There’s an excellent logical method for proving or disproving any kind of theory, which seems to be widely used for all kinds of purposes, and is completely infallible for producing the end-result of not being convinced.

It’s called dismissing all evidence that doesn’t fit your theory, or, to define it more broadly, accepting or dismissing evidence according to one’s preference.

I observed this method in practice for years, probably decades, when arguing against adherents of different religions, including atheism, on religious forums; I can’t remember when someone accepted evidence that disproved his belief system. The result is, of course, that nobody really changes his opinion when faced with opposing evidence, and the entire concept of a rational discussion becomes pointless, because if nobody accepts any evidence, what purpose is there in providing evidence? Essentially, I came to the conclusion that you can’t argue against a belief system with its adherents, hoping to dissuade them; you need to argue with the purpose of convincing the audience. Adherents of a belief system are beyond convincing; the only way to convince those is in spheres other than logic; they need to have strong emotional reasons to reject their own belief system, and only then will they accept evidence. Sure, there are exceptions, but they are so rare one would be ill-advised to rely on those when forming a strategy.

Let me explain how those things work on an example which I happened to hear many times on the Internet: the argument that men never went to the Moon because they couldn’t survive the radiation of the Van Allen belt.

My first reaction to this is the facepalm of despair. This lasts for several moments, and is followed by the “your physics teacher deserves to be sentenced to forced labor in a North Korean gulag for giving you a passing grade”. Then I calm down and enter the next phase, which is “OK, let’s explain the basics”, and what I would say then sounds roughly like this:

Radiation is a broad term. Essentially, you can have electromagnetic radiation, particulate radiation, and things that are usually called “radiation” but are in fact some other phenomenon which produces similar effects by other means. There are forms of radiation which are harmless; for instance, light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, which is harmless in normal quantities, because this kind of radiation, when absorbed by objects, increases the kinetic energy of their molecules in a process called “heat”, which is basically when molecules move faster. A similar form of electromagnetic radiation are microwaves. They are absorbed by water molecules, increasing their kinetic energy, and can therefore be used for warming up objects which contain water. The problem with some forms of electromagnetic radiation is that they don’t just accelerate molecules; sometimes they can break them, and when they break molecules in living tissue, this is a problem. For instance, ultraviolet solar radiation can damage molecules in eyes and skin, causing accelerated aging, blindness or cancer. Electromagnetic radiation of even higher energy can do the same thing, only it penetrates the tissues more deeply, creating similar kinds of molecular damage in internal organs and tissues. We all understand why that would be bad. Of course, electromagnetic radiation isn’t the only thing that can penetrate tissues and cause damage. For instance, if a star explodes somewhere in the Universe, it creates a burst of highly accelerated massive particles. If a proton, or a Helium nucleus (also called alpha-particle) hits your body, it also has the potential of breaking up molecules. However, depending on what those forms of radiation actually are, they behave quite differently. Neutrinos, for instance, are one of the most abundant forms of radiation in the Universe, but they are so weakly interactive with matter, a single neutrino can pass through a block of lead one light-year thick without being stopped. You can’t possibly shield yourself against them, but then again, they are only likely to be a problem in very rare circumstances, for instance during a supernova explosion, when the entire stellar core is under such pressure that all protons turn into neutrons in beta-decay, producing neutrinos. If all protons in a star produce a neutrino at a single time, that’s a lot of neutrinos, and in such quantities they will become statistically likely to perform major influence on the surrounding matter, transmuting atoms in a way that would seriously harm living organisms. Other forms of radiation, such as high-energy photons, also known as gamma radiation, can be shielded against more easily, for instance by a thick wall of lead, and this is what we usually mean by “radiation” in a more narrow sense. This radiation is produced by nuclear reactions of various kinds, both naturally and artificially. Finally, there is the form of “radiation” produced by the Sun, which consists of electrically charged particles, which can be repelled by the Earth’s magnetic field, and which produce the polar lights when they impact the atmosphere in parts of the Earth where the magnetic field doesn’t extend all that far from the surface. The luminance is produced when the charged particles hit the molecules in the atmosphere and make them glow; you can imagine why that wouldn’t be healthy if it hit your body. Essentially, what Van Allen belt is, are those exact particles, trapped around the Earth in places where the magnetic field extends beyond the atmosphere. They are either permanently trapped there or are simply temporarily there because they are constantly being brought there by the solar wind; but in all cases, they are not electromagnetic but particular in nature, and can be deflected by the electromagnetic field, or stopped by several layers of aluminium foil. Yes, those ionized particles can break up molecules inside your cells, but they are very weakly penetrative, they are electrically active and they can be shielded against with the greatest possible ease. So basically to call them “radiation” is a misnomer; they are actually electrically charged gas particles, or plasma, which can produce ionization damage similar to the ionizing electromagnetic radiation.

The other thing with radiation is that it is a statistical thing; what matters is not only strength of radiation, but also duration of exposure. Essentially, it’s like an oven. How much you’re cooked depends on how hot the oven is, and how long you’re in it, because your molecules absorb heat, or radiation, as a function of time. Short exposure to strong radiation is equal to long exposure to weak radiation. That, at least, is the basic theory; in practice, your body is very well adjusted to handling long exposure to weak radiation, because life on Earth evolved exactly under those circumstances.

So, essentially, if you push a metal can through the Van Allen belt very quickly, the statistical amount of charged particles that can actually harm the people inside is actually quite small, and that’s exactly what happened to the Apollo astronauts; Van Allen belt was the least of their problems. They actually took much more damage from the cosmic rays, which are usually stopped by the thick layers of the atmosphere, and against which their capsule provided insufficient protection; however, the astronauts on the ISS receive the same form of radiation during a much longer period of time, and they seem to survive it quite fine. So, basically, does the problem exist? Yes. Is the problem as bad as some say? No. It’s very bad if you would attempt to reach Mars, and you’re exposed to cosmic rays and solar wind for years; that would probably cook you quite effectively, but for days and weeks it’s fine. You’re in the oven, but not long enough.

Essentially, the entire argument is fallacious, because “radiation” is poorly defined and understood, its effects are poorly understood, and the problem is misrepresented in order to make it worse than it actually is. The argument that Apollo astronauts couldn’t survive the passage through the Van Allen belt is similar to one which states that the bumblebees can’t fly because they are too heavy. Tell that to the bumblebee.

There’s an interesting place to which you get by selectively dismissing evidence that doesn’t suit you – it’s called madness. For instance, you dismiss the testimony of the Apollo astronauts who went to the Moon, because “they couldn’t have”. Basically, you dismiss the existence of bumblebees because they “can’t exist”. What you did is dismiss existence of something because you had an opinion which was worth to you more than the presented fact, so the fact must be false. Giving your opinions more weight than the facts is the opposite of science. But let’s see where it leads us. You dismiss the astronauts as liars. You dismiss NASA as the source of the conspiracy. You dismiss the Russians because they must be in it together with NASA if they corroborate the story. You dismiss ESA because it also corroborates the story. You dismiss the scientists who corroborate the story. But if you dismiss so many things, what is to be believed? You can trust only the things you can personally attest to and understand. For most people, this is a very narrow source of data and a very shallow pool of capability, and then you get the flat-earth theories. You dismissed so many things, you ended up in the dark ages. However, it’s very easy to get out: you only need to admit that you are not the smartest person in the world and that maybe trusting others might be a better idea than trusting your own intellect, because, believe it or not, if all that shit makes sense to you, you are most likely a pretty stupid individual.

And then we come to the matter of faith. Faith is often misunderstood. Faith is not believing in things for which there is no rational evidence. Actually, faith is something much more fundamental: it’s acceptance that you can’t always directly verify things, and that the only way to move forward is to trust that some things have been sufficiently verified. What do I mean by that? Actually, very simple things: that it makes sense to take the money and go to the store to buy bread, having faith in your understanding and recollection of the facts at hand, which are that the store is located in front of your building, you can buy food there, and that money is accepted as an instrument of payment. Of course, if you are inside of your apartment, there is no “rational reason” to believe that this is possible. You can’t see the store. You can’t see that there’s bread there. If there is, you can’t be sure it’s for sale, and that some form of colored paper will be readily accepted as payment. If you haven’t done it already, you need to have faith in the truthfulness of someone else’s account. If you have done it already, you have to have faith in the truthfulness of your own memory. If you don’t have faith, you need to try it experimentally. But why would you? If there’s no reason to assume that any of the above facts are true, what remains there as basis for this experiment? Faith? But we are rational people, we can’t base our actions on faith. And so you die of starvation in a state of solipsistic madness.

And if you think that my example is too radical, that nobody can be that insane, you haven’t been up do date with the current state of the Internet noosphere. Just google “flat earth conspiracy”.

My son (12) recently asked me about the difference between the “left” and “right” political parties and I discovered that it’s actually very difficult to explain. I’ll tell you what I told him, so you can decide for yourself.

Initially, the meaning was straightforward. Those politicians who supported the king assembled at his right, and those who opposed his policies (but were considered his loyal opposition) assembled at his left. Basically, the right was the government and the left was the opposition.

Later, the meaning shifted and the “right” was understood as conservative and “left” as reformist or revolutionary, and this is the core of the meaning we have today.

However, when the “left” political option wins the elections and forms the government, and the “right” is the opposition, the situation turns into a complete opposite of the initial meaning, which confuses things greatly, because we can no longer define “left” and “right” in relation to the government policies, but only in relation to the basic philosophy of politics, where the sides differ on the basic concepts of what they are trying to do with the state.

In order to come up with a generalized definition, we first need to see some specific examples and see whether we can come up with a rule that encompasses them. So for instance the leftists will say that there’s injustice in the society because some have more than the others, and those injustices need to be remedied by implementing a progressive social policy, like taxing the rich in order to give social benefits to the poor. Since the basic assumption is that people are equal, the difference in wealth is explained as a result of some sort of a crime – if you have ten equal people and some pool of resources, such as ten loaves of bread, and some end up with more bread than the others, the conclusion is that the inequality of distribution is the result of injustice, where some took more than their fair share while the others ended up empty handed. This is then extended to all spheres of life – if some are more educated than others, it’s because of social injustice. If women do different things than men, it’s because of social injustice. If dogs chase postmen, it’s because of social injustice. You get the picture.

The rightists, on the other hand, don’t think there’s any great social injustice taking place in the world, because they don’t think all men are equal. Some desire knowledge and study, while others prefer to watch football on TV. Some desire success and wealth and work diligently, while others are satisfied with moderate income and a peaceful job without stress. Some follow religion, others are atheists. Some want to raise a family, some care only about advancement of their technical field. Those differences add up and produce different outcomes, which explains the different social conditions without any need of introducing an additional factor such as injustice. The rightists simply don’t view equality as a desirable outcome, since it would erase the basic motivation for advancement – if people knew they’ll always have the same outcome, regardless of how hard they worked or what they invented, would they be motivated to invest so much extra effort? Of course not. Besides, one needs to trust the proven methods. If people did something for centuries with good results, don’t interfere with it. Instead, introduce a level playing field with the same laws applying to everyone, and trust that the outcome will be justice, because inequality of outcomes is just, if it reflects different choices. If women prefer to raise families, they will avoid professions which require complete dedication, and will naturally not be as represented in some fields as men. The outcome reflects the choices, without any need to resort to “oppression” or “injustice”.

In essence, the leftists start with some concept of an ideal society and they perceive the difference between the actual state and their theory as the reality’s problem, and they then want to impose their theory upon reality until they get them to match. Essentially, they are dogmatic idealists. The rightists, on the other hand, start with observing how things are, and then they attempt to understand why things work the way they work. Essentially, they are pragmatists and they think in a way that is quite scientific, because the main difference between dogma and science is that dogma starts with some ideal concept and tries to impose it upon reality, while science starts with the observation of reality and then attempts to form a theoretical model. The idealist sees a hawk eating a rabbit and interprets it as cruelty and violence, and desires a world in which hawks wouldn’t eat rabbits. A scientist sees hawk eating a rabbit and understand that this is simply what hawks do – they cull the rabbits, which both improves the rabbit gene pool, and lessens stress on the habitat. If the rabbits were allowed to reproduce exponentially without the presence of the predators, they would overgraze the habitat and die off, maybe to the point of extinction. So, the scientists would warn against imposing our emotional or ethical views upon nature, because it is much wiser to simply observe and learn, without making judgments, and maybe even revise your own personal ethics based upon observations, instead of sticking blindly to your initial viewpoints.

Essentially, the leftists start with the assumption that they know better, that they are smarter, that what they propose would mean progress, and that anyone who opposes them is primitive, stupid and needs to be either controlled, repressed or killed for the good of the world, because the leftists know better. It doesn’t matter that the leftist ideologies invariably fail and destroy the societies that attempt to implement them: the leftists never change their position, because it is dogmatic, not scientific. A rightist is basically a creature of the free market. If he attempts something and fails, he will conclude that he needs to do something better and different in order to succeed the next time. He observes those who succeeded and attempts to emulate them, and he observes those who failed and tries to learn from their mistakes. Essentially, he observes the reality and learns from it in order to improve his probability of success. The leftist starts with an ideology, and if that ideology fails, he rationalizes it in some way, usually as a conspiracy of the regressive forces of society, which need to be fought and destroyed in order for his theory to work.

So, basically, the leftists are conceited dogmatic idiots, and the result of implementation of their ideas is always some form of anti-evolution, where those with the correct ideological attitude are promoted and the others are repressed, where the successful ones are punished and the unsuccessful or mediocre ones are rewarded, and the result is a society with total lack of motivation, which is then corrected by introducing some persistent threat or danger which serves to mobilize people to work and sacrifice their well-being. That’s why the socialist states are always in a state of war with someone, they always embrace a siege mentality and they fail once the people stop believing in the reality of the threat; that’s why the Soviet Union collapsed almost immediately after the cold war ended and they realized there’s no longer a danger of Americans killing them all. There simply was no reason to tolerate their bad economy if there was no threat of war – why would they? This mechanism is usually poorly understood by people who didn’t live in socialist countries that embraced such siege mentality.

So, essentially, the leftists were repeatedly proven wrong by history, it was experimentally proven that their methods reliably fail, because they remove the primary incentive of progress, which is the difference in outcomes as a function of difference in choices. “There are many kids in your class”, I told my son, “who have different grades. This difference in outcomes is the result of their different choices. Some hang out with other kids all day and play soccer. Some are checking their Facebook account and chatting for ten hours every day. Some, such as yourself, read books, talk to their parents and are engaged in intellectual pursuits. For you, this has an outcome of being great at everything intellectual, but at the cost of being a social outcast and sucking at soccer. You obviously understand why this is the case, and consider the tradeoff worthwhile or you would have changed your behavior in order to adjust. It’s the same way with the adults. Sure, there are additional factors. Some kids have stupid and violent parents who are drunk and/or beat them up. Some are simply too stupid and unmotivated to care about anything. But for the majority, it’s a function of inputs influencing the outputs.”

So, when you see a hawk eating a rabbit, don’t act like a child, crying “poor little bunny rabbit”, but instead try to understand what is actually going on, and why there’s a rabbit in the first place – why the rabbit needs to have great hearing and big ears and why he needs to be fast. Imagine a world with no predators. Essentially, the life on Earth would still be somewhere before Cambrium, consisting of sponges and jellyfish, because there would be nothing to punish evolutionary failures, nothing to punish the bad choices, nothing to reward good choices and evolutionary successes. There would be no reward for having good eyesight and no punishment for being slow and blind. You have hearing, eyesight and all other senses exactly because you need to have them, because there’s a reward for having them and using them to the full extent, and punishment for failing to do so, and the punishment is not eating, not reproducing and in being eaten by a leopard. You have so much brain because you need it, you simply can’t afford not to have it and not to use it. You are weaker and slower than the other animals, and you need to think your way to success. Failing to think results in failing to eat and failing to understand where the leopard will ambush you. Bad choices have bad outcomes.

So, we have an interesting situation here. Initially it looks like the leftists are correct in their diagnosis and attempted treatment of societal ills. There are inequalities, since people are equal this is unjust, injustice needs to be remedied, those who oppose it must be fought.

However, after closer examination, it turns out that they are completely wrong. People are not equal, and they are not supposed to be. Evolution works by producing a certain amount of variety within any species, and this is why we reproduce sexually and not by cloning. The purpose of sexual reproduction is to provide greater variety, which will allow some specimens to survive where the others will fail, simply because some rabbits have bigger ears than others, and some have quicker reflexes than others. On the other hand, some hawks will have better eyesight and speed than others, and will eat when the others will starve. In humans, there will be variation in abilities, variation in motivations and variation in outcomes. Those who have better outcomes will be preferable in sexual selection, and those who have inferior outcomes will have their children die off due to lack of resources, thus closing inferior evolutionary paths forever. Attempting to correct that will have terrible outcomes. Treating all people as equals, as clones, is a terribly stupid and evil thing to do. For instance, if you have someone who is an evil, drunk fucktard who beats up his children regularly, his children are all half-retarded and he has no friends who are willing to help him, the state needs to let him and his children die off. To take resources away from successful people who made better choices, and use those resources to finance the reproduction of losers and incompetent evil fucktards, it’s simply evil, it’s like culling healthy and fast rabbits in order to lessen the competition for the lame, slow rabbits. Soon you will end up with a diseased and inferior rabbit population. Essentially, in order to have evolution and health, you need to have a difference in outcomes, you need to have a reward for good choices and punishment for bad choices, and both reward and punishment need to be quite radical and unambiguous.

So, basically, the difference between the leftists and the rightists is that the entire nature functions according to the rightist principles, and the failed communist states functioned according to the leftist principles. Pick your government accordingly.