s) you are dealing with are very mature and have alot of experience dealing with people you are bound to get short shrift.  Even then it pays to toughen up sometimes.  But then some people are just so sweet they are really not capable of stinking the place up. Its a delicate balance knowing when to spray.  What does Mr. Skanks say?