Quote of the Day
Power is not awarded to truth; power comes from truth. Believing true things ultimately makes you better at persuading people and manipulating reality, and believing untrue things does the opposite. The best ideas don’t need bayonets.
Adam Mastroianni
July 30, 2024
Good ideas don’t need bayonets — OR: Keep stomping necks until utopia arrives
Via email from John S.
This was some good stuff. I could have pulled multiple quotes from his blog post.
That said, there are many cases where making an imperfect decision is a better choice than endlessly debating which is the best choice. You don’t let your kids argue for hours about whether to go to McDonald’s or Burger King. You don’t dither over what the company logo should be for years before you put all your resources getting your first product to market for your startup.
He didn’t mention it in the blog post but as I was reading it I was thinking of “climate change” and “gun control.” It is my understanding that “climate change deniers” have lost their jobs and/or lost funding for their research. And of course gun owner frequently stay in “the closet” to avoid punishment in social and work situations.
It would be a better to have a society where all ideas are free to be explored.
The people debating “climate change” would both create their climate models and as the years go by everyone compares the model predictions to reality and they keep the best models and archive the ones which failed to match reality.
The violent crime and genocide rates in countries/states/cities with and without gun control could be modeled and compared to historical data and predictions made about the future and, again, publicly compare model predictions to reality and keep the best models. Even if it turned out we pay a high price in violent crime and/or genocide for having no, or oppressive, gun laws, at least we have a good idea of the price we paid for those decisions.
But that isn’t how humans’ psychology is wired. Perhaps on planet Vulcan, but not on planet earth.
Silly me. I thought truth came from power.
Power, and whoever is better in a fight.
#History
People will fight like hell for the lies they like. They have to: truth is what is left if they stop fighting.
Truth just has to engage in self-defense or it’ll get steamrolled.
I saw a quote from the science-fiction and fantasy author L. Sprague De Camp, “Truth is what remains after you stop believing.”
First you get the sugar
Then you get the power
The you get the women
-H.J. Simpson
If you observe Clown World closely, you will see they enforce their bad ideas / lies with bayonets. They do not censor lies, they censor the truth.
“Diversity is our strength” is observably false, but denying it will get you fired.
Climate change models used to demand immediate CO2 reduction don’t match the data, but because they a politically and economically useful to certain powerful cliques bent on control and destruction, denying them can get you unemployed.
To those with political power, the “best ideas” are not the truest ones, it’s the ideas that give them more money and power. And they are happy to enforce those with a bayonet. Just look at the Islamic invasion in the UK and how it’s being supported by the political class at the literal expense of murdered little white girls. If you criticize the murderer, you can get more jail time than the murderers do. They want you dead, or at least in abject submission.
Yup, Spot on. They want you dead.
Submission is only a means toward our death.
What we refuse to admit is that it’s so much easier to kill them, than to live with them on your knees.
I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees
E. Zapata
This is variously translated and attributed but Zapata is probably the original.
Just because it’s censored doesn’t make it true. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s censored.
But I think it’s a pretty useful rule of thumb that , as a practical matter: a) that which is censored, is dangerous to the powerful and b) you are more likely to find truth in that which is censored, vs. that which is not.
Tangential: “If you want to know who rules over you, just look for who you are not allowed to criticize.” — Voltaire
Censorship always benefits the censors or their bosses; it never helps the people being censored, no matter what anyone says.
Voltaire also conveniently located his house just a few miles away from the Swiss border. Just in case.
“Power is not awarded to truth; power comes from truth.”
You mean power CAN come from truth.
But most power comes from fear. And the only question is whom gets to use that where? Either you use it build the good, true, and beautiful.
Or the brainwashed communist idiots get to use it for murder and destruction.
History and the misery of thousands of years, countless human life’s lost or wasted. Raped and butchered. We don’t need anything more to prove the point.
Communism is just the latest iteration of that tyrannical power. Vox Day’s, “Empire that never ended.”
Guns are tools of fear. That’s why the empire is trying to steal them from you.
“But that isn’t how humans’ psychology is wired. Perhaps on planet Vulcan, but not on planet earth.”
Yup, Logic and reason, truth. Only get you part way. It still has to be backstopped by fear for maintenance till the next generation understands the truth. And is willing to act on it.
Anytime were not willing to act on this, they will.
Communism is a crime against humanity.
Here we go again.
Good article. I clicked through to the two he wrote previously (the first two he linked, in order), and they are solid, as well.
And I agree, there are a TON of potential pull-quotes in those. I particularly like the last two paragraphs, especially where he differentiates “corporate-compatible diversity” (i.e. racial/ethnic/DEI “diversity”) with intellectual/ideological diversity, where “nobody gets to stomp on anyone else’s neck, even when they really want to.”
“What we refuse to admit is that it’s so much easier to kill them, than to live with them on your knees.”
When one suffers an infection, is it rational to ask the doctor for an antibiotic that reduces the infection by 50% instead of eliminating it completely?