Just testing to see if it posts ok.
PhD Microbiologist is a theist.
McGrath wrote the book for those who want more than the classical arguments about the existence of God. Atheists pretend that there are no folks with advanced degrees in science who are theists. The debate is not over knowledge or science. it is over belief. What is believable. A lot of scientists think theism is more believable than atheism. Calling them names or saying they are irrational isn’t a proof the the scientists who are theists are incorrect.
Free Social Networking?
Free as in “big tech does not control it.”
We shall not be down on Zuckerberg’s plantation any more.
Why Do Dems Quit?
Why would a fan of a democrat unfollow them from twitter just because others are using twitter? Do they believe their favorite democrat has nothing to say?
Could it be the fake supporters know they will be squashed? That the supporters were fakes all along?
Scientific Religion?
Saying Scientific Materialism is like saying Scientific Religion.
Materialism is a philosophic opinion. It is not science. It is actually a leap of faith. But people talk about it because it sounds scientific, and because it is not very obvious that it is a leap of faith.
Putting the word scientific in front of materialism does not make materialism into science any more than putting the word scientific in front of the word religion turns religion into science.
It takes more than a label or an adjective to describe what is scientific.
Philosophers refer to materialism as being “scientific materialism” because the people talking about it talk a lot about science. I use the term too. It really means “science-y sort of like one would use the word geeky. But it is just plain old materialism spoken of in science-like terminology to dress it up a bit. What would be the difference between scientific materialism and non-scientific materialism? None.
Its a bit like grape nuts. They are not grapes. They are not nuts. They are just a name. Not even a description. More of a metaphor. Grape nuts is metaphorical language, not definitive or descriptive language. Scientific materialism is metaphorical language for materialism.
Howto Convert a kindle Book to PDF
(for personal use of books you own)
From Amazon Website
Even if you have a registered Kindle device, you can download the Kindle book to your computer directly from the Amazon account. Log into your account Amazon Website Select Account and save your purchased book for export to USB (option near the bottom as I recall).
Then use the book reader know as Calibre
Calibre works great on linux. Calibre is one of the easiest ways to convert Kindle to PDF that also allows you to read and organize ebooks on various devices. This tool is available for all Operating Systems but I use only linux so I do not care about the others.
To convert Kindle to PDF:
Click on the ‘Add books’ option.
- Go to the Kindle book you want to convert and select it to add it to Calibre.
- Select the added book inside Calibre.
- Click on the Convert Books option.
- From the dropdown menu of ‘Output format’, select PDF.
To see the conversion, you can click on Jobs at the bottom-right corner. When the conversion is complete, select PDF and select “Save the PDF format to disk” and save it.
Open in your favorite PDF editor.
Dem Gov Response To Biden
Half Price Black Friday
This is for the farm. I could never afford it if not half price. The Wyze cams are a complete failure. I have 6 wyze devices that have stopped working. We shall see if blink turns out to be useful.
The Constitution: Why a Republic?
Ever wonder about that?
Here is a resource on that subject.
Video by Robert George: The Constitution: Why a Republic
OK, I probably need to make a page to discuss what this 5 minute video says. Or I could review it here I guess.
I’m not sure I remember how to make a menu item that takes you to a video page on the topic of say, constitutional law. For right now I wanted to be able to post a link to the video on social media in a “write one post many” fashion.
Readers can watch the video if they wish.
The goal here is to never create content on other social media pages but instead to create it ONCE in my own space with my own commentary. Let facebook censor commentary on wordpress if they will. They might possibly do that. But this is a PUBLISHING PLATFORM not a file sharing platform. It is under FAIR USE rules in law. Facebook resident content is not under fair use law. Or any law. Facebook owns all content.
I, Robot or … Get a Dog?
I love gadgets. My wife hates gadgets. She wins. Her rule: Keep it warm wet and fuzzy.
Cute idea. Ummm…in my kitchen … what about chair legs everywhere? ** Bump ** Crash **
My puppy used to lap up every crumb under that table.
Will the robot put up all the chairs for us?
BTW, doubles as a coffee maker, didn’t you know?
This baby, by contrast, seems to have mulched up all the debris on the kitchen floor with aplomb.
Just kidding.
Shocked by Reductionism
Recently I watched a portion of a debate between an atheist and Dinesh De Souza in the wake of the Sean Carroll debate.
The atheist team member (who I thought was Sean himself) stated that thoughts are imaginary. They arise from chemical phenomena in the neuron but themselves are imaginary, i.e., do not exist. We only think they exist, but they actually do not. In other words, they are ontologically imaginary.
To me this has huge implications. It implies that minds are imaginary (and do not really exist). The trappings of minds, such as love and justice and morality and meaning are also imaginary. Personality does not exist. What a convenient way to get rid of the ultimate personality we call God. It is a very convenient solution to an atheists problem set! Define God as non-existent.
One problem: this means people also not exist! They are just chemical reactions.
I thought at the time, how does one who believes this way describe himself? Is he a reductionist? Is that his philosophy? Hmmm.
I want to touch briefly on reductionism. Here is a quote from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy about Reductionism.
Reductionism
Reductionists are those who take one theory or phenomenon to be reducible to some other theory or phenomenon. For example, a reductionist regarding mathematics might take any given mathematical theory to be reducible to logic or set theory.
Or, a reductionist about biological entities like cells might take such entities to be reducible to collections of physico-chemical entities like atoms and molecules. The type of reductionism that is currently of most interest in metaphysics and philosophy of mind involves the claim that all sciences are reducible to physics. This is usually taken to entail that all phenomena (including mental phenomena like consciousness) are identical to physical phenomena.
The bulk of this article will discuss this latter understanding of reductionism.
This definition (in grey) certainly does describe the position of the atheist person debating Dinesh. It was presented as the position of modern physicists when arguing against Dinesh’s theism.
I do not think reductionism is the position taken by most physicists, and this is why the claim surprised me.
There is a related belief: scientific materialism.
Scientific materialist say “if a phenomena is not part of the physical world of matter and energy then the phenomena is not REAL. I.E., does not ontologically exist. It exists only as a concept (which of course is held by an imaginary non-existing entity we call a mind). This is what they mean by “imaginary”.
Who can question the word of a physicist?
What about John Polkinghorne? John Charlton Polkinghorne KBE FRS (16 October 1930 – 9 March 2021) was an English theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest.
*GASP* A “theist”. See some of what PolkingHorne has to say in his FAQ pages.
Or Stephen M Barr? Stephen Matthew Barr[1] (born November 28, 1953) is an American physicist who is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Delaware.[2] A member of its Bartol Research Institute, Barr does research in theoretical particle physics and cosmology. In 2011, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the citation reading “for original contributions to grand unified theories, CP violation, and baryogenesis.”[3]
*GASP* … another theist.
Whats going on here?
Alan Lightman (Alan Lightman, both a novelist and a physicist, teaches at MIT. ) wrote about how many scientists see no problem between science and God’s intervention with the physical universe:
Francis Collins, leader of the celebrated Human Genome Project and now director of the National Institutes of Health, recently told Newsweek, “I’ve not had a problem reconciling science and faith since I became a believer at age 27 … if you limit yourself to the kinds of questions that science can ask, you’re leaving out some other things that I think are also pretty important, like why are we here and what’s the meaning of life and is there a God? Those are not scientific questions.” Ian Hutchinson, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, told me: “The universe exists because of God’s actions. What we call the ‘laws of nature’ are upheld by God, and they are our description of the normal way in which God orders the world. I do think miracles take place today and have taken place over history. I take the view that science is not all the reliable knowledge that exists. The evidence of the resurrection of Christ, for example, cannot be approached in a scientific way.” Owen Gingerich, professor emeritus of astronomy and of the history of science at Harvard University, says: “I believe that our physical universe is somehow wrapped within a broader and deeper spiritual universe, in which miracles can occur. We would not be able to plan ahead or make decisions without a world that is largely law-like. The scientific picture of the world is an important one. But it does not apply to all events. Even in science we take a lot for granted. It’s a matter of what you want to trust. Faith is about hope rather than proof.”
Devoutly religious scientists, such as Collins, Hutchinson and Gingerich, reconcile their belief in science with their belief in an interventionist God by adopting a worldview in which the autonomous laws of physics, biology and chemistry govern the behavior of the physical universe most of the time and therefore warrant our serious study. However, on occasion, God intervenes and acts outside of these laws. The exceptional divine actions cannot be analyzed by the methods of science.
Alan Lightman declares himself to be an atheist, yet can conceive of a religious belief that ould be valid once we learm more of the universe. Why? He says,
However, I certainly agree with Collins and Hutchinson and Gingerich that science is not the only avenue for arriving at knowledge, that there are interesting and vital questions beyond the reach of test tubes and equations.
But he ascribes such knowledge as belonging to the realm of arts and humanities.
Problem: To a reductionist (or to a scientific materialist) those realms of knowledge are NOT REAL. They are not really knowledge.
Lightman drops a bomb.
As another example, I cannot prove that the Central Doctrine of science is true.
Lightman seems to, ahem, cough, cough, not be a reductionist.
My Question: What makes a reductionist so sure he really knows?
Lightman drops another bomb:
I imagine the conversation in the MIT seminar room, with the murmurings of students in the hall and the silent photographs of Einstein and Watson and Crick staring from the wood-paneled walls:
I agree with much of you’ve said, says Jerry, but we need to distinguish between physical reality and what’s in our heads.
Something like the resurrection of Christ is a physical event. It either happened or it didn’t.
So he gets back to the actual historical claims of Christianity. These are not elements of religious faith. They either happened or they did not happen. How does a reductionist know they did not happen? Well, they just define it as not being possible. By faith in scientific materialism.
If reductionists cannot proven history did not happen how can they insist everybody must believe them? This seems a tough proposition – made more tough by the idea they want to tell the people doing the believing they themselves do not really have minds or personalities that are anything except imaginary.
Unless I misunderstand reductionism of course. Perhaps it is possible to have a mind but one where thoughts are all imaginary, as the reductionist said. Its difficult to ponder what such a mind would think of itself. It sounds sort of like Brave New World where Huxley proposes that if you don’t like your beliefs you just take a pill, and this alters chemistry, and this alters reality – POOF the world changes and history itself changes. This does not sound to me like the most rational of belief systems, but then again, I do not believe in reductionism so it is not my problem to solve.
I am just trying to understand 1) what reductionist are saying and 2) why they think it makes sense and is convincing.
Then came an anti-reductionist thought.
Physicists teach that the real state of matter at a microscopic scale is in indeterminate states until an observer interacts with matter. (i.e., does an observation). then there is a “quantum collapse” and the state of the matter becomes fixed. Example: an electron is both a wave and a particle and acts like both a wave and like a particle. And nobody knows which until it is observed. Then, having been observed, it is only a particle. If there isn’t an observer then it stays as both a wave and a particle. This is a well known paradox.
This implies that thoughts alter the material universe. Not the other way around. Perhaps I missed something and perhaps I am naive as can be. But to me this is hysterically funny.
What if an entity, made of only thought, outside the universe observed an electron? Or any other particle? Would it suddenly change it’s physical state? How do we know that is not possible?
What do we mean by “observer” anyway?
If an observer is imaginary, how can it affect physical states of matter?
Anyway, the bold declarations of the atheist debating with Dinesh just seemed to be a bit too strong to be taken at face value. It’s got to be more complicated and I see no reason to take his word for it.
I am going to discuss scientific materialism (separate post) and this may shed some light.
A final point on an argument between physicists.
First I want to mention one thing about Polkinghorne’s point that science and religion relate at a conceptual level. The atheist scientist I heard debate Dinesh, if I understand him correctly, would as a reductionist say Polkinghorne is wrong. They do not relate at a conceptual level. Why? Because thought is imaginary whereas physics is real. That is his belief.
I do have a question here. When this belief is expressed, is that KNOWLEDGE? I ask because if thought is imaginary then … isn’t knowledge itself also imaginary? I am somehow bothered by this sweeping thought under the rug by declaring it to be imaginary. I’m unsure how philosophers sort this out.
I think physicists really should disagree about this and really stop making categorically true statements that reductionism is the sole definition of scientific knowledge.
What is a Great Book?
Professor Rufis Fear says “a Great Book as one that possesses a great theme of enduring importance, noble language that “elevates the soul and ennobles the mind,” and a universality that enables it to “speak across the ages.”
Might the same be said of a Great Nation?
This, among other things, is what is meant by MAGA. Why such concepts threaten democracy is one of the mysteries of the universe.
Before disparaging “greatness” would it not be best to try to understand the definition?
We are being lied to by the opponents of a Great America.
Progressives Hate Thanksgiving
What I know of it that 5 or 6 native tribes banded together to exterminate the pilgrims, but one tribe, fearing they too would be attacked, sided with the pilgrims and warned them. The violence was against the pilgrims. What the alleged 1619 event has to do with this is completely unexplained.
There is an explanation. Every time you have a bad actor in a group of people progressives like Joy Reid want to blame the whole group.
One Ring To Rule Them All
The Great 666?
Electronic Ball and Chain?
Amazon gave me a Prime Card. Pays me 5% for online orders. Bought a computer.
I’ve gone to my bank and done 4 separate electronic payments to make sure they are paid. I have send $600 in payments before the first billing date.
But have I made a minimum payment? NOPE!!!!!! Did they get the money? Yes. Does it count as a minimum payment? NOPE.
Its got to do with billing cycle, which I have no cognizance about.
Hmm…very mysterious …
After 6 weeks I still cannot get their bank to send me e-bills. After a couple of calls to customer service I am told i need to download the banks APP (from the google IDENTITY store) and then in the app you can turn on the E-BILL to work at your bank. Otherwise E-BILL cannot be done. Nobody can turn it on except the APP.
So….EVERYTHING IS AN APP.
The the ball and anchor in my hand is the one ring that rules them all.
One wonders if this system is customized for 16 year olds who have never seen a computer. Or is actually designed by 16 year olds. (don’t laugh – some kids are geek geniuses and software has no age requirements).
These folks cannot even conceive that you do not have that little bugger in your hand all day long. You cannot buy and sell without it.
Soon it will be in the glasses on your face and in a chip in your hand. It this the MARK OF THE BEAST the prophet spoke about, not understanding he was viewing electronic banking devices in forehead and hand? One does wonder.
And Biden-Sauron can just switch you off without notice because you gave permission for him to do that.
Does that sound harsh and a bit over-claimed? welllll…. consider ….
Let me explain what I mean. Google stores your data for free, as a free service to you. But only if you accept their terms of service. Bit because you are not paying them for their service there is no TORT – NO CONTRACT. You therefore are not covered by any body of law such as consumer protection laws. They can do anything they want with the data (well, almost) and you cannot sue them. That “anything” includes just cutting you off. for any reason. such as your social credit score is too low, should they decide it’s too low.
This is the basis facebook uses to ban you or censor your words. And they can use politics as the basis. That is completely legal. You have no free speech rights on their platform. and the same holds true with google and everything related to google IDENTITY.
All of this was made possible because google offered free email and free data storage and social media companies offered free communications services to everyone. The fact that you pay your telephone and internet providers does not mean these “data companies” have a contract with you. They do not. But they “own your data”.
This affects other stripes of life. Ancestry.com, for example, recently declared thay own all your family photos. Iy you object then you had a chance to get your data off the site but afterawrds you contract terms gifts your photos to them. But at least they told you. Well … google tells you too but only when you signed up for their service.
What is the solution? FIND ALTERNATE PAID FOR SERVICES with companies that do not abuse your data privacy.
A few examples.
Most wealthy people rent encrypted email services that runs on servers in the Swiss Alps and which are under Swiss banking law. But the middle class Americans, being sheep-like, don’t bother.
Some people use VPN’s (virtual private networks) to protect privacy. Most do not.
Many rent private cloud storage for their cloud-based documents.
Millions have banned Alexa from their homes and businesses (SIDE EFFECT: Amazon lost $10 billion out of that division in 2022)
Millions have switched to browsers that block facebook from data-mining their online browsing habits.
70% have denied facebook the right to know data about their iPhone usage. (Meta also lost $10 BILLION in 2022 because MAGA people, and others, do not want their intrusive virtual world services).
So Its All Changing.
The point is … in order to preserve freedom we all need a strategy for dealing with this. And it’s more than tech. It’s being aware of our legal rights. Not our imagined rights. Our rights we could defend in court.
The first thing to do is make sure our communications and data are not vulnerable. That is where it starts.
How I Added a Wifi driver to a New Linux Install
Adding a wifi driver to a state-of-the-art HP laptop. In this case its a Ryzen 7 8725U with a newer wifi-6 wifi card. There are no linux drivers in the distributions for this chipset, but you can grab the driver from repositories and compile them.
Here’s how I did it:
This has what I had actually typed, minus the resulting outputs it all gave me.
I dont remember exactly why I repeated a command. i got the wrong driver a couple of times.
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:kelebek333/kablosuz
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kelebek333/kablosuz
# ok, that took two tries, I dont remember why
# now some modprobes to make sure I have the correct device
sudo apt install rtl8723de-dkms
# now some modprobes to make sure I have the correct device
# I tried a number of things, guided by suggestions from various websites
sudo modprobe -r rtl8723de
sudo modprobe rtl8723de
sudo modprobe -r RTL8852AU
sudo modprobe -r rtl8852au-dkms
sudo apt install rtl8852au-dkms
sudo modprobe -r rtl8852au-dkms
sudo modprobe -r rtl8852au
sudo modprobe rtl8852au
sudo modprobe -r rtl8852au
# still wan not confident I had the correct repo, added it again
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:kelebek333/kablosuz
# got rid of this driver because it was the wrong device and is a waste
sudo apt purge rtw89-dkms
# now update links to drivers now that I know what driver goes with what device due to reports from modprobe
# updating pulls in latest metadata from new repositories
sudo apt update
# ok, I will need git installed to do the clone command
sudo apt install git bc
# grab the source code for the rtl8852be device (which is the new wifi-6 chip with blutetooth on chip)
git clone https://github.com/HRex39/rtl8852be.git
# change directory to the new source code directory we just pulled in with git
cd rtl8852be
# build the source code
make
# and install it
sudo make install
# ok, is the 8852 chip now accessible via the newly installed driver?
sudo modprobe 8852be
YES! We are done. The wifi channel now comes up and you can configure it.
removed the temporary USB wifi dongle and reboot. And it comes up and connects.
How to create a fake GMAIL account.
I found this useful. I wanted an account that did not link to my phone number but would allow play store access so a tablet could download apps.
I think I should give a google identity to every pet, maybe every cow in the herd. If the animal gets tracked and they can tell what stores he has been near so they can advertise feed to him, thats fine by me.
Actually I want my appliances to have their own email and their own google ID. Think of them as being robots.
Whats the Objection Anyway?
Whats bad is google monitoring my credit card and business transactions and my location and who I visit and who I communicate with. That is all personal data. I do not have any “contract” or “tort” relationship with google and thus have no consumer rights whatsoever.
Notes On Libertarian Moral Values
References: Excerpts taken from
Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians
Citation: Iyer R, Koleva S, Graham J, Ditto P, Haidt J (2012) Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians. PLoS ONE 7(8): e42366. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0042366
As I study Jonathon Haight’s works on moral/ethical values I came across the above 2012 research article on how libertarians self-identify their beliefs and values. Libertarians score differently that both liberals and conservatives on beliefs about morals and ethics.
Haight reports that studies show that liberals care very much about harm and fairness, whereas libertarians do not. Libertarians care very much about oppression versus freedom, whereas this is not much of an issue for liberals. And both liberals and libertarians differ from conservatives, who weigh every moral foundation equally. Conservatives value divinity ethic , for example, whereas divinity ethic is not very important to either liberals or libertarians.
So the three groups see fundamental issues of human values and life in somewhat different ways. Well, markedly different fashions actually. In the below sections quotations from the referenced paper are shown in alternating colored backgrounds. My comments are in this larger text.
My purpose is to report on what they said about libertarian moral values in order to better understand why libertarians do not seem to communicate their ideas effectively with others such as leftists, conservatives,liberals, and other groups, or why members of those groups fail to understand a libertarian world view.
Now, let us ask, what do Libertarians say about themselves? Here are some excerpts and conclusions from the study about how libertarians describe themselves.
Study 1: Describing Libertarian Morality
If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.
– Ayn Rand
Our first prediction was that, compared to liberals and conservatives, the morality of libertarians would be characterized by strong endorsement of individual liberty at the expense of other moral considerations. We addressed this question by examining several measures designed to give a broad overview of a person’s values and morals, in particular the Moral Foundations Questionnaire [41], and the Schwartz Value Scale [42], as well as a new measure of endorsement of liberty as a moral principle, introduced here (see Appendix S1). For convergent validity, we also examined several other scales commonly used to measure moral orientations.
Results.
The first five rows of Table 2 show d scores indicating how libertarians differed from liberals and conservatives on the MFQ (also see Figure 1).
Libertarians were similar to conservatives on the fairness foundation, as both groups scored substantially lower than liberals.
However, like liberals, libertarians scored substantially lower on the ingroup, authority, and purity foundations compared to conservatives.
Finally, libertarians scored slightly lower than conservatives and substantially lower than liberals on the harm foundation.
Convergent results were found using the Moral Foundations Sacredness Scale, which measures endorsement of foundations using a willingness to make tradeoffs.
My Comments: Please Note: I am not sure how willingness to make tradeoffs affects any of this.
Interpretation.
Our results suggest why libertarians do not feel fully at home in either of the major American political parties.
Consistent with our prediction, libertarians were relatively low on all five foundations.
Libertarians share with liberals, a distaste for the morality of ingroup, authority, and purity, characteristic of social conservatives, particularly those on the religious right [43].
Like liberals, libertarians can be said to have a two-foundation morality, prioritizing harm and fairness above the other three foundations.
But libertarians share with conservatives their moderate scores on these two foundations. They are therefore likely to be less responsive than liberals to moral appeals from groups who claim to be victimized, oppressed, or treated unfairly.
Libertarianism is clearly not just a point on the liberal-conservative continuum; libertarians have a unique pattern of moral concerns, with relatively low reliance on all five foundations.
My Comments: This has been my own observation – DISGUST expressed at victims. Other groups seem not to feel the same way, or at least to varying degrees.
Lifestyle and Economic/Government Liberty
In the original conception of Moral Foundations Theory, concerns about liberty (or autonomy or freedom) were not measured. But as we began to collect data on libertarians and to hear objections from libertarians that their core value was not well represented, we created questions related to liberty in the style of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. We generated 11 items about several forms of liberty (see Appendix S1) and collected responses from 3,732 participants (2,105 men; 2,181 liberals, 573 conservatives, and 525 libertarians). Principal component analysis using varimax rotation indicated two clear factors (Eigenvalues of 3.40 and 1.48; next highest was .74). Six items loaded greater than .60 on the first factor, which represented concerns about economic/government liberty (e.g., “People who are successful in business have a right to enjoy their wealth as they see fit”).
My Comments: Please Note: Libertarians do not seem to know most other people do not share this attitude.
Three items loaded greater than .60 on the second factor, which can be interpreted as a “lifestyle liberty” factor (e.g., “Everyone should be free to do as they choose, as long as they don’t infringe upon the equal freedom of others.”).
My Comments: Please Note: I personally, as a conservative, reject the above belief on freedom. It is *NOT* the rule Christians are supposed to follow, for example. It is a secular value.
We created two subscales from these items (Cronbach’s alpha for economic/government liberty was .81; for lifestyle liberty, .60; the correlation between factors was .27).
Results.
Table 2 shows that libertarians scored highest on both kinds of liberty (also see Figure 1). On economic/government liberty, liberals were the outliers, scoring below the midpoint of the scale, two full standard deviations below libertarians (d = 2.56). On lifestyle liberty, libertarians scored substantially higher than both liberals (d = .81), and conservatives (d = 1.19).
Interpretation.
Libertarians are not unconcerned about all aspects of morality, as suggested by their scores on the MFQ and several other widely used morality scales. Rather, consistent with their self-descriptions, they care about liberty. Like conservatives, they endorse a world in which people are left alone to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, free from government interference. They also exceed both liberals and conservatives (but are closer to liberals) in endorsing personal or lifestyle liberty.
Study 2 Summary: How Do Libertarians Think and Feel?
My comments: Note: I am going to skip this study and perhaps report about it separately.
The next study, study 3, is more interesting in terms of objective results.
Study 3 Summary: How Do Libertarians Relate to Others?
As predicted, libertarians in our sample appeared to be strongly individualistic. Compared to liberals and conservatives, they report feeling a weaker sense of connection to their family members, romantic partners, friends, communities, and nations, as well as to humanity at large. While liberals exhibit a horizontal collectivistic orientation and conservatives a vertical collectivistic orientation, libertarians exhibit neither type of collectivism, instead displaying a distinctly individualistic orientation. This relative preference for individualism may have been moralized [10] into the value orientation found in Study 1.
Libertarians’ weaker social interconnectedness is consistent with the idea that they have weaker moral intuitions concerning obligations to and dependence on others (e.g. Moral Foundation Questionnaire scores). If “moral thinking is for social doing” [33], then libertarians lack of social connection naturally means that they have less use for moral thinking. Their distaste for submitting to the needs and desires of others helps explain why libertarians have very different ways of relating to groups, consistent with their lower endorsement of values related to altruism, conformity, and tradition in Study 1, providing convergent evidence for the idea that moral judgment is tightly related to social functioning.
Conclusions (to Study 3)
While not all libertarians endorse the views of Ayn Rand, our findings can be summarized by the three quotations we have presented from her work. We began Study 1 with Rand’s exhortation to reject “the morality of altruism,” and we showed that libertarians do indeed reject this morality, as well as all other moralities based on ideas of obligation to other people, groups, traditions, and authorities. Libertarians scored relatively high on just one moral concern: liberty. The libertarian pattern of response was found to be empirically distinct from the responses of liberals and conservatives, both in our cluster analysis of participants and in our principal components analysis of measures. We found strong support for our first prediction: Libertarians will value liberty more strongly and consistently than liberals or conservatives, at the expense of other moral concerns.
We introduced Study 2 with Rand’s claim that Western culture can only be reborn when it can be founded on “a rational ethics.” Consistent with Rand’s writing and psychological research concerning the intuitive origins of moral reasoning [8], we found that libertarians were indeed less emotional (less disgust sensitivity, empathic concern, and neuroticism) than liberals and conservatives. This lack of emotional reactivity may underlie an indifference towards common moral norms, and an attraction to an ideology where these moral codes are absent, libertarianism. The only emotional reaction on which libertarians were not lowest was reactance – the angry reaction to infringements upon one’s autonomy – for which libertarians scored higher than both liberals and conservatives. This disposition toward reactance may lead to the moralization of liberty and an attraction to an ideology that exalts liberty above other moral principles – namely, libertarianism.
We also found that libertarians showed a strong preference for and enjoyment of reasoning (higher on utilitarianism, need for cognition, systemizing, and a greater likelihood of answering correctly on the cognitive reflection task). We think it is worth repeating that libertarians were the only one of our three groups for which systemizing scores were higher, in absolute terms, than their empathizing scores, suggesting that libertarians are the only group that may be psychologically prepared for the Randian revolution of “rational ethics.” Thus, we found strong support for our second prediction: Libertarians will rely upon emotion less – and reason more – than will either liberals or conservatives.
We introduced Study 3 with Rand’s condemnation of love that is not based on a strong sense of self. We found that libertarians do indeed have a strong sense of self and the self’s prerogatives, and a correspondingly lower sense of attachment to others. They exhibit a high degree individualism, a low degree collectivism, and generally report feeling less bonding with others, less loving for others, and less feelings of a sense of common identity with others. Libertarians have a lower degree of the broad social connection that typifies liberals as well as a lower degree of the tight social connections that typify conservatives. These social preferences were related to their moral attitudes suggesting that libertarians have less functional use for moral concerns. We found strong support for out third prediction: Libertarians will be more individualistic and less collectivist compared to both liberals and conservatives.
12 Republican Skunks
Samsung Tablet
Friday Nov 18:
I bought a Samsung tablet to
- Be able to download android apps (like opera and brave browsers which are not available on fire-os)
- Get away from appliances and devices having my phone number associated with web services. This is to stop tracking.
Grrrr…it has not been easy to install anything. I had to read articles about how to initialize a google ID to not use a phone number.
Sunday Nov 20 (A couple of days later)
Ok, the Google ID seems to have been worked out. I had to go to my phone and add a new google identity, but skipped adding the phone number to it. I then went to the tablet and initialized the tablet with the new google identity.
I plan to remove the identity from the phone soon. I hope the fact the tablet is logged onto the new identity means it will still exist even though the phone now will know nothing about it.
i skipped the Samsung login initialization on the tablet. WHY? Because Samsung wants to offer services surrounding syncing between tablet and phone. The whole reason I bought the tablet was to GET AWAY FROM APPLIANCES KNOWING MY PHONE NUMBER.
Brave, Audible, Kindle, Amazon, and PDF reader/editors are working on the tablet now.
Saturday night Google NUKED ALL MY PHONE NUMBERS OFF MY PHONE. You have to proceed very carefully.
This took some effort to recover. i had to call some cousins and ask for people’s phone numbers.
Google also refused to email to proton mail in europe in order to use proton as a backup email address for password recovery. They do not like people having privacy. Or – perhaps an evil government is interfering with routing to europe. there is a war going on after all.
Tech Blog Category.
I added a Tech Blog category. I guess the idea is if I write a post about a tech topic I can filter all of them by selecting just tech blog and they show up seperate from the general blog. That’s the idea anyway.