A reply to a conservative friend.

I have a secret; I have an open mind.  I take every idea on it's merits rather than on some obscure affiliation the author chooses for him or herself.  Someone's liberal is someone else's conservative and it is not unusual for a lot of fence-jumping on one subject or another.

People typically decide they fit one of these stereotypes based on one or two choices out of an infinity of choices which run the gamut. You are (I think), a self-proclaimed conservative.  Possibly even an ultra-conservative. 

So...(these are rhetorical...your opinions are none of my business).

Do you believe it is right to withhold condoms from Africans (or anyone at all) with AIDS, or do you believe it's fine to give your wife or partner AIDS on the chance a pregnancy might occur?  Do you believe it is appropriate for pedophiles to be protected by the company they work for?

Do you think it is a good idea to legislate mandatory drug-tests at public expense for everyone who is receiving unemployment (at ~$100 bucks a pop) when their potential employers may not require it and those which do provide it as a precondition to employment, yet not require people on welfare to take the same tests?

Do you think the American taxpayer should be on the hook for bailing out TBTF banks?  How about the oil leak in the Gulf?  Should taxpayers be on the hook for that?

According to me (and I trust myself implicitly), the world has 600+ years of fossil fuels remaining, and that's just what we know about today.  There is probably twice that much and as long as it's cheap, we are going to use it.  I'm OK with that.  But I also work out that we are losing 80 million square miles of arable land a year to erosion, desertification and clear-cutting forests and rainforests.  I can give you the figures if you want them, but this is a net loss and, at that rate,  we will run out of arable land in ~275 years.

That won't happen of course, because we will run out of water to irrigate within about thirty years.  25,000 people die of hunger every day.  That shouldn't have to happen.  There are 1.15 billion overweight people in the world and 1.02 billion undernourished people. Feeding everyone is a liberal idea...but you place a value on human life as you told me many times.  How can you reconcile those positions?

Again, these are rhetorical and I am really not asking you to comment; I am merely trying to make the point that all ideologies must conflict sometimes and agree sometimes; that ideas must flow from free thought, and that dismissing or cleaving to dogma instead of looking at every new idea is self-defeating.

"Scientific Certainty" isn't.  David Attenborough was impressed by the theory of Continental Drift while a geology student at Cambridge. He mentioned this to his Professor, who put him in his place with an instant riposte "Dear boy, I will accept the theory of Continental Drift when you show me what the continents can float on".

Actually, the Professor was correct. Without Plate Tectonics (which only came along when I was in school), the evidence for Continental Drift was quite slim. Instinctively, we always think the "losers" were wilfully blind or stupid in any intellectual debate, but often the "wrong" side were also the side with the better evidence at the time.

This was a point Stephen Jay Gould was fond of making, when defending Cuvier, Catastrophism and other scientific "losers". Evolution was only totally accepted in the Modern Synthesis with genetics, and Lamarckism was kicked to the curb.

The point is that the scientific consensus HAS to be the starting point. Only when you have totally picked over its bones and understood it can you start thinking of alternatives. And the alternatives usually grow from points where the consensus is weakest, not from maverick science that rejects the whole consensus to begin with. 

I flatter myself that I am able to take science for what it is; not a certainty; not complete; not validated by peer review. I believe most papers...ummm...push the limits of their data-sets to form premature or incomplete conclusions, just as you would expect.

But one never knows.  I thought I was a liberal until I discovered mainstream liberalism. Holy crap, what idiots. But when I looked at mainstream conservatism, it was even worse.  No one knows can agree what they can believe in and the nutcases get all the media coverage.  That's no good either. There must be a middle ground where everyone gets something and gives up something to reach it.

Let me switch to politics. Stan McChrystal ain't Santa Claus and he has been saying for almost a year that if you go up to an enemy warlord and say..."Lookit...I'll pay you a million dollars month to let my convoy supply my base once a week."  and the guy goes "Yeah, but we need weapons and training and food...and I have 18 lf my best pro-American soldiers who want to go to Lackland AFB and get counter-terrorism training, OK"?  And we say "Oh, sure!  That's fine".  And they get the training and military ID and disappear into the woodwork.

So McChrystal finally got tired of it.  He has his four stars and his career is maxed...so he told Rolling Stone, a LIBERAL-TO-THE-MAX publication the truth.  Obama and his cabinet are wimps.  He knew he'd get fired for it, but he had the courage of his convictions and said what he thought and so do I.  Ask Walter.

Obama is not going to get any pissant agenda passed and anything he DOES get passed won't take effect seriously until 2014 so it can be corrected.

Tired...screwed up knee x4 days; can't walk, golf-ball sized swelling...I reckon a slight lateral collateral ligament tear.  That knee was blown out some years ago.  I'm going back to bed.

Good night, better tomorrow.

a hui hou

Posted via email from Thus knowledge flows like water