The allegedly “rational” approach is for the second person to accept whatever is offered to him, because he has a choice between something or nothing, and something is better.

To me, this analysis illustrates why the current “rational” approaches to human behavior are nonsense. What’s really going on here is a layer of rationality that transcends the calculus of the experiment. People who evaluate things solely by the terms of the experiment miss the true significance.

If the entire world were just this experiment, then yes, the second person should accept whatever he is offered. But in reality the second person has other goals in mind — like the generalized social goal of not allowing jerks to get away with their schemes.

In reality, it works out like this. The second party will usually accept an offer that is at least 25% of the available pool. Below that, he’d rather take nothing.

This is an “irrational” response if you evaluate it in isolation. But society has other goals, and in light of those goals it may not be irrational. In fact, I think it is not.

All of this reminds me of another social science experiment that involves people’s attitudes towards incest. A premise of the question in this particular study is that “no harm is done” by the incest. Given that, experimenters are often baffled by the fact that people still condemn the act. They often attribute this to irrational attachment to rules of sanctity.

There are two things to note here. The first is that people may simply reject the premise that no harm is done. The second is that attachment to rules of sanctity might — as in the example of the ultimatum game — defer to a higher rule that is more important than any calculus of the individual situation.

IOW, even if you can prove (which you can’t) that “no harm was done” in this particular case, that doesn’t mean that the behavior is acceptable as a general rule, or should be accepted in this case.

I see this kind of bad reasoning all the time from the secularists. I’m somewhat amazed that they don’t see it themselves. Once again, as I’ve said many times, I wish the skeptics were a little more skeptical.

The all-knowing oracle (Wikipedia) says this.

[A]ll philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories … : Idealism, and materialism. The basic … distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: “what does reality consist of and how does it originate?” To idealists, spirit or mind is primary, and created matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary and mind or spirit is secondary, a product of matter acting upon matter.

Hmm. I don’t think that “idealism” necessarily involves either spirit or mind, so I consulted the all-knowing oracle about idealism.

In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.

The all-knowing oracle apparently doesn’t understand the that vs. which rules, but note the subtle distinction here. Now “idealism” simply says that reality is immaterial.

So, seeking to harmonize the words of the all-knowing oracle, we get this.

To idealists, spirit or mind (or some other immaterial thing) is primary, and created matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary and mind or spirit (or any other immaterial thing) is secondary, a product of matter acting upon matter.

Here’s the problem. Mathematical equations don’t seem like a “product of matter acting upon matter.” Rather, they seem like immaterial rules that govern the way matter acts upon matter. They seem rather like Platonic ideals.

When people want to make fun of Platonic ideals, they talk about the “ideal chair,” or the “ideal horse,” which just gets horribly weird and makes Plato seem like a clown.

But I’ve read recently that most mathematicians are Platonists — at least with respect to math. That there really is some “ideal realm” in which math is true — completely independent of anything physical or of our observation of the world.

So what do materialists say these equations and rules and relationships and such really are? They’re clearly not matter. So what are they?

The way to get ahead in academia is to find some work you disagree with, misread it and take cheap potshots at it.

I’m not an academic or an expert on academia, but that’s what I see in most so-called intellectual discussion — whether it comes out of a university or not.

It was an interesting show (which I haven’t quite finished yet) reviewing a book called “the outrageous idea of Christian scholarship.”

Another slightly amusing comment had to do with the “nothing buttery” problem in academia — that is, taking a complicated thing and trying to reduce it to something trite and dismiss its significance by saying “that’s nothing but ….”

E.g., a photograph is nothing but pixels on paper, there is nothing but matter, etc.

If you’re a real person and your comment isn’t showing up, I’m not blocking you. Send me an email and I’ll fix it.

I’ve often wondered about the influence of two different ways to look at education policy, and how we measure success.

On the one hand there’s the “are we producing stars / how are we doing with our best” approach, and on the other hand there’s the “who are we leaving behind / how are we doing with out worst” approach.

ISTM both approaches have merit, but for different things.

There is a certain minimum that we want everybody to surpass. Everybody should be able to read, do basic math, understand basic civics, and so on. For skills that are necessary to function in society, we should have a “who are we leaving behind” approach.

But there are other skills that people don’t really need to master. Advanced math, literature, a lot of science. In those fields the standard should be “what are we doing with our best.”

This seems to be what’s happening to Europe right now, and the American left seems dead set (literally) on following their example.

I was thinking of this in terms of the meta-narrative of the left — that their ideas are “progressive” — as if “progress” means adopting their views. But it seems that exactly the opposite is the case. “Progressive” views leads to culture disintegration.

What does “progress” mean, anyway? Leftist rhetoric wants us to believe that there’s some inevitable trajectory to history, and that you can be “on the wrong side” of it.

This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy about the so-called skeptics, who swallow liberal rhetoric whole with their morning tofu shake. Where is the philosophical or scientific or “evidence-based” proof that history has a goal? Materialists claim that they don’t believe in teleology or final causes. But they accept it in their politics. (Once again, if only the skeptics were a little more skeptical.)

Whether history is aiming at something or not, it seems that the relatively near future will be more religious and more conservative rather than the reverse. This is especially true in the southern hemisphere.

“Progressives” will find themselves on the “wrong side” of history.

As an example of dumb SSM propaganda, just today someone told me that it’s a matter of gay people having the same rights as straight people.

That doesn’t fly because gay people have exactly the same rights as straight people. I can’t marry a man, and neither can the gay guy. There is absolutely no discrimination against gays in marriage laws. A woman I know is married to a gay guy.

So then they say “heterosexuals can marry the person they love but homosexuals can’t.”

That doesn’t work for two reasons. First, heterosexuals don’t have an unrestricted ability to marry “the person they love.” There are limitations, e.g., they can’t marry close relatives, they can’t marry someone who is already married, or if they themselves are already married, etc. Second, the very word “marriage” means a man and at least one woman. That’s simply what it means.

Then they try to back up and make it into a more general conversation. They want to compare a heterosexual couple who wants to marry with a homosexual couple that wants to marry. We allow the first but we don’t allow the second, and in the crazy world of liberal-land the only possible explanation for that is discrimination against homosexuals.

No, it’s not. Rather, society wants to promote a particular arrangement — specifically, the union of a man and a woman to create a stable environment for children, to manage the inheritance of assets, and so on. This is a time-tested, proven, unquestionably good thing for society.

The reason we don’t allow men to marry men is because that’s not the thing that we’re trying to promote.

If the government decides it wants to promote drilling for oil on the outer continental shelf, somebody else can’t come along and say “you’re discriminating against people who want to dig for peat.” No. We’re just not promoting that. Those are entirely different things.

The SSM advocate will say, “but wait, we don’t only allow marriage between heterosexuals who can have children. We allow sterile people to marry, so therefore we’re not trying to promote what you say we’re trying to promote.”

Baloney. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m trying to promote offshore drilling for oil if some of the sites don’t produce oil, or if I use some relatively easy mechanism as a litmus test. Furthermore, allowing sterile heterosexuals to marry still promotes the kind of marriage culture that has been found to be beneficial to society.

There is nothing to prevent society from deciding to promote this other thing — the union of a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. But that is simply a different thing. It’s not marriage, and all the attempts to say that it is are — as my Dad would say — dumber than a mud fence.

It is certainly true that there are lots of forces destroying marriage today, and easy divorce is one of them.

Still, I find it amusing that the word “wife” has some meaning in the context of Rush’s marriages. IOW, even in Rush’s far less than optimal married life, we know what “marriage” and associated terms like “husband” and “wife” mean.

In the mixed up world of same-sex marriage, words don’t really mean anything. And this is usually a clue that people haven’t thought things out very well.

For example, will a man be able to marry his male cousin, but not his female cousin? Will he be able to marry his uncle but not his aunt?

We run into these problems because “same-sex marriage” is meaningless nonsense. It’s like a square circle. “Marriage” actually means something, and it doesn’t mean what Obama thinks it means.

I’m sure that’s so, but read the article. The “studies” are a joke. E.g., people who looked at “The Thinker” got lower scores on a test measuring their belief in God than people who looked at the ancient Greek sculpture Discobolus.

Only in social science would that be taken to mean anything.

In another test, results were different based on which font the test was printed in.

This seems to be the key to the studies.

Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition.

Which makes me wonder if the “belief” tests weren’t really “intuition” tests.

In any event, I have no doubt that critical thinking tends to make people less religious. I would expand on that and say that critical thinking tends to make people less likely to believe just about anything for the simple reason that most people hold to their beliefs uncritically.

It is almost impossible to believe that after all his years of being in and around religious debates, Michael Shermer could say something as ignorant as the opening paragraph in his “Much Ado about Nothing.” Saying that God does not need a creator is an entirely different kind of statement than saying the universe does not need a creator. If he doesn’t understand that, he should avoid speaking on the issue. And you really need to find somebody to review his stuff before it goes public.

The very word “God” implies things like “necessary being,” “uncreated,” etc. That’s simply what we mean when we use the word “God.”

The word “universe” doesn’t mean anything like that. The word “contingent” would be quite apt when referring to “universe,” but not when referring to God.

This is what Shermer actually said in “Much Ado about Nothing” in the May 2012 Scientific American.

“… if God does not need a creator, logic dictates that neither does the universe.”

You can postulate an uncreated universe if you like, but that has nothing to do with “logic.”

Following Shermer’s usage (If X does not require A, Y does not require A), we could say “if player pianos don’t need a pianist, logic dictates that regular pianos don’t need one either.”

Shermer could have simply said, “if God doesn’t need a creator, perhaps the universe doesn’t need a creator either.” And it’s horribly disappointing that he doesn’t know better. I’m tempted to put some of the blame on the editors at Scientific American, but they might not have the rights to edit Shermer’s submissions.

I realize that the science / skeptic crowd thinks religion is just a bunch of foolishness, but if they’re going to speak about it, they should have the intellectual honesty to know what the heck they’re talking about.

Katniss reflects on the song and recalls that when she was young she thought the author had to be the worst kind of creep.

The older Katniss — still in her teens, but aged by experiences none of us will (may it please God) ever have — doesn’t want to judge the guy any more. She’s been through times where she thought it would be a mercy to end a life, so she’s a little less sure of her ability to judge somebody else’s situation. At least without knowing more of the facts.

Experience is supposed to make you broad-minded. At least that’s the story we keep hearing.

I don’t think that’s the case at all. Experience can also make you quite narrow.

Just this weekend I heard a guy from Nigeria tell me about the problems in his country. I could easily have come away from the discussion confirmed in the belief that Muslims are a curse on the planet and should be eradicated for the sake of the future of humanity.

It’s not experience that broadens your mind. Sometimes experience just confirms your prejudices. What broadens the mind is the willingness to get out of your own perspective and see things the way somebody else sees them.

Recently I heard a story about a man’s path to engagement. On a certain level it was a very nice love story, and on another level it appalled and offended me.

But who am I to say how love grows, or where it comes from, or the right path to a healthy marriage? The preacher says …

There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a young woman.

The first three aren’t quite as mysterious as they were in Solomon’s day, but the fourth is still inexplicable.

I got the Norton wine from Horton vineyards, in Virginia. (You have to scroll down a bit on this page to see it.)

My wife put some Norton in one glass and some Syrah in another. I had no idea what to expect, so I wanted to taste it against something I knew decently well.

It was obvious right off the bat which was which. The Norton reminds you of concord grapes, both in the aroma and in the taste. It’s somewhat sweet and has a wildness to it. I’ve heard it would go well with game, which makes sense to me. (I had it with meat pie.)

If I was a colonist and this was all I could drink, I would be content. But it’s not a variety I’ll be stocking the cellar with.

• Whoever invented the idea of the moving camera (as used, for example, in the Hunger Games) is an idiot. When you run through the woods, the images don’t jump up and down like that. The moving cam is less realistic, not more.

• Tom Brokaw gave an excellent reply to somebody who was complaining that the anchor position on various Sunday TV shows has always been given to a white male. He characterized it as “a slowly rising pool of talent.” Eventually there will be minorities with enough experience and talent to get the job, but it will take a while. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.

The basic message is that a tyrannical government keeps 12 districts in check by starving them and humiliating them. The main form of humiliation is requiring them to submit one boy and one girl each year to an arena-style death match.

Then everybody watches it for entertainment. Yeah!

It’s fiction, of course, but there are parallels in real life. For example, we’re learning more and more that football is very dangerous. It’s not just ACLs and hamstrings. The signs are that repeated trauma to the head is causing far more damage than anybody had thought. Some recent suicides have highlighted the problem.

So far, the NFL has been pretty responsible about this, IMO. They’ve been changing rules and have been spending a lot of time and money trying to keep players safe. From everything I’ve heard and read, they’ve been doing exactly what they should be doing. Three cheers for the NFL.

But what if they weren’t? What if we knew that players were risking their future for our entertainment? Would we continue to watch? Would we allow people to get their brains bludgeoned for a few hours of distraction?

I’m not so sure. The NFL seems to be doing the right things (so far as I can tell). But what about professional wrestling, or boxing?

Do we really care if these people are condemning themselves to brain disorders, or spinal injuries, or other debilitating problems — just so we can have something to watch on TV?

How different is that from the arena-style death matches in the Hunger Games?

I’m not against sports in any way. I think sports are a very good thing for individuals and for society. And I’m pleased with the way the NFL has been handing the head trauma issues.

But moral pressure needs to be applied to other sports — to the sponsors, the organizers, and the consumers — to make sure that we’re not asking people to harm themselves for our pleasure.

And we, as consumers, need to have our own standards.

I’m somewhat interested in mixed martial arts myself. I used to take martial arts, and we did some of the same stuff you see in those matches.

But I’m appalled at how violent they are. It’s not sport when you’re beating somebody senseless with bare knuckles. That’s just plain evil, and people should be ashamed of themselves for supporting it.

People invent all kinds of excuses for this. “They chose that lifestyle,” and “this is their chance to make it big,” and “nobody’s forcing them to fight.”

I think the excuses are flimsy and we need to apply a better moral sense to the entertainment we watch.

But there is one thing that kinda bugs me, and I’m going to post it just to get it out of my system. I think it bugs me because it’s closer to a logical mistake than a grammar mistake.

“That” introduces an essential clause. “Which” introduces an inessential clause.

So, if I have two cars, a red one and a blue one, and one is parked in the driveway and one is on the street, I could say “My car that is parked in the driveway is old.” The phrase “that is parked in the driveway” is essential because “My car” doesn’t specify which one.

I could also say, “My red car, which is parked on the street, is dirty.” The phrase “which is parked on the street” is not essential because I’ve already specified which car — the red one.

One other thing that confuses me. “Farther” refers to distance, while “further” means “in addition to” or “to a greater extent.” But for some reason you don’t say “You’ve gone too fur.”