Friday, April 15, 2016

COTD: The Eroding Evolutionary Gauntlet

TPP and the Law of Unintended Consequences | Armed and Dangerous: "TomA on 2016-04-12 at 11:39:33 said:

The answer to as to why this abomination (TPP) has occurred is that it is a reflection of the current mean caliber of our population. For nearly half a century now, unprecedented affluence and abundance have inexorably eroded the evolutionary gauntlet that imbued us with the rationality skill set and work ethic that made us a great people. We have become a nation of coddled malcontents that have been conditioned to believe that the gravy train will run on forever, no matter how stupidly we behave. I believe that history will eventually show that we passed the de Tocqueville tipping point sometime during the past decade or so.

You can abrogate a bad trade deal, but you can’t fix stupid with a speech."
Speaking of evolution, Matt Ridley's recent "The Evolution of Everything" is a somewhat uneven but at times smashing read. How smashing?
This truth continues to elude most intellectuals on the left as well as on the right, who remain in effect ‘creationists.’ The obsession with which those on the right resist Charles Darwin’s insight — that the complexity of nature does not imply a designer — matches the obsession with which those on the left resist Adam Smith’s insight — that the complexity of society does not imply a planner. In the pages that follow, I shall take on this creationism in all its forms.