Author Archive

AVI:

Believing Untrue Things

More Motives on Untrue Things

Summary: People believe in the truth of ideas that don’t withstand even casual empirical scrutiny, e.g., that American police kill more black people than white people every year. Why do so many of us believe in and even defend vehemently the validity of bogus ideas when contrary evidence is easily found?

You can find many examples of this kind of thing in Amazon reviews of controversial books such as Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean:

5-Star Reviews

1-Star Reviews

The respective authors of the five-star and one-star reviews appear to inhabit separate factual universes. In one universe James Buchanan was a distinguished laissez-faire economist and originator of public-choice theory. In the other universe Buchanan, the Koch brothers and other prominent libertarians were members of a racist conspiracy. How can people on one side of a controversy remain ignorant about the other side’s arguments and even basic facts?

AVI suggests possible explanations that are worth reading, as always. I think the main problem is the poor quality of our primary and secondary educational systems, particularly in the teaching of history, math and basic statistics. Another big problem is the ignorance of journalists who were educated in our lousy schools, and modern journalism’s clickbait business model that incentivizes the promotion of controversy and conflict even more than was the case back in Front Page days.

Discuss.

Worth reading.

Sarah Hoyt summarizes:

Not just the conviction that “it can’t happen here.” There is also the deep in-built certainty that tomorrow will be more or less like today, and the worst that can happen within relatively safe bounds. Even while everything is shifting against you. From Pompeii to Nazi Germany, from Alexander’s conquests to Communist Russia, the normalcy bias has killed more human beings than any other factor in history.

See also Note 12 here.

Apologies for the prolonged downtime. We had some site issues that are now fixed. No left wing conspiracies, purges or censorship were involved. Thanks for your patience.

J. E. Dyer:

This is a profound crisis for America. In my view, it has reached the level of the question of slavery, which was too big an issue to be settled by conventional expectations for courts of law and social and political transactions.
 
In 1861, there were many Americans, as there are many today, who didn’t see the question as being that much beyond the scope of ordinary remedy.
 
But it was. For what it’s worth, I don’t foresee an armed battle erupting over the 2020 election, per se. That’s partly because there’s no obvious way to organize one. Unlike the situation of the Civil War, there’s no territorial division to make options plain.
 
But the spiritual divide between Americans who don’t perceive a crisis (or whose intention is to provoke one and benefit from it), and Americans who do perceive one, could not be deeper. Either there must be a fight, to authenticate the 2020 vote and ensure that it produces a new president only if it was really honest and fraud-free, or there need not be a fight, but only a formulaic consultation which cannot possibly establish the meaningful absence of fraud.
 
If the choice is supposed to be the latter, voting is meaningless anyway, and no one is under moral compulsion to agree to be governed by its “outcomes.”

Worth reading in full.

There is a lot of truth in this column:

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden are not the stars or antagonists in this tale. Their supporters are.
 
A blind unconditional love of their leader fuels the energy and action of Trump supporters. They risk their health (maskless rallies), reputation (accusations of racism and sexism) and safety (social media and Antifa harassment) to stand with their hero.
 
A blind unconditional hatred of President Trump fuels the energy and action of Biden supporters. Their leader’s ideas, policies and resume are irrelevant. Biden is a tool to kill the Trump presidency. Nothing more.
 
[. . .]
 
A reliance on hate and an absence of love inevitably spark widespread corruption.
 
This is my problem with The Resistance, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the far Left and their pervasive anti-American sentiment. There’s no love. It’s all hate.
 
Hate cannot sustain life, liberty, freedom and a pursuit of happiness.
 
As much as President Trump’s public behavior and narcissism annoy me, I’ve never questioned his love of America.

Worth reading in full.

Chicagoboyz enjoy the occasional turn around the dance floor, but can only dream of cutting the rug with the panache of this young couple.
 

From an interview with Stanley Druckenmiller:

This massive market rally is due in large part to the measures taken up by the Fed since the pandemic began, Druckenmiller said. He noted that, while the central bank did a “great job” in March by cutting rates and launching unprecedented stimulus programs to sustain the economy, the follow-up market rally “has been excessive.” He also said that for the first time in a while, he is worried about inflation shooting higher.
 
“The merging of the Fed and the Treasury, which is effectively what’s happening during Covid, sets a precedent that we’ve never seen since the Fed got its independence,” Druckenmiller said. “It’s obviously creating a massive, massive mania in financial assets.”

You don’t say.

The 2004 remake of “Flight of the Phoenix” was mostly dreck except for the sublime opening scene.