A musing Beam

When it is okay to be skeptical? I run into this question all the time.  In which areas should you be skeptical, and where should skepticism not be allowed?  Science, religion, public discourse, family relations, friend relations .... Let's start with a couple of terms: Fact: Whether something did or did not happen in a certain way at a certain time, etc. Opinion: "I think that X" or "I believe X" or "I feel X." In my opinion, the level of skepticism should remain high for facts and low for opinions.  While it is technically a fact that Bessie feels X (maybe she is lying and doesn't really), I'm virtually always willing to take her at her word, without trying to investigate further, say through a lie-detector mechanism.  Facts offered, however, need some proof to be persuasive.  The more unintuitive or important the fact, the more proof it needs.  "The grass outside is green" will generally need little proof ... unless you ...

I have not put much effort into following the Ferguson, MO, crisis.  For anyone remotely connected to U.S. news, though, it jumps in your face. And it should.  As far as I can tell, the majority of the main actors in this farce (that would be funny were it not real) have behaved poorly.  Michael Brown, the "unarmed black man" (as he is unwaveringly described), appears to have been robbing a store shortly before the event. Darren Wilson somehow found himself in a situation where he shot an "unarmed black man" six times, killing him.  This may or may not have been in complete self defense, and it may or may not eventually reveal poor decision making, poor training, or poor execution of protocol.  Having known cops that killed in the line of duty, I suspect (were the whole world not watching) that he would be the first to say that something went wrong here. The rioters who have destroyed property and assaulted civilians and police alike. The protestors who di...

Yeah, sometimes the feds overreach.  Does power corrupt?  Of course.  The NSA's unconstrained surveillance is an obvious example, as is the IRS targeting of specific groups based on their political allegiances.  Those should be dealt with. Before I get into the rest of this post, I want to note that I sometimes tire of the recent conversation being so stilted.  Tea Party-esque people have taken over the dialogue.  I would love to see real discussions about trade-offs in the war on drugs, on Department of Education overreach, of our goals with the EPA, of how current IP law stifles growth in the fastest growing areas of our economy, etc.  Instead, we fight over whether to repave our crumbling highways or even whether we should pay our national bills.  The self-righteous feel of many making the (obviously) fallacious arguments is also taxing. The point of this post, though, is to respond to many postings I see about how the federal governme...

Long time without a post -- been a busy several months. I'll start posting a few ideas I've had in the hopper.  This one is a request from a friend who had a bad travel experience.  It's a case study in problem solving skills, incentives, and thinking of people as human beings. As a consumer of the airline industry's products, it certainly feels like their customer-facing employees rarely have any incentive or desire to be helpful, efficient, or even to solve a problem.  Everyone is annoyed with the passengers when a flight is cancelled.  How was that their fault? The annoyance is even worse if the first airline transfers you to another airline. A woman stands in a long line, sobbing, because she won't make it to her daughter's wedding.  She is mad at the person at the desk, who of course didn't make the decisions leading to the flight cancellation.  Neither side shows empathy.  Passengers who don't fly often are in a strange, emotionally charged...

Einstein spent a good deal of energy in his later years striving to convince people that nationalism was the greatest evil facing the world.  "Nationalism, in my opinion, is nothing more than an idealist rationalization for militarism and aggression." I think the root of the problem he saw lies in people's innate desire to feel part of a group and to form their identities around these group affiliations.  (It is easy to see many evolutionary advantages to this, so I won't try to belabor its purpose or existence.) One of the smallest instances of a tribe is a family unit. "Family comes first" is considered a positive value, even though that mantra means that other, more "deserving" people might be treated as secondary.  Others who are like you get added to your tribes.  This is often a really good thing -- your neighbors help each other, church members show up when you go to the hospital, your fellow bridge players give you a sense of being neede...

I have a prediction:  The War on Drugs officially started by President Nixon in the early 70's will shortly be abandoned.  That's a good thing, and this entry will explain why. Before I get to that, though, why do I think it will end?  First, the Obama administration explicitly rejects using the term as unproductive.  Second, there are several states that are flouting the federal prohibition, with great public appeal.  Third, a substantial group on the Right (the Tea Party) has an ideology that goes squarely against the "war."  I think the next Presidential cycle will see a movement to federally repeal the prohibition of marijuana, and that may well be accompanied by the ability to use any of the prohibited substances medically.  At that point ... no more war.  I hope the next step would be to decriminalize drug use altogether (at least for adults). Now, on to why ending it is a good thing.  In a nutshell, it has high costs for these: 1) ...

The "Monsanto Protection Act" is discussed some, but (for the most part) for the wrong reasons.  Actually, I'm discussing it partially for the "wrong" reasons, too -- I wasn't that interested, but my cousin asked me to. Once I did some research, though, I thought it really was worth slamming. If you haven't heard, the "Monsanto Protection Act" is what many are calling a "rider" placed on a recent appropriations bill.  It says that the Secretary of Agriculture should ignore court rulings in a particular set of cases.  The scenario is when a plant has been preliminarily deemed to be unharmful, and therefore unregulated, by the Secretary, then later a court order tries to stay that determination. Critics are saying that this gives carte blanche to Monsanto, the largest plant genetic modifier, who no longer has to worry with the courts.  That's taking it a bit far -- the Secretary of the Agriculture is already making a determinat...