When Utopia Works Too Well

     When Utopia Works Too Well

 

When Utopia works too well, then the people forget what it was like before Utopia came to be, so they neglect the necessary upkeep, and the old ways return.

Related to this is the Marxian Paradox: when the capitalist class takes seriously Marx's predictions of mass immiseration leading to political unrest, then they pay for semi-socialist reforms: welfare statism, worker's rights, and unionism. These work; the nation prospers, unrest subsides... and eventually the capitalist class ceases to take Marx's warnings seriously. Then they defund and repeal the reforms, and mass immiseration returns. Therefore, to the capitalist class, Marx is as true a prophet as he is false. That’s the paradox.

Also related is anti-vax. Remember measles? Well, it’s back!

To Cats We Are Telepaths

    To Cats We Are Telepaths

 

From the cat point of view, we humans are telepaths. We do telepathy by the sounds that we make with our mouths. Cats can partially read us, specifically our emotions; but we can transfer detailed information beyond that. Evidently there’s more to it than vocabulary; the _order_ in which we make noises matters somehow. We’re a mystery to them.

         Human telepathy (i.e. language) has all the properties and problems that science fiction ascribes to telepathy. Mass mind, virtual immortality, manipulation, hacking, spam, and viruses. As ever, science fiction excels not at predicting the future, but at imaginatively observing the present.

         So imagine telepathic saucer aliens who relate to us like we relate to cats. They’d teep at us constantly because they’re compulsive teepers. They like the sound of their own minds. We’d detect the psi waves that they make; we could make out how they are feeling, but not what they are thinking. There would be psi waves that we make back to them, but never to each other, as a way to manipulate them.

         They’d think they own us; we’d think we own them. If we play our cards right, then our case would be the stronger.

On Crimes against Reason

On Crimes against Reason

 

          I give two definitions to the phrase “crimes against reason”. A crime against reason, in the lesser sense, is a crime that makes no sense on its own terms. By flaws in planning, tactical or inherent, the misdeed cannot achieve the perpetrator’s goals. In retrospect the perpetrator shouldn’t have bothered to commit a crime with no reason.

          A crime against reason, in the greater sense, is a crime against Reason itself. It is a violation targeting the victim’s ability to think, and thus self-defend against the perpetrator’s other predations.

          The lead poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan was a crime against reason, in the lesser sense. By saving $100 a day for three months, for a grand total in the tens of thousands of dollars, the manager of Flint did damage to the city pipelines that will cost many tens of millions of dollars; a loss-to-savings ratio in the thousands.

What’s more, lead is a neurotoxin, gravely affecting brain development in the very young. For many decades hence, thousands of children then alive in Flint will fall behind in IQ and impulse control, as a direct consequence of the Governor’s meddling in Flint’s water supply. Therefore the poisoning of Flint was a crime against reason, in the greater sense.

I submit that crimes against reason, in the greater sense, tend to turn into crimes against reason, in the lesser sense; for even the greatest crook is at the mercy of the stupidity of his neighbor.