February 17, 2022
Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
--John Michael Crichton
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December 04, 2020
Iron law of bureaucracy - Jerry Pournelle
...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
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July 15, 2020
Epistemological Break
Bad idea: "Truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else." (Bari Weiss)
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July 08, 2020
Things which don't seem true anymore :-(
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost
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May 11, 2019
Some wisdom
https://twitter.com/wretchardthecat
Paradoxically the Western intellectual elite were disarmed by their inability to appreciate the real power of "thoughts". They handled it without gloves, careless of its effects. They forgot what people once knew: the keys to your mind are your most precious possession.
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September 15, 2018
Quote
"To win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths.â€
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January 27, 2014
Favorite quote
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck’.â€
--Robert Heinlein
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October 06, 2009
FTC
Unfortunately, I have received precisely nothing from anybody w/ re: this blog and things written on it.
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December 18, 2008
Too many of my photographs...
...can be found
Here
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