Dialog Topics

April 27, 2015

Some categories of topics that I have seen on Facebook
Abortion
Property Rights
Human Rights
Immigration
Vaccination
Selfishness vs Compassion
Privacy
Children's Rights and their status
God, the Bible, Koran, other religious texts
Celibacy of Priests and Women Religious
Women's Rights
Animal Rights
Intelligent Design vs Evolution
Managed Economies (Socialism, Communism) vs. Price Coordinated (Capitalist) Economies
Minimum Wage Laws

I'll try to update as I think of more.  Or some suggestions?

Two Aspects of the Enlightenment

In his book The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch notes a distinction in the Enlightenment as it developed on the European continent (continental) and in the British Isles.

"The Continental Enlightenment understood that problems are soluble but not that they are inevitable, while the British Enlightenment understood both equally." *

He goes on to say that this is not a geographic or national distinction.  A French thinker might hew toward the British version, or vice-versa.

This distinction helps explain some fundamental differences between the political institutions of Europe and America.  The U.S. was founded on the principle that imperfect people are the government. The Bill of Rights, the first Amendments to the Constitution, are largely proscriptive and concrete, specifying what the institutions of government can NOT do. 

The French Declaration of Rights ^ is largely prescriptive and conceptual, enumerating  the responsibilities of the law to the citizens and the citizens to the law.  The nation is a perfectible union of the people. There are few safeguards against government abuse enumerated in the French Constitution of 1793 #

Democratic governments are prone to several sins which undermine or suppress the rights of the citizens:  the tyranny of the group over the individual, the tyranny of the majority over the minority, and that this tension is inevitable and persistent so that structural safeguards must be in place to protect both the individual and minorities.


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* Deutsch, David. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World. New York: Viking, 2011. 66. Print.

^ http://www1.curriculum.edu.au/ddunits/downloads/pdf/dec_of_rights.pdf, retreived Jan. 18, 2015

# http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1793-french-republic-constitution-of-1793, retrieved Jan. 19, 2015

Child Care Benefits

As every parent knows, child care is expensive, whether parents have to pay someone else to take care of their child or one parent forgoes the income from working to assume care duties.  Under current tax law parents can take up to $3000 per child ($6000 max) for qualifying child care expenses. If one parent does not work or works only part time, that lost income does not qualify as a legitimate expense.

The current system is one of many income redistribution schemes that follow a complicated set of rules  that undermine a family's major life decisions in  return for government benefits.  I propose that these tax credits be turned into tax deferments for parents under a certain income threshold based on the median household income of their area.¹  Under this proposed system, parents could defer a certain amount of taxes while they were raising children.  The tax burden would not go away as it does under the current system but the parents would have full control of the amount of taxes they deferred up to the set annual limits.  The taxes would accrue interest free while the parents are taking on the financial burden of child care and could be paid back over a long time period like ten or twenty years.

1.  Note:  Median household incomes, and living expenses, in large metropolitan areas like New York City can be 10% higher than the national average. (Census Bureau)  Income thresholds should be set accordingly, not a one-size-fits-all dollar amount common in many benefit programs.

The Gift

"All our social insurance legislation, a piece of state socialism that has already been realized, is inspired by the following principle: the worker has given his life and his labour, on the one hand to the collectivity, and on the other hand, to his employers.  Although the worker has to contribute to his insurance, those have benefited from his services have not discharged their debt to him through the payment of wages (my emphasis).  The state itself, representing the community, owes him, as do his employers, together with some assistance from himself, a certain security in life, against employment, sickness, old age, and death." *

This is a particularly succinct rationale for socialism, or the kind of socialist leaning capitalism in the U.S.  As an employer I don't agree that the exchange of wages does not discharge the debt I owe an employee.  As an employee, I did not feel that my employer owed me anything more than the wages and benefits agreed to.  I don't think there is any persuasive argument capable of swaying a person's opinion on this topic.  A person's experience and attitude will lead them to concur with or refute the phrase I have highlighted above.

Millions of words have been written to denounce or defend socialism.  The armies of writers and speakers on either side of the issue wave their ideological flags, exhorting their compatriots to fight the opposing army.  Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, explains how people of opposing ideologies construct a moral code that has an internal integrity by placing emphases on different values.

Here  is a TED talk by Haidt.  Here is a discussion Jonathan had with economist Russ Roberts about the topic.

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Mauss, Marcel, and W. D. Halls. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. 67. Print. (First published in 1950 as "Essai sur le Don.")

Multiple Choice Paragraphs

I imagine a variation on the conventional multiple choice question that tests a students familiarity with concepts, or a series of facts that have some cohesion.  To do this, we are going to give the student a paragraph in which are embedded multiple choice list boxes.  In programming and web development, they are called drop down combo, or list, boxes. Since some  test composers may be unfamiliar with the terminology, I will call these list boxes "choice" boxes.  Using the format I present below, the test composer can write out the paragraph on any text editor and the web developer can implement the choice boxes.

The first item in the list will be blank and it is this blank that will appear within the paragraph.  The choice box  has a down arrow to the right of the blank space.  The student will select from the choices listed by clicking on the down arrow.  The student can select the empty choice and continue on in the paragraph if they are unsure.  This way the student can easily see what blanks still need to be answered.

Choices do not have to be limited to one word although choice phrases should be fairly terse so that the list box will fit on the page.

 It is important that the composer of the paragraph not betray some choices by the use of a particular form of an article before the choice box.  For example, the use of "an" before the box might cue the student that the correct choice begins with a vowel.  Inform the students that the article before the choice box does not determine the proper choice from the list.  As such, the sentence may read slightly awkward in places.

In the examples below, I will use curly braces to denote a choice box.  The choices will be separated by commas.  The test composer does not need to include the default blank choice, leaving it up to the web developer to insert that in each choice box.  The test composer may insert a comment within the choices or at the end of the choices but within the curly braces.  Comments begin with /* and end with */.  For instance, /*comment here*/ These comments could be an explanation for the knowledge the choice box is testing or any other requirement of the composer or institution.  The test composer should enclose the correct choice in hash tags.  For example, {choice 1, #choice 2#, choice 3}.  Note that the hash tags precede and follow the choice within the commas.

In the example below I have included a number of choice boxes simply to illustrate the method.  An example from  philosophy:

Rene Descartes was a {2nd, #17th#, 20th} century philosopher and {priest, prince, astronomer, #mathematician#/* student should be aware that a mathematical sensibility  is central to Descartes' approach to philosophy*/} who developed a {#ontological#, Aristotelian, teleological, causal} argument for the existence of God first proposed by {Aristotle, Acquinas, #Anselm#, Jesus/*student should know that Anselm's argument is similar to Descartes'*/}.  This type of argument focuses on the {#being#, purpose, fairness, cause} of God.  A central part of this argument is God's {#perfection#, necessity, divinity, power}.  Descartes argued that God must exist because {the world must have had a first cause, #existence is part of perfection#, it is written in the Bible}.

Paragraphs can consolidate particular "takeaways" and test whether the student has assimilated the material.

Note: The hash tags and comment tags are called markup.  The web developers at an institution might want to use different markup sympbols if it interferes with the programming language of their platform.

Trust

A friend sent me a link to a USA Today article about a decline in trust

Of course, people say one thing to survey questions and do another.  Just using the internet requires a lot of trust, whether it is to make transactions, or to share stuff with people that we barely know.

Here's a quote from the article:
The best-known analysis comes from Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam's nearly two decades of studying the United States' declining "social capital," including trust.

Putnam says Americans have abandoned their bowling leagues and Elks lodges to stay home and watch TV. Less socializing and fewer community meetings make people less trustful than the "long civic generation" that came of age during the Great Depression and World War II.

I disagree.  People stay at home more because there is a greater entertainment choice at home now than there used to be.  When we were growing up, there was little to see on TV.  Now people are using the internet.  The TV has become a medium for broadcast and cable channels, for YouTube videos, videos on demand (for free), games, etc.  My grandson plays video games live with his friends yet they are all in separate houses.  This is all possible because of the internet, sophisticated software and powerful hardware.

People are socializing more than ever - thru Facebook, gaming sites, interactive gaming platforms, email, text messaging, live photo sharing sites, etc.  Authors like Putnam may be stuck in an old way of looking at things, in a world that doesn't exist anymore.  That is the problem.  Most people old enough to have the discipline to write a book are too old to be aware of what younger people are doing with the available technology.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même choses - Understanding that underneath the myriad motions of change, the core nature of people remains the same, enables insightful innovators to make a lot of money.

On the subject of trust is another interesting link to a Gallup article on the changing trends of people's trust in politicians and government institutions.

Age Of Discovery

December 15th, 2013

As a kid, my brother Tom got a boogie board that he used to ride along the beach as the outgoing waves leave a film of water on the sand at the ocean's edge.  Now if there was some way to magnetize the board, he once theorized, and the ocean was magnetic, and one was positive and the other was negative, then he could boogie board all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, from Jones Beach to Europe.

Being the older and wiser kid, I immediately saw the problem in this hare brained scheme.  What are you going to do about the sharks in the middle of the ocean, I asked?

I don't think sharks can eat you when you're magnetized, he answered.

Yeh, but they could bite you, I answered.

No, he replied, the shark is the same polarity as the water so as his teeth started to close on my leg, the different polarities would repel and the shark's teeth couldn't clamp down.

I had to admit this was true.  How would you magnetize the whole ocean, I asked?

Well, you wouldn't need to magnetize the whole ocean, just sections of it, he answered. Run a cable like the Transatlantic Cable across the ocean except that it would have to be a lot bigger.  The magnetic field around the cables would then magnetize the ocean above the cable and it would be like a highway across the ocean.

The late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s was a time when people thought that almost anything was possible.  A trip to the moon was feasible.  So too was the idea that people could one day fly to work in their own personal plane.  I wanted to say that I miss the days when we had grand schemes and big dreams but I realized that I am typing on a computer that is connected wirelessly to a global network called the internet.  This year physicists confirmed the discovery in 2012 of the theorized Higgs boson, the "God" particle that gives matter in the universe its mass. My smart phone is far more capable than the wristwatch communications device that Dick Tracey wore.

Still, we have not solved the problem of traffic congestion during rush hour.  We have not cured cancer, poverty, death or the debility of old age.  These were the "holy grail" discoveries that we thought possible a half century ago after the discovery of DNA and the invention of jet engines.