Thursday, 28 November 2013
Freedom of Speech
Under no circumstances should government attempt to limit the right to free speech in any way, based on the idea that some people might abuse that right. If there are abuses of free speech such as incitement to hatred or violence, we have laws to prosecute the offenders.
This is how free speech should work:
Free speech is a basic human right for all, not just for those who have passed some sort of value judgement, test, or filter.
Any person or organization has the right to vocalize their thoughts and opinions using whatever medium they see fit, hopefully using some reasoned argument in support of their position.
Any other person or organization then has the right to either support or criticize those thoughts and opinions in whatever way they see fit, but hopefully using some reasoned argument in support of their own position.
This process can continue as long as the participants want to pursue it, ad infinitum.
At some point there may come a synthesis of the various arguments, or the parties may have to agree to differ.
The important thing is that at the end of the process all the ideas have been tested in a public forum, and all persons who have followed the argument will be able to establish their own point of view as a result.
If the process is stopped at an early stage because one of the parties is offended and adopts special pleading instead of engaging in the process of debate, we cannot reach that point.
I would suggest that those who will not submit to, or will not allow, full and open debate use diversionary tactics because they know that their argument is weak and they will be unlikely to press their case successfully.
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
"Desired Things"
Monday, 2 September 2013
Words of Wisdom
certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him.
Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other
over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything --
anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous
than the world we are living in. ”
- Sam Harris
Friday, 9 August 2013
Ten Ideas Not Cast In Stone (Inspired by "Sunscreen")
- Knowledge is a process. That is the first thing you need to know. It is a lifelong endeavour and should be constantly checked for relevance. If the world changes and your ideas don't you will get left behind. "Stay hungry, stay foolish".
- Be open to all ideas no matter where they come from, but be wary of those ideas whose proponents demand a protected or privileged position. Truth will stand up to any amount of criticism, debate and ridicule without special protection.
- It is important to have your own reasons for what you believe to be true, but there is nothing wrong with consensus. Neither is there anything wrong with intuition so long as you recognise it as such.
- It will serve you well to be sympathetic to ideas held by others, even those which you perceive to be mistaken. The route by which they have arrived at them is informed by different experiences to your own.
- Take at least some time to study a little formal Logic. You will be amazed at how soon you you find yourself using it to determine the strength, (or otherwise), of people's arguments.
- Try to understand people's motives. It gives an extra dimension to what they say and do. Likewise be critical of your own motives.
- Strive to keep a balance in your life between Competition and Co-operation. Too much of either will weaken you.
- You will do well to recognise the fundamental importance of free speech. The free, open and frank exchange of ideas in a public forum is vital for the moral wellbeing of any society. All ideas have equal validity, although not equal truth, relevance or usefulness. Any attempt to control the input of ideas into the process will result in a skewed outcome.
- Treat every person you meet as your exact equal. To do anything other than this is to belittle either them or yourself.
- Beware pedants who use bullet points.
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
Global Inequalities.
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
War - what is it good for?
The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless.”
― Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
A new vision of the pale blue dot from Cassini
Prompted by the images from Cassini I have revisited Carl Sagan"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Still puzzled why people believe
Most systems have a creation myth and a belief in different types of afterlife for the soul after it leaves the body.
There is usually a priesthood of some sort which acts as a go-between in the day-to-day transactions between the ordinary people and their God. The priesthood normally have responsibility for instructing the people in how to interpret the sacred texts, and also for ensuring that any criticism of the status-quo is punished in some way. They are also responsible for conducting the rituals surrounding the observances required by the system. They also act as gatekeepers to the afterlife.
Prophets claim to have information revealed directly to them by God for dissemination to the believers.
These belief systems have invariably been used in conjuction with political power as a means of social control.
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Carl Sagan quote (1996)
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Monday, 10 June 2013
How strange again
Sunday, 9 June 2013
Worth noting!
My Hero
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Lord Tebbit
Sunday, 26 May 2013
How strange
Friday, 24 May 2013
The eternal problem
Monday, 20 May 2013
Introduction
Guess what?