Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query

Darwinian evolution is certainly the most simple and powerful theory to explain us, to date. There isn't any others that are viable at all.

Its not the randomness that leads to order, it is the fact that the selection process is non random. The laws of physics simply prefer one arrangement over another. Even temperature is a most decidedly non random selector.

And what about *all* of the other 10,000's of accounts on evolution?

Once you see some GA techniques successively applied to circuit design you might change you view.

So what. Every biologist knows this. Its a trivial issue. There are billions and billions of replications occurring all the time, you only need one good one. How many replicating cells are there on the planet earth?

Probably not. It don't look like the laws of physics allow such traits. No one claimed that all things are possible just because there are may be an infinite number possibilities. Infinite is not all. e.g. There are an infinite of numbers between 0 and 1, but one of them are 2.

They do over a long period of time. This is easily demonstrated by simulation. The evidence that new species arise from mutations is overwhelming. Of course, direct proof is an issue, but so is direct visible proof of other planets orbiting other suns. The indirect proof is simply not debatable within the existing science framework. Pretty much *everything* we know about the respective sciences would have to be fundamentally wrong if either evolution was false, or that the newly discovered planets were false.

It just seems that you don't have enough background to know where science is today. Sure, its not always right, but that doesn't mean that everything that we know in science is wrong. Science is more about dotting it's and crossing t's for much of existing knowledge, which is not to say that something surprising might not occur. There will always be unknowns. However, the *basics* of Evolution is not one of them. Evolution is fact beyond any measure of reasonable doubt. Period. Its just unfortunate that many religious bent individuals cling to daft ideas of 1000's of years ago.

You don't understand what GAs are then. The only thing the human does is physically set up something that could have occurred by nature. There are no explicit instructions in GA. You simple generate random traits, and have a selection process going on.

Secondly, the human brain is itself a Darwinian Machine. It works by exactly the same process. There are no other viable alternatives. If you know of one, please do let me know. You might get a Nobel.

My arguments are not circular. Indeed, I use this very same notion to prove that conscioness is not derivable.

What I do is start with some axioms

That isn't a defence, its simply a statement that no one has presented a viable alternative.

And we mean *nothing*.

What I am saying here is not a proof of the statement, only that no other theory has ever been found that is as successful as Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution has been confirmed millions of times. Indeed, no other theory actually exists. Name one *scientific* theory, i.e. one not based on the Bible says so.

And what alternatives would those be? Seriously, present one.

Meaningless statement. With all due respect, this shows you still don't understand the basic principles here.

Of course random colours occur. Dah...Thats *why* evolution works. If there were no randam generation of traits there would be no evolution. Dah... Sure, randam colurs by themselves are not evoltion, its just

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

But what is the force, energy, the motivation causing a meme to replicate? Its organisms trying to take the path of least action, or what they think is the path of least action. Maturity is a processes of logic, identification, integration and mutation. Organisms mature, species mature, cultures mature.

Then they replicate and proliferate better.

Have you heard of Burkett's, "Pentagon's New Map"?

Oops, the name is Barnett, not Burkett.

Don't you think they make enough of those already? You want more paranoid loons ranting about being tormented by them?

I'll try to follow up now on the relevant technical issues in this query.

Winfield Hill in : w: I'm sorry Max, I received neither of those emails you mention, w: nor did I see the post you refer to. My long-standing home w: email address has not been functional for about a year now, w: and my work email should be used instead ... 10x more w: spams than real mail ... 300 messages/day

I quite understand, I know the problem.

Winfield Hill in :

Max Hauser wrote... >

w: I remember working with Paul on that drawing, which would w: have to have been sometime in 1977 or 1978. The inspiration w: for our design was an HP instrument which came out probably w: in the early 70s. This instrument fully laid out the technique, w: although it was more complex than our design, and I thought w: we could devise a more simple version. I don't recall the w: Workman article in ED, although I may have seen it - could w: you send me a copy? It would be interesting to compare w: and consider the differences.

I certainly plan to do that once I get it back into my possession. I do not have the article at hand now, though I have some other relevant literature I'll mention below.

But at this point I should explain something that (from other replies) may have been unclear to some people who have not seen the circuits in question. The two circuits are interesting not because they are LFSRs (linear-feedback shift registers). Rather, they start with LFSRs built specifically from long CMOS shift registers, then they exploit the time-shifted output sequence inherent in shift registers with parallel outputs, and the rail-to-rail voltage swings of CMOS logic, through an array of analog-weighted resistors, forming a compact analog FIR filtering function with inherent D/A conversion, the resistor conductances defining the filter impulse response (IR). The Fourier transform of this IR then weights the natural spectrum of the LFSR digital pseudonoise generator, so that you get an analog pseudonoise output, with _arbitrarily_ programmable spectrum. The circuits are remarkable both for the concert of principles, in my opinion (analog and digital, continuous- and discrete-time), and also for the coincidence of practical details in these two published versions. (Workman's _ED_ article included a programmable-calculator algorithm to set the resistor weights for a desired output spectrum.)

Along with CMOS implementation specifics, these circuits depart from the famous Hewlett-Packard 3722A pseudonoise generator, by exploiting time-lagged shift-register outputs for analog FIR filtering. (I have 3722A details in the 1970 H-P catalog.) Another analog pseudonoise generator design, published in _Electronics_ circa 1980 by Henrique Sarmento Malvar at the University of Brasilia, uses a CMOS LFSR, but applies continuous-time lowpass filtering to a _one-bit_ binary output.

For those of you interested in general, yes, LFSRs are a type of recursive digital filter or limit-cycle oscillator defined on Galois fields. The formalism is exact. Take a series of clocked delay cells carrying modulo-N integer numbers, tap off some linear combination using the modulo-N arithmetic, and feed it back to the input. Then you will get pseudorandom cycles as the clock runs, details dependent on tap arithmetic and on initial values (state) in the delay cells. (Basics of LFSR were not however the focus of my query.)

w: If you examine our book, you'll see that we have very few w: references. ... it was clear we could not take the time to find w: good or accurate references for everything we were presenting, w: and therefore we didn't even try.

Again the similarity to a published circuit triggered the query. I don't know which came first, but I favor acknowledgement. (Some authors are very casual indeed about these things, in more recent years.)

"Michael Black" in m: We're talking about a shift register set up for a pseudo- m: random output? The concept was out there before this. ... m: Don Lancaster also wrote about it. I can remember an m: article in Radio Electronics in mid-1975. And he covers it m: in his TTL Cookbook with 1974 copyright. Even better, he m: used the concept in his Psych-Tone in the February 1971 m: issue of Popular Electronics, page 25, to generate random m: musical tones.

Above I explained further details common to the two circuits. But what a small world! Some of us can trace engineering careers, in part, to Don Lancaster's 1968 Decade Counter Unit (DCU) in Pop'tronics in 1968, with sequels. In 1973 I wrote to Don Lancaster to show a pseudorandom beep-tone generator of my own, built at the time for a parrot that was hard to please. (Dubbed a Pseudorandom Parrot Pleaser.) Later (1974) built into a nice hand-held box (LMB Crown Royal series) and renamed a Cyclodigitron, in honor of a famous fictional computer advertised in the 1960s on then-MIT campus radio station WTBS, called a Dynadigitron. (Mine used a CD4006 18-bit shift register with a second chip, CD4011 quad NAND, as XOR for feedback.) Memory lane.

"Harry Dellamano" in : h: I remember working at Beckman Systems Division in 1967 h: and using a 22 bit pseudo random noise generator ... h: implemented with Sylvania SOUL-!! 5V TTL devices.

"Nicholas O. Lindan" in : n: > Sylvania SOUL-!! n: SUHL: Sylvania's Universal High-Level Logic n: Premiered 1963. Was used for the control computer, a n: Bailey 855, at Three-Mile Island....still in production in 1979.

Good stuff, SUHL I and II. If you missed the "old-fart electronics quiz" that I posted here 2 Aug 87 (sci.electronics) and 17 Jan 04, Question 11 asked about SUHL (and also SN7300 series, CCSL, HTL, ECCSL, Utilogic, and COSMOS).

"Don Lancaster" in :

d: The PsycTone came about at Goodyear Aerospace when a d: cubical mate was applying these sequences to a multi-million d: dollar aerospace project and I told him I thought I could make d: them squawk. d: See

A happy 2005 to all -- Max

(The limerick wasn't bad, either, IMO.)

Scott Stephens wrote:

At the risk of polluting the work of Hayek, I'll attempt a brief (and likely clumsy) explanation regarding what I take his meaning to be when he refers to "socialism is/as a religion."

For starters, socialism aims for a "designed society/civilization"; the thrust and justification has high congruency to the teleological argument (for the existance of God) exemplified by Einstein's comment that "God does not play dice with nature." The point of this argument is the "proving" of the existance of controlling/creating supernatural dieties by arguing that the extraordinary order that life manifests could not have occured by chance, but only by intentional *design* with God-power.

That is, the socialist believes civilization can be *designed* by some extraordinarily educated elites that have/had the god-like wisdom to know what the *results* of civilization should be. That is, the elites can claim the current results and "design" are "wrong" and they know how to design a proper civilisation and "correct" the current and past shortcomings.

Hayek points out that civilization was not "designed" with any such central command of grand intent for result. He describes the exisiting order of civilization as the "extended order." It is not an organic order like that biological life, but the extended order certainly did "evolve" with no overriding specific intent to do so, just as organic life has done. Moreover, this extended order worked in synergy with an organic form (us).

Socialists claim rationality because they *believe* civilization was (and can be) designed by humans, rather than occurring spontaneously -- in synergy with them -- as just another random but ultimately selected mutation. In point of fact, it is certain that "human reason" to at least some extent is responsible for our current form of civilization. However, these "reasons" were not part of a grand overall design by some few bright humans, but rather an incremental test/try/fail-succeed that is gradually built upon. "Reasoned" and overall development of civilization was not of explicit design but rather environment tested creation of the extended order: thus the extended order is evolutional and not of teleological design by some elite board of unusually bright humans of god-like knowledge and decision making. The extended order of civilization occurred, according to Hayek, on the razor's edge *between* instinct and reason, it was incremental, and not of overall design intent.

A socialist design is anti-random and anti-evolutional because he/she claims to know what the results of civilization should be (via "social justice"). Socialism strives for stability when life contrarily calls out its inherent dynamism. It is irrational to expect some elite board of humans to know what some *specific* "right aims" are, or much more devastating, to have the arrogance to even believe they would know how to effectively implement those specific actual aims/results. To pin such hopes on humans is an act of faith, not rationality, so it is striking that many socialists claim the mantle of rationality. In this way of faith in god-like perspicacity of certain elite humans (rather than actual gods), socialism is religion.

Often scientists are the worst "rationality" offenders, as they have succeeded in the design of much lesser projects and are arrogant enough to believe themselves (and others) capable of designing the extended order, whose complexity they greatly underestimate. (I haven't read it, but I suspect this was the premise of Hayek's _The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason_.

When proposing and justifying government socialist interference and redistribution aims, Jackson is heard citing religious doctrine. The same goes for Ward, a talk show host for San Francisco's KGO superstation. Jackson is a preacher and Ward a former Franciscan priest. I find it ironic that many "intellectual" leftists denounce the moralist christian tradition on the so-called right, but endorse those on the left.

I have never read any Rand, but perhaps given how much she pisses so many off, perhaps I should.

The "socialism as religion" idea is more elucidated in his book _The Fatal Conceit_, with the fatal conceit being the arrogant but gross overestimation of the knowledge and decision capabilities of the elite. _The Road to Serfdom_, while his most well-known and embodying many of his repeated ideas, was pointed as a political tract against Naziism (note the timing).

I had not heard of it. Hayek devoted his life to principles of _The Constitution of Liberty_ and this involves general Rule of Law, and promotes individual liberty. It is individual liberty, protected through general Rule of Law, that plays to the dynamic aspect of life and best fosters the evolutional sorting of effective culture (by not prohibiting/preventing experimentation as long the equal liberty of others is not trampled upon).

In reviewing Burkett's book at Amazon, I thought you may be interested in another book, Brink Lindsey's _Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism_

I wonder if the following excerpt will amuse: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hayek, _The Constitution of Liberty_, pp55-62

CHAPTER FOUR

Freedom, Reason, and Tradition

1. Though freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization,it did not arise from design. The institutions of freedom, like everything freedom has created, were not established because people foresaw the benefits they would bring. But, once its advantages were recognized, men began to perfect and extend the reign of freedom and, for that purpose, to inquire how a free society worked. This development of a theory of liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty; the second did not. As a result, we have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty:1 one empirical and unsys- tematic, the other speculative and rationalistic2--the first based on an interpretation of traditions and institutions which had spontaneously grown up and were but imperfectly understood, the second aiming at the construction of a utopia, which has often been tried but never successfully. Nevertheless, it has been the rationalist, plausible, and apparently logical argument of the French tradition, with its flattering assumptions about the unlimited powers of human reason, that has progressively gained influence, while the less articulate and less explicit tradition of English freedom has been on the decline. This distinction is obscured by the facts that what we have called the "French tradition" of liberty arose largely from an attempt to interpret British institutions and that the conceptions which other countries formed of British institutions were based mainly on their description by French writers. The two traditions became finally confused when they merged in the liberal movement of the nineteenth century and when even leading British liberals drew as much on the French as on the British tradition.3 It was, in the end, the victory of the Benthamite Philosophical Radicals over the Whigs in England that concealed the fundamental difference which in more recent years has reappeared as the conflict between liberal democracy and "social" or totalitarian democracy.4 This difference was better understood a hundred years ago than it is today. In the year of the European revolutions in which the two traditions merged, the contrast between "Anglican" and "Gal- lican" liberty was still clearly described by an eminent German- American political philosopher. "Gallican Liberty," wrote Francis Lieber in 1848, "is sought in the government, and according to an Anglican point of view, it is looked for in a wrong place, where it cannot be found. Necessary consequences of the Gallican view are, that the French look for the highest degree Of political civilization in organization, that is, in the highest degree of inter- ference by public power. The question whether this interference be despotism or liberty is decided solely by the fact who interferes, and for the benefit of which class the interference takes place, while according to the Anglican view this interference would always be either absolutism or aristocracy, and the present dictatorship of the ouvriers would appear to us an uncompromising aristocracy of the ouvriers."5 Since this was written, the French tradition has everywhere progressively displaced the English. To disentangle the two tradi- tions it is necessary to look at the relatively pure forms in which they appeared in the eighteenth century. What we have called the "British tradition" was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson,6 seconded by their English contemporaries Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, and William Paley, and drawing largely on a tradition rooted in the jurisprudence of the common law? Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlight- enment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism: the Encyclo- pedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Condorcet, are their best-known representatives. Of course, the division does not fully coincide with national boundaries. Frenchmen like Montesquieu and, later, Benjamin Constant and, above all, Alexis de Tocque- ville are probably nearer to what we have called the "British" than to the "French" tradition.8 And, in Thomas Hobbes, Britain has provided at least one of the founders of the rationalist tradi- tion, not to speak of the whole generation of enthusiasts for the French Revolution, like Godwin, Priestley, Price, and Paine, who (like Jefferson after his stay in France9) belong entirely to it.
2. Though these two groups are now commonly lumped together as the ancestors of modern liberalism, there is hardly a greater contrast imaginable than that between their respective concep- tions of the evolution and functioning of a social order and the role played in it by liberty. The difference is directly traceable to the predominance of an essentially empiricist view of the world in England and a rationalist approach in France. The main contrast in the practical conclusions to which these ap- proaches led has recently been well put, as follows: "One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attain- ment of an absolute collective purpose";10 and "one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberateness; one for trial and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern."11 It is the second view, as J. L. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy. The sweeping success of the political doctrines that stem from the French tradition is probably due to their great appeal to human pride and ambition. But we must not forget that the political conclusions of the two schools derive from different conceptions of how society works. In this respect the British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the rationalist school was simply and complete- ly wrong. Those British philosophers have given us an interpretation of the growth of civilization that is still the indispensable founda- tion of the argument for liberty. They find the origin of institutions, not in contrivance or design, but in the survival of the successful. Their view is expressed in terms of "how nations stumble upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action but not the execution of human design."12 It stresses that what we call political order is much less the product of our ordering intelligence than is commonly imagined. As their immediate successors saw it, what Adam Smith and his contemporaries did was "to resolve almost all that has been ascribed to positive institution into the spontaneous and irresistible development of certain obvious principles,--and to show with how little con- trivance or political wisdom the most complicated and apparently artificial schemes of policy might have been erected."13 This "anti-rationalistic insight into historical happenings that Adam Smith shares with Hume, Adam Ferguson, and others"14 enabled them for the first time to comprehend how institutions and morals, language and law, have evolved by a process of cumu- lative growth and that it is only with and within this framework that human reason has grown and can successfully operate. Their argument is directed throughout against the Cartesian conception of an independently and antecedently existing human reason that invented these institutions and against the conception that civil society was formed by some wise original legislator or an original "social contract."15 The latter idea of intelligent men coming together for deliberation about how to make the world anew is perhaps the most characteristic outcome of those design theories. It found its perfect expression when the leading theorist of the French Revolution, Abbé Sieyès, exhorted the revolutionary assembly "to act like men just emerging from the state of nature and coming together for the purpose of signing a social contract."16 The ancients understood the conditions of liberty better than that. Cicero quotes Cato as saying that the Roman constitution was superior to that of other states because it "was based upon the genius, not of one man, but of many: it was founded, not in one generation, but in a long period of several centuries and many ages of men. For, said he, there never has lived a man possessed of so great a genius that nothing could escape him, nor could the combined powers of all men living at one time possibly make all the necessary provisions for the future without the aid of actual experience and the test of time."17 Neither republican Rome nor Athens--the two free nations of the ancient world--could thus serve as an example for the rationalists. For Descartes, the fountainhead of the rationalist tradition, it was indeed Sparta that provided the model; for her greatness "was due not the pre-eminence of each of its laws in particular ... but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to a single end."18 And it was Sparta which became the ideal of liberty for Rousseau as well as for Robespierre and Saint-Just and for most of the later advocates of "social" or totalitarian democracy.19 Like the ancient, the modern British conceptions of liberty grew against the background of a comprehension, first achieved by the lawyers, of how institutions had developed. "There are many things specially in laws and governments," wrote Chief Justice Hale in the seventeenth century in a critique of Hobbes, "that mediately, remotely, and consequentially are reasonable to be approved, though the reason of the party does not presently or immediately and distinctly see its reasonableness.... Long experience makes more discoveries touching conveniences or in- conveniences of laws than is possible for the wisest council of men at first to foresee. And that those amendments and supplements that through the various experiences of wise and knowing men have been applied to any law must needs be better suited to the convenience of laws, than the best invention of the most pregnant wits not aided by such a series and tract of experience.... This adds to the difficulty of a present fathoming of the reason of laws, because they are the production of long and iterated experience which, though it be commonly called the mistress of fools, yet certainly it is the wisest expedient among mankind, and discovers those defects and supplies which no wit of man could either at once foresee or aptly remedy.... It is not necessary that the reasons of the institution should be evident unto us. It is sufficient that they are instituted laws that give a certainty to us, and it is reasonable to observe them though the particular reason of the institution appear not."20
3. From these conceptions gradually grew a body of social theory that showed how, in the relations among men, complex and orderly and, in a very definite sense, purposive institutions might grow up which owed little to design, which were not invented but arose from the separate actions of many men who did not know what they were doing. This demonstration that something greater than man's individual mind may grow from men's fumbling efforts represented in some ways an even greater challenge to all design theories than even the later theory of biological evolution. For the first time it was shown that an evident order which was not the product of a designing human intelligence need not therefore be ascribed to the design of a higher, supernatural intelligence, but that there was a third possibility-- the emergence of order as the result of adaptive evolution.21 Since the emphasis we shall have to place on the role that selection plays in this process of social evolution today is likely to create the impression that we are borrowing the idea from biology, it is worth stressing that it was, in fact, the other way round: there can be little doubt that it was from the theories of social evolution that Darwin and his contemporaries derived the suggestion for their theories.22 Indeed, one of those Scottish philosophers who first developed these ideas anticipated Darwin even in the biological field;23 and the later application of these conceptions by the various "historical schools" in law and lan- guage rendered the idea that similarity of structure might be accounted for by a common origin24 a commonplace in the study of social phenomena long before it was applied to biology. It is unfortunate that at a later date the social sciences, instead of building on these beginnings in their own field, re-imported some of these ideas from biology and with them brought in such conceptions as "natural selection," "struggle for existence," and "survival of the fittest," which are not appropriate in their field; for in social evolution, the decisive factor is not the selection of the physical and inheritable properties of the individuals but the selection by imitation of successful institutions and habits. Though this operates also through the success of individuals and groups, what emerges is not an inheritable attribute of individuals, but ideas and skills--in short, the whole cultural inheritance which is passed on by learning and imitation.
4. A detailed comparison of the two traditions would require a separate book; here we can merely single out a few of the crucial points on which they differ. While the rationalist tradition assumes that man was originally endowed with both the intellectual and the moral attributes that enabled him to fashion civilization deliberately, the evolutionists made it clear that civilization was the accumulated hard-earned result of trial and error; that it was the sum of experience, in part handed from generation to generation as explicit knowledge, but to a larger extent embodied in tools and institutions which had proved themselves superior--institutions whose significance we might discover by analysis but which will also serve men's ends without men's understanding them. The Scottish theorists were very much aware how delicate this artificial structure of civilization was which rested on man's more primitive and fe- rocious instincts being tamed and checked by institutions that he neither had designed nor could control. They were very far from holding such naïve views, later unjustly laid at the door of their liberalism, as the "natural goodness of man," the existence of a "natural harmony of interests," or the beneficent effects of "natural liberty" (even though they did sometimes use the last phrase). They knew that it required the artifices of institu- tions and traditions to reconcile the conflicts of interest. Their problem was how "that universal mover in human nature, self love, may receive such direction in this case (as in all others) as to promote the public interest by those efforts it shall make towards pursuing its own."25 It was not "natural liberty" in any literal sense, but the institutions evolved to secure "life, lib- erty, and property," which made those individual efforts bene- ficial.26 Not Locke, nor Hume, nor Smith, nor Burke, could ever have argued, as Bentham did, that "every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty."27 Their argument was never a complete laissez faire argument, which, as the very words show, is also part of the French rationalist tradition and in its literal sense was never defended by any of the English classical economists.28 They knew better than most of their later critics that it was not some sort of magic but the evolution of "well-constructed institutions," where the "rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages"29 would be reconciled, that had successfully channeled individual efforts to socially beneficial aims. In fact, their argument was never antistate as such, or anarchistic, which is the logical outcome of the rationalistic laissez faire doctrine; it was an argument that accounted both for the proper functions of the state and for the limits of state action. The difference is particularly conspicuous in the respective assumptions of the two schools concerning individual human nature. The rationalistic design theories were necessarily based on the assumption of the individual man's propensity for rational action and his natural intelligence and goodness. The evolutionary theory, on the contrary, showed how certain institutional arrange- ments would induce man to use his intelligence to the best effect and how institutions could be framed so that bad people could do least harm.30 The antirationalist tradition is here closer to the Christian tradition of the fallibility and sinfulness of man, while the perfectionism of the rationalist is in irreconcilable con- flict with it. Even such a celebrated figment as the "economic man" was not an original part of the British evolutionary tradi- tion. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that, in the view of those British philosophers, man was by nature lazy and indolent, improvident and wasteful, and that it was only by the force of circumstances that he could be made to behave economically or would learn carefully to adjust his means to his ends. The 'h*mo oeconomzcus' was explicitly introduced, with much else that belongs to the rationalist rather than to the evolutionary tradition, only by the younger Mill.31
5. The greatest difference between the two views, however, is in their respective ideas about the role of traditions and the value of all the other products of unconscious growth proceeding throughout the ages.32 It would hardly be unjust to say that the rationalistic approach is here opposed to almost all that is the distinct product of liberty and that gives liberty its value. Those who believe that all useful institutions are deliberate contrivances and who cannot conceive of anything serving a human purpose that has not been consciously designed are almost of necessity enemies of freedom. For them freedom means chaos. To the empiricist evolutionary tradition, on the other hand, the value of freedom consists mainly in the opportunity it provides for the growth of the undesigned, and the beneficial functioning of a free society rests largely on the existence of such freely grown institutions. There probably never has existed a genuine belief in freedom, and there has certainly been no successful attempt to operate a free society, without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits and "all those securities of liberty which arise from regulation of long prescription and an- cient ways."33 Paradoxical as it may appear, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in a large measure be a tradition-bound society.34 This esteem for tradition and custom, of grown institutions, and of rules whose origins and rationale we do not know does not, of course, mean--as Thomas Jefferson believed with a char- acteristic rationalist misconception--that we "ascribe to men of preceding age a wisdom more than human, and... suppose what they did beyond amendment."35 Far from assuming that those who created the institutions were wiser than we are, the evolution- ary view is based on the insight that the result of the experimenta- tion of many generations may embody more experience than any one man possesses. ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Review:

1. "[T]he British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the [French] rationalist school was simply and completely wrong.
2. Evolution of civilization was not "Darwinian"; the theories that explain this evolution precede Darwin.
3. "[T]he rationalist tradition assumes that man was originally endowed with both the intellectual and the moral attributes that enabled him to fashion civilization deliberately, the evolutionists made it clear that civilization was the accumulated hard-earned result of trial and error; that it was the sum of experience, in part handed from generation to generation as explicit knowledge, but to a larger extent embodied in tools and institutions which had proved themselves superior--institutions whose significance we might discover by analysis but which will also serve men's ends without men's understanding them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"A few lines of reasoning can change the way we look at the world." -- Steven E. Lansburg

"Even scholars with Ph.D.s in other fields are often uninformed or misinformed about economics, though that seldom deters them from having and voicing opinions on economic issues." -- Thomas Sowell

I read in sci.electronics.design that gwhite wrote (in ) about 'Suggestions for AoE 3rd Ed.', on Tue,

There's more than a slight odour of 'meme' about that.

But it might be more appropriate to send such long messages by email.

Something interesting I came across at

Penrosian

Penrose thinks

I'm not insisting QM has anything to do with consciousness or politics, or that Penrose is even right about gravity and QM. String theory with multiple dimensions could be just as spooky when it comes to non-local effect. Just citing organizing principles in nature.

The wisdom to organize matter is distributed in it. To the extent there is "intelligent design" or an invisible hand organizing and causing evolution, it appears to be distributed and intrinsic.

In the case of politics, its the inability of both the princes and peasants to the resist delusions they can either withstand or refrain from corruption, from concentrated power. Narcissism and hubris make the weak minded deny history and reality.

Socialism, perhaps I should say populism, is the delusion of values are given by consensus regarding entitlement or servility, prestige or shame, rather than objective values intrinsic in nature, necessary to attaining the true path of least action to further one's life in a civilized context.

Life is often counter-intuitive. Elitism breeds delusions of benevolence, which lead to subsidizing and rewarding the pathetic while punishing and taxing the excellent, degrading the culture at large. This is the theme of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", which is occurring in places like Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

And you find Patricia Ireland and many other feminists defending Bill Clinton too. No better way to identify a corrupt pragmatist. Power is a greater motivator than the cause they claim power to advocate.

I really like her works. I can't think of a better single source for useful philosophy in an easily digestible form. A while back I found some of Atlas Shrugged and her speeches on the net, and compared to other philosophers I've skimmed, none were nearly so contemporary or practical in understanding human behavior, psychology and politics.

Rand's novels depict the delusions underlying socialism and despotism, and her formal philosophy proposes rational values and morality.

I heard it said our current "cultural war" is over living according to a "social contract", or living according to a religious "covenant". In "To the New Intellectual" Rand traces the "mystics of mind" (clergy) and "mystics of muscle" (warlords) through history, and has a few chapters that summarize her novels and philosophy.

The rich bribe themselves tax exemptions, the poor vote themselves entitlements, and immigration, taxation and fiat currency inflation drag the working class down. The government taxes everyone to their tolerance, kicking the money to the government universities and contractors, which are the same as government. There is a revolving door, an aristocracy, of university, corporate and government top-level management. That is the serfdom I see.

....

This is Rand's central thesis; your own life (qua rational being) is your highest value.

Thanks for the post and the book list!

LOL

I don't know if there is a legislated monopoly on money in the US. In any case, there is a practicing monopoly.

We get a roach coach at about 10:15. I've finally talked them into making Sloppy Joes, albeit Manwich, and only about once a week. So on Sloppy Joe day I usually get six, and keep four for the weekend.

Cheers! Rich

Sad Stale Slimy Sloppy Joe.

You left out "soggy". ;-)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Yum! Soooooo good with Saturday Morning cartoons. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

When my Mom used to make sandwiches for me, I asked her to _not_ butter the bread first, because the ketchup all squeezes out. Withouth the butter, the ketchup soaks into the bread, and so gets into your mouth rather than on your pants. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

I have a small kitchen in the cottage I use for my computer room. I cook a lot of meals in a large crock pot, or a large older microwave. I can't eat a lot of prepared foods because of the fat, salt and sugar contents so its convenient to have it just a few painful steps away.

I would really like to see the following in the index, but I suspect that the authors wouldn't share my sense of humor..

Assume that the "G" portion of the index is on page 486. Put in an entry that says "Guy Macon; 486"

I wonder how much of a bribe it would take to get Winfield to slip that in?

The index on page 486 only? You obvious don't own the current edition. I suggest purchasing it tout de suite if you want to influence Win. ;-)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Sigh.

I bought a copy for everyone in my engineering dept. and two for me. the number 486 was picked out of a hat (it's the CPU of a box I just added to my LAN, actually). The key point is the index entry that referrs you to the page the index entry is on - a self-refferential index entry. (Also, it would be cool beyond imagination being able to ask people to look me up in the AoE index. )

I would have used a more plausible example, such as "page 1103".

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

So you're proposing patrons so the authors can dedicate their time to finishing the new edition and get it out sooner?

Wouldn't it be classier if page 486 said at the bottom of the page "this page was brought to you by Guy Macon"?

Michael