Best "Rickroll" I've ever seen

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Evolution of mathematical symbols

At first glance (at least for me), mathematics seems to be a purely rationalistic endeavor. One sits and thinks about a problem, and then by the sheer power of the individual mind is able to produce an answer. By nothing more than logical deduction, one is able to prove theorems linking certain basic assumptions to interesting and/or useful conclusions. Unlike most other subjects, mathematics is a quest for abstract principles, without any necessary connection to concrete facts.

Yet doing mathematics requires symbols, which are necessarily concrete in their origin and use. The use of symbols in mathematics arises naturally even at its very beginning: counting. There is nothing more fundamental to mathematics than a collection of symbols representing different quantities. What often goes overlooked by those who don't study mathematics is that embedded in those symbols is a theory of numbers. For instance, many people hardly notice that our counting system is a "base 10" or "decimal" system. The number 10 itself is not so significant. What is significant is that somehow everyone knows that when I put a "1" directly to the left of a "0" I actually mean ten. This principle allows us to express remarkably large numbers with relatively few digits; indeed, the value of a number grows exponentially with the length of the number: 10 is ten times 1, 100 is ten times 10, 1000 is ten times 100, and so on. Thus a deep fundamental principle is embedded into the very symbols we use to count things: that all whole numbers are uniquely expressible as a sum of powers of ten, where the coefficients of each power is something between zero and nine.

The use of the mind in society

Friedrich Hayek is primarily known for his contributions to economics and political philosophy. Yet one of his best contributions to both of these fields is an underlying theory of social learning. As an economist, he was interested in how it is that civilizations make use of information which is distributed among many individual minds (see, for instance, Hayek's essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society"). As a political philosopher, he was interested in how institutions come to be, and how these institutions benefit individuals and allow society to progress. In both cases, Hayek finds that people engaged in free exchanges with one another unwittingly contribute to a process of social learning of which they themselves are mostly unaware.

Reponse to Mike Meredith (and all libertarians out there)

Here is a comment left on my blog by Mike Meredith:

Comment by Jameson Graber on 23 November 2010:
I mostly agree with the views you all are espousing, but I think some commenters here are simplifying the issue far too much. The criticism that the government is “doing things to other people they could never justify if they were in the private sector” is, upon a moment’s reflection, not good enough. The government has the right and even the responsibility to punish offenders of the law, whereas private citizens have no such right. Unless you intend to argue that this is not the way things ought to be (which would be arguing for anarchy) you’d better put forth a more reasonable principle which forbids the government from taking these invasive security measures. The fourth amendment should suffice.

I ran across this post on the Freeman website today and thought a couple of things odd and one humorous. First, how is it that any government has rights? As far as I can tell only people have rights. Second, from whence does government's authority to act derive? I fail to understand why anarchy is implied unless government has power that the people don't. The humor is in supposing that the constitution has force. It hasn't been worth the paper it is written on since the ink dried. Or at least since Marbury vs. Madison in 1803. It has had no force of restraint to speak of on government. And what little it has had diminishes with each passing day.

Mike

And here is my response:

Two years of blogging

Today marks the second anniversary of this blog. This post is the 310th post I've written. I suppose that's an average of one post every two or three days, though I certainly haven't been that consistent.

I don't know that blogging actually does the world a great deal of good, but if it's true that ideas matter, and that thinking critically about what you believe and why you believe it is important, then this blog at least does me a great deal of good. It's motivated me to essentially continue my liberal arts education, reading more about topics ranging from theology to economics to the interaction between science and faith. It's helped me to at least start down the path to developing a more coherent philosophy of life, all the while giving credit to that which has most influenced my thinking.

Some small part of me hopes that because this blog is public, it will have some positive influence on people I have never met, yet remain connected to through this vast incomprehensible network known as the World Wide Web. I have occasionally been surprised to find my blog being referenced in a wide variety of places on the Web, but I have never taken seriously the prospect of other people actually listening to me. Yet if there ever comes a time in my life when people really want to know what I think about things, I hope that this practice will have prepared me to give clear, intelligent answers.

So if you've been reading this, let me say thank you, and I hope you've gotten something out of it. I know I have.

Hayek Against Rationalism

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.

F. A. Hayek
The Constitution of Liberty

Perhaps the single most attractive part of Hayek's philosophy is, in my view, his epistemology. This is not something that the majority of people are likely to care about. Yet whether most people care about them or not, questions about what we know and how we know it are intensely important to the intellectuals who are often most influential in shaping society. The argument for a free society must have, as part of its foundation, an argument for the right kind of answers to these questions.

Modern Spirituality

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These are the haunting religious questions of our time...