In a previous post I explored the chief problem with democratic systems – that producing the most popular choice does not equate to providing greatest overall human value. I was trying to show by analogy how a market system produces better value than central control, even when that central control is managed democratically. Show why [...]
[This post may not stand well on its own, as it was written as a response to my friend Jim Davidson's facebook note concerning a person's rights to kill another person in certain situations.] I prefer to analyze moral actions based on expected resultant value, rather than any idea of absolute rights. Doing so, the [...]
What follows is a simplification of the political climate into one metaphorical issue upon which people have different opinions. I think this example clearly shows why anything that we allow our government to regulate tends to make most people less well off – and how political parties make things even worse. So, please now consider [...]
(excerpt from GWYD section 8.1): If you believe that any of the technologies we have talked about are possible (and there certainly are some good reasons to think so), then it would seem that we can look forward to a very interesting future. It may be that we are destined to be a race of [...]
I thought it would be fun to post this cartoon from God Wants You Dead. When I was working on the book, I tried to get several different artists I know to draw this one for me, but none of them would touch it. Apparently they feared for their lives, so I ended up having [...]
Vera Verba Blog got hacked by spammers and, for various reasons that I won’t go into, I don’t want to fix the problem. So, instead, I shut it down and am moving all my old posts here. I am also moving various posts from other places on the net to try to consolidate them to [...]
The best real argument for anthropogenic global warming appears to me (and I don’t think I am constructing a straw man here, but feel free to correct me if I am – or if I am missing anything) to be: 1. There is a historical correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature. This correlation is probably [...]
Recently, I have been thinking about the things that give people faith in science. As a mental exercise I have created some scenarios concerning scientific claims that shed light on when I will or will not believe alarming claims by scientists. In each case, if the given scenario represented reality, I am sure that some [...]
This was my first time giving any sort of presentation in front of a crowd – at least since grade school. So, I was facing a fear of mine here. I have been on national radio and TV a few times, but that is really just talking to two or at most three people; one [...]
(Group A Forever ! ! ! ) As a right thinking member of Group A, I know that all of our societies ills are the fault of Group B. Of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of things we disagree on, it is clear to me that Group A holds the correct position on each and every [...]