Correspondence and Coherence blog

[merjet]

On Peikoff's ‘Fact and Value’

[Brant Gaede]

Graet article. Peikoff thinks Objectivism is fragile and not robust.

And I think Rand would say of Peikoff here--WTF?

--Brant

[merjet]

21 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Graet article. Peikoff thinks Objectivism is fragile and not robust.

Thanks. Where did he say that? URL?

[Brant Gaede]

On 9/5/2017 at 6:40 AM, merjet said:

Thanks. Where did he say that? URL?

If you say the philosophy collapses if one part is not accepted or compromised then that's fragility. Contrary, Rand said in "To Whom It May Concern" that Objectivism was its own avenger destroying its half-way miscreants.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

If you say the philosophy collapses if one part is not accepted or compromised then that's fragility. Contrary, Rand said in "To Whom It May Concern" that Objectivism was its own avenger destroying its half-way miscreants.

--Brant

That sounds  quasi-religious.   Woe, oh Woe unto him that changes a jot or a tittle of this Law!.  In the land of Islam any attempt to modify or negate what the Prophet said  is met with Fatwas  which are based on what the Prophet said. Fiddle with Islam and Islam will wreak vengeance and destruction.  Ditto for Judaism and Christianity.   Each of the Prophets (and that includes Rand)  either claimed or their follower claimed that they were the Last Word.

[merjet]

The Cost of Rights

Infinitesimal #1

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, merjet said:

The Cost of Rights

Infinitesimal #1

Infinitesimals  did not achieve a rigorous  logical foundation until 1965  when Abraham Robinson  figured a way of deploying second  order logic  to make infinitesimals  as well founded as Archimedean fields.*   In the early 19 th century  August Cauchy and those who followed his work found a way to bypass the rickety logic of infinitesimals and get the same results (in calculus and differential equations). This is the limit concept which is the way  that  real and complex variables  are still handled.  But it is possible to base real and complex variables on infinitesimals although it is not that commonly done. Infinitesimals and limits get the same results and most mathematically trained people are used to limits (rigorously define and applied). 

* An Archimedean Field is a division ring such that if   e > 0, however small given any large quantity L   we can find an integer  N  such that N x e  > L.  In short we can produce a large quantity from a small quantity by adding it to itself   a sufficiently large number of time.   In the system of infinitesimals   if e*  is an infinitesimal   N x e*  is an infinitesimal  no matter how big N is.  Yet e*  is not equal to zero.

[merjet]

Infinitesimal #2

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, merjet said:

Infinitesimal #2

See this:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_set_theory

Ed  Nelson (1932-2014) formulated the theory of infinitesimals in such way as to make a detailed knowledge of formal logic unnecessary.  Nelson's invention of IST (internal set theory) makes  infinitesimals accessible to non-genius  mathematicians.   

So far as I know,  every theorem based on IFC  can also be proved using the standard theory of limits.

[merjet]

Infinitesimal #3
 

[merjet]

Infinitesimal #4
 

[BaalChatzaf]

22 hours ago, merjet said:

Infinitesimal #4
 

Thomas Hobbes, not John Hobbes. 

[merjet]

11 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Thomas Hobbes, not John Hobbes. 

Oops. Thanks.

[merjet]

Burns & Novick's The Vietnam War #1

[merjet]

Burns & Novick's The Vietnam War #2

[Backlighting]

I'm enjoying the footage, most of which I have never seen before. I guess most of it was obtained from Russian, Chinese & the Vietnam governments.

I was stationed in Japan (1968-69), in the Army, as a offset press operator. I remember printing, for days on end, tens of thousands leaflets which were dropped by plane, with Thieu's face on it...along with his plea to the  S. Vietnamese people for their support.

[merjet]

Burns & Novick's The Vietnam War #3

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, merjet said:

Burns & Novick's The Vietnam War #3

Thanks for the summary.

I was part of an unofficial "invasion" of Cambodia in November 1966. When we found out where we were we were ordered to withdraw after inflicting heavy casualties. We used airboats, hovercraft and helicopters. This was in IV Corps.

When I was told in 1965 conventional forces were going into Vietnam I worried that it would be another Korea, only worse, with +40,000 dead Americans. The ten thousandth died while I was in Vietnam.

In a book I wrote--never published--in and about 1971, I predicted almost exactly the end of South Vietnam. I just didn't know when beyond a few more years. None of this was great brain work; the Nixon/Kissinger administration knew it too. When Congress appropriated an indecent amount of money in early 1975 to support the South Vietnamese government--half what Ford had requested--that effectively eviscerated the regime.

The North Vietnamese came in through the Central Highlands and when the South Vietnamese military ran before them they sent a conventional army south through the DMZ. The United States then could have, if it had had the will, inserted a trapping force behind that army and destroyed it with air power. But that would have defied the logic of the entire situation.

The Tet Offensive of 1968 resulted in the utter destruction of the Viet Cong reducing the conflict to a conventional North-South war. But Johnson threw in the towel. Still, the war as such was won but the US couldn't sustain the victory for the peace negotiations were a blatant confession of American defeat.

All US wars since WWII--I'm not evaluating WWII here--were proxy wars. Wars designed not to be won but to be fought. You have to give Eisenhower credit for stopping the Korean War.

--Brant

 

 

[merjet]

Amazon HQ2 #1

[merjet]

Trump's "Across State Lines" Baloney

Epic Systems
 

[Brant Gaede]

On 10/27/2017 at 3:54 AM, merjet said:

Trump's "Across State Lines" Baloney

Epic Systems
 

This all may be true, but Medicare is heavily subsidized. The basic problem is third-party payer and government control of medicine.

--Brant

[merjet]

Amazon HQ2 #2

Amazon HQ2 #3

Trump's Tax Plan and Demagogues

[merjet]

Senate tax bill

End Corporate Income Tax? #1

End Corporate Income Tax? #2

Senate tax bill #2

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act #1

[merjet]

Association Group Health Insurance

Supreme Court rules against forced fees to unions

Marconi #1

Marconi #2

 

[merjet]

Marconi #3

Marconi #4