Fear = Hating the future you predict

Fear = Hating the future you predict ... Therefore, there are 3 ways to alleviate fear: 1) change the path you're on so as to create a different future 2) change your prediction 3) change your opinion of the future This is all especially important if you're particularly bad at predicting the future or if your hatred runs contrary to human interests (yours, your country, your world etc.).

My response to friends' response to my "Why Dennis Miller is a Republican" post

My posts to corpania.blogspot.com are automatically re-posted to my facebook page. Some of my GOP friends respond with facetious and occasionally thoughtful comments. Instead of replying to them on FB (where such debates are virtually always fleeting and are rarely substantive) I will quote from their comments and respond here. PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM EARNESTLY ATTEMPTING TO ANSWER ALL OF MY "OPPONENT'S QUESTIONS". I hope they will return the courtesy especially when I explicitly call for them to answer a specific question of mine. HERE ARE THEIR RESPONSES TO MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT "WHY DENNIS MILLER IS A REPUBLICAN"... GOP FRIEND#1: "Regarding your view that killing doesn't lead to peace, what about the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War II, etc?" MY RESPONSE: I'm genuinely surprised the concept that "war begets war" isn't as universally accepted. I strongly urge those to revisit my previous post In not-so-short: There are 1,300,000,000+ Muslims on earth. Psychiatric studies show that as much as 1% the human population is schizophrenic. http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm And more than 1/10,000 commit suicide. So it stands to reason there should be at the very least 1,300 schizo Muslims with a deathwish to be worried about. What if only 50 of them simultaneously shot up churches or malls around America? That would surely incite full-on WorldWar3. Clearly, if the threat was so great our enemies could coordinate some of them entering the US to wreak havoc (on our infinite vulnerabilities: like our non-hardened chemical plants, thousands of miles of Alaskan oil pipeline, water supplies, etc.). But they haven't. You know why? Because while the number of people who may superficially hate us may be in the millions or billions (substantially fewer since Obama's election) the reality is that over 99.99% ain't gonna do a thing about it because they're busy with their own lives (feeding their kids etc.). The number of people in the world who hate us so much that they're willing to leave their family and journey to our shores to kill us IS REALLY MINUSCULE! But every time we bomb someplace and there is any "collateral damage" (and there always is) then that victim's relatives become exponentially more likely to want to make that havoc-wreaking journey to our shores. War begets war. Revenge is a vicious cycle. Chilling our government into not waring is exactly what we need now. Until the geo-politics substantially changes we should be actively discouraging war (even more so than usual). GOP FRIEND#1: "As to Miller's psychology, isn't yours an argument from bad faith? Why diagnose his motives? " MY RESPONSE: No, not in my opinion. My analysis of his motives appears, to me, to be original, interesting and somewhat falsifiable. My theory may inform what may be the cause of the disconnect between left & right modes of thinking. But beyond the pedantic self-aggrandizing I'm doing, it's just plain fun for me. If you don't want to engage in my though experiments & philosophical debates then that's ok. I won't be offended. GOP FRIEND#1: Why do celebrities sound off on economic and global issues with junior-high level analyses every day of the week? Is it because they are shallow and seek to appear sophisticated? It is because they are personally monstrous people who compensate with simplistic moral preening? Is it because they don't understand business and are jealous of the power of those who do? Just following the pack?" MY RESPONSE: Your rhetorical questions have some validity, in my opinion. The nice thing about celebrities, or amateur philosophers like myself for that matter, pontificating about important issues is that, at least on the most basic level, they are citizens engaging in important debate. It's better than whatever superficial drama Spears, Lohan or Paris Hilton are up to. I'd rather have an engaged electorate as opposed to the right-wing policies that can only exist when voter turnout is low and skewed to the wealthy & elderly. Of course, that's primarily because I'm a progressive populist. GOP FRIEND#1: "Who cares? The only issue that matters is the content of their ideas. If you want to engage a serious discussion, I suggest leaving motive out of it." MY RESPONSE: While I think we can agree that the "content of their ideas" is paramount, I do think motive makes a difference (especially while diagnosing strategies). GOP FRIEND#1: "You did not qualify the statement "GWB also proved that military occupation doesn't work." So, the U.S. in Japan following WWII? MY RESPONSE: I don't want to get mired in a semantic debate but I duly stipulate that defining terms is crucial in a productive debate. So let me clarify by restating with a hedge - "Military occupation rarely works". I could have argued that an occupation after a surrender is substantially different from an occupation without a surrender. I could have also argued that the dynamics of occupation have evolved over the past 6 decades enabling fewer and fewer people to do greater and greater damage thus fundamentally changing the equation. GOP FRIEND#1: "BTW, although you frame your arguments as fundamentally discrediting Republican foreign policy doctrine, many war supporters today make similar points to argue the war implementation was tragically flawed but the strategy was sound. I don't make that argument, but some do. There's certainly a serious debate to be had on that, motives aside." MY RESPONSE: While I agree that a better implementation would necessarily have led to a better outcome it is practically ludicrous, as your disavowal implies, to claim that an outcome virtually 180 degrees different from their prediction is proof that the execution was the problem as opposed to the strategy (especially when none of those hawks were decrying the execution while it was happening. To the contrary - those very same hawks were crowing about how "flawless the execution was (in their opinion)" when Saddam didn't put up the defense they expected). GOP FRIEND#1: "Honestly, I think if we hadn't floated the dollar forty years ago we wouldn't have half the global problems we do, but that's another discussion." MY RESPONSE: That may be so but I am too uninformed about that topic to respond here now. I would need to know more about your specific arguments about that. GOP FRIEND#2: "Or... Dennis is aware of the fact that because of the blase attitude towards radical Islam by the Left -- which has led to North Korea and Iran both going nuclear -- it is now more likely than ever that militant Islam will get their hands on a nuclear device of some kind and detonate it within one of our major cities." MY RESPONSE:  Mentioning North Korea proves my argument and discredits yours. Focusing so much of our resources on "radical Islam" prevented engagement with North Korea (diplomatically and/or with military force). Nuclear proliferation is a very serious issue that I think deserves exponentially more resources. It was GOP's GWB & friends that diverted resources away from the prevention of nuclear proliferation. GOP FRIEND#2: "The fact that Obama and his AG have decided to try the 9/11 terrorists in open civilian court it just another example of how liberals just don't seem to get what's happening. Perhaps if Islamic terrorists openly supported Proposition 8 and campaigned to repeal Roe v. Wade, the Left would finally sit up and take notice...?" MY RESPONSE: What don't we "get"? Please explain the details of why upholding the rule of law is wrong and/or dangerous. "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" - Ben Franklin. Does the average GOP supporter truly understand what "liberty" is? If laws that protect the accused go out the window at the whim of the executive branch then what would happen if/when a less gracious and more militant progressive assumes office? What if Obama's more liberal successor chose to handle his critics the way Bush/Cheney handled theirs? I dare any of my GOP-supporting friends to explore this path of the debate. I will wager $100 that an impartial judge would rule that Bush/Cheney policies of oppression were way more fascist and civil liberty-crushing than those that Obama has implemented. I can't wait to ensnare my GOP-supporting friends in a GWBush vs. Obama debate. But I suspect they're too smart for that and will instead choose to move on and argue from their ideals. WHEN I PREVIOUSLY WROTE: What would be some sound policy decisions about nuclear weapons? - secure the unstable nations with nukes (like spending more on Pakistan than Iraq or Afghanistan whereas today we spend less than 5% of our Middle East War resources on the one radical islamic nation with currently viable nukes). - secure/payoff the scientists (especially from Russia etc.) so they have no economic incentive to arm our enemies. - secure the world by having fewer nuclear powerplants (which would result in less nuclear waste and fewer locations for resource-intensive enrichment facilities that could be "upgraded" to weapons) Yeah, I'm for all that. But those are Democratic policies whereas the GOP holds nearly 100% opposing views on those policies. MY GOP FRIEND#2 WROTE: Suggestions one and two are blackmail/bribes to terrorists. Not viable." MY RESPONSE: What is so inherently wrong with blackmail/bribes to terrorists? Let's look at it from a cost/benefit analysis. If bribes work then the only downside would be the possibility that the bribes themselves would encourage more terrorists. But that runs contrary to GOP assumptions that it's "Radical Islam" that is the threat. What would be the delta is enemies caused by bribing? Is that delta greater than the number of enemies created by "collateral damage"? We need to take a much more practical, holistic look and weigh all potential costs (including opportunity costs) of available options against the probability of the outcomes and their various risks & upsides. MY GOP FRIEND#2 WROTE: "Three is strange since Democrats want to get us off of oil, but no clean nuke plants like in France? Windmills won't power the world." MY RESPONSE: That implies there is such a thing as a "clean nuke plant" which is such blatant BS I'm shocked that I need to respond to it. Also, to date every single pro-nuke person I've ever encountered has been unaware of "The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act". In short, we tax-payers ensure the nuclear industry over a set amount. It is universally accepted that if we were to stop assuming that risk that there would be no nuclear energy industry. The insurance premiums to cover the unlimited liability would be so high that they would erase any hope of economic viability for nuclear energy. FINALLY - Windmills alone might not power the world but other renewable energy very easily can. I just took an intensive course on Solar PV and I'd be more than happy to explain the science and economics of how. MY GOP FRIEND#3 WROTE: Wasn't your time traveler experiment essentially carried out in the 90s after the first WTC bombing? The US responded by prosecuting terrorists in a US court of law rather than "taking it to them." Would you argue that because we gave those terrorists the benefits of our justice system it deterred future terrorists? Seems the answer is very obviously no. MY RESPONSE: This is a very trenchant point which I humbly take very seriously. Unlike so many GOP-supporters who can't ever concede a single point (I suspect they view all debates like a trial where they don't want to appear weak so they avoid productive debates and primarily seek to "rhetorically score" against their opponents) - I will concede that because I would have concluded a lack-of-attacks to be evidence on my side I must take the existence of an attack as evidence, not necessarily proof, that the other side is correct. But let's drill down deeper. The motivation for the first attack was not eliminated (that is not to claim that one must always eliminate one's enemies' motivations because that might be even worse). So it is reasonable to assume that there would continue to be attacks until the motivation was eliminated. The fact that there was a legal trial merely prevented an exacerbation of motivations. Whereas GWB's torture policies (Abu Ghraib) clearly exacerbated our enemies' motivations. The most important point is weighing our options of risk & reward. GWB's "taking it to them" had predicted costs and expected outcomes. The war was supposed to "pay for itself" and instead cost us $3trillion and counting not to mention thousands of American soldiers' lives and limbs. The outcomes were nearly entirely different from the predictions. Can't we fairly conclude that the strategy was a stunning failure when the costs were so off and the outcomes were so wrong? If that isn't a failure just how bad would things have to be for that GOP-Hawk strategy to be defined as a failure? How wrong does a GOP prediction have to be for the GOP-supporters to concede that it was wrong? Are the GOP-Hawks equally undeterred by the lessons of Vietnam (even though those errors were initially made by Democrats)? Let's make some predictions about Iraq & Afghanistan going forward. If my predictions come true and yours don't will you then concede that I know better? Is there any evidence or outcome that would disprove your theories? Or is your political paradigm unfalsifiable and impervious to facts? I routinely mention that I could be wrong. Would you at least give lip service to the possibility that you could be wrong? What would have to happen to prove that? I'm all to happy to set forth my predictions and criteria for falsifiability of my philosophical/political paradigms. I want to get to the truth and abandon my ineffectual ideas. I can't wait to shed my erroneous assumptions. What about you? MY GOP FRIEND#3 WROTE:  "It's not likely anyone will ever be able to quantify the number of lives saved because of US military action - or that you would call it anything other than propaganda if the previous Administration had tried. But it seems to me we can reliably say treating terrorists like common criminals is not an effective security policy." MY RESPONSE: I agree that we can't definitively quantify the parallel universes of "what if". But I entirely disagree with your claim that "treating terrorists like common criminals is not an effective security policy." That claim is not substantiated by the evidence. I will graciously reiterate that your trenchant point about prosecuting the first WTC bombers has some validity. But your simply not at all fully calculating the options. On this branch of the "permutation tree" we spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. How much good will could we have bought with 1/10th of that? Here's a non-hypothetical point: your entire argument necessarily hinges upon the assumption that our very presence in the Iraq & Afghanistan does more good than harm and that we're killing more enemies than we're creating. That assumption is falsifiable and has already been disproved by the evidence. Read all the recent reports by the generals and intelligence agencies. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent and we're not gaining ground. The people don't trust the kleptocracy we installed and no one expects any lasting good resolution to come from our presence in less than 10 to 20 years. Now we can estimate what 10 to 20 more years of occupation will cost (by extrapolating what has happened in previous years). To make a wise decision we have to weigh those costs against what would happen if we pulled out immediately (like George Will described somewhat recently). Even if we concede that "our enemies would have a safe haven" who cares? Don't forget that the 9/11 attacks were conceived and executed by Al-Qaeda (from supposedly "Western-friendly" countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt & Lebanon) while they were hiding in Germany & the United States of America. Terrorist attacks can be planned from anywhere in the world. There's no way around the fact that we need human intelligence and detective work to find them. Establishing good will by magnanimous foreign policy and yes, even bribes, can elicit such valuable information. In fact, it might be militarily beneficial if our enemies indeed had a "safe haven" in a hostile country because then we can just bomb the crap out of their base from the sky instead of hunting door-to-door with our soldiers. Is that blood-lusty enough for you? Think about all of our options and their costs, benefits & risks. I'm hoping but not expecting Obama just pulls us out entirely of the occupation and lets their countries bad guys war among themselves for a while. Final point - the industry of WAR is inherently counter-productive and necessarily "shrinks the pie". But now that so many military contractors are legally based outside the US for tax reasons there is much less incidental economic benefit to Americans (compared to previous wars where we made everything in the US and had to pay Americans to do it and therefore got increased tax revenue from it). For those of you GOP-supporters who still somehow disagree that FDR's progressive policies got us out of the Great Depression you must therefore conclude that WWII alone got us out. Ramping up industry to create our tools of war was a de facto stimulus/jobs-creation plan. It put money in people's pockets by paying with our collective credit card (national deficit/debt). Ok, that's a lot of process. Think about it and respond to my specific points. If you skim and reflexively respond in such a way that proves you didn't actually consider my points then you owe me $1. Seriously, I will insist on collecting. ;-) If you want to have a productive debate then you have to actually read and consider your opponent's arguments BEFORE you respond. Thanks and good karma to you.