Jul 2, 2018 | Politics
NHS 'worse than average in treating eight common causes of death' | Society | The Guardian:
The research was carried out by the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the King’s Fund. It determined that, with the NHS free at the point of use, the UK had the lowest proportion of people who avoided healthcare due to cost. Just 2.3% did so in 2016 compared with an average of 7.2% across the 19 countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US. However, the UK’s health service performed worse than average in the treatment of eight out of the 12 most common causes of death. They included deaths within 30 days of having a heart attack and within five years of being diagnosed with breast cancer, rectal cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. The NHS was also the third-poorest performer in cases where medical intervention should have prevented death, and had consistently higher death rates for babies at birth or just after (perinatal mortality), and in the month after birth (neonatal mortality).
Jul 1, 2018 | Philosophy, Politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRHaropPZCcJordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, and ARI's Yaron Brook and Greg Salmieri discuss the impact of philosophy on a person's life live at OCON 2018.Update: Dr. Brook hosted an illuminating follow discussion up with Onkar Ghate and Greg Salmieri on The Yaron Brook Show: May 27, 2018 | Business, Politics
Brian Philips' online course on The Principles of Property Rights is now free online at Udemy.Here is the course description:
Property rights have long been a part of America’s political heritage. Indeed, the Founding Fathers wrote extensively on the importance of protecting property rights. But property rights are under attack in America today. Part of the reason for the success of these attacks is imprecise or fuzzy thinking. Even many advocates of property rights are unable to clearly define the concept, and thus, they are unable to provide a consistent and principled defense. In this course, we will examine the principles that underlie property rights, as well as the principles underlying attacks on property rights. Only by understanding these principles can we clearly defend property rights and refute the claims of their enemies. Who is the target audience? Business owners harmed by regulations Property owners restricted by land-use regulations Organizations involved in defending property rights.
Link: The Principles of Property Rights
May 27, 2018 | Business, Politics
Brian Philips' online course on The Principles of Property Rights is now free online at Udemy.Here is the course description:
Property rights have long been a part of America’s political heritage. Indeed, the Founding Fathers wrote extensively on the importance of protecting property rights. But property rights are under attack in America today. Part of the reason for the success of these attacks is imprecise or fuzzy thinking. Even many advocates of property rights are unable to clearly define the concept, and thus, they are unable to provide a consistent and principled defense. In this course, we will examine the principles that underlie property rights, as well as the principles underlying attacks on property rights. Only by understanding these principles can we clearly defend property rights and refute the claims of their enemies. Who is the target audience? Business owners harmed by regulations Property owners restricted by land-use regulations Organizations involved in defending property rights.
Link: The Principles of Property Rights
Apr 27, 2018 | Education
“Let us imagine ourselves among a race of giants who differ from us in proportion as we differ from the child and we ourselves are forced to use the giant’s furniture, dishes and possessions. If we want to sit down, we have to climb on to a chair with our hands and feet. If we want to move the chair, we have to climb down the same way and move this great weight. We want to wash our hands but the [sink] is like a big bath tub. … It takes two hands to use a hairbrush. Everything is so high that we cannot use anything (without asking for help), doors to open, hooks on which to hang our clothes and other things. We are unable to do things we need to do and we feel the humiliation resulting from our failure to act. We certainly would disdain these giant people and not wish to live with them, if we knew they had prepared nothing so we might act. — Maria Montessori"A century ago, Dr. Maria Montessori introduced the world to a new type of classroom — the "prepared environment" — which did away with the traditional teacher-as-master model in exchange for a wholly new method that encourages each child to happily develop mastery over himself. But what happens when a teacher or parent is no longer the "giant" ruler of the classroom or home, when children are allowed to direct their own development — won't they then just go wild? No. In fact, in the right environment, the opposite occurs. As countless teachers and parents have experienced firsthand since 1907 (the year Dr. Montessori opened her original school in Rome), children truly transform themselves in Montessori classrooms and in Montessori homes. With adult guidance, they develop into independent individuals who are competent in the world, confident in themselves, and capable of connecting peacefully with others." -- Jesse McCarthy
To help introduce the Montessori Method to parents and teachers in the 21st century Jesse McCarthy of montessorieducation.com has launched a new podcast -- now three episodes in. "Interviews range from What is Montessori?, to the challenges and fun of working with infants & toddlers, to becoming a Montessori parent. And there will be many more episodes and topics to come! ... Current episodes range from about 20 to 30 minutes and offer listeners a chance to delve a little deeper into the world of thoughtful, down-to-earth parenting & teaching, with an emphasis on us adults growing right alongside children."You can listen in here: https://www.montessorieducation.com/podcast.
Apr 27, 2018 | Education
“Let us imagine ourselves among a race of giants who differ from us in proportion as we differ from the child and we ourselves are forced to use the giant’s furniture, dishes and possessions. If we want to sit down, we have to climb on to a chair with our hands and feet. If we want to move the chair, we have to climb down the same way and move this great weight. We want to wash our hands but the [sink] is like a big bath tub. … It takes two hands to use a hairbrush. Everything is so high that we cannot use anything (without asking for help), doors to open, hooks on which to hang our clothes and other things. We are unable to do things we need to do and we feel the humiliation resulting from our failure to act. We certainly would disdain these giant people and not wish to live with them, if we knew they had prepared nothing so we might act. — Maria Montessori"A century ago, Dr. Maria Montessori introduced the world to a new type of classroom — the "prepared environment" — which did away with the traditional teacher-as-master model in exchange for a wholly new method that encourages each child to happily develop mastery over himself. But what happens when a teacher or parent is no longer the "giant" ruler of the classroom or home, when children are allowed to direct their own development — won't they then just go wild? No. In fact, in the right environment, the opposite occurs. As countless teachers and parents have experienced firsthand since 1907 (the year Dr. Montessori opened her original school in Rome), children truly transform themselves in Montessori classrooms and in Montessori homes. With adult guidance, they develop into independent individuals who are competent in the world, confident in themselves, and capable of connecting peacefully with others." -- Jesse McCarthy
To help introduce the Montessori Method to parents and teachers in the 21st century Jesse McCarthy of montessorieducation.com has launched a new podcast -- now three episodes in. "Interviews range from What is Montessori?, to the challenges and fun of working with infants & toddlers, to becoming a Montessori parent. And there will be many more episodes and topics to come! ... Current episodes range from about 20 to 30 minutes and offer listeners a chance to delve a little deeper into the world of thoughtful, down-to-earth parenting & teaching, with an emphasis on us adults growing right alongside children."You can listen in here: https://www.montessorieducation.com/podcast.
Mar 27, 2018 | Business, Politics
From A Conversation With John Allison, the CEO Who Led BB&T Through the Financial Crisis:
The Fool: In your opinion, what caused the crisis?
Allison: I view the crisis differently than a lot of people. I was a long-serving CEO when the crisis struck and I think the whole thing was caused by regulatory policy.Yes, some big banks made mistakes. But it was a combination of government housing policy, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular, which had $5 trillion in liabilities and $2 trillion in subprime mortgages when they failed, and the Federal Reserve, which held interest rates below inflation, that contributed to the bubble in the housing market, along with bubbles in other markets.I don't believe the whole industry was failing. I think that's ridiculous. It was a relatively small number of large institutions that were in trouble. Banks like Citigroup. I think they should have been allowed to fail and the world would be a better place today.The whole idea that everybody would have gone broke if one of the big banks failed was absurd. We had been doing business with investment banks like Bear Stearns andGoldman Sachs, but we controlled our risk with those companies just like we did with any borrower. If they had gone broke, we would have lost money, but not nearly as much as we lost to residential builders in the marketplace.It was a relatively small number of large banks and a handful of small banks that were in trouble. It was not an industrywide crisis, except to the degree that the regulators created a crisis by choosing to fail Wachovia, save Citigroup, fail Lehman Brothers, save Bear Stearns. The uncertainty caused by that response took what was going to be a normal correction and transformed it into a crisis, making everything worse than it had to be. The Fool: How did regulators' response to the financial crisis differ from their responses in past crises that you witnessed?Allison: I went through the financial correction in the early 1980s, which should have been more severe because we were in bad trouble economically after the inflation of the 1970s. I also went through the correction in the early 1990s. In neither case did we have a panic. And the reason we didn't have a panic was because at least you knew what to expect.Thousands of banks and thrifts failed in the 1980s and 1990s. The unwillingness to let banks fail in the latest crisis -- they were effectively bailing out everybody -- prevented the natural correction process from happening.We had rule of law in the past. In this crisis, we had no rule of law. When Washington Mutual failed, instead of taking the losses out of the FDIC fund, they took it from bondholders. That crashed the capital markets, which then caused Wachovia to fail. That was a regulatory decision.
The entire interview is definitely worth a read.Link: A Conversation With John Allison, the CEO Who Led BB&T Through the Financial Crisis.
Mar 24, 2018 | Philosophy, Politics
Reading Glenn Woiceshyn's 1998 article The Lewinsky Sex Allegations Against Clinton are Totally Believable draws some interesting parallels to President Trump:Clinton became president not because he is a deft man of principle, but because he is a deft pragmatist, one who skillfully monitors (and manipulates) public opinion, and alters his “principles” accordingly.
Pragmatism, the philosophy dominating modern politics, involves eschewing principles in the name of “doing what will work.” The classic example of a pragmatist was Britain’s then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who abandoned principles to appease Hitler’s power lust by giving him Czechoslovakia, all in the name of peace. The result was war. Without principles, one cannot identify what will and won’t work.
Pragmatism eschews valid moral principles, such as honesty, integrity and justice, which leads to a policy of “doing whatever I can get away with.” If elections can be won by making promises one knows one can’t keep, or deliberately generating false hope about disastrous and wasteful schemes like Medicare and Social Security, or accepting financial contributions from Chinese dictators, or lying about adulterous affairs (such as with Gennifer Flowers), then do it. Clinton’s latest big lie was his claim in his recent State of the Union speech that “We have the smallest government in 35 years.”
How does one know if one will get away with lying or adultery? Ultimately, by feelings. Pragmatism sinks to: “Do I feel that I will get away with it this time?” If one is impulsively driven by strong adulterous urges and gets away with satisfying them once, that builds “confidence” to try again. “Success” at fooling others breeds recklessness, and a perverted feeling of triumph over others and over reality. According to Gennifer Flowers, Clinton once asked her to have sex in a bathroom at the Arkansas’ governor’s mansion while his wife and 50 guests were outside on the lawn. (CNN — Larry King Live, Jan. 23, 1998.) Imagine the “triumphant” feeling of getting away with that!
Read: The Lewinsky Sex Allegations Against Clinton are Totally Believable over at Capitalism Magazine.Mar 24, 2018 | Politics
Writes Dr. George Reisman in a moving tribute to his wife Edith Packer:
Edith was born on October 27, 1924. At this point, I don’t think she can hold it against me for revealing her age. So when she died this last Sunday she was over 93 years old. I had always expected her, and ardently desired her, to live to be at least 105. The fact that she didn’t, has devastated me. For over 48 years her presence filled my life, and now it’s simply gone. I feel a great void.
[...]
As I’ve said, Edith’s passing has left a great void in me. And my knowledge and commitment to reality and rationality have only made it worse. I know that Edith no longer exists as any kind of actual being. All that physically remains of her is a small pile of ashes. She no longer has eyes and so she cannot see me. She no longer has ears and so she cannot hear me. There just is no longer any “she.” But nevertheless, I pretend that in some way, she still exists and that she can still see and hear me, and so I still talk to her every day. And when I’m alone, out of anyone else’s hearing, I talk to her out loud. So I now need Edith more than ever—as my psychotherapist, in addition to everything else. But you know what. Until just this last Sunday, I did talk to Edith out loud, in reality, practically every day, for almost half a century. And so it feels much more normal to go on talking to her, even if only in pretense, than to slam into the brick wall of the fact that she simply is no more. So what I think I’m doing is trying to tap the brakes gently, so to speak, and come to a smooth stop, if that’s possible. I don’t think that’s actually unreasonable. ["Obituary and Eulogy for My Wife Edith Packer"]
The entire tribute is worth a read.
***Dr. Packers' Lectures on Psychology: A Guide to Understanding Your Emotions include some invaluable articles on understanding your own psychology including: The Art of Introspection, Toward a Lasting Romantic Relationship and Happiness Skills.
Mar 23, 2018 | Politics
Writes Gena Gorlin in A Passionate Call for a Commitment to the Truth | Psychology Today:
Indeed, people of all political persuasions seem increasingly willing to uphold their “principles” at any price—including the price of bending or disregarding reality. A recent meta-analysis (link is external) of 41 studies on partisan bias revealed that liberal and conservative participants show equally strong tendencies to distort factual information in line with their respective ideologies. For instance, participants rated the same scientific study as being more methodologically rigorous when told that the results supported versus opposed their political views. Similarly, participants evaluated the same policy proposal more favorably when told it had been endorsed by members of their party, and vice versa. Levels of bias were near-identical among liberal and conservative participants.
Perhaps, then, the one moral concern that most desperately needs defending is the one that would lend credibility to all the rest: loyalty to the truth. Without a commitment to grounding beliefs in what is true, we lack a fundamental motivation to check and validate (and, if need be, abandon or revise) whatever principles we happen to ingest from parents, peers, and professors. As a result, our “moral concerns”—rather than guiding us in the pursuit of a noble vision—may instead urge us blindly down the path of least emotional resistance.
The entire article is a must-read.
Mar 22, 2018 | Politics
Ayn Rand Institute fellow and foreign policy expert Elan Journo has just written a book that examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the goal of answering: what does justice demand in this conflict? In What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict...
....Elan Journo explains the essential nature of the conflict, and what has fueled it for so long. What justice demands, he shows, is that we evaluate both adversaries—and America's approach to the conflict—according to a universal moral ideal: individual liberty. From that secular moral framework, the book analyzes the conflict, examines major Palestinian grievances and Israel's character as a nation, and explains what's at stake for everyone who values human life, freedom, and progress.What Justice Demands shows us why America should be strongly supportive of freedom and freedom-seekers—but, in this conflict and across the Middle East, it hasn't been, much to our detriment.
BOOK: What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Mar 22, 2018 | Philosophy, Politics
The Atlas Project is an online, chapter-by-chapter discussion of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, exploring the novel’s intricate plot and abstract themes through online discussion and live interactive video with philosophers Dr. Greg Salmieri and Dr. Ben Bayer.This week's discussion is on Part III, Chapter 7: "This Is John Galt Speaking" which contains "Galt's Speech" where Rand first presented the fundamentals of her philosophy: Objectivism. For a list of study questions visit this link: https://campus.aynrand.org/
Mar 22, 2018 | Politics, Sci-Tech
Jason Crawford has written an positive summary of Steven Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress over at his blog Roots of Progress:Enlightenment Now is just what the world needs right now. It is a defense of the ideas and values that have created the modern world, and a defense of that world itself. I don’t agree with every word of it, but I agree with its theme and essence. The weakest aspect of the book, to me, is its morality. “Humanism” is a great start, because it sets the right standard: human life and everything that helps people thrive and prosper. But Pinker largely ignores issues of individualism vs. collectivism, and egoism vs. altruism, that I see as core to the ideological struggles of the modern world. And closely related, Pinker falls short of painting a truly inspiring, motivating picture, a heroic ideal to strive for. He himself indicates this in the final pages of the book, when he writes: “The case for Enlightenment Now is not just a matter of debunking fallacies or disseminating data. It may be cast as a stirring narrative, and I hope that people with more artistic flair and rhetorical power than I can tell it better and spread it farther.” I hope they do, as well. But overall, this is a great book, full of profound truths, meticulously researched, lucidly argued, and entertainingly written. Everyone who cares about the big issues of human life, society, politics and culture should read it. [Enlightenment Now: A summary]
One problem with Pinker's book, according to energy expert Alex Epstein -- author of the Moral Case For Fossil Fuels, is his analysis of climate and energy. Writes Epstein:I am generally very excited about Steven Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Unfortunately, the book’s treatment of climate and energy is deeply problematic. A few nights ago I recorded a 20 minute analysis of the climate section of the book. You don’t need a copy of the book to follow along since the text of the book is in the video. I hope you find my analysis useful. I think the principles involved apply to many smart people who get this issue wrong. Bonus: At the end of the video I defend “the Koch Brothers” from Pinker’s smearing. I haven’t spoken much about them publicly so I was glad to get the opportunity. [What’s wrong with Steven Pinker’s analysis of climate and energy | Center for Industrial Progress]
Epstein's particular analysis and Crawford's overall review are both important reading on this vital topic. 
