03-24-2006
42 Absurd Things I Believe
Inspired by this, I decided to list some of my more “absurd” beliefs. If all goes well, I’ll do a blog post defending each one. Of course, I don’t hold any of these beliefs to be “absurd,” but I think there are rational people who disagree with each one. If anybody has a preference on which I defend first, leave a comment.
In no particular order
- That God does not exist
- That the best social structure is rational anarchy
- That if one must have a government, local government have no business having legislative power(i.e. there ought be such thing as “state’s rights”)
- That non-human sentient extraterrestrial life exists(or has existed/will exist)
- That human beings are inherently selfish.
- That the above is a good thing.
- That we will eventually develop a general purpose AI. It will come from a flash of algorithmic and/or technical brilliance, not the slow plodding work of the current field
- That Science Fiction is legitimate literature
- That Society Doesn’t Exist
- That Open-source software is a great idea,but viral software licences are evil
- That copy-leftism helps content creators
- That everyone would benefit if fewer people went to college (and the stigma was removed) . That is only people actually interested in learning should goto college.
- That there is such a thing as ontological true and that it may be unknowable
- That drastic increases in the minimum wage(other than to account for inflation and done periodically) are a terrible idea which does very little to help the poor
- That Google really isn’t evil
- That our society’s ideas about sexuality and sexual orientation will be seen as unbelievably backward in 50 years
- That our country is on the verge of a major constitutional crisis and the good guys will win
- That organized religion is harmful
- That all non-medicinal(currently illegal) drugs ought to be availible of the free market
- That there ought to be a fundamental right to suicide
- That there’s no such thing as natural rights
- That prostitution should belegal
- That marriage should be abolish as a legal institution
- That the Many Worlds Interperation Of Quantum Mechanics is the best one and possibly ontologically true
- That the Free market is one of the most powerful, most useful, and least understood forces in our society
- That people, as a class, are manifestly stupid
- That the Electorial College is archane and should be abolished
- That Free Trade is good for every body(even if it “cost you your job”)
- That “Sweat Shop Labor” is not terrible
- That illegal immigration is not a big deal
- That the growing populations of India/China and the third world represent a bigger threat to national security than the “war on terror”
- That ladder theory is a reasonable approximation of male/female interaction
- That Ayn Rand is not the Anti-Christ
- That Ann Coulter, may be, in fact, the Anti-Christ
- That the concepts of free speech and obscenity are mutually exclusive
- That the FCC should be abolished
- That Joss Whedon is more brilliant than Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas combined. That his influence in the history of genre tv/film will be correspondingly less
- That the English language will have greater staying power than previous “global” languages. That this is a sheer historical accident
- That a flag burning amendment is atethetical to everything this country stands for
- That time travel is possible, but that it’s impossibe to return to the same “universe” you left
- That every man(and woman) is, in fact, an island.
- That at least some of the above are correct
Ok that’s enough for now. Bet you had no idea I believed so many “absurd things.” Let the flaming commence(feel free to post “me too”’s as well)
