Steve Gagne

Ummm...the motor was already developed back in the 60's. I saw a working model of it. Its fate was pretty much the same as what happened in the book, but at the hands of a different set of idiots (concrete-bound bean counters instead of socialist moochers). Not a fantasy at all.

Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but in my own experience I'm seeing this "confirmation-falsifiability" thing not as "either-or" but on a scale of "confidence-ambiguity-no confidence", seeing that the split between the extremes is variable somewhere in the "ambiguous" range. What one regards as false can be determined empirically by how much ambiguity one can tolerate. Any proposition, when initially put forward, is false, i.e., it starts as having zero confidence (much like proposed expenditures in zero-based budgeting). As evidence is added for its support, it develops a higher and higher "confidence factor". At a certain point within the range of "ambiguous" evidence, a post hoc ergo ipso hoc relationship is discovered, resulting in predictability. Once that level of confidence is achieved, the proposition becomes a useable "cause-and-effect" knowledge stub (in the face of all that is unknown) for a limited period of time...then stops working after awhile. An example of this is in the product testing environment; this approach is applied by repetitively triggering (a) typical conditions, (b) limit conditions, and © overload conditions, with the assumption that, "the one test that was not performed, i.e., the next one, is when the product failure would occur"; every time a product failure DOES occur, all previous presumptions are considered invalid, and the test iterations start over from zero. How does this work out? On a first-trial, simple arithmatic basis (failures are weighted heavier in the case of multiple retrials.): If, on the first trial, you test something once without a failure, it is assumed to have failed on the second try. One success out of two trials = 50% confidence factor, 50% failure rate. If you test something 9 times without a failure, it is assumed to have failed on the 10th try. 9 successes out of 10 trials = 90% confidence factor, 10% failure rate. If you test something 49 times without a failure, it is assumed to have failed on the 50th try. 49 successes out of 50 trials = 98% confidence factor, 2% failure rate. If you test something 99 times without a failure, it is assumed to have failed on the 100th try. 99 successes out of 100 trials = 99% confidence factore, 1% failure rate. So on and so forth. As you can see, you rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns through this methodolgy. You will find that most people generally settle in the 50% - 66% confidence factor range (33% - 50% failure or inaccuracy rate) for everything they know, think, say, or do. [There is an observable difference in applicability of this based on gender. Generally females truly start from the zero-based presumption, while men assume that "anything's possible", i.e., there is already one successful trial on the mental "stack". Typically a female (as socialized in this society) needs to see at least one (and usually more) instance of something in order to believe something is possible; this first instance is generally considered a "fluke" and not significant (statistically or otherwise), more like "priming a pump" than being used of evidence of something. The second time she sees it, is when it becomes a possibility. The third time she sees it she may start to sense a pattern. it is only on fourth and subsequent trials that she can generally derive any predictive value from what she is observing. On the other hand, since a male already believes in the first instance, once he sees an actual instance, he already has reached his 66% confidence level and is ready to recognize patterns in what he is observing. Once something happens twice, he is already at the 75% confidence level, ready to test his concepts for predictability. This is a factor in why men are generally perceived to be more "decisive" than women; they have a greater confidence in their knowledge, and are able to get earlier feedback on the accuracy of their projections.] Now logically speaking, all it takes is ONE counterexample to "disprove" a "theory", but with an empirically scaleable confidence level, there is the assumption that there is ALWAYS AT LEAST ONE COUNTEREXAMPLE. Thus ambiguity of knowledge is normative, there is no "falsification" per se, because the concepts of "concept" and "theory" as used are inherently flawed. so, Pragmatism? Hmmm. Not of the mid-19th century sort. But I find it hard to work with "concepts" that appear to me inaccurate and/or inadequate, in that they cannot subsume the discrete entities, qualities and actions they are intended to abstract. I'm saying that the concepts of 'proof', 'confirmation', theory', 'evidence', and 'falsification' all fall into that category.

That is a misconception. You never can see the origin of a new species in real time, the emergence of a new species is something that can only be inferred much later. See for an explanation Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea Chapter 4.3: Retrospective Coronations:Mitochondrial Eve and Invisible Beginnings. Dennett illustrates this by a rather comical passage from a historical novel "..in which a French doctor came home to supper one evening in 1802 and said to his wife: "Guess what I did today! I assisted at the birth of Victor Hugo!". See also Chapter 4.2: Color-coding a Species on the Tree. Talkorigins.org has records of speciation events (observed evolution in real time): http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html Note that if you have done any thinking on this, and have come to your own conclusions concerning objective requirements of what constitutes a "speciation event", then you are likely to find that better than 60% of the experiments reported and/or linked to in these two articles are not valid. But that is not relevant. What is relevant are the nearly 40% of reports that ARE valid. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. (I myself am skeptical concerning naturalistic evolution, but cannot accept the time scale of the biblical "young-earth" creationists nor the moral ambiguity of "intelligent design". I was given these links by an ardent believer in evolution who regarded my disbelief in evolution with horror, while he was taking every word of these two articles as gospel. Maybe not perfect, but still a useful tool.)

That assertion is just plain false. The lack of a complete workable theory in no way confirms any previous proposition, no matter what confidence factor has been established for "sections" of that previous proposition. In information processing, in order to do systems testing ("to confirm a theory") there are sections that are "solid". These are "solid" because they are FAKED DATA, presented either through a manual entry or through a FAKED ROUTINE called a stub. It is assumed that this FAKED DATA will provide predictability for system outputs, by stimulating and simulating typical, limit, and saturation conditions. But it is really just placeholder information -- it's not real. It only exists because the nature of the program, "the theory", requires something to be there. This is the nature of most human knowledge as well. For example. You yourself have learned a great deal of what you speak of, but as I will not be repeating your path to knowledge, there is only one way I can accept what you say: Second hand, on faith. If I believe what you say, it is not "knowledge", not even a theory. It is only a knowledge "stub", to fill a hole in my knowledge that I was never aware of till now. (If I HAD been aware of it, I would have had to create my own "knowledge stub" before now. With no more of a guarantee concerning its reliability.) I can only guess how your knowledge has affected your perception of things. And what we know does make us open to certain ways of seeing things, and close us off to others. As another f'rinstance, I started screwing around with computers in the 60's, became a computer hobbyist in the 70's, and a systems engineer doing military comm systems in the 80's. The hardware designers I worked with were physicists, but did not have information theory. I on the other hand (not a physicist), had to specialize in (actually reinvent) information theory, but was taking the same classes in linear and discrete transforms as they did. Handling comm signals that were quieter than noise levels; doing logic in assembler (rom bios) and microcode (pal's, pla's, pgal's etc.), telling the hardware people how to redisgn the hardware so it would work, I was exposed not only to the screwball quantum world in terms of the physics involved, but there was also something else that happened. As I started to create working systems, I found that I was the only one of 2 people (out of 40 on the projects) that had the capability to fully "scale" my understandings; being able to fully understand the relationships from the customer-needs levels down to the level of tunneling diodes in the programmable logic; my scale of time became so "precise" that I could smell a bad sequence from 50 paces. (Still can.) My scale of time became such that the 30-millisecond (thousandths of a second) limit for human perception (definition of a real-time system) became like a million years for me. A 100-microsecond (millionths of a second) task switch took a lifetime to complete. I was more used to debugging 5-nanosecond (billionths of a second) rise/fall times on my signals, but was equally adept at dealing with logic testing down to the level of 50-150 picoseconds. (Trillionths of a second. But that's my limit. Technology faster than that was only theoretical at that point.) At first, before I became aware of how this precision was affecting my own thinking, I assumed that others were able to understand precise sequence-related, cause-and-effect events; I found it highly frustrating to deal with people who were just so, well, "WRONG". But in observing myself, I found that those who lack a similar experience, also lack the opportunity to develop a similar precision in their ideas of "what comes next", or of cause-and-effect. They just never run into the need for a better theory. Does that make them "RIGHT", i.e., does that "confirm their theory"? I don't think so. And what you find is that, in the world of capital-'S' Science that most of what passes for "premises", "postulates", "tests", "evidence", "components", and "theories" are nothing more than stubs. Fake knowledge. You chase them down, try to grab hold like they're something solid, and they run like sand through your fingers.

Victor, Angie I haven't read the whole thread; being new here I'm still doing "the condiment dance" -- trying to "ketchup" on everything. I really "relish" the posts of others; some call for a really "hot sauce"-y response. But I would be in a real "pickle" if I started responding inappropriately to people. Should I stop that now? Well, "mayo"-be yes. Okay, what I wanted to say was, that from what I've seen here, it seems the biggest mistake would be not to try and find out if it's real and right, as Scott Meldrum pointed to in his song, "Einstein's Big Mistake". (© 1999 Crushwerx) You really owe it to yourselves to find out; enjoy the adventure called life, don't be afraid of it. And I hope it lasts even longer than the 30 years my marriage has (so far). I wish you both all the best. steve "She's in Love; there's nothing better than that...."

An article titled Goodbye U.S. dollar, hello global currency, discusses the claims of the chief of the CFR that monetary nationalism and sovereignty should be abandoned. Do you see this as a direction our nation should be moving in? If so, why? If not, why not?

Dodger Who is saying these things to you? steve

Michael Has there been any news on this subject? I just caught up with your post and I'm feeling....strange.... Sort of like that scene in Woody Allen's "Bananas", when the leader of the guerilla forces succeeds in taking over the banana republic...he announces that sanitation is a major need, so to guarantee proper sanitation, everyone must now change their underwear EVERY 15 MINUTES...that to guarantee they are doing this, everyone must now wear their underwear on the OUTSIDE..... Except these guys are SERIOUS?!?!?!?!?!? UNDERWEAR ON THE OUTSIDE?!?!?!?!?!?

Dang you beat me in that one. Should also add Barbarella ('68), Altered States ('80), and The Stuff ('85). The first because it makes the unsexiest use of a woman's body for marketing purposes; the latter two for their sappy, heavy-handed moralizing.

Chris I post to a few different conservative blatherboards, and sadly, from what I've seen I think you are right. Every time I attempt to get a thoughtful, collaborative discussion going, there isn't a helpful, "but what about this?"-type attitude, but a straight-go-for-the-jugular type attack (somewhat like one sees on some other so-called "objectivist" boards). People even attack you for agreeing with them. It's a real time waster. More L8R.

Actually, within the Republican Party, the libertarians have been drowned out by the secular neocon globalists and their buddies in the mainstream media. Those you label "Christian kooks" are with the libertarians better than 85 percent of the time on policy, and though they (the Christians) get the press regarding their supposed "influence" in this administration, they've been forcibly sodomized by the republican establishment as much as the libertarians. You find it "scary" that not all the candidates "believe in evolution"? You make it sound like some sort of religious test. What are you, some kind of religious kook? :poke: Actually, what I find scarier is the mention of the neocon globalist John Thompson running as the supposed "conservative" Republican candidate, and polls showing he has a chance of winning. Great. Our next president is going to be named "Mr. Thompson". I mean, talk about life imitating art. Now THAT'S scary.

If this story is true, then it's about time. Every other experiment using fetal stem cells has been an abysmal failure. Is there a second source on the story? I'm sure AP would have picked up on this as they did, say, with the Raelians, with their "success" in human cloning. Will there be a follow up story when the woman develops rejection of the foreign tissue, or when she develops cancer, due to the uncontrollable reproduction of the introduced fetal stem cells? Did you read the comments following the story? Of a quadriplegic woman who cannot raise her child, and now wants to hope for a miracle cure for herself as well? How cruel! Trotting out a single event like this smacks of anecdotal miracle stories you hear from religious fanatics. Whereas there have been over 1200 successful stem cell treatments in the last 16 years using adult stem cells, without irritating the witchhunters and witchdoctors, and without getting them involved politically in what should be a medical decision. These treatments have included regrowing bones lost to cancer, kidney repair, liver repair, and spinal reconstruction, to name a few. Right now a cure for type II diabetes is in the works. Why are you not scouring the web for stories related to this? But people involved in the abortion industry can't make any money off the adult stem cells, so they constantly pander to the former. What a waste. A cruel, cruel waste.

John Interesting approach to the "father's rights" question. I would like to know if you can argue it without recourse to legal principles or an appeal to an "outside" authority. There are other points but I will raise them separately. Steve

No, of course not. But then, I didn't post this topic under "Ethics" for a reason. What was that reason?

Hi. I just stole this thread from the "Parenting" section because the polemics in this post do not belong there. This thread started as a discussion of an individual who does not want children. I have no right to disagree with her insofar as her individual choices go. The subject I want to address here, though is demographics -- the observable aggregate result of what happens when many people make the same choices concerning their fertility. Leaving out side discussions concerning abortion and the like, this is the basic frame of the discussion: Though I agree with John Dailey on the advice side, I must take issue with the supposed truth-value, or at least the implications, of Fran's last statement: Evolution may "care" (what an anthropomorphism!) about nothing but one's reproduction, but acting upon an aversion to having children, plays straight into natural selection -- if one opts out and remain childless, he makes himself the dead end of the chain of life that brought him into being. This is not called "beating evolution", it's called "extinction" -- a very important factor in real evolution. The topic I'm bringing up is the problem of demographics, and is discussed in a book by Mark Steyn entitled America Alone. The link connects to an excerpt from the book on Free Republic. Its topic of the demographic collapse of western civilization is in the same vein as the last few books by Pat Buchanan. The argument put forth is that the current western tendency, of downplaying the importance of family and posterity, plays directly into the demographic debacle that western civilization now finds itself in. If those people who come from western civilization, those who we hope would have an appreciation for its rational intellectual traditions, will not maintain their demographic pre-eminence, their civilization will be overrun and and destroyed, to be replaced by those who have no such orientation or loyalties. (Like by Brazilians...haha, Michael. Or Armenians. Or Eskimos.) Do you understand how the rational choice of refusing to bring children into the world, and to educate them to be rational human beings, will actually result in a world full of irrational people? Don't say, "but I can teach someone else, and he will embrace objective reason and rationality as I do," because (a) it's a lie -- you are neither trying nor succeeding, and (b) it does not contribute one additional rational being to life. There will still be more people born into the irrational mob, to live worse than animals, than those born to live as rational human beings. Population movements throughout history, like those triggered by the cyclic climate shift every 650 years or so (for at least 6000 years -- the last one was 650 years ago) have generally benefitted larger population groups; the smaller ones have either been assimilated or have become extinct. This phenomenon can as easily be made manifest in the relation between rational people and irrational people. If you give up the world to the irrational people, their granchildren "will dance on your unmarked grave." If that's the type of legacy you wish to leave to the world of rational men, then have at it. You can always say, like the fictional Cuffy Miegs, "In the long run, we'll all be dead." But were you in a burning building, it would be really stupid to stand there and burn with it, expecting anyone else to stand with you -- refusing to escape simply because you weren't the one who set the fire. Likewise, you cannot expect everyone around you to close their eyes ("blank-out"), and pretend with you that that a world left to irrational people is not the consequence of your chosen actions.

We all live our lives. We also all tell ourselves and others stories of our lives, trying to rationalize our experiences, fair and unfair. But not at the same time. (Thank you for that lesson Jean-Paul.) In another context, I told this true story: It's a real heartbreak, but it might be for an unreal person. Don't sustain any unreal hopes -- it will hurt you in the long run -- and get on with setting your life aright. Good luck. yt steve

Kirby J. Hensley (founder of the Universal Life Church) once said that the Bible was like a lumberyard. If you want to build a red house, you go to the lumberyard and get the stuff you need to build a red house. Then go and build your red house. Likewise if you want a white house, go to the lumberyard and get what you need to build a white house. Then go build your white house. I tend to agree with him. You want to find beauty and truth, you can find it. Likewise if you want to find ugliness and lies, well you can find that too. Depends upon what you're looking for, and what you want to have in your life. Depends also on who is going to the store with you.

Fran -- I agree with John Dailey on the advice side. I had some other things to say, but I realized that they were inappropriate for the scale and scope of this discussion; making them appear to be intentionally, unnecessarily cruel. That is not my intent. I may start another thread wherein they would be appropriate, but not here. On a personal note, if you don't want children, why on earth would you consider having them?

I wanted to add one here, but I couldn't, because as we all know

This guy walks up and goes, "Gek gek gek." The second guy goes, "Poq'l?" The first guy goes "Rrhak'uhl!" The second guy goes "Rrhak'uhl poq'l?" So the the first guy goes, "RRHAK'UHL TZU'UHL!!!!" <B'LEN> <B'LEN> <B'LEN> . . . . . Hey, whatsa matta you? You never heard an ALIEN KNOCK-KNOCK joke before? It's pretty popular on Beta Centauri Prime, but probably loses something in translation. Imagine a whole civilization based on a warped sense of humor. They bankrupted their whole population to perfect space travel....just so they could come here to catch Seinfeld on cable. KNOCK KNOCK!

Me too..but the first time I was Dagny, the second time Roark....not what I expected at all. I thought I would have been one of the more minor characters in AS.

Hi. I'm Steve Gagne and I'm new here (this is only my third post here.) Although (as a recent convert to Catholicism) I do not self-identify as an capital-"O" Objectivist, I appreciate reason, rationality, and reality. I have studied most of AR's (non-posthumous) books, as well as several of NB's, and owe them both, at the least, a debt of gratitude. And where I meet people of good will, I hope to respond in kind. About thirty years ago, when I was first studying AR, I found there was an undercurrent of humorlessness and ill-will in the Objectivist community that I found...unpalatable. So I kept my distance. Maybe ten years ago, when I finally got online, I happened upon some Objectivist chat rooms, and ARI, and LP's peculiar versions of AR's works...and thought to explore the Objectivist community again. I've talked to Jehovah's Witnesses who were more rational and reasonable -- as soon as they found out I wasn't toeing the party line as they saw it, I was k-lined/banned/& bounced faster than you could blink. So a few days back when I clicked a link elsewhere and ended up here, I found a pleasant surprise -- believers in reason who practiced what they preached! People who showed the goodwill that AR said would exist among rational men! Ahhhhhh yesss. So a little about me....I'm a working man, married for 30 years. Three kids (opera-singer daughter full grown & married, out of the house; two teenage sons in high school, one a lazy bum, the other an honor student). I've dabbled in music, computers, and languages most of my life; I've been a systems engineer, a driver, an educator, a business manager, a baker, a preacher, a safecracker, a street musician, a salesman, and a welfare bureaucrat. My intellectual history is that I was raised to be an atheist by parents who were "recovering catholics". An intense interest in science gave me enough knowledge at a young age that I started to question scientific orthodoxy, at a time in life when most start to question an inherited religious faith, and for much the same reasons -- that most of what passes for knowledge is that A told B who told C who told A....etc. Secondhand knowledge and circular reasoning, accepted on ***faith*** and the fallacious argument to authority. This led me to independent study in comparative religion; especially in the area of native american religion. For years I absorbed some of those practices, until a broken heart, combined with a loss of the sense of my integrity, made me crazy. Then the religion didn't help; but following a failed suicide attempt, it was a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, and the offering his friendship, that did. I don't expect you to believe that, and I am not here to thump you with it. He is the one who led me to study AR & NB, to help restore my rationality and heal my broken mind. I learned that much that I had doubted about myself -- my objective observations of the world around me -- had always been true, and could never have been otherwise. And I have to say, that although I may have had some low points since, I have NEVER AGAIN wanted to give up on life since that time. Life is its own reason. So I hope to be able to share something intelligent here once in a while, and if not, at least to have the wisdom to keep my mouth shut. Cheers!

Back in the day, I had a buddy whose dad was a high muck-a-muck in the Music Business (my buddy later became the sidekick/stooge for Soupy Sales). He and some other buddies of mine were trying to get some garage bands moving, and he used to sequester me (and them) in his room to listen to show tunes, Stan Freburg, and other abominations )(especially the ones he wrote himself, like "My Monster" -- you all know this one -- "My Monster's a nice monster, the best monster I've ever seen; My Monster's the best monster, he's 10 feet tall handsome and green...." well you get the idea; or maybe you don't, to which your crying out, "PRAISE GOD!!!"). (But then I date myself.) One day I got even. I bought Tiny Tim's album (vinyl only in those days), and played it for my buddy, and wouldn't let him leave until he acknowledged the nuance, grace, and artistry of every single track on that camp album. Only took twice thru. Never had a problem with my buddy after that. (And actually, Tiny Tim's choice of old songs really wasn't half bad.) Man that whole-tone scale cadence/fade on the last cut ("This is All I Ask", originally recorded by Sinatra, and later by Harry Nilsson; written by Gordon Jenkins) was AMAZING!!!!

Hi. I'm Steve Gagne, and this is my first post on this board. I've spent a few days reading and trying to learn who is here, and the range of ideas, before (figuratively) attempting to insert my foot in my mouth. I checked out the link to the thread on SOLO, and what I found over there was a typical example of what Bill Buckley called "the psychology of small differences." Those people over there are so enamored of the minutiae and concretes of their beliefs, that they are willing to sacrifice the communicability of their own conceptual coherence. And they'll drive away anyone who doesn't embrace what they have to say, with or without evidence, condemning it as a moral failure. Since it not in my power to change others' behaviour, but only my own, I would think that my moral judgments concerning behaviour would always apply first and foremost to myself, and rarely to others. Their condemnatory behaviour there at SOLO shows that they do not share this understanding. Apart from anything Dr. Branden did with Ms. Rand, his work, especially "The Disowned Self," stands on its own, and the vituperation and character assassination from SOLO against him is stupid. So, I think the word I am looking for here is 5 letters long, starts with an "i" and ends with a "t" -- yes, that's it, they're all a bunch of ESKIMOS! Without a doubt, blame the INUIT! Their kind of nonsense is the reason I excluded myself from the humorless "objectivist community" over 30 years ago; A is A, and thumpers are thumpers whether they're holding a Bible, a Qu'ran, the Gitas, the Book of Mormon, Das Kapital, Mein Kampf, or Atlas Shrugged. Ay hombe!