Update: a commenter made some strong criticism of the Coolidge quote, and I think i agree with the criticism, and that the Coolidge quote isn’t right. But I leave this post up for the sake of posterity and for reminding myself of how I can be wrong!
Someone made a John Galt Speaking youtube [...]
Update 11/28 : A reader made several relevant points.
1. It’s a dangerous game whenever one starts making inferences from unpublished notes. Clear communication of ideas is incredibly difficult even when one is putting in the effort to make something publishable and generally accessible. In private notes, one’s only audience is oneself — as such, one [...]
NYTimes has an interesting article on Asperger’s and psychiatric classification:
THE Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the bible of diagnosis in psychiatry, and is used not just by doctors around the world but also by health insurers.
Changing any such central document is complicated. It should therefore come [...]
A redditor is sad he got dumped and asks for an analogy that has been made before to be posted:
I know a girl who broke up with a guy and she told him she wanted to “still be friends.” He said, “No thanks.” She wondered why he couldn’t fall back to being just friends after [...]
One thing I’ve taken for granted in the past is that two parents are better for a child than one — helping kids is tough, and it seems as though the more help, the better.
There is an issue with this. Three people helping a child is better than two, and four better than three, and [...]
Sometimes I get an email with something I requested (an answer, or a document), and I wonder if I should respond with a thanks.
On the one hand, people apparently like being thanked. And if it’s done in the same sort of communication (like, real time chat, in person or phone convo) it seems like a [...]
Revision 1
People think certain traits are inherent, even when they cause harm.
Why? Sometimes genes are blamed. Sometimes no real explanation is put forth.
Examples: A person who eats to excess might blame genes. A person who has a temper, and knows this is bad, may say “that’s just the way I am.”
Sometimes people will deny that [...]
A form of argument I’ve commonly encountered when debating people on the morality of foreign intervention to promote democracy is the following:
“So, if you think Democracy is so great that it is worth initiating wars over, how can you justify putting pressure on / intervening against democracies when they vote for people you consider ‘bad’? [...]
Edited mildly for grammar and analogy clarity:
The debate around Indigo children is one of those things that leaves me dissatisfied all around.
Essentially, the Indigo Children movement argues that some children are a quasi-magical next stage in human evolution. There’s some claim of paranormal abilities, but let’s put that aside and look at the more mundane [...]
The New York Times offers a book review of a Rand biographer in which they fundamentally misunderstand Rand’s vision of capitalism:
“When Bennett Cerf, a head of Random House, begged her to cut Galt’s speech, Rand replied with what Heller calls “a comment that became publishing legend”: “Would you cut the Bible?” …In fact, any editor certainly [...]