Your Opinion

I like researching issues to develop an opinion. While everyone has a right to their opinion I find that some opinions are more educated than others. I publish things that I believe may encourage people to research issues further and develop their own educated opinions.

Maybe the reason “you” are having an issue publishing is that you don't believe “your” opinion can be useful.

There are a lot of people who will try and make people who have opinions that differ from theirs feel as if they don't matter. I find teachers typically fall into this category,particularly f you ask "to many questions" or if they interpret questions as an attack on their authority.

When I was in school I used to keep trying things over and over again that others claimed were impossible. If a teacher said something that disagreed with something else I had read I questioned them and then researched the issue. This made me a target for a lot of teachers and a lot of kids. People called me stupid for saying things like “Einstein was wrong” or “The US will probably end up becoming friends with Russia” or “Sea level is not the same all over the world, look at Panama”.

I still question everything people say and because my teachers in elementary school taught a lot of incorrect things in, history, politics, economics, science, and other things I have learned not to ever trust what any one person tells me. Sometimes I don't trust what “everyone” tells me is correct like Einstein or Evolution. Theories especially, I do my own research on theories.

When I was in high school a teacher was trying to explain relativity. I said, “so the sun orbits the earth, relativity speaking” which it does. In Einstein's book he described relativity using trains, a person on the train is not moving relative to the train and the ground outside is moving relative to the train. Taking Einstein's example we can replace the train with the Earth and suddenly the Earth is not moving it is the sun that moves. Now Aristotle is not a moron, just someone who understood relative motion even if he could not properly describe it. The teacher became angry with me and told me I was an idiot because I didn't understand that the Earth only revolved around the sun. Obviously the teacher was incapable of understanding the implications of Einstein's relativity and couldn't teach something they couldn't understand.

Now most people would have been embarrassed and I am sure most of my classmates don't remember my specific comments like this, they only remember I was an idiot who argued with the teacher.

I was ecstatic because once a teacher results to ridicule or insults I know I am right and the teacher is wrong and just trying to save their own ignorant butt. I also know most people are too afraid of their peers to rock the boat and even those kids that did agree with me would never admit it because they would be thought to be an idiot.

Teachers are basically well intentioned ignorant people afraid to admit or display their own ignorance. In other words they are no smarter or better educated than you are on most subjects. In fact, because teachers study teaching instead of things like history, math and science you may know much, much more about these subjects than any teacher.

I can count on one hand the times a teacher agreed with me against a class full of kids because teachers operate in a “peer pressure” environment and even when they know they are wrong they are going to change the subject or “attack” the “trouble maker”.

Teachers, parents and other system officials are doing everything they can to train people to submit to authority rather than educate them in how to think and question authority.

Personally I learn from almost everyone, even the stupid teachers who withheld their approval and gave me crappy grades because they thought I wanted the approval.

Not exactly, although like most people I enjoy praise. I would rather learn something than be approved of. I would rather help others learn than be approved of.

Sometimes your track record is more important that approval. If you don't blow your own horn someone else will use it as a spittoon. On the other hand people hate feeling stupid even when they obviously are and they feel even dumber when you keep doing things that they can't or couldn't do.

People will often ignore what is correct for what s popular, just as kids and teachers do in school and our educational system indoctrinates people into this ridiculous idiocy.

Once you understand how stupid and ignorant people can be two things should occur to you.

The first is that you are no better and no worse than any one else. Your opinion is just as important as Einstein's and just as worthless as Charles Manson's.

The second is that the only way to evolve intellectually is to constantly question and discuss even “laws” like gravity or the conservation of energy.

The third thing to remember is that people who laugh at you for questioning things they take for granted, things “everyone knows”, are just brain washed idiots whose ability to think is so compromised that they cannot understand their own ignorance. You should feel sorry for them as you remember that their opinion, as ignorant and brain washed as it is, can be useful.

How can the words of an obviously compromised idiot be useful? The wise man learns even from the child. “From the mouths of babes” is an old saying that is always worth remembering. Sure, they are ignorant morons, but, since “you” (or me or anyone) can not possibly know everything the person “you” are talking to knows things that “you” don't and those things can be useful to “you”.

So if you are an intelligent person on a quest for knowledge and understanding or just a moron blowing off steam your opinions are useful whoever you are.

Sure, the morons who think they know everything will claim you bring nothing to the table. You obviously know things they don't know. The wise man will seek out that knowledge and the moron will ignore it.

The first thing a researcher does when examining an issue is review bibliographies of published works looking for the “expert” everyone else is referencing. Then the researcher reads what the expert has to say. The surface researcher trying for a basic grasp will stop here. The more thorough researcher will read almost everything published on the subject because even if a paper has never been referenced in another paper it can still be a useful and important paper filled with information the researcher can use. Or it can be a ridiculous rant with hardly a shred of information.

In the end, share your thoughts and ideas for wise people who know that even in the worst pages of moronic rant filled with propaganda and ignorance there are gems of knowledge, wisdom and understanding.

Sure, morons will attack you as being worthless when you share your opinion. Some people will open discussions with you and you can learn even more from each other. Others will ignore you.

If writing out your opinion does nothing else, it will accomplish two goals. It will encourage you to think and become a better person. It will allow others to learn from you.

Rich Paying their “fair” share of taxes

What does that mean? Typically, in the United States, it means that rich people making more than about $500,000.00 a year pay most of the taxes. How much is most? The top 1% of earners in 2008 ended up paying 38% of the tax income.

How is that fair? They can afford it, oh yeah.

So the government becomes primarily dependent on that rich 1% for most of the government income. Just think, if they doubled the number of people making over $500,000.00 and exponentially increased the number of poverty level families in the US they could increase tax revenue by 38%! Make the rich, richer and make the poor, poorer and increase the tax revenue!

Making the rich, rich and poor, poor is exactly what the current tax strategy in Washington is designed to do.

In order to increase the GNP you have to increase the number of people with disposable incomes who spend money. That is what increases the GNP, people spending money; money that they actually have, not money that they borrow.

Henry Ford did more to improve the standard of living in the United States and increase the GNP than any other historical figure. Ford did it by increasing the wages of unskilled workers to the point where they flooded the economy with money making Ford a billionaire along the way.

The way to increase the GNP and the tax base is not to raise the taxes on the rich. The way to increase the GNP is to increase the amount of money the average person earns.

Congress can do that tomorrow. Double the minimum wage, make all employers provide health insurance for all employees (even part time), make health insurance part of the unemployment package, change SSI to be a retirement plan only and make a bachelor’s degree at any state university free for any citizen student that can earn admittance.

Will they do it? Not a chance because the politicians don’t have the guts or business savvy that Henry Ford had.

Burn Out and Satying the Course

I just finished reading a book called “Brotherhood of Warriors” written by a former member of an Israeli counter-terrorism special forces unit. The author, Aaron Cohen, was born in Canada, grew up in the States and decided to go to Israel and join an Israeli special forces unit. The process is not as easy as it sounds. Out of hundreds of applicants only a few make it into any special operations units. Cohen made it in, he lasted three years and he was discharged. Cohen started a security company in the States and wrote a book.

I don't believe Israel can last as an independent state. I believe it should last and I believe that if the people have faith in God and maintain their vigilance against their enemies God will maintain Israel.

I don't believe that will happen and Aaron Cohen is a perfect example of why. To do the things that are necessary to survive in the condition Israel is in it takes an extraordinary multi generational commitment.

In the Bible Saul is selected as King, David and Saul fight against the enemies of Israel. Eventually David becomes King and then Solomon becomes king and then Israel falls apart after Solomon's death. The multi generational commitment to the nation of Israel was not there.

People become exhausted with fighting for their survival and they want peace. The people willing to stay the course, to maintain the discipline, to keep fighting after the other guy gives up will succeed.

The United States does not have that commitment. Lyndon Johnson should never have escalated in Vietnam. If Barry Goldwater had made friends with Martin Luther King Jr and supported the Civil Rights Act the United States would not have escalated the Vietnam War. Of course George Wallace might have been elected in 1972 and I don't even want to think of that can of worms. Lyndon Johnson won in 1964, he signed the Civil Rights Act that the minority Republicans had gotten through Congress and he escalated Vietnam into a full fledged war.

Once the United States committed to Vietnam we should have maintained our commitment. International politics requires that people believe each other will keep their word. The United States makes and has made many commitments that they do not follow through on.

The United States is lucky because it is separated from most of the rest of the world by vast oceans that protect our borders. If the United States were surrounded by enemies the way Israel is the United States would have become an Islamic nation under Sharia law a long time ago.

For the first few generations after the holocaust Israel maintained their commitment. The Palestinians and Arabs who hate Israel have the lessons of history on their side. Israel, like the United States, cannot keep their commitment and eventually they fall apart. If the Palestinians wait long enough Israel will fall and they know it. It takes a few suicide bombers a year, year after year,to wear down the commitment Israeli generations have. Eventually, just as they did in biblical times, they will fall and even the future zealots in Masada will become Martyrs to the lack of generational commitment.

You could compare Israel and the United States to Rome. Eventually a lack of commitment to the goals set by the past Roman leaders led to the destruction of Rome.

“Can't we all just get along!” The answer is no, not as long as there are people willing to use guns to force others to behave a particular way.

People didn't like Randy Weaver on Ruby Ridge and he became a millionaire based on FBI entrapment. People didn't like the Branch Davidians in Waco Texas and a bus filled with children was burned to death. These actions encouraged a couple of guys to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma city.

You may believe Weaver and David Koresch were scum and that society has every right to force them to live a particular way. Not everyone is going to believe that.

As long as people feel they are being forced to do things against their will they will rebel against the authority forcing them. School Shooters, “going postal”, Palestinian Homicide bombers, Al Queda. Hussein gassed rebels who fought against his regime.

People like to say there were no WMD's in Iraq. That is crap. Hussein used them. We know Hussein used them, against Kurds, against Iran. Where did they go? No one knows so they make up stories about how they were never there. I wonder how the family members of those who died in Hussein's chemical warfare attacks feel about that rhetoric?

Chemical WMD's were found in Iraq in very small quantities. What happened to the rest of them? Your guess is as good as mine.

The United States didn't have the resolve the stay the course, to maintain discipline and keep their commitments.

The same thing is happening in Israel. People are calling Israel an Apartheid State. People refuse to support the government of Israel. Some idiot in Iran claims the holocaust never happened and they don't hate the Jewish people, just the State of Israel. How believable is that? Look at how Jews are treated in Iran. When was the last time a Jew was elected to an important political position in Iran? Yeah, the Iranians don't hate Jews, they just want to get rid of them like they get rid of sand fleas.

But people buy into that drivel. They think “hey, if we work with these people we can co-exist”. Bull crap. Jews thought the same thing during Hitler's rise to power and they became National Socialist party members. Trying to work with Hitler and co-exist didn't work out so well for the Jews in Europe.

The reality is that just like you may believe in the right of society to use guns and force David Koresh and Randy Weaver to adapt to a version of society they do not like others believe that they have the right to force you to adapt to their version of society.

Get it. They are not any different than you are. They hear about people living by some disgustingly strange set of rules that they totally disagree with and that gives them the right to charge in, guns blazing and kill whoever gets in their way.

Yeah, I know, you only want to stop people from doing “bad things” and otherwise you just want to live and let live. Al Queda feels the same way, you can live however you want to as long as you don't do “bad things”. Oh, but they don't agree with you on what “bad things” are so they are “wrong”. Yeah, I think David Koresch and Randy Weaver felt the same way about that. Funny how people can have totally different ideas and both believe they are right. Notice the way you felt when I used GWB's “stay the course” line? Yeah, it's like that. I can believe I am right and you can believe you are right and if I pick up a gun and shoot you or if you pick up a gun and shoot David Koresch or if Osama rams a few planes into a couple of buildings, the last person standing is “right”.

God does fit in there, and sometimes I wish he would just make slaves and force everyone to follow his rules universally. That would put an end to conflict, but, then I couldn't make my own decisions.

In the end, the people who stay the course and keep their commitment to their society will succeed. The rest will be killed or burned to death in a bus or executed or imprisoned or become slaves in a society they hate.

Between now and the end people like Aaron Cohen (and me if I am honest) will burn out and want nothing more than to live in peace. Burn out is a key factor in letting the other guy win.

Opinions, facts, fallacies and education

The other day someone posted some ridiculous drivel on a Facebook website that I had “liked” so I responded with a kind of tongue in cheek response. The person sent me a facebook message presenting their opinions as facts, jumping all over without addressing the original subject at all in some strange attempt to convince me that I was “wrong”.

Here are a couple of thoughts that I tried unsuccessfully to explain to this brain dead liberal.

Some people have opinions that are more educated and some people have opinions that are less educated. No one has a “wrong” opinion. In my experience liberals research one side of an issue without considering alternate opinions or arguments. These are what I would consider less than educated opinions.

History repeats itself. Right now the pseudo-intellectual elite in the United States is trying very hard to repeat the mistakes Rome made; by making heros out of orators, by increasing social programs and impeding commerce to the point where the tax burden practically eliminates commerce, and by eliminating basic military ground forces in favor of “heavy cavalry”. People who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it and in my experience liberals typically ignore history that does not support their opinions.

The jobs created over the last two years have reduced the real average wage to $8.94 (BLS press release Feb 17 2011) with an average work week of less than 35 hours. Yep, these jobs are part time un-skilled labor that will result in near zero federal tax income.

People need to be able to tell the difference between facts and opinions. “John ran fast” is an opinion. “John ran 100 meters in 6 seconds” is a fact, well use of the term run in a factual statement is debatable even though I believe the velocity traveled does qualify as “running”.

People really need to understand logical fallacies. In my experience people who describe themselves as liberal democrats often ignore logic fallacies or incorrectly identify logical fallacies.

In the end the uneducated person messaging me told me I was being rude (typical, if you can’t win an argument attack your opponent for a perceived slight no matter how ridiculous, “you are insulting me”, “you hate Jews”, “you hate blacks”, “you hate women”, etc). Every time you hear someone accusing someone else of prejudice, bigotry, insulting behavior, etc, remember that those are logical fallacies designed to change the topic from the original issues, usually by the loser of the argument.
I explained that they were the one being rude for demanding that I accept their opinion as “truth” even though they supported their opinion with nothing more than indignation.

There are three important things I would like you to take from this blog, and one key factor in education.

1: No one has a “wrong” opinion, some opinions are just more educated than others.

2: Education is a process, not an achievement. Edu-snobs and pseudo-elitists will demand you recognize their academic achievements and concede your position based on those academic achievements while they ignore facts. This is the least educated opinion possible.

3: When someone claims you insulted them, ignore them, refuse to apologize and stay focused on the issue (unless you really did deliberately insult that particular person or group). Use of sarcasm is not an insult although some people will take it as insulting in an attempt to deflect from their ignorance and lack of education on a subject.

Key: Have fun exploring each others opinions and learning from each other.

White Hot Anger, Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discussion

Sometimes friends of mine who are black become angry with me when I talk about prejudice and segregation. I don't blame them. I understand it. If you let yourself stay caught up in the injustice of bigoted stereotypes you can become so angry that there is nothing left except an ultimate explosion.

Teachers and school administrators cause these kinds of explosions. Psychological profiling is a typical tool these days for police and school administrators. What is psychological profiling? Essentially Psych profiling is the statistical analysis of behavior probability. That's a mouth full, what the hell does that mean?

To make it simple some people exhibit particular behaviors. Psychological or behavioral profiling is not racial profiling, HOWEVER, people of particular races, religions or cultural backgrounds are more likely to exhibit particular behaviors than people of other races, religions or cultural backgrounds.

Still not clear? Yeah, I get that. Suppose you know someone who looks down constantly, slumps when they walk, rarely makes eye contact. In a single instance of behavior this means nothing. If you see a person walking down the street one time and they are doing this it means nothing. If you see a person behave like this all of the time it means something. The problem comes when you see people behave like this sometimes.

The subjective analysis of a primary behavior mode is where the problem comes in. Suppose a high school kid sucks at gym and feels bad every time they leave gym so they typically leave gym slumped and looking at the ground. If every time a teacher observes this kid the kid is walking from gym to math class the teacher may determine that the slumping, no eye contact behavior is a primary behavior pattern. On the other hand, if the teacher observes the same kid for the majority of the day they may observe that this no eye contact slumping behavior is no where near a primary behavior pattern.

So the teacher notices this “primary” issue and the teacher starts talking and the next thing you know all these amateur psychological profilers are finding behavior patterns consistent with a troubled teenager. They conduct an intervention and the kid becomes bewildered, then angry that they think he is someone who might shoot up the school. The actions of the teachers exacerbate the problem.

This problem is even worse because most school shooters are victims of excessive bullying and the amateur psych profilers actually become bullies.

On the other hand some school shooters go completely unnoticed until after they shoot up a school because the amateur psych profilers missed the real signs.

So what does that have to do with black people, segregation and anger?

It is all actually the same problem, the systemic belief that stereotypes have a basis in reality and we can use those stereotypes to predict behavior.

Psych profiling is much more difficult than that. To develop enough of a probability to accurately identify a potential problem you need overlapping primary patterns of behavior.

Dime store psychics are amateur psych profilers. “The body will be found near water” and they find the body in the middle of the desert by an empty canteen. “See, that canteen held water”. The issue is probabilities. The more general the assessment the more likely it is to be accurate.

What is the primary psych profile of a serial killer? A white middle aged male near water.

Is that a joke? Yes and no. It is true, that is an accurate generalization of your average serial killer. Does it describe all serial killers? No.

The idea is to find multiple behavioral patterns and focus resources on those people who fit within those multiple behavioral patterns. This allows for resources to be used most effectively.

A properly trained, reasonably objective, person can improve the odds or reduce the number of potentials. CAN, not WILL.

Psychology is subjective analysis based on previous subjective analysis and all subjective analysis is filtered through a person's internalized experiences.

What does that mean? This is actually pretty simple. If a person is abused by their father they will be more likely to identify people who are similar to their fathers as abusers. Essentially they will find the behavior patterns they are looking for.

The majority of psychologists and social workers are victims of abuse by family members, typically abuse by their fathers and that father is typically going to be a white male. As a result the majority of social workers will incorrectly identify a white male as an abuser about 1/3 of the time.

Does that mean every white male identified as abusive by a social worker is not? Nope. It means that a large number of white males identified as abusive are not.

Social workers and psychologists know this. This ain't news. Want to hear something really arrogant? Even though they know they are internalizing their filters these psychologists and social workers typically believe that they are objective enough to overcome their internal filters EVEN though they know that statistically they are probably part of the problem.

Huh? Ever see the movie “A Time To Kill”? Samuel Jackson tells Matthew McConaughey that he is one of the bad guys, that he knows Matthew McConaughey does not mean to be a bad guy, but he was raised a bad guy and he thinks like a bad guy.

I realized that about myself back when I was in the Army. I wrote a blog about that and you can hunt it down if you like. Matthew McConaughey realizes that he does think like a bad guy and changes his closing argument and Samuel Jackson goes free. Nice story, ain't going to happen in real life. Most people are never going to accept that they are just one of the statistical probability who are going to incorrectly filter someone.

You have to be aware that you are going to, not might but WILL, incorrectly filter someone and most people are so arrogant that they never think of themselves as the bad guy.

So the CEO of a company I used to work for is a Christian. One day before a meeting some of us were talking about jury duty and punishment. He was upset because some guy got away from man's justice when he had served on a jury. I shrugged. I pointed out that there is no justice with people, but that God's justice is perfect and inescapable. The person will either repent and change their behavior or find themselves judged.

This is a pretty basic Christian belief, but, my CEO was filtering through his own belief system which included the justice system people had created as an appropriate justice system.

I filtered it through my belief system. Since Christ tells us no one is good, that we “being evil” are still loved by God I accept that people are evil and incapable of righteous judgment so it really doesn't matter if someone goes to jail here on Earth or not.

In my belief system prison should only be used for people convicted of multiple violent attacks which result in bodily injury to others. Once imprisoned we might as well execute them since they are only imprisoned after they have been convicted of multiple violent attacks which have resulted in bodily injury to others.

Drug dealers, car thieves, etc can all do community service. I think all crimes should be punishable by probation and community service rather than jail time. Jail time is a waste and we can't afford to keep wasting resources.

Sound's like I am off track? Not really. You probably have a different filter system and exposing you to mine has probably made you consider your filter system. Filter systems regarding punishment for perceived wrongs are typically very strong.

As a society we need to bring these filter systems out into the open and accept that we are applying them in our decision making process. Until we bring them out in the open we will continue to waste resources and incite bad behavior in others.

A friend with a doctorate applied at a research organization. His work was very good, cutting edge and applied directly to a major research initiative at the organization. His application for employment was denied.

Why? Was management stupid or bigoted? Truthfully I think they were both. I won't go into the issues which lead to my belief. I am sure that these people have what they feel are “good” reasons for rejecting my friend just as they had “good” reasons for refusing to do the basic variability calculations behind a primary process variable in their research initiative.

I have a simple filter for this though, I don't believe there is ever a good reason to do something stupid so when someone does something I know is stupid my internal filter kicks in and it is very difficult to convince me that they are anything except stupid.

I am aware of my filter though, and I will try and listen. Occasionally someone will make sense of their stupid reasons although they very rarely ever seem to be anything except stupid to me and I am sure that other people can say the same thing about decisions I have made that they feel are stupid.

No one talks abut this stupidity because everyone becomes angry and offended.

There it is. The white hot anger burning and corrupting our society from within based on our internal stereotypes, filters and prejudices that we refuse to discuss because it just makes us angrier.