All Thoughts Being Equal

I. At the end of the last Drunken Philosophy meeting I gave in to a bit of political-philosophy masochism and listened to a former-libertarian-now-anarchist explain how to argue your way out of paying a traffic fine. Just ask the following series of questions—not arguments, because if you try to argue the judge can just order you to pay: Is the court obliged to prove its case against me, beyond a reasonable doubt ?    - Yes. Must the court justify every point of its argument to prove the case?    - Yes. Can the court use anything but facts and evidence to justify those points?    - Yes. Is the court's reasoning based on the idea of jurisdiction ; that I must pay the fine because I allegedly violated a law in the jurisdiction of the court?    - (with growing trepidation) Yes... Then what facts or evidence can the court provide that this "jurisdiction" actually exists ?    - Bailiff! At which point the anarchist, having smugly ...

Source: Travis Walton / WikiMedia I used to really like UFO stories, pretty much ever since I watched E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind , but then especially after picking up a book called Alien Encyclopedia in a third-grade book sale. It was great because the author presented both "real-life" stories and fictional characters with pretty much equal weight, so I learned about paranormal stuff and lots of science fiction at the same time. For a kids' book, it affords a surprising level of literacy in close-encounter stories (that is, stories from either abductees or contactees )—everything from Grays to Project Blue Book to Reptilians. At least, I thought it was surprising. Then I learned that pseudoscience is actually kinda boring . I'm still interested in those stories—for example, I listen to Coast to Coast AM —but more because I'm fascinated by the social phenomenon of telling close-encounter stories than the stories themselves. For exampl...

I. The other day (N.B. months ago at this point) I got into a very interesting discussion with C. Michael Pickens, a prominent member of the Washington State Libertarian Party, on what principles should form the proper ground of a theory of liberty. In his original Facebook post, Michael claimed that "Liberty is an optimistic concept based on the philosophy of self-ownership." Someone else asked whether liberty could be grounded in concepts of free will and autonomy; Michael replied that these are themselves based in self-ownership. In the discussion, I (and the other guy) both raised the possible issue of indentured servitude—I had in mind specifically the condition of indentured servants during the early American colonial period, which was a condition of chattel slavery in all but name. Michael wasn't arguing that slavery was permissible—obviously it isn't, regardless of your libertarian principles, unless you're a Confederacy-fetishist douchebag like, s...

In my previous post I wondered about the common feminist narrative of an overwhelming fear: that women face so many threats and imminent dangers that it's mentally exhausting just to get through the day. Rather than diagnose that directly (because politics is war and arguments are soldiers ) I want to examine another case of overwhelming fear: that of white male reactionaries. Why? Well, because I'm going to give a presentation on neoreaction later this month, but also because this is prima facie a "safer" discussion topic. The last section of Nick Land's summary of neoreaction (also known as NRx or the "Dark Enlightenment") includes a "multi-part subdigression into racial terror," and attempts to explain the deeper motivations behind stuff like John Derbyshire (formerly of National Review ) giving his son "the Talk" about basically avoiding black people unless a few prove themselves sufficiently safe to befriend. For the recor...

Disambiguation: I’m not talking about the T.V. show called “Fringe.” That show is awesome and I love it to death, but wholly unrelated to this post. As my previous blog posts may suggest, I’m a (at times, masochistic) fan of politics and the way people think. As such I tend to eagerly participate in online discussions, in an attempt to encounter beliefs not the same as my own. One exchange got me thinking about the way I use words—specifically, the word ‘fringe.’ What do we mean when we talk about “fringe theories” or “fringe ideas”? Fundamentally, I think, ‘fringe’ is a political term. I’ve often heard ‘fringe’ used in the context of the so-called “demarcation problem” in science: how can we tell whether something is science, or pseudoscience ? “Fringe” therefore takes on the connotation of pseudoscience, but I think they’re describing two very distinct things.