Category Archives: Logic

UPDATED: About An Inspiring Young Man Who Knows He Has Things To Learn

Education, English, Intelligence, Kids, Logic, Reason

The stories about youths ruined by the education system are legion. My own encounters over the years confirm that students are taught to never question the state of their knowledge; to work to a grade and to not doubt the value of that grade.

Students and parents mistakenly believe that grades correspond to the state of their knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Adoring parents enforce these misconceptions, enabling bad teachers, and giving pedagogues (mostly mediocre or sub-par minds) ample cover.

In this context, I seldom give interviews, because young interviewers, while genuinely interested, poor things, are unable to grapple with substance and content.

I feel for these promising young minds. They’ve been deprived. They most certainly have not been taught to distill, analyze and question information. Unable to grapple with content, young minds resort to process-oriented gibberish:

“How do you feel about… What made you … Who inspired you.” Sorry, old chap. That’s not going to cut it. It’s what you ask the traditional Agony Aunt.

See, your kids are taught by women and their house-trained boys. So they look at the world not in search of substance, data, insights; but by escaping into different states of feeling.

Having said that, I am so happy to report that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a young Millennial. He had “reached out”—scrap that phrase, please, use “contacted”—with a request for an interview.

After reading his questions to me, I replied somewhat curtly by saying that his were questions better addressed to a YouTube fresh face or some young social-media sensation.

I explained why and told my young interlocutor I’d be glad to look over his revised questions once he got his bearings.

I had expected that he’d huff and puff as ego-maniacal Millennials usually do, when criticized.

But what a pleasant surprise awaited.

The young conservative replied thus:

OK. That’s definitely right. I enjoy your writing very much. Will get back with different questions. Thank you very much

My reply to his:

I knew you could be pushed to grapple with material. You’re better than the previous questions you sent, smarter. Give me a week and I will get back to you with answers to new questions. Good for you for being a good sport.

 

Came his reply:

Thank you for encouraging me. I really appreciate it … [and other stuff I won’t share]

AND MY YOUNG INTERVIEWR’S REVISED QUESTIONS ARE SHARP. They’ll be shared when answered.

Pushing good minds in the right (and Right) direction, provided they don’t suffer hubris, can work.

UPDATE:

No. Traditional, teacher-centered learning is the only way to begin to reverse progressive, child-centered miseducation. Restoring hierarchy is essential.

School Shootings: A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem

Education, Kids, Logic, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology

The NEW COLUMN IS “School Shootings: A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem.” It’s now on WND.com. An excerpt:

The tele-experts assert that to do what he did—kill 10 and maim 13, at Santa Fe High School, in Texas—Dimitrios Pagourtzis had to be insane.

Likewise, Nikolas Cruz—killer of 17 in Parkland, Florida—and many shooters before him: All were victims of mental disorder. Or, so say the experts.

Come to think of it, the structure of argument coming from conservative and progressive corners is the same:

Conservatives blame mental health.

Progressives blame the National Rifle Association.

Both factions see the locus of responsibility for these murder sprees as beyond the reach and bailiwick of the individual and of what were once formative and corrective institutions: the church, for example.

As the language deployed in the culture might suggest, crimes aren’t committed, but are caused. Perpetrators don’t do the crime, but are driven to do their deeds by a confluence of uncontrollable factors.

The paradox at the heart of the disease theory of delinquency is that causal theoretical explanations are invoked only after bad deeds have been committed. Good deeds, however extravagant, are in no need of extenuation.

The evidence our tele-therapists advance for a killer’s “madness” is … the murder or murders he has committed.

Whatever the logical fallacy the psychiatrists commit—circular reasoning or backward reasoning—thinking people can agree: This is bad logic.

Fact: When they suggest a shooter is sick, they do so based on the fact that he committed murder.

Let’s run with this “logic”: The reductio ad absurdum of what the mental-health mavens are saying is that to kill, an individual must be deranged.

Does that not imply that the default condition of humanity is goodness?

Indeed, evil has been cast as a symptom of illness. It’s certainly so if to judge by the language used by the experts. …

… READ THE REST. “School Shootings: A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem” is on WND.com. And on The Unz Review, Constitution.com., etc.

UPDATE IV (5/22): ‘Haters Gonna Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate …’

Anti-Semitism, Family, Gender, Ilana Mercer, Law, Logic, Political Correctness, Psychology & Pop-Psychology

As my dearest first cousin says, “You need to duck, cuz, and let the sh-t hit the wall.”

Quit trying to convince pathological haters you’re a good gal or guy, because, well … “haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”

And they’ll hate you, even when you transform yourself in their image.

If people harbor hate for you—speak it and act it—there’s nothing you can do to transform that hate. Surround yourself with those who don’t think you’re drek. Surround yourself with people who know your heart and with whom you have reciprocal relationships.

In a related context, an articulate reader, a lawyer, reacted strongly to the habitual hatred this writer receives on the Unz Review:

imbroglio says:
May 18, 2018 at 2:00 pm GMT • 400 Words

Until recently, I’ve been an avid reader of the UNZ review one of whose leading contributors is Ilana Mercer. Ilana has great insight informed by natural gifts and the benefit of having lived in various cultures. Because of her (((background))), Ilana draws the mocking ire of trolls who hope to discount the value of what she says by means of their ad hominem attacks on her ethnicity. As we say in the legal world, argue the facts. If you haven’t got the facts, argue the law. If you have neither the facts nor the law, call your opponent unflattering names and argue to the jury that though the defendant didn’t commit the crime, he could have or at least he would have which makes him as guilty as if he had committed the crime.

Free speech enables people to say what they want. But there are consequences. When the UNZ Review lends itself to Jew-bashing, which is better done by those who write for Takimag and whose skill, in that regard, has been refined to a finer art than UNZ readers seem capable of; Ron Unz and his contributors lose credibility and start to become cliché and uninteresting. In addition, the men who engage in this business – I’ve yet to see a woman do so – come off as weasels and wimps. Let the P.C. crowd do as it pleases, its denizens are hardly avatars of healthy gender relations, but though a guy may take sharp issue with a woman, no self-respecting man would demean a lady with the kind of snide and baseless insults Ilana seems to attract.

There are two kinds of Jew-bashers: the ruthless, intelligent sociopaths who’d inflict violence on Jews if they thought they could get away with it. Their presence on this site is rare. More numerous are the clever but vacuous Jew-bashers who tend to end up as cannon fodder in their personal lives, conflicts and contests that have little to do with Jews. UNZ may find their comments useful, but why that would be so escapes me.

*****

Why, thank you sir—especially for fingering the unmanly men who suffer small-man syndrome.

Fact: There are other Jewish writers on the Unz Review. But they are men. They receive mostly obsequious, boot-licking adoration from the “weasels and the wimps.”

At play here is more than Jew-bashing. It is that the miserable, mediocre men in the Comments Section (for the most) hate it when a woman out-thinks men.

As a defender of men, this saddens—it’s been a huge disappointment—but it is, nevertheless, true.

Like the reader, I prefer the American Renaissance’s practice of a modicum of comments moderation. The Comments on said site are edifying even when negative.

An example of edifying criticism is the reader on Townhall.com. His comments yielded the 5/17 column, “Whodunit? Who “Meddled” with Our American Democracy?” (Part 2).

But hey, The Unz Review is private property. And weasels and wusses don’t scare me. I write my weekly piece, generally to positive reviews. (UPDATE III (5/21): Have done so since 1999, for almost 20 years.)

And I avoid reading the words of the weasels and the wusses as a real man would avoid email spam advertising penile enhancements.

BRING IT, BITCHES!

UPDATE I via Facebook:

Myron Robert Pauli Ilana Mercer: (1) There are, tragically, very few really good columnists of any sex M,F,LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ – and you are one of them. (2) Even among good writers, there are not too many women – not sure why {politically correct answer is the Intergalactic Sexist Conspiracy} – but there are just a few. (3) Can one find anti-Jewish/Zionist whatever stuff on the Unz sight – yes, and more than I would like to see but I try not to get into a pi$$ing contest with every skunky inference on the planet – one never “wins” these contests (4) Ironically, I am finding precious little to read in the Washington Post op-eds – I almost think it is the identically same op-ed “Trump Is Hitler” with a computer randomly toggling sentences and then putting a random name of Dana Milbank, Fareed Zakharia, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, Greg Sargent, Kathleen Parker, Richard Cohen, Fred Hiatt, R2D2, … whomever’s turn it is for the by-line of the “Trump Is Hitler” op-ed-du-jour (5) On the latter point, I am not claiming this because I think Trump is perfect but to quote Johannes Brahms when someone pointed out that the last movement of his first symphony resembled a theme in Beethoven‘s Ode to Joy, “Any ass can see that!”. (6) Thus, it is the people who point out that the Iraq war was an impending disaster – the people who have the foresight to not follow the “prevailing” stupidity that I admire the most (such as Ilana).

UPDATE II via Twitter:

UPDATE IV (5/22): Wanda’s generosity of spirit means more than she knows.

Wanda De Lange Zanzi With dictionary by my side, I adore reading the workings of your mind. As a female you inspire me as a female… You have already and continue to teach me to think logically and laterally without gender (class, culture and or race) emotion, on many issues. As a female South African that says a lot, which, perhaps, would be greatly misinterpreted by a gazillion other people. Thank you for inspiring me to think.

UPDATED (10/30/018): St. John’s: The Most Rigorous College In America & What Every Young Mind Needs

Education, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Literature, Logic, Technology

According to data reported by Tucker, only 31 percent of Americans who graduate from college can read a complex text/book.

By the same data’s telling, American kids are the dumbest in the developed world (facts I was reporting 14 years ago, already. In addition to the two hyperlinks provided, click “Education” to go back in time).

While our kids know less and less, their grades are only getting higher. The vaunted GPA is meaningless, except to give an idea of a student’s grades in relation to the inflated marks of his peers.

The most common grade given (the statistical mode?) in American college courses is an … “A.” “Forty-three percent of all letter grades are As.”

An exception to the rule is St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico (there is a Campus in Annapolis, MD, too), whose core curriculum is centered around what we call The Western Canon:

The great books (and works of art and music) upon which nobody contemporary has improved. (Everybody needs to be humbled by these works. I recently read some Plato abbreviated, after which I felt very small indeed. It’s all been said and thought-out before by the Greats. For example, an insight articulated and carefully thought-out in Into The Cannibal’s Pot; it was there. Plato said it already. Of course I was chuffed; it felt good. But how sad that this heritage—and with it the humility that comes with a recognition of true genius—is not being handed down.)

The video begins 4:22 minutes into the Tucker segment. (Tucker is a gem. The only gem on Fox News.)

St. John’s College admits only 800 and is producing the renaissance men and women of America.

ALL “freshmen must learn ancient Greek. ALL seniors struggle with quantum physics, along the way, as do they have to grapple with calculus, learn how to do differential equations, study Hegel and Kierkegaard, Karl Marx and Adam Smith.”

“St. John’s is sailing against every trend in American higher education.”

Their “students read 200 serious books over the course of their education.”

Only 800 students qualify in admission and all must undergo this rigor.

This is the traditional liberal arts education that our greatest minds (thinkers, scientists, Founding Fathers) would have undergone 100 plus years ago. (Was not Thomas Jefferson a scientist and a philosopher and an all-round genius? Indeed he was.)

It’s an all-required curriculum. Everyone is required to take courses of equal rigor. There are no majors, no minors. No hiding. No skewing the grades Bell Curve.

Minds thus enriched can go on to become whatever they want, having been given the intellectual wherewithal to think, and the tools to both appreciate intellectual history, draw on it and from it.

American education is an exercise in egalitarian idiocy. In my opinion, educational egalitarianism and idiocy does the greatest harm to the gifted child.

And isn’t that the aim? To give all children the feeling they are equally gifted?

Ultimately, wonderful young minds should not be abandoned to the evaluation standards of what are mostly sub-intelligent, near-illiterate educrats, who’ve been disseminating dumbed-down subject matter, in institutions of “learning” in which everyone is a winner.

UPDATED (10/30/018): Rotting young minds. 

And when I refused to partake in mobile-device mania I was called a Luddite (backwards). When I tell friends their kids (essentially) don’t know how to READ; I am dismissed.

See: “‘Screens are Poison’: Tech Elites Keeping Devices Out of Their Children’s Schools“

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