A Response to the Science Be Damned Faction!

[Wade]

If the comment section had never existed in the first place, it would be non-news, someone would have just created an off site forum to slug it out with others there and I'm sure someone will do so in this case, the game changer was that something which we take for granted got taken away from us. There are always issues to going backwards from things that have been granted to us, it's like talking a rattle from a baby

 

[Randall]

It is my policy to withhold content from websites or forums that are unfair. It's like the "vote with your dollars" idea. If you hate McDonald's or Mastercard, do not give them your business. Your individual effect is miniscule, but the policy is powerful if enough people do it. Catherine Austin Fitts is doing this with investment portfolios.

I've been banned from both GOPUSA and Democratic Underground, not for cussing, ad hominem, or being rude, but merely for expressing libertarian ideas.

Echo chamber forums are self-destructive. I've seen it a hundred times. When moderators enforce a rigid orthodoxy, the forum slowly dies. I've seen it on motorcycle forums, gun forums, religious forums, survival forums, electronics forums, martial arts forums, and computer forums.

One thing you'll find on this forum is a healthy openness on the part of the moderators and owners. For example, The Paracast not only tolerates skepticism, it holds the occasional live listener round table, and one of our regular skeptics @lancemoody has been invited as a guest. That is practically unheard of on other shows. He even gets likes from @Christopher O'Brien ( the show's cohost ) and myself once in a while. The stereotypical attacks you'll see the skeptics level against those interested in the paranormal have been proven over and over again not to apply here in a general sense.

Sure we get the odd polarized believer who refuses to engage in reasonable analysis and expects their claims to be taken at face value, but they don't tend to last long. Plus you can edit and delete your posts in any open thread no matter how old they are. Short of major advertising, spamming and heavy trolling or flaming, this forum is very tolerant. Even a certain amount of aggressive opinionated commentary is allowed, but it rarely gets out of hand. The only thing I wish is that we had more regular participants. Which makes me want to ask BTW, what brings you here? Are you interested in any particular aspect of the paranormal or UFOs? Do you have any ideas or personal experiences you can share?

 

[Charlie Prime]

Sure we get the odd polarized believer who refuses to engage in reasonable analysis...

That's the type of person I don't mind banning. I lost an old friend that way. I owned a hobbyist forum in 2001 back during the run-up to the Iraq War.

This "friend" would drop in each day and post whatever warmongering bullet points the NeoCons were pushing that week on television. He refused to discuss them, and ignored all refutations. I warned him several times "This is a discussion forum, ...for discussion, not a graffiti wall. Respond to discussion on your assertions, or stop making them". He ignored my warning. I banned him. We haven't spoken since.

I'm here because I just found out about the Podcast. I was a hard-kore atheist for thirty years. About three years ago some woo-woo started happening to me that exceeded explanation by apophenia or agency detection. I started studying the Ancient Mysteries and the Trivium. Now I'm trying to become educated about all manner of spooky stuff. I dig it.

 

[Wade]

That's a big ole like there, as far as your woo-woo moments my I point you towards our personal experiences forum ?

Your Personal Experiences Forum | The Paracast Community Forums

 

[Charlie Prime]

Thanks man, but I not "out of the closet" enough yet to share my personal experiences.

I avoid them for the time being because they scare me. I take the rationalist approach to any new endeavor like a sport, diet, car purchase, relationship, job, etc.; ...study up on it before proceeding.

Right now I'm studying Thomas Cambell's My Big T.O.E. and reading Picknett & Prince books, and listening to Red Ice.

 

[Randall]

That's the type of person I don't mind banning. I lost an old friend that way. I owned a hobbyist forum in 2001 back during the run-up to the Iraq War.

This "friend" would drop in each day and post whatever warmongering bullet points the NeoCons were pushing that week on television. He refused to discuss them, and ignored all refutations. I warned him several times "This is a discussion forum, ...for discussion, not a graffiti wall. Respond to discussion on your assertions, or stop making them". He ignored my warning. I banned him. We haven't spoken since.

Although I understand how you could get frustrated by such behavior, if the comments were on topic and not simply trolling; then banning for failing to respond to counterpoint seems a little harsh. Here, when someone refuses to respond to valid counterpoint, their agenda quickly exposes itself, people stop paying attention to them, and they tend to move on.

I'm here because I just found out about the Podcast. I was a hard-kore atheist for thirty years. About three years ago some woo-woo started happening to me that exceeded explanation by apophenia or agency detection. I started studying the Ancient Mysteries and the Trivium. Now I'm trying to become educated about all manner of spooky stuff. I dig it.

Cool. I hope that at some point you decide to share. I've posted most of my experiences on the forum and I've had no negative fallout from doing so ( not that I care anyway ). My position is that strange things do happen, but we have to be careful not to draw unfounded conclusions as to the causes and intentions ( if any ) behind them. I presume that because you used the word "atheist" in a past context, that you now are either undecided or have converted to a believer in some deity?

 

[Jeff Davis]

Excellent post Jimi. The problem is that your nemesis Lomborg is probably considered to be an "expert" by a large enough faction to get him into a position of influence. So the real question is what is a so-called "expert", and what should the real "war on expertise" be about? Personally, I don't think the war is over. Or if it is, I'm one of those lost soldiers who is still hiding in the jungle after it's all over thinking that someday I'll see the flag of truth rise in glorious victory. All too often these so-called experts have been the ones with more power than competency, and this is what I believe the war should be about. When those with power and control win out over those with competency, we've lost a battle. But this doesn't mean we've lost the war. Keep up the good fight.

Welcome to the USA's judicial justice system. Money will buy anything here. Even a different version of the truth. I have a VERY hard time believing that this is not representative of the Green Party's intentions. Just a major corporate ploy to shift power. That's ALL Obama's proposed healthcare plan is. Just a shift in the present medical lobby that takes the majority of the control away that the present system of checks and balances represent. (read: insurance companies).

Any new system will be just as corrupt and just as exclusive. I can hear the young man yelling out, "New Lamps For Old, New Lamps For Old".....

Just fill 'em up, and get your slice of the corporate pie. Chef Obama, who's doubling as the town sheeny man, is gonna serve it up hot, with ice cream no less.

Mr. Charity and Goodwill....

 

[Randall]

Welcome to the USA's judicial justice system. Money will buy anything here. Even a different version of the truth. I have a VERY hard time believing that this is not representative of the Green Party's intentions. Just a major corporate ploy to shift power. That's ALL Obama's proposed healthcare plan is. Just a shift in the present medical lobby that takes the majority of the control away that the present system of checks and balances represent. (read: insurance companies).

Actually, Obama's health care plan was something Hillary Clinton had been striving to get in place for a long time, battling against politics and corporate greed. Obama supported that very robust plan, and it was the Republicans who eviscerated the plan as part of their "oppose anything Obama does" strategy. To get a better grip on this history I suggest you watch Sicko ( Michael Moore ).

 

[Jimi H.]

Welcome to the USA's judicial justice system. Money will buy anything here. Even a different version of the truth. I have a VERY hard time believing that this is not representative of the Green Party's intentions. Just a major corporate ploy to shift power. That's ALL Obama's proposed healthcare plan is. Just a shift in the present medical lobby that takes the majority of the control away that the present system of checks and balances represent. (read: insurance companies).

Any new system will be just as corrupt and just as exclusive. I can hear the young man yelling out, "New Lamps For Old, New Lamps For Old".....

Just fill 'em up, and get your slice of the corporate pie. Chef Obama, who's doubling as the town sheeny man, is gonna serve it up hot, with ice cream no less.

Mr. Charity and Goodwill....

There's something deeply disingenuos about the anti-political spin that eg. the Libertarians commit. The spin is that there are no politics, that all politics are simply posturing, that there is no left and right etc. It's a very damaging bit of spin as it actually denies democracy. The underlying desire is to undermine the political itself, because when all political means are discarded, all that remains is the market, and anarcho-capitalist heaven.

Imo., it is very hard to overlook the differences in outlook and policy between eg. the Green Party and the Republican Party. Denying those differences is disingenuous.

 

[Muadib]

There's something deeply ingenuos about the anti-political spin that eg. the Libertarians commit. The spin is that there are no politics, that all politics are simply posturing, that there is no left and right etc. It's a very damaging bit of spin as it actually denies democracy. The underlying desire is to undermine the political itself, because when all political means are discarded, all that remains is the market, and anarcho-capitalist heaven.

Imo., it is very hard to overlook the differences in outlook and policy between eg. the Green Party and the Republican Party. Denying those differences is disingenuous.

Bravo, I agree 100%. Libertarians just love to toss around buzzwords, things like "false left/right paradigm," for instance. I get what most of them are saying, ie that both parties were bought and sold a long time ago and they belong to the same people. This may be true, I don't know, but what I do know is that there are some serious ideological differences between the left and the right, that part is not false at all. When you deny that, not only do you deny democracy, as you pointed out, you deny the very nature of human beings. Some libertarians act like all it will take is for everyone to just drop both parties and vote for Rand Paul or some other libertarian candidate and that will fix everything. It's nonsense.

As for the topic of this thread, I'm all for it. I stopped reading the comments section of most science based websites a long time ago, every single article will have some religious asshat in the comments section barking about how the article is crap because it doesn't agree with their 2,000 year old guidebook to life, the universe and everything. I wish more websites would disable the comments section or at least do a better job monitoring and banning people who aren't there to engage in a rational discussion.

 

[Charlie Prime]

...what I do know is that there are some serious ideological differences between the left and the right, that part is not false at all.

You don't seem to understand that to an anarchist, the difference between Republican-Right and Democrat-Left is so miniscule as to be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It's like worrying about whether White prison rapists are worse than Latino prison rapists, versus the difference between you being in prison or not.

 

[Jimi H.]

..Some libertarians act like all it will take is for everyone to just drop both parties and vote for Rand Paul or some other libertarian candidate and that will fix everything. It's nonsense....

Exactly.

I'm quite convinced at this point, that it's a strategy that comes from the top, because you'll see all the Libertarian minions repeating the same sound-bites over and over again.

But it's always been like that, the right have always been scared of critique, meaning intellectual political discourse. The problem is that critique of power structures and big capital may stir the peasants enough that they get fed up with their meager wages, and unite. We've seen this mechanism many times during the last century, and previously.

 

[Jimi H.]

You don't seem to understand that to an anarchist, the difference between Republican-Right and Democrat-Left is so miniscule as to be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It's like worrying about whether White prison rapists are worse than Latino prison rapists, versus the difference between you being in prison or not.

It's arrogant to say there's no difference between a president who openly supports the fossil fuel companies and one who wants to spur alternative energy. If one doesn't get the significance of this divide, one will never see any meaningful differences between political ideologies or their consequences in a big structured society like those in the Western world.

That's just one issue of a multitude of issues where denying the actual differences seems like willed ignorance, or perhaps simply resignation?

 

[Muadib]

You don't seem to understand that to an anarchist, the difference between Republican-Right and Democrat-Left is so miniscule as to be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It's like worrying about whether White prison rapists are worse than Latino prison rapists, versus the difference between you being in prison or not.

I'm sorry but.... what? Why would I care about the anarchist perspective on this issue, given the fact that I'm not one and that I don't know any. Are you equating all libertarians with anarchists here? Is that your point?

It's arrogant to say there's no difference between a president who openly supports the fossil fuel companies and one who wants to spur alternative energy. If one doesn't get the significance of this divide, one will never see any meaningful differences between political ideologies or their consequences in a big structured society like those in the Western world.

That's just one issue of a multitude of issues where denying the actual differences seems like willed ignorance, or perhaps simply resignation?

I'm guessing for most it's resignation, the idea that no matter what happens they're going to get screwed fits well with the conspiracy mindset that most libertarians posses.

 

[Charlie Prime]

I'm sorry but.... what?

I'm sorry. Since you don't know the difference between libertarian and anarchist, we cannot discuss these ideas. Please ignore my posts.

 

[Muadib]

I'm sorry. Since you don't know the difference between libertarian and anarchist, we cannot discuss these ideas. Please ignore my posts.

I'm sorry but I do know the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist, I'm just wondering why you think this issue should be viewed from the anarchist perspective, as you said in your original post. If you don't feel like explaining that, I will ignore your posts.

 

[Jimi H.]

I'm sorry. Since you don't know the difference between libertarian and anarchist, we cannot discuss these ideas. Please ignore my posts.

You replied him in the context of Libertarianism, so..

I found a definition here, between Anarcho-Capitalism and Libertarianism: Anarcho-capitalist FAQ

The author suggests that Anarcho-Capitalism is a type of Libertarianism, the only difference being that the Libertarians want to maintain the following institutions: police, courts, and defense. Is he correct in your opinion?

In either of the two cases, I think the result would be extreme social stratification, and a huge gulf between peoples' access to information (science, health, anything, you name it, all media would be corporate with no obligations to serve the people), and in the case of Anarcho-Capitalism, lots of private armies would be involved too, the winners would be the war lords. Let's be realistic here..

In a Libertarian Ayn Randish society, the lords would be the Oligarchs, namely those who, at the time of the system change, had significant monetary power and production facilities, enough to ensure huge monopolies from the get-go. Even major infra-structure projects would have to be private, so all control with basic utilities, roads, hospitals etc would be with a private company completely outside of public control. Eventually, people would have to work for the big industries, or the big farms, because small business/farms can't compete with huge corporations. Workers (the majority of people) would have no protection whatsoever. Imagine Foxconn City. Again, all big media would be corporate with no obligations to work for the people.

In other words, I don't think it would serve the common good, though I've experienced degrees of anarchy in hippie communities, but that's on a small scale, and the right people..

To quote the good American semi-anarchist Henry D. Thoreau from his Civil Disobedience:

" [All romantic ideals aside] .. to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1

In other words, if there is no democratic elect to complain to, who can act upon developments, how can things ever change for the better?

People say that 'the market will fix it', but no, it won't. Regulation fixes it. That is the big blunder that recent Presidents have committed again and again, including Clinton, because, well, deregulatiog worked, at least right until the moment the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

 

[Charlie Prime]

Minarchists (libertarians) believe violence is a good way to solve social problems, and that monopolies are good. They believe one group should have a monopoly on violence. They believe one man may own another man.

Anarchists do not. They believe in the Non-Aggression Principle, and work for the abolition of slavery.

 

[Muadib]

His original post didn't, and largely still doesn't, make sense to me precisely because anarchists and libertarians have different ideology. Not to mention the fact that there are several different kinds of libertarianism, some closer to liberal socialism and some that are closer to what is known as minarchism, which is close to what Jimi describes in the post above when he refers to a state that exists solely to protect the rights of individuals and nothing else:

Minarchism (also known as minimal statism) is a political philosophy. It is variously defined by sources. In the strictest sense, it holds that states ought to exist (as opposed to anarchy), that their only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud, and that the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts. In the broadest sense, it also includes fire departments, prisons, the executive, and legislatures as legitimate government functions.

My confusion comes from his thinking that this idea of the differences, or lack thereof, between the left and the right should be considered from the perspective of an anarchist. I don't get that at all. We were talking about libertarianism, not anarchism and they are not the same thing. Furthermore, any subject can be considered from an extremist viewpoint, and I think certain kinds anarchism definitely fit the definition of extremism, but why should that matter? I could consider the theory of evolution from the perspective of a Southern Baptist Fundamentalist, but why would I bother to do that when I think their views are ridiculous? Unless I was specifically referring to the problems with that perspective or trying to illuminate that perspective for someone else, I would never consider the issue from their position because their position is fundamentally flawed and nonsensical.

 

[Muadib]

Minarchists (libertarians)

Apparently you're the one who doesn't understand the subject matter here, all libertarians are not minarchists.

Samuel Edward Konkin III, an agorist, coined the term minarchism in 1971 to describe libertarians who defend some form of compulsory government.[citation needed] Konkin invented the term minarchism as an alternative to the cumbersome phrase limited-government libertarianism.[citation needed] It is ostensibly formed as min(imal) + -archy (government) + -ism (system) – "system of minimal government".