I don’t remember where exactly I found it, but I was browsing Google Images for searches such as “Theory of Mind” and “Consciousness”.

the 2nd image [on 'a word on modesty], the one that represents human brain activity…where did you get it from? would love to find out..

many thanks

.m

that was very deep…

you are most sensitive.

What makes you so confident that the photo is definitely not representative of one of the well-documented forced labor camps in the USSR? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

The USSR killed over 60 million of its own people. That’s more damage than even the Nazis and Fascists combined were able to do, but you don’t hear that statistic being thrown around so much.

In any case I don’t see any crucial idealogical difference between communism and fascism. NAZISM stands for National Socialism: some think Communism is such a great ideal only their superior race is entitled to it,.. the USSR on the other hand, officially maintained that communism was a “gift to be shared with the world” (however racist and chauvinistic Russia has always been to its ethnic minorities). But the basics are very similar: both deeply rooted in collectivism and statism.

But the evils of the “religious right” have been already exposed, and downright overplayed. The kripto-religious left has exaggerated them for propaganda purposes.

I’m afraid the most dangerous authoritarians are from the ‘secular’ ‘humanistic’ ‘progressive’ left, with all sorts of technical master plans for humankind.

Read this: In the ’60s, a Future Candidate Poured Her Heart Out in Letters

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/us/politics/29letter.html?ei=5065&en=fe1c5e426f649855&ex=1186286400&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

“She is mildly patronizing if not scornful, as she encourages her friend to “try-out” for life. She quotes from “Doctor Zhivago,” “Man is born to live, not prepare for life,” and signs the letter “Me” (“the world’s saddest word,” she adds parenthetically).”

“Ms. Rodham becomes expansive and wistful when discussing the nature of leadership and public service, and how the validation of serving others can be a substitute for self-directed wisdom. “If people react to you in the role of answer bestower then quite possibly you are,” she writes in a letter postmarked Nov. 15, 1967, and continues in this vein for another page before changing the subject to what Mr. Peavoy plans to do the following weekend.”

I probably should have put a disclaimer there but it would have watered it down too much, for friends like you who might read into it and get flashbacks of previous discussions and perceive it as a personal attack.

It was not meant as such. The ‘authoritarian personality’ template which I haphazardly present is a qualitative collage of various traits of various individuals, some display more of them than others. If you must know, I thought more of you when I wrote the last 2 paragraphs than throughout the rest of the post.

This is not an attack to people I disagree with, but an expose of people whose LINE OF THOUGHT I find immature. Not necessarily the libertarian vs non-libertarian thing. Although there IS a tendency amongst what I perceive to be the authoritarian types to hate free enterprise. I was actually thinking of Jeffery Sachs as I was writing that portion, as well as Larry Smith’s zealots (I am writing about Larry Smith and some of the snotfaces he attracts).

As far as my mind being fallible, like I said, I take it for granted that I am wrong about some of my convictions right now, and I try my best not to be complacent about it. If anyone is willing to expose and explain as rationally as they can where exactly I went wrong, I would be always grateful.

I mean it though, don’t look too much into the engineer thing. Almost all my friends and acquaintances at Waterloo are engineers.

As far as the irony about being still radical in what I believe, I think you might have overestimated the irony. My strict libertarianism might be seen as radical, especially to a middle-of-the-road type like you, but my approach in defending and justifying my conviction is not radical and condescending. And this post was really more about the approach, the way of thinking, as opposed to the particular contents of anyone’s convictions.

Anyway, I really appreciate your comment. If you get any more insights from re-reading it, I’d love to hear them

i’m quite busy right now so i can’t give you a worthy reply except quote you on some ironic statements like “I used to be very radical about everything I believed in.”

there’s also something ironic, about this: “.. can easily be interpreted as a personal attack to be responded with a personal counter-attack.”, in an article which is basically an attack on people who you have had disagreements with.

but the irony in your article runs much deeper than this.

you’re basically writing a boo-hoo article about people who are smart at some things, cocky, and dogmatic, and don’t see the world the way you do. and you end up sounding just like one of them. if this was intended, bravo; otherwise, i think your mind just showed itself to be a bit more “fallible” than you expected.

i should probably read over it again, but sorry, too much work maybe some other time.

one final thing:
“They see free enterprise as doomed to fail because it’s so stupid, without a controlling intelligence behind it, but they don’t consider how stupid and myopic their “smart” planning is, doing away with the creativity of all the interconnected ‘little people’ at the bottom.”

maybe what these idiot engineers were saying was that the best way isn’t full control, and it’s not no control, but really something in the middle.