Long before brain imaging to understand human behavior, we already had all the tools we needed for a hopeful humanity. We didn’t take advantage of the gifts we were given, and what a shocker — we don’t make good use of those fancy new insights either.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises … in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
— Francis Bacon, Novum Organum Scientiarum, 1650
It’s refreshing that the history of ugliness behind this post was inspired by beauty. Once again, I am reminded that I am not alone in my fight for timeless truth long forgotten in a land where liars are loved and the honest are hated. I can handle being hated just fine — it’s the facade of it all that sickens me. Nothing infuriates me more than smart people insisting on behaving stupidly.
And since I’m taking on all of America by myself, I’ve seen the depths of self-delusion in a way no other has.
But in a sea of sameness: Where hero-worship and self-congratulations are canon across echo chambers wallowing in an abyss of absurdity — there is still uniqueness and light to be found:
Is she the genuine article?
We’ll see, but within her words is a richness of sincerity so rarely seen. At the very least, I owe her the benefit of the doubt. No matter how many times I’ve been disappointed by those who failed to deliver, ya gotta keep the door open (which is at the core of what my efforts are all about).
On that note
It’s fitting that the inspiration for this post came from a platform of posturing I expose in “Substack Is a Scam in the Same Way That All Media Is.” I borrowed the title from an article offering some exceptional points I hadn’t thought of in my original version called The Substack Sector:
Where I argue that the “scam” element goes well beyond monetary motives. The far more dangerous and destructive scam is how it’s yet another tool for deceiving yourselves. It’s not the tool’s fault — it’s yours!
In these echo chambers of self-congratulations (for accomplishing absolutely nothing and making matters worse to boot): Regurgitating garbage gets people to Like you — celebrating “victory” by clicking “bravo” to bad manners and bunk. A world where the rush is everything:
- The rush to respond
- The rush you get from responding
- The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
- Repeat and never reflect
If you think you’re making progress because of ever-increasing attention to your concerns — I suggest you reconsider:
A young man sittin’ on the witness stand
The man with the book says “Raise your hand”
“Repeat after me, I solemnly swear”
The man looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seemed to hear anymore
And it didn’t really matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair— Johnny Cash
What is Truth
America lost its way long ago (and you’re right about how some of that happened). But all that pales in comparison to the aftermath of 9/11. Every major problem in America was exponentially exacerbated because of that fiasco for the ages — which Sowell helped sell and got off scot-free.
They all did
As they always do (Democrats & Republicans alike):
America’s in perennial pursuit of ideologies: Warfare waged with galactic levels of baggage & bullshit bolstered by . . .
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
And thanks to all that and much more: Which Thomas Sowell is a part of while engineering the illusion that he’s not.
Even 20 years later
Half the country still can’t get this straight:
By Design
America Remains Mired in the Murky
What does it say to you: That on evidence claimed as components to build a nuclear bomb — the “debate” was hijacked by 10-second sound bites? Shouldn’t any debate establish what the debate is actually about? What does it say about a country that can’t even establish that much on a matter of this magnitude? As I said in my doc:
All the sarin gas shells in the world would have no bearing on the aluminum tubes and other intel, but loyalists to logical fallacies are not burdened by the inconvenience of FACT.
They will nitpick over pebbles while refusing to even glance at the mountain of evidence that crushes their “convictions.”
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
For the sake of argument: Let’s say Saddam had full-blown active WMD programs on chemical & biological weapons. The tubes would still be a lie — whether the war would have been justified in that scenario or not. I’ll go one further: Let’s say he had a uranium enrichment program in operation as well, but that the rotors were carbon fiber — not aluminum. Once again, the tubes would still be a lie.
Getting lucky in finding something you didn’t know about — does not absolve you from a case that was woven out of whole cloth.
One Tweet is all it should take:
He & his followers preach
Follow the facts where they lead . . .
Well there they are right at your fingertips.
But the Tweet below tells the story of what I invariably face in telling the story above.
Debunking the WMD delusion & Trayvon tale is a conduit for showing how this nation systematically derails debate. We’re well beyond “disagreement” in America — this is madness (countless millions miserably failing to follow even the most fundamental methods of how understanding works). The second you shun evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative you want — you have contaminated your judgment.
Pay no mind to how many times we go backwards by the means in which you move forward.
The Yellow Brick Road
Path of America’s Predictably Counterproductive Pursuits:
Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. In reference to its opening image on Without Passion or Prejudice, I wrote: “Half the country is with me on this — and I just lost the other half. Had I started with the image below — it would be the opposite half.”
When you instantly make up your mind on perception alone: In what parallel universe does that qualify as critical thinking?
The story I’m out to tell takes both parties to task on the biggest & most costly lie in modern history — along with some other issues at the core of America’s decline. Sowell is simply a conduit through which to tell that story (and how his role within it could be harnessed for good).
Compelling him to admit where he’s wrong will work wonders for where he’s right.
But Sowell’s supporters make it impossible to have this conversation (or even get to the point of what it’s about). Some of ’em even Like my links simply by virtue of his image being included (never mind the context). Making such assumptions, all by itself — is in breach of the standards Sowell espouses.
It’s pure fantasy to think that you can ignore key dimensions of a problem and magically solve it. The problems that plague America are interrelated, and anything short of addressing that is going nowhere. But everyone’s wrapped up in their wheelhouse — operating under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them.
You know what they say: Fail, fail again, fail better, succeed
They say other things too – like “work smarter, not harder.” By all means, keep trying — but examine the efficacy of your efforts and adjust accordingly. Just picking the “root cause” that works for you doesn’t cut it.
You’ve gotta look at interconnected causes across-the-board.
[T]here could be no country that makes less use of the accumulated experience of those who have served it – none that is more frivolously neglectful and improvident of these assets – than the United States of America.
— George F. Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill
Just What am I to do . . .
When This is the World of Your Making:
And this is the world of mine:
“I am a maker” . . .
Just because you hang a banner on a building doesn’t make it true. “We are Purdue. Makers, All.” No, you’re not — but I am (as these words reflect a lifelong record in what do, not simply what I say):
I think work should be about making things work. Better, Faster, Smaller, Smarter. So I build bridges between what’s known and what’s not. I tinker. I toil. I write poetically in an abundance of languages (including code). I hack. I dissect. I have an insatiable desire to un-complicate the complicated. I am easily inspired.
I believe that just because it hasn’t been thought of doesn’t mean it won’t be. Potential is my thrill ride. Imagination is my most-used tool. I am a maker. And I am what moves the world forward.
Funny they mention that about that bridge. Stick around — you’ll see!
In what parallel universe does this even remotely reflect anything like that:
A couple of 2-minute reads that never even mention the tubes that took us to war (or anything else of substance on this endless saga of absurdity). Touting technicalities as “facts” doesn’t get it done: Especially when you make a living selling slogans and catchy quotes about careful consideration.
If you only apply the principles you preach when it serves your interests — they’re just empty claims on a cup and a meaningless mantra touted on a T-shirt.
“Compared to What?”
That principle is built into the doc imagery staring you straight in the face. And since this issue involves an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter: My answer to “What hard evidence do you have?” is as concrete as it gets. You can’t have “Compared to What?” without comparing what’s in question.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the marquee evidence used to sell a war in the Middle East is as critical as comparison gets.
That is “Compared to What?” and “Show Me the Evidence”
This — is crap . . .
And so’s this:
Regurgitated Garbage
Everything that guy just said is bullshit!
Some of your favorite authority figures throw 99 items of shit on the wall to make damn sure you never discuss what matters most. And how eagerly you comply with the contempt they conditioned you to have for anyone exposing the truth and how they gutted it with your help.
So, when someone comes along tell you a story about everything they conveniently left out: Offering a concrete case built by exhaustively detailed arguments rooted in mathematical certainty in centrifuge physics:
Right on cue . . .
Without an atom of courage, courtesy, conscience, or curiosity — you redirect the “debate” to authority figures who redirected the “debate” (giving you the blueprint for slinging the same bullshit). So, the guy who wrote & produced a 7-part series totaling 2 hours and 40 minutes (by far, the most exhaustive doc ever done on WMD):
Taking both parties to task on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history (along with other issues at the core of America’s decline) . . .
What do we have for him?
But for this guy
Who cranked out a couple of 2-minute reads less than 800 words each: Not one of which addresses the tubes that took us to war or anything else of substance on this saga of endless absurdity . . .
This is your gold standard for getting to the truth (no matter how many times he and his kind gutted it). In your “where’s your facts?” refrain of an automaton — you blow off my doc that’s chock-full of facts on this fiasco for the ages:
To follow the facts to where there are none to be found.
There was a time when people understood how to understand — and didn’t blame the source because the material doesn’t magically unfold for standard scrolling with ease. It was a time when you stopped to think about things before breezing on by clips at the crux of the story:
Then bitching because you don’t understand what you didn’t stop to think about.
And there is no measure for how preposterous it is that people who can’t even get the self-evident straight: Have the bottomless gall to belittle me on making correlations in 3 dimensions while you wallow in one.
Then tell me how he was wrong about one thing that he has no expertise in.
lemme get this straight
A layperson with limited resources and no connections:
- Can do countless hours of research & writing
- Interview a world-renowned nuclear scientist
- Correspond with Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence — along with a key physicist
- Spend $15,000 of his own money to write & produce the most detailed documentary ever done on WMD (taking both parties to task for it)
Qualifying me to exhaustively explain how half the country could not be more wrong on this issue of world-altering consequence.
But it’s all good . . .
That Sowell cranked out this crap that any Iraq War cheerleading jackass could issue in chain-letter lies — topped off with smug sloganeering.
After all — he doesn’t have any expertise in it.
“It’s indefensible!
Don’t you know that?”
For the record . . .
Sowell’s articles on the subject are assertions, not argument. It’s high time we appreciate the difference — perfectly defined on a blog I stumbled across years ago called Duane’s Mind: A Christian’s Perspective:
An assertion is just a point of view, an opinion. An argument goes further. An argument is a point of view supported by reasons that demonstrate the view is a good one.
But who cares about that when you’ve got friends to comfort you in your follow-the-facts fantasyland: Hiding behind your impenetrable force field of fallacy.
Conservatives have put on a masterclass of complaining for 30 years — but because the intelligentsia on the Left perennially pumps candy into that piñata: They beat the hell out of you — while unconscionably ignoring the debauchery of their own behavior.
Sailing away on Scot-Free . . .
The Left institutionalizes weakness — and the Democratic Party is notorious for lacking backbone. You weaken the very people you’re trying to strengthen — branding weakness to boot. And right on cue, the Right is ready to pounce. I don’t blame ’em — except for the part about them being weak while branding strength.
So courageous from your keyboards:
Gutless in the face of facts you don’t like — disguised by your goose-stepping glory in the Facts Over Feelings Parade.
Conservatives control the narrative about responsibility and think that magically translates to taking responsibility. Republicans pounce on the Left day in and day out — as if the Right’s record vanished off the face of the earth. It’s all about framing the narrative — and the Left institutionalizing weakness is a gimme for the Right to rail on ’em.
That the Left brings it on themselves is another matter.
And the icing on the cake
Somewhat sincere intellectuals justifiably calling out universities, woke ways, racially rigged incidents and such: Providing endless fodder for the Right to rip people for behavior that pales in comparison to what they’ve done for decades. The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batshit crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly.
That — is faith-based belief at its best. The Left’s anti-racism religion, woke, and whatnot — they’re amateurs. I didn’t write Mariana Trench of Mendacity from my imagination.
I point you to a 7-part, 2 hours and 40 minutes doc — that distills a story that demanded a massive amount of effort, thought, research, and writing: And you tap a Tweet with a talking point or two — thinking you can inform me.
That you even think that a story so complex and convoluted could be explained away so easily — is a monumental problem all by itself. And without even the most basic insight into anything on this story:
That camp has a habit of glossing over global issues of catastrophic consequences with . . .
“Seems”
So you found one small crack in Sowell’s character where he defended Iraq having WMD, does that hurt his credibility?
This man muddied the waters of debate to serve himself: On a little matter of war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11. On top of unconscionably ignoring irrefutable evidence of world-altering consequence, he has a habit of toeing the party line. Not only did Sowell flagrantly fail to follow the facts on all-things Iraq — he brazenly ignored the debauchery in his own party to politely pounce on the other.
In light of his history being wildly out of sync with his sanctimonious claims: That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
I wouldn’t care if Sowell cured cancer:
You don’t get a pass for basking in baseless beliefs that cripple the country — and have the bottomless nerve to preach responsibility & accountability to boot. That is a cancer of its own. The poison he pumped into the atmosphere helped destroy the internal organs of America. So we have very different standards as to what qualifies as a “National Treasure.”
At what point does it dawn on you and your beloved genius — that blind loyalty to that cause would be colossally counterproductive to your others? I’m not brilliant and I figured that out all by myself. The Right treating Bush like the Second Coming of Christ — set the stage for the rise of the Rock Star they spent the next 8 years railing against.
That doesn’t strike me as sound strategy. Dumb, dishonest, and delusional wars don’t either.
Nice work!
Sowell’s hailed as a folk hero for calling out problems he helped create (and takes no responsibility for any of it) — which flies in the face of the principles upon which he’s put on a pedestal. This man has a patently obvious history of hypocrisy & lies — and yet he’s worshipped as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes.
Even in the most unsophisticated years of my youth, I would have never bought something so impossibly simplistic as Sowell’s “said so and so” — and the Right’s ubiquitous belief that “everybody believed Iraq had WMD.”
My mind would never allow me to accept something so easily (thank God).
Sowell’s disciples have no interest in such a demanding way of life — as defending the faith is all that matters in the religious-like following around Sowell. They spread the gospel by mindlessly countering with boilerplate beliefs that have no bearing on the issues in question.
The regurgitated garbage by your gold standard is everywhere. The only place you can find my information is in my doc, my sites, and scattered across the mountain range of material upon which my research was based (including first-hand research):
What did you do besides take great delight in derailing the debate every step of the way? But more importantly, what will you do now? This mountain of information was publicly available before he wrote that second article — and yet not one word addresses the marquee claim on a mushroom cloud.
How do you reconcile that?
For “logic lovers”
No Need . . .
love to use “logic” to win an argument, and then disappear before they can find out they’re wrong
Oh yeah — I know the type, all too well!
A go-to tactic of the doubt-free is to make damn sure the debate never reaches the merits of the matter. I’ve seen highly intelligent people derail discussions by claiming that “everything’s just an opinion!” Nobody really believes that — it’s just a cop-out. And if you call ‘em on it, they fall back on Old Faithful — “agree to disagree.” How this hijacked-for-hackery catchphrase caught on over the years can be charted with the times:
Where things that once meant something, now mean nothing.
It’s a sign of the times that even on matters of math — there are competing camps for rigging your own reality. Is 2 + 2 is open to debate now too? After all, there appears to be no line which you will not cross to keep your calcified convictions. It’s impossible for you to fathom the mountain of childish and spectacularly stupid shit I’ve seen for decades in dealing with the self-delusion of the doubt-free.
They deny the undeniable with glee:
Pulling off stupefying psychological gymnastics when going for gold in the Gutter Games of Government. To take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to a few minutes was no small feat.
Imagine what I did with 160
“There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on.”
— Major William Pierce (Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton)
Wouldn’t it be absurd to share that quote if my clip contained nothing but trite talking points? Some circles are not burdened by squaring their walk with their talk. They seem to think that advertising virtue equates to embodying it.
Case in point
People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.
— Thomas Sowell
D.O.E’s standard is to spin a tube at 20% above 90,000 RPM before failure — so 48,000 short is a pretty loose definition of “rough indication.”
And since the entire point of testing should be to replicate the conditions of centrifuges, one would think that the full-blown testing would be performed before the N.I.E. was completed.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Between Sowell’s words and mine
Which ones strike you as glib?
And these are on the mild end of the savagery I’ve seen.
You couldn’t carry Sowell’s jockstrap!
Seriously? Get a life. It doesn’t matter what you say, he’s better than you basically in everything.
You deserved to be treated that way! You’re a moron and pathetic character assassin
Holy shit…. a video of a circle jerks with a nut in the center talking about RPMS. Yet somehow Thomas Sowell is a liar.
How do you reconcile that with this?
This gem is just priceless (and polite compared to what I’m used to):
Even if he said that stuff, your entire diatribe smacks of the now classic modern progressive tactic of taking a single mistake by anyone whose views they don’t like and using that one error in judgement to try and discredit ALL their work. Everyone is human and at least occasionally shows poor judgement.
Who said I disagreed with his work?
Outside of butchering the debate on WMD — and his partisan hackery in flagrantly ignoring his own camp’s abominable behavior, record of recklessness, systematic lying, and hypocrisy that knows no bounds: I haven’t come across anything I object to.
As for economics, I’m not qualified on that front. Imagine — there are still people who measure their knowledge in such ways.
You introduce statements and arguments of people who aren’t Thomas Sowell
As this story is also
About the behavior of the echo chamber around Sowell — it’s kinda necessary to include other people to properly illustrate the problem. And I wouldn’t mind explaining everything — if you thought about anything.
Behold my shrine of “hatred”
to Thomas Sowell . . .
This chart is misleading in several respects . . . Beams centrifuge never actually worked . . . We can infer . . .
Sounds pretty sloppy to me. Perhaps we should have a conversation to clear up what all this means on an issue that helped create the clusterf#@k of a country we have now.
Something’s Not Right
And for all those who pooh-pooh expertise these days: Lemme remind you that you had no trouble appreciating the importance of material properties in comparing this toy vs. a craft like Cameron’s.
Stockton Rush’s name will never be forgotten for his folly that took 5 lives in a contraption doomed to fail. That same wishful thinking in totally unsuitable material — was held by a CIA/WINPAC analyst named Joe Turner:
Who provided a path to war that cost countless lives, unspeakable destruction, trillions of dollars & counting, and poisons political discourse to this day and probably generations to come.
Never heard of him
I’m not surprised
If you understand baseline information on material properties in one context: Shouldn’t you be able to grasp the exact same principles in another? Anyone entering this discussion with sincerity — would come away realizing that there is no debate, and there never was.
They just made it up
Red Team Paper: Nevertheless, by September 2001, the matter had more or less been settled. There was no serious debate within the intelligence community. One stubborn WINPAC analyst does not constitute a debate.
Richard W. Memmer: Then 9/11 happened — and whad’ya know, the tubes were resurrected.
— Act I
For two decades
America has made it impossible to have that conversation: Painfully obvious deception that shaped everything you see today. But we’ve got all the time in the world to talk about Titan:
Strikingly similar — don’t ya think? . . .
I’m a retired engineer, electrical not mechanical. You are absolutely correct about technical limits on materials such as this sub design. It’s insane this guy took the sub to its breaking point. It’s sad but a good lesson to future explorers. Don’t push the physical limitations of the materials and design.
— YouTube user
That’s Entertainment
This is work! Where your bullshit beliefs get put in the dustbins of self-delusion where they belong.
Something’s not right
Just as something wasn’t right with Stockton Rush and Elizabeth Holmes (both of ’em dying to be disruptors (and one of ’em went all the way). Yeah, Rush got Titan to work for a while, but it was pure folly from the start — just like the hackery behind her claim to fame.
Why would anyone believe that you could conduct 200 blood tests in this little box? Maybe someday someone will — what do I know? I know something’s not right when I see it. To be sure, I’ve been fooled a time or two — but that’s at the core of what this is all about:
To learn from our mistakes.
And lo and behold: Those who bought into her fantasy would have seen who she really was had they simply started with these 3 words and followed their instincts:
Something’s not right . . .
A.K.A.
Speaking of Holmes
Another parallel is how our culture places excessive faith in people based on image, not the totality of their record. Titan’s passengers put their trust in their pilot — because surely if he’s going along, it must OK. I’m hardly comparing the naivete of Titan’s crew to the wildly misguided belief in this media darling.
I’m simply saying we’ve become a country that’s way too easily accepting of those who speak to us.
In a society that’s either gushing with over-the-top praise or seething with over-the-top scorn — whatever happened to something in between? Ya know, balance — which was nowhere to be found in the fallacies that follow:
The Mariana Trench of False Equivalence
But if an experimental approach to discovery is a crime, then we might as well put the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh and Apollo’s lunar-bound astronauts on trial.
And while deep exploration of the oceans carries obvious risks, I can’t quite accept the notion that he was cavalier about it all.
Then by definition, you’re as delusional as he was:
- A delusion is a mistaken belief that is held with strong conviction even when presented with superior evidence to the contrary
- Characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument
- Something a person believes and wants to be true, when it is actually not true
A lot of that goin’ around too
And here’s his motive — in the very next sentence:
I knew Stockton through a mutual friend of ours in our hometown of Seattle, and within those circles of acquaintance he was known as a terrific husband, father, grandfather and friend, with an infectious, fun-loving curiosity that will linger as an influence long beyond his death.
His risks were calculated ones, however flawed the calculations might turn out to be.
Right on cue | Never fails
Stockton took shortcuts that cost him his life and the lives of those who placed misguided faith in him. Elizabeth Holmes took shortcuts that put her in prison and made fools out of a lot of people. Some were young and sincere who simply got lost in the dream of doing something special.
Others should have known better, but miserably failed to ask tough questions in a culture that craves ease and the quick win.
Speaking of #winning and records:
Before this guy got cancer — he’s ridden the Tour de France four times. His best place was 36th overall. In a mountain stage, he never finished within 8 minutes of the winner (mostly he was 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes behind). So how can you get cancer, come back from cancer, and be completely transformed? And this was a sport that the previous year had been revealed to be a doping circus.
— David Walsh, The Undoing of Tour de France Hero Lance Armstrong
Walsh asked questions unwelcomed by a world wrapping its arms around a cancer survivor who came back to dominate the sport of cycling. Incredibly, no matter how times the truth comes to light about people claiming to be something they are not:
Even in the face of overwhelming and irrefutable evidence . . .
You still won’t start with those 3 little words of wonder (all the while insisting the other side do what you won’t).
The more I learn about the sub, the more it sounds like a 50/50 coin flip suicide expedition than exploration.
Lots of intelligent commentary floating around on Titan. It’s refreshing to see all the sound analysis I’ve seen on the sub. And from experts to casual observers — most everyone recognizes reality on Rush.
Who doesn’t?
The same people who always refuse to see something for what it is: Those too close to the situation to objectively evaluate it (invariably with motive in some form — innocent or otherwise). I realize Cameron’s craft was designed to go 3 times deeper than Titanic:
But it’s just a striking contrast on the look of seriousness alone.
And so’s this . . .
One Voice Became Two 