[From the book "God Wants You Dead" section 8.2] 8.2 Rethinking Atheism and Anarchy Atheism and Anarchy are not really ideologies, in that they are not complex ideological organisms. Each of these words represents opposition to a particular type of complex collective idea-organism. They both claim that the Idea-organism they are fighting is not necessary [...]
If you are like me, you have probably already started using Google Plus and found that this combination of the best elements of Twitter and Facebook is quite appealing. I like it better already, and I expect it to improve as Google tends to be quite responsive to user feedback. Also, their process of inviting [...]
Property is a concept that assigns the rights for the use of scarce resources to certain economic actors. This tends to encourage the creation of greater value as people are more wiling to invest effort into improving resources that will not then be taken away from them. There are two category errors that sometimes arise [...]
People find fault in the actions or works of others for one of three reasons: 1.) To discredit an idea. 2.) To assert superiority for ego or social reasons. 3.) To be helpful. When someone finds fault with you or yours, it can be difficult to tell which of these three reasons is motivating the [...]
<In response to Robin Hanson> Instead of choosing from your options concerning how important or hard the problem is, I will just solve it for you. At the core of the problem is the fact that the idea that we ever think or do anything for any given rational reason is itself a self deception. [...]
(from the book “God Wants You Dead” section 8.3) 8.3 Spreading the Word Let’s say you really liked the ideas in this book, and wanted to spread them, but it occurred to you that some of the ideas might be dangerous, and you didn’t want anyone to get hurt. We faced this same problem ourselves [...]
[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 [...]