Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

What’s up with El Neil?

El Neil has had the Covid, has been in ICU, and is well and doing rehab to regain strength, and will be back here Real Soon Now.

Speaking of being “Old Like Me”, here is some interesting news: “Scientists Identify the Key to Extending Our Human Lifespan Dramatically”. Well, alrighty then!

And from the Advocates for Self-Government, a commentary on “What masking means to Rachel Maddow and friends”, which seems to indicate that the “left” uses medical masks to reinforce their prejudices about We The People and to signal their own “virtue”—an extremely important part of “leftism”.

Golly, that ancient enormous Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon finally has some competition, the forthcoming The Cambridge Greek Lexicon in 2 volumes for $85. Every now and them I tell myself I am going to apply myself to re-learning me some Ancient Greek, which I spent 2 years on in college. Then I look into my textbook and say “how did I ever learn all this complicated stuff” and close the book. I was smarter in those days than now. Alas. Maybe I'll smarten-up, eh? Someday? Soon? Rejuvination? Eh? Eh?

 

As I have probably noted here before, the most important question you can ask is “What do you know, and how do you know it?” Or, more precisely: “What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?” (Since most people don’t think much about this kind of thing.) And it is a hard question to answer. Here is a handy not-so-little book that tries to help with that question: Rationality: From AI to Zombies, by Eliezer Yudkowsky. You can get it as an Amazon Kindle book [Here], or you can read it for free online [Here].

If you like books-on-paper, the first two sections are on paper [Here] and [Here]

Finally, if you would prefer a more entertaining presentation, there is a novelization called [Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality] The author notes: “This is an Alternate Universe story, where Petunia married a scientist. Now Rationalist!Harry enters the wizarding world armed with Enlightenment ideals and the experimental spirit.” It is in .pdf [Here] as well as read-online form, .epub form and .mobi form. And translations into Russian, Chinese, Indonesian, Czech, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish,Finnish, Dutch, Romanian, Hebrew, and Ukranian.

Anyway, I have read it several times now, and it is delightful. We hear people sometimes talking about “scientific method,” but The Method of Rationality is a more general technique that might be called “The Method of Knowledge” since that is actually what it is all about: “how do you know?” For a higher-level examination of the whole thing, see The Conditions of Philosophy by Mortimer J. Adler (no ebook, so far) [Hardback] [Paperback].

I have noticed some hostility to The Enlightenment at various Alt-Right websites. Apparently because it prevents soneone from burning at the stake people they disagree with. Which of course, is the whole point of The Enlightenment.

And The Enlightenment is why you and I and them are alive right now. BLM and Wokeness, for example, are anti-Enlightenment.

 

Anyway!

 

This one sez it all:

 

Yes, grate again!

 

Cats.

 

Just a reminder: I am on Central (Daylight) Time now, the “deadline” is early Saturday afternoon. How early? Friday, to make sure, if possible.

 

Anyway! Stay Deplorable! Someone has to!