The temperature is going to get down to -14 degrees (or 247 degrees Kelvin) tonight here in Ohio, so I thought I would post a video about global warming that I saw on economicpolicyjournal.com. In the video below Dr. Pierre Latour uses physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, economics, history and ethics to show the futility of attempting to designing a thermostat to control Earth’s temperature by adjusting CO2 levels. It’s long but very interesting when you get into the meat of the talk.
IS DR. LATOUR RELATED TO GEORGE CARLIN?
Dr. Latours voice and delivery reminds me of George Carlin. If you get board watching the above video, watch the George Carlin video below. It is a shorter and funner version of Dr Latour’s talk.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell: Stormy Weather And Politics, at austrianaddict.com.
I always read everything Thomas Sowell writes. His RSS feed is on my site so you can also enjoy his clear thinking. All his articles are outstanding, which is a bit of a curse, because that means they are all average. Some of his articles surpass his normal brilliance and these are the ones I post.
His recent article “Stormy Weather and Politics“, is outstanding. He talks about global warming theoretical models and how they can be fudged to fit the desired result. Click on the article and read it all. Here are some excerpts from the article if you can’t.
It’s always enlightening to read what Thomas Sowell is randomly thinking (Read here). Here are some excerpts from the article,
–“When someone tries to lay a guilt trip on you for being successful, remember that your guilt is some politician’s license to take what you worked for and give it to someone else who is more likely to vote foe the politician who plays Santa Claus with your Money.”
–“So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers’ unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.”
-“Somewhere Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of an education should be to produce a mind that cannot be humbugged. But today our educational system, from kindergarten to the universities, is engaged in the mass production of fashionable humbug – propaganda rather than education.”
-“Would you go to a funeral if you knew that your presence would be unwelcome and would just add to the pain of the mourners? Probably not. But New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio went to both funerals for the two New York City policeman recently murdered – and gave speeches. that epitomized what a truly despicable human being he is, eve by the low standards of politicians.”
-“Demographic “diversity” is a notion often defended with fervor but seldom with facts.”
Related Article – More Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – More Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at asutrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell’s Random Thoughts, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell’s Random Thoughts, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Random Thoughts And Other Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.
Here are some cartoons to help us get through the week.
Here are some more cartoons at theburningplatform.com.
I saw this post titled, The Day That Einstein Feared Has Arrived, at zerohedge.com. It has a quote from Albert Einstein saying, “I Fear The Day That Technology Will Surpass Our Human Interaction. The World Will Be A Generation Of Idiots”. Look at the photos in this post. You’ve seen versions of these pictures in your everyday life, haven’t you? It’s kind of scary. I wonder if people today are aware of what’s going on around them? And, would they be able to see a discernible pattern of events, even if they were paying attention????
I saw the video below on economicpolicyjournal.com, and it reminded that nobody writes more clearly about race and culture than Thomas Sowell. His book, The Economics and Politics of Race, was written in 1983. I read this book after I had read Race And Culture, Migration and Culture, and Conquests and Cultures, which make up his three book cultural trilogy which was written in 94, 96, and 98 respectively. As much as I liked the cultural trilogy, I think I liked The Economics and Politics Of Race better, although the fact that I read the other books first may have had something to do with it. What I took away from the book is that some cultures are superior to other cultures, in specific areas, at specific times in history. And even though past cultural tendencies seem to follow and influence ethnic groups over time, superiority and inferiority are always subject to change.
Here are some excerpts from the book.
“The human race has, throughout history, differed greatly in its component parts. At various periods of history, some groups have been far ahead of others in military power, scientific achievements, or organizational skills. But often those who were far behind in one era became far ahead in another era. The Chinese, for example, had a huge and complex empire thousands of years ago, when Nordic Europe was living a primitive, tribal existence. It has been only the past two or three centuries that their roles have been reversed…..The Arabs conquered parts of Europe in the Middle Ages but have suffered conquest by Europeans in more recent times.”
“Virtually every portion of the human species excels at something. From an economic point or view, this means the mutual benefits can result from cooperation among different racial and ethnic groups, whether through domestic markets, international trade, or the migration of peoples. From a Political point of view, however, it is very difficult to get acceptance of these intergroup differences and their beneficial economic consequences. The conflict between the economic consequences and the political consequences of these group differences is one that appears again and again…..”
In this video Thomas Sowell discusses his book, The Economics and Politics Of Race, on the TV show, Tony Brown’s Journal.
Here are some excerpts from the book.
“History is a treasure of experience, available without paying the high price often inflicted on those who lived through it. But history is not free, however. It conflicts painfully with many cherished beliefs and shatters many carefully built theories. At best it is untidy and complex, and often it is a battleground for those with differing visions of the world today. Yet history remains a massive fact and a massive influence on out lives: “We do not live in the past, but the past in us”.”
“To seek to look ahead into the future is to seek to understand the momentum of the past and the choices available to us in the present. We live in a world of options constrained by decisions already made and actions already taken – as well as constrained by mutually competitive and perhaps irreconcilable goals among contemporaries.”
“The history of racial and ethnic groups around the world is a story of the heights and depths of the human spirit – the glory of its perseverance in the face of every kind of adversity and the vileness of its brutality against the helpless. Whether the future brings great advancements or succumbs to wretched agonies, it will have ample precedents. How well we understand the past can be an important factor in decisions to shape that future.’
THOMAS SOWELL QUOTE – “Each group tends to trail the long shadow of its own cultural history as well as reflecting the consequences of external influences”.
I asked myself this question, “are people smarter today compared to people 100 years ago”, after reading an article titled, Dumb And Dumber – Scientific Proof That People Are Getting ‘Stupider’, at zerohede.com. In the article, the writer makes the assertion that people are getting ‘stupider’ {then humorously asks, is ‘stupider’ even a word}. The article states that there is now scientific evidence that this is so. SAT reading and verbal scores have been going down for decades, are examples cited as evidence to support the theory. The article also posts a 1912 eighth grade exam from Bullitt County Schools in Kentucky. Try to answer some of these questions, you will be humbled.
DEFINE STUPID AND SMART
The question: are people getting stupider, needs to a few qualifying questions asked before we can answer it. 1) What are the standards used for comparing the intelligence of people who lived 100 years ago to people alive today? 2) Who decides what constitutes being smart and being stupid? 3) Does reciting facts from memory, like a contestant on Jeopardy, show higher intelligence than being able to take facts and logically reason your way from point A, to a conclusion at point Z? 4) Does being smart in your chosen field magically make you smart in other fields? These are just a few questions we need to think about before we make a pronouncement about intelligence or lack of intelligence.
DIFFERENT ERAS REQUIRED DIFFERENT KNOWLEDGE
People today need to know less about some things and more about other things than the people who lived 100 years ago. If you look at the eight grade test in the article linked to above, you will find questions about spelling, arithmetic, grammar, geography, physiology, civil government, and history that not many of us could answer today. However the answers to these questions are just a click on the computer, or a swipe on a cell phone away from getting answered in today’s world. The knowledge that people had to memorize back then is now stored on a computer chip and is able to be called up at a moments notice. Think of the times you have been with people and someone asks a question that no one can answer until someone uses their cell phone to look it up. The ability to write these posts would be exponentially more time-consuming if it wasn’t for computers. The ability to use spelling and grammar checks makes writing so much easier (some times these tools can’t even save me from spelling and grammar mistakes). Think about a sports writer decades ago pounding out his story on a typewriter: talk about having to get it right on the first take. Calculators have made complex math problems easy for dummies like me. You don’t have to know how to read a map today because you have GPS on your phone with the hot British female voice telling you, “in 200 feet turn right”.
The advance in the standard of living since the industrial revolution brought about a situation where more and more people didn’t have to know how to produce food, clothing, shelter, etc in order to win their battle against the planet for their survival. People began to specialize in producing these things more efficiently which freed up time and labor to be used to produce new products and services that were created by entrepreneurs who speculated, but were not assured, that markets existed for these new products and services. Through this trial and error process of becoming more productive, we can safely say that the over all amount of knowledge in society is obviously expanding, while at the same time we can say that an individual needs less over all knowledge to survive. The process of production has become so specialized that an individual can be a welder at a John Deere plant and literally trade his labor for food, instead of knowing how to actually produce food.
THOMAS SOWELLS TAKE
Thomas Sowell writes about what we are talking about in his book, Knowledge And Decisions ( one the best books I have ever read), was inspired by F.A Hayeks essay, The Use Of Knowledge In Society.
Dr. Sowell writes in Knowledge and Decisions (which was written in 1980), “The growing complexity of science, technology, and organization does not imply either a growing knowledge or a growing need for knowledge in the general population. On the contrary, the increasingly complex processes tend to lead to increasingly simple and easily understood products. The genius of mass production is precisely in its making more products more accessible, both economically and intellectually to more people.”
Think of how much more true this is thirty-four years after Dr. Sowell wrote this. Things we use in our everyday life weren’t around in 1980.
More from Dr. Sowell. “…Matthew Brady required far more knowledge of photographic processes to take pictures with his cumbersome equipment during the Civil War than a modern photographer requires to operate his automated cameras…..The printing press performs daily communications miracles beyond the ability of an army of the most highly trained and dedicated scribes of the Middle Ages….An ordinary individual can easily arrange travel across thousands of miles through cities he has never seen by tapping the knowledge of travel agents and/or the American Automobile Association.”
Photographic equipment? The printing press? Travel agents? Seriously. We take pictures with cell phones. We have the internet and inkjet printers. We don’t call Triple A to make travel arrangements, we call Triple A if we need a tow.
THE ONE AREA IN WHICH WE ARE CERTAINLY DUMBER
If you haven’t seen the eighth grade exam from 1912 in the Dumb and Dumber article above you should go look at it. The civil government and history part of the eighth grade exam is where we have become woefully ignorant. Unfortunately these two areas are the most important areas we as individuals need to be smart about if we want to have continued prosperity. Being smart in these areas would have kept us vigilant about the incremental taking of individual freedom by people in Government that has happened over the last 50 plus years. Two questions from the civil government part of the exam prove my assertion. How many adults, let alone eighth graders today, could get these two questions right. 1) Name three rights given Congress by the Constitution and two rights denied Congress, and 2) Define the following forms of Government: Democracy, Limited Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give examples of each.
These questions aren’t even asked today. The first question, “name three rights given congress by the constitution…and two rights denied congress”, speaks volumes about what was understood about the constitution in 1912 that isn’t even taught in schools today. The fact that congressional powers are limited is stated in the question. Today most people think congress has unlimited power to make any law individuals in congress wish to make. Most people today think the President has unlimited power to decree what he wishes. But I bet most eight graders in 1912 knew that the President had limited powers.
CONCLUSION
The amount of over all knowledge has expanded exponentially over the last 100 years, while at the same time the amount of knowledge an individual needs to survive is less, and also the kind of knowledge each individual needs to survive is different.
The real question is not; are we smarter today than 100 years ago,? The real question is; are we smart enough to understand that the process that produced today’s standard of living stretches far back in time? Free individuals cooperating in free markets produced the standard of living we enjoy today. Central planning by Governments didn’t produce it, in fact, it has hampered our advance. The passage of time has separated us from the founding principles of our country. If we aren’t smart enough to understand this, we will continually allow democratically elected tyrants to incrementally crush our individual freedom under the heel of their central plans.
Related Article – We’re All Born In The Middle Of The Story, by austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – July 4th, Declaring Independence From Tyranny, by austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Spontaneous Order = Free Markets, by austrianaddict.com.
Brian Cox visits the worlds largest vacuum chamber in Sandusky Ohio to prove that all objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum. What results the first time the bowling ball and the feather are dropped, before the air is pumped out of the chamber, is what we would all expect because this is what we observe in our everyday life in earths atmosphere. What happens when they are dropped after the air is pumped out of the chamber, is a surprise to most people who have never seen this before.
APPOLO 15 PROVED THIS IN 1971
I have seen this experiment before. In the summer after my freshman year in high school I watched Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott perform the same experiment on live TV from the moon. He dropped a feather and a hammer in the vacuum of space, proving Galileo’s theory that all objects fall at the same rate.
The Space Power Facility that houses the worlds largest vacuum chamber was built in 1969. This must have been where the faked moon landings were filmed. Why did they go through all that trouble, just to show one experiment that wouldn’t have worked anywhere on the earth?
I saw the bowling ball and feather story at theblaze.com.
The burningplatform.com, posted some great old photos, some I have seen before but many I haven’t. Here are a few of them. Click Here to see the rest.
Under water detonation of a 15 kiloton nuclear weapon.
Abandon boy holding a stuffed animal in the ruins after the Germans bombed London 1940.
The last Jew In Vinnitsa, 1941.
Hitler rehearsing his speech In front of mirror, in 1925.
Using banknotes as wallpaper during hyperinflation in Germany 1923
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 