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Comments |
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 | Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 0:29:14 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Dan G.
It passed, time to write your senators. |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 1:06:47 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: pomponazzi
E-mail: invinoveritas196(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://mabadar.blogspot.com
I am searching for a good introductory book on micro-economics that is consistent with free market thinking, and without the Keynesian crap. I have read "Economics in one lesson" which is a good book but doesn't delve into all the basics like demand-supply curves, PPF etc. This is what I am looking for. Thank you. |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 3:02:09 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
I now know where in Vegas this year's OCON will be; Red Rock Resort is less than fifteen minutes away from my house (hell, it's almost within walking distance from the first house I owned here). Diana, if you are setting up a meet and need someone onsite for things like evaluating venues, feel free to ask me (if you have any of my altyna.com email addresses, those are fastest).
We may also offer a place to stay for an attendee who'd like to save on hotel costs, but I won't know that until my Diana gets here later this month, and we get settled in. |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 5:52:49 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Neil Parille
E-mail: neilparille(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://objectiblog.blogspot.com/
Mr. Pomponazzi,
I'd recommend Foundations of the Market Price System by Milton Shapiro.
http://mises.org/etexts/Foundations.pdf
-Neil Parille |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 6:59:34 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
Unfortunately, the bill passed with bi-partisan support, since Rep. Anh Lao (R-LA) also voted for it. 39 Democrats wound up voting against it. It's critical that this bill not pass the Senate in any form, since all the "even worse" provisions are likely to just be added back in "reconciliation." |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 8:29:34 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Wayne
My wife and I loved the new ABC sci fi series V.
It got press over the obvious political parallels to today. Sinister forces actually promise "universal health care."
But more importantly, it's about free will. The show lays out choices crystal clear.
Like (may be spoilers below) The TV host who chooses to compromise. The skeptical preacher who chooses to resist. The female FBI agent who chooses to resist while her son lets himself get seduced by a pretty alien. They even had a alien visitor who chooses to help humans.
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 8:56:43 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: pomponazzi
E-mail: invinoveritas1976(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://mabadar.blogspot.com
Mr.Neil, thank you. |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 9:40:57 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Mike
E-mail: mikedialj(at)netscape.net
I was one of the people who showed up on a moment's notice on the west steps of the Capitol yesterday to protest the House vote on health care. It was great theater, but it didn't help in the end. I've been writing my representative and both senators (all far-left), and have been active in the fight. What I really need, however, is some people in Congress who are committed to liberty instead of the religious values proclaimed at the Capitol yesterday. I need a representative who won't be bought off by appeals to altruism. |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 10:15:40 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
Gotta love this "fair and balanced" AP article extolling the benefits of socialized medicine in distributing the swine flu vaccine. No mention, of course, that the process of producing and distributing the vaccine here is controlled by the government.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091106/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_europe_swine ...-
The Chicago Tribune is experimenting this week with producing a newspaper sans the AP. Hopefully they succeed. |
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| Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 23:52:34 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Excellent, Jim! |
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| Monday, November 9, 2009 at 19:35:36 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Alex G.
Diana,
Have you discussed the First Cause and Necessary/Contingent arguments for the existence of God in your podcasts yet (Aquinas' argument that the universe needs an explanation as something can't come from nothing and God prevents there from being an infinite regress)? I have a question on them which you may have answered but I have not yet listened to those podcasts. |
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| Monday, November 9, 2009 at 19:48:35 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Alex -- Yes. You can find my full list of podcasts here:
http://www.dianahsieh.com/cast/
You'll want episodes #6 and #9. |
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| Monday, November 9, 2009 at 20:03:35 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Alex G.
Thanks! |
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| Monday, November 9, 2009 at 20:54:51 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Alex G.
Picking up on the subject of god, what is a rational interpretation of the Big Bang Theory? It can't mean that the totality of existence started at one specific point in time, that would imply the existence of nothingness. I see that Christian apologists constantly refer to the Big Bang Theory to prove that existence had a starting point and therefor to show that if the universe is not infinite it must have had a beginning which mandates the existence of a creator. From this they build bridges to the Christian god. So what is the best way to explain the data from the Big Bang Theory? |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 2:01:11 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: SurahAhriman
Alex,
I find myself absolutely failing at summarizing the idea, so I'll just mention the book, and quote the wikipedia:
"In A Brief History of Time and elsewhere, Hawking says that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there was another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame.[33] Upon occasion, Hawking has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are meaningless."
In the second sentence, he's talking about *our* time dimension, rather than some theoretical pre-Big Bang one, and specifically not a time dimensions encompassing both periods. I'd suggest just reading the book if you have the inclination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time#Time_and_the_Big_Bang |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 3:02:32 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Alex G.
I'll look into that book. Thanks.
But does anyone here have an answer from the perspective of an Objectivist cosmology? I'll read Hawking, but I'm not sure if I trust him on metaphysical issues. |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 6:22:56 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Andrew Dalton
E-mail: andrew.s.dalton(at)gmail.com
URL: http://witchdoctorrepellent.blogspot.com
Alex -
There really can't be such a thing as "Objectivist cosmology," because philosophy does not dictate specific answers to the questions investigated by the special sciences. What Objectivism can do is to reject the errors that motivate such questions as "When did the universe begin?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?" These are the errors that play into religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory.
There is nothing wrong, philosophically, with the Big Bang theory as an explanation of the history of the matter and energy that we can (presently) observe. The error comes in looking for the beginning of existence, or anything else that assumes that reality *as such* demands an explanation. Existence is not something to be explained, but rather a precondition to being able to speak of causes, explanations, "why" questions, and so on. |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 10:39:56 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Alex G.
Andrew,
Thank you for explaining that Philosophy does not dictate the findings of the special sciences. That's something I need to remember. But I am having trouble answering this charge from theists: they say that one of the staples of atheist thought is an eternal universe, but that Big Bang cosmology "proves" that the universe is not eternal. This they say invalidates atheism and mandates the inference that the universe had a starting point and thus the existence of their god. I'm stuck trying to explain to them that all the Big Bang does is to give a recount of how the universe took its present shape and form but that it doesn't say how and when existence as such was "created". This is rejected outright by theists. Perhaps its the metaphysical premises of theism that demand such responses but it does seem that the response "the universe is eternal despite what many scientists say about the Big Bang being the starting point of the universe" seems weak. I would like to have something more powerful than that. |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 11:02:05 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://dianahsieh.com/blog
Alex,
You need to be clear that they are relying on a certain equivocation over "universe" to make their point.
The "universe" that (decent) philosophers talk about is all of existence -- everything that is in any and every sense -- existence per-se -- Beingness, etc. That's really broad and fundamental, and doesn't say anything in particular about the existence or nature of matter or energy. In contrast, the "universe" that (decent) physicists talk about is the physical world of all matter and energy and so on. That's more narrow, not so fundamental (matter is a very tricky idea, still being explored, for example). SO, in considering the Big Bang, physicists are not talking about the arrival of existence per-se (why there is something rather than nothing, etc) -- they are talking about how the *form* that we find existence taking develops and changes.
Decent physicists won't try to talk about what happened "at" or "before" the Big Bang because our concepts of time and causality simply don't apply there in that model -- the concept of time is intimately wrapped up in the motion of matter, and so that may stop being applicable/coherent in a context with no matter/motion.
And at the same time (competent) philosophers will not try to talk about the "cause" of existence because they recognize that this is nonsense in the syntactic form of a "question": any cause necessarily has to exist to do any causing, which contradicts the assumption of Nothingness that's embedded in the question.
Hope this helps,
Greg |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 13:39:23 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
Alex: Basically what the other commenters here have told you is right. The Big Bang is a scientific hypothesis that has gained enough support so that it looks likely to turn out to be true, unless there is some real surprise waiting for us. But what it tells us is that at a certain point in time, many billions of years ago, the universe was so compact and at such a high temperature and energy density that it was effectively a uniform concentration of mass/energy with no internal structure that could carry information. Therefore we cannot know what happened before that. Science can only work from observation and experiment, and neither is possible for the pre-Big Bang cosmos. The scientific answer is "we don't know."
So anything you believe about what preceded the Big Bang must reflect purely philosophical assumptions. And I would start by pointing out that in the nature of the case, neither the theist nor the naturalist can give a scientific answer; any answer must be philosophical. If they won't accept a naturalistic answer that isn't a scientific explanation, you point out that their theistic answer isn't a scientific explanation either.
What I would say to a theist is to question their own metaphysics. They believe that the answer to "What preceded the Big Bang" is "God made the universe, in the form of an incredibly dense point of mass/energy." The logical question, then, is, "And who made God?" (Many small children think of that one, and are browbeaten out of it.) There are various ways they can reply . . . a higher level God made God, God made himself, God emerged spontaneously out of nothing, God exists eternally because it is God's nature to exist . . . some of which have problems of their own (spontaneous emergence out of nothing, for example). But aside from the divine infinite regress ("elephants all the way down," as the old joke has it), every one of these amounts to stopping at God and saying, "Well, God's just there and doesn't need an explanation." And if it's legitimate for them to stop at God in that way, it's equally legitimate for you to stop at the universe in that way . . . and we actually know the universe exists, because we can see it. |
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 17:23:44 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: Alex G.
Greg & William,
Thankyou. Your answers were very helpful. |
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