The Great War
Published on 27 Mar 2018The German Operation Michael continues this week and after some uncertainty, the Germans put their eyes on Amiens. The city is a vital communications and transport hub for the Entente and so Ferdinand Foch decides to mount a defence in front of the city.
March 28, 2018
Backs To The Wall – All Eyes On Amiens I THE GREAT WAR Week 192
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Ideological Possession
Robin Koerner offers some information on how to diagnose and treat the widespread scourge of ideological possession:
As someone who has long been writing about the threat posed by this all too prevalent epistemic disease, I am delighted to see the attention that is now being paid to it.
Ideological possession is to healthy political discourse as scientism is to science.
The most important thing to know about diagnosing ideological possession is that you can’t do it by looking at the content of the possessing ideology.
As I have said elsewhere, it’s not the content of your belief that makes you dangerous, it’s the way you believe it.
Any ideology has the potential to be deadly when advanced by those who are so sure of their own knowledge and moral outlook that they would impose it against the protestations of those affected by it. To the ideologically possessed, the imposition can always be justified because “it’s the right thing to do,” “it will start working if we keep at it,” “the complaints are coming from bad people,” and so on. (Yes. The logic is as circular as it seems.)
[…]
To protect oneself from the terrible epistemic disease of ideological possession, epistemic nutrition and exercise are extremely effective.
With respect to the former, the regular consumption of great thinkers like J.S. Mill (“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that”), George Orwell (“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle”), and Dostoevsky (“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer. Nothing is more difficult than to understand him”) will keep you in good epistemic health. Supplement these basics with a more varied diet of thinkers with whom you disagree on things that matter, and you’ll be in even better shape.
With respect to the latter, a comfortable regime of epistemic exercise — which takes a little time and effort but is immediately rewarding — involves maintaining real friendships with people who have very different assumptions, experiences, and declared moral and political priorities from your own.
The good news is, if you’re chasing Truth hard enough, it is very unlikely that this particular disease will ever catch up with you.
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Samuel HaNagid – A Prince of Jews – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 11 Jun 2016Forced to flee from his home in Cordoba, Samuel HaNagid made a new name for himself in the kingdom of Granada. He picked his allies carefully and rose to the position of vizier, an unheard of honor for a Jew in a Muslim kingdom. His fame as a poet, a leader, and a patron of Judaic studies spread across the Mediterranean.
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QotD: Rent-seeking through “health concern” trolling
Producers too often shamelessly use whatever excuses are at hand to justify their prodding the state to prevent consumers from patronizing rival producers. Trumped-up health ‘concerns’ are a prominent set of easy excuses when the good in question is food or drink. “Those foods offered by our rivals are likely to kill or injure our beloved consumers!” cry rent-seeking producers, feigning an overriding concern for the health of the public. “For the health of our citizens, our rival producers must be stopped from selling their foul foods in our market!” Conveniently, of course, when such restrictions are implemented the favored producers no longer must compete as vigorously for consumers’ patronage. (Question: What does diminished competition do to producers’ incentives to maintain the safety of the foods they sell to the public?)
Anyway, here’s a history lesson: today’s expressed concerns about the safety of genetically modified foods and the calls for governments to restrict consumers’ freedom to buy these foods are, in their essence, nothing new. In the late-19th century similar ‘concerns’ over the safety of American beef and pork were used by some beef and pork producers to sic state restriction on rival beef and pork producers. European ranchers and farmers, disliking the competition from American ranchers and farmers, played the safety card as means of securing protection from their American rivals. Likewise within the U.S.: local butchers and local slaughterhouses throughout the U.S. played the same safety card as a means of securing protection from the upstart and wildly successful Chicago meatpackers such as Swift and Armour. That this safety card was illegitimate – that is, that charges of unsafe beef and pork were unwarranted – doesn’t matter if enough people believe the charges. The widely believed myth of dangerous foods enables the state to protect powerful producers from competition.
Cronyism and rent-seeking are nothing new. But they are perhaps becoming more widespread as the scope of state involvement in private affairs expands.
Don Boudreaux, “If Only We Could Be Protected From the Disease of Rent-Seeking”, Café Hayek, 2016-07-14.
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