Foreign policy pro tip: Ultimatums to capitulate don’t work. (Carrot + stick >> stick.)
Category Archives: Thought for the Day
On Willful Ignorance
Rumsfeld’s notorious epistemological categories (“known knowns”, “known unknowns,” “unknown-unknowns”) missed the most important category: “unknown knowns” – the things we already know but choose to “unknow” because we don’t want to deal with the consequences of that knowledge.
Thought for the Day – December 4, 2020
Cribbed from an astute observer on the internet:
The crux of the problem with MBTA’s proposed service cuts is that they come from an assumption that transit is a commodity that can be cut to match market demand rather than a public good. We don’t treat water, electricity or roads this way. Why transit?
The proposed cuts are unpopular but I don’t have a lot of confidence that will prevent them from happening. Are the proposed cuts unpopular enough that people will vote their elected representatives out if they don’t act to stop them? Probably not and, more importantly for the near-term, not enough our legislators are concerned that failing to stand up for public transportation will cost them re-election.
Politics is what it is but cutting public transportation will increase traffic congestion, increase air pollution and be a drag on our economy as we recover from the COVID pandemic. Bad decisions about public transportation now will pay toxic dividends for years to come. Please urge the MBTA, the MA Legislature, and Gov. Baker to strengthen public transportation not weaken it.
Thought for the Day – November 20, 2020
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty.
-Abraham Lincoln
Thought for the Day – November 7, 2020
“Practicing good epistemological hygiene requires that one seek out perspectives that challenge one’s own.”
I try to do that. The perspectives that challenge my own and hold up to scrutiny are much more often from my left than from my right.
Thought for the Day – November 5, 2020
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
– Tom Stoppard
Thought for the Day – October 10, 2020
Degrowth: A planned reduction of excess energy and resource use in rich nations to bring the economy back into balance with the living world, while reducing inequality and improving people’s access to the resources they need to live long, healthy, flourishing lives.
Thought for the Day – October 9, 2020
I too would prefer a benevolent dictator who imposes liberty and justice to the messiness of majority rule. Problem is, no one aspires to be dictator because they want to impose liberty and justice. And no one who prioritizes liberty and justice has much chance to be dictator.
-Radley Balko
Thought for the Day – October 8, 2020
It just sounds wrong for a male deer to have a rack.
Thought for the Day – October 6, 2020
From a review of Carlos Lozada’s book, A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era:
Messing around with the notion of truth is a luxury that comes with affluence. We have spent the past 50 years undermining the basic institutions of society — not just our sense of common purpose and identity, but also normative values like truth and duty and expertise. The politics of consumerism — and grievance — have overwhelmed the politics of unity and responsibility. Among Lozada’s favorite books is the conservative thinker Yuval Levin’s “A Time to Build”: “Popular culture compels us to ask: ‘What do I want?’ Institutions urge a different query, Levin explains: ‘Given my role here, how should I act?’