Author: Paul

Humanity is informed as never before; nothing in the historical record compares. This, unfortunately, is not a particularly good thing.

The provision of information, if it is to bless mankind, must have quality control built into it… it must have a feedback mechanism with teeth. Barring that, it can spiral out of control, as, indeed, it has.

Consider that almost everyone in the modern world is flooded with information. Even the poorest people walk around with phones beeping at them a dozen times per day, delivering little packets of it. And for active people the info-delivery is far greater. Even the delivery devices themselves, smart phones, have become status symbols. Continue reading “Information Is Broken”

Even if you’re not exactly sure what bourgeois means, you’ve almost certainly noticed that it refers to something bad or embarrassing. But before I explain its actual meaning, I want to turn the tables on it: I will maintain that bourgeois is good. For most of us, the bourgeois way of life is something to be sought, and hopefully to be attained.

Now, let’s get back to the proper meaning of the term. Continue reading “Bourgeois And Proud”

People sometimes talk about freedom requiring morality and even religion. The famous quote along these lines is from John Adams, who wrote that the US constitution was made for “a moral and religious people,” going on to say that it’s unfit for any other kind.

Nothing against Mr. Adams, but that passage is a mere assertion. It says nothing about why it might be true that freedom requires a moral populace. Such assertions really ought to be supported, and so far as I’ve seen, they haven’t been.

Today I’ll address that void. Continue reading “Is It True That Only Moral People Can Be Free?”

I learned long ago that when institutions decide to ride a subject, they can do so for a long time. By endless repetition people are worn down into compliance, and then into defense of their compliance. I’ve seen it too many times.

And so, seeing them harping on “Bitcoin isn’t environmentally friendly,” I feel a need to defend reality, before it’s overrun yet again.

Let’s start with some basic engineering, so you can see that it isn’t people on my side who are making wild assertions, but people on the institutional side. Continue reading “What About Environmental Concerns Over Crypto Mining?”

The existence of absolute standards threatens a great deal of modern power, and so has long been ridiculed and excluded from consideration.

Reality, however, cannot be changed, and the fact is that we all act for life and against death. So does every other living thing on this planet. That makes life and death absolute and objective standards. 

Continue reading “If There’s Life And Death, There Are Objective Standards”

As the year 2020 arrived, we were living and thinking as we had been in 2019, 2018 and 2017. There was plenty of fear and outrage in the world, but the levels were fairly smooth. And then, unexpectedly, a long and nightmarish storm battered us.

We all lived through three years of intimidation and fear. It has subsided now, but most people haven’t processed what has happened… they haven’t sorted and settled things inside themselves. Continue reading “Everyone Got It Anyway”

Excellence is attainable, and by every healthy person. I received this lesson from a man I never met, named Earl Nightingale. Today I’m passing it along to you.

Earl researched and taught about success for decades, and he took his job seriously. His work is often forgotten now, but if you can find it, it is definitely worth your time. I had it on cassette tapes, but I suspect it’s still available in some format. Continue reading “30 Minutes To Excellence”

Humans are moral obsessives. Anywhere you go, you’ll find people speaking in moral terms: “He didn’t treat me right,” “She’s arrogant,” “That’s a man you can respect,” and so on. All of these are moral judgments. Even confirmed criminals will routinely say things like, “That ain’t right,” which is, again, a purely moral judgment.

On top of that, moral judgments vary fairly little between individuals. There are exceptions, of course, but nearly all of us will agree on the majority of moral judgments, staying close to the model of the golden rule. Continue reading “Our Moral Obsession”

Over the past few years, huge numbers of people have come to see Bitcoin as an investment… like a stock. That’s because a significant percentage of the populace knows someone, at least a friend of a friend, who has done very well with Bitcoin. That’s the kind of thing that people notice, and not unreasonably so.

The truth, however, is that Bitcoin is more and better than an investment… much more and much better. Continue reading “Bitcoin Is Far More Than An Investment”

I don’t recommend watching television, but I fell into one useful experience while watching it, some years ago:

It was well after midnight and I found myself in front of a TV, killing time. There wasn’t much on, but after some scanning, I found a rustic infomercial from a local church. They were offering prayer for the sick, depressed, and overwhelmed. My thumb was poised to move to the next channel, but instead I stopped and watched. I decided to look at the people in the pews—to really look at them. Continue reading “The Cure In Our Hands”