That last post aged well

Bannon's gone, but our collective national nervous breakdown continues.

It's only Day 9.

It's Day 9. A white supremacist is now on the National Security Council and input has been reduced from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our intelligence apparatus. 

An executive order banning individuals from a number of majority-Muslim nations, even if they are legal US residents, has been enacted. Don't worry though, not all majority-Muslim nations are impacted. Only those in which Trump has no business ties.

Oh, and our President openly wished on Twitter for someone to "buy" the New York Times and "run it correctly" or have it fold entirely. It's probably cool. There's no reason to be alarmed that he's actively attempting to stifle dissent from one of our country's most important and respected journalistic outlets.

It is sure a good thing we dodged that Hillary bullet, right? She would have been a total disaster. Pure evil, that one. 

Fuck fascism and fuck everyone who supports it.

An open letter to those in my family who supported Trump

The following is a lightly-edited message I sent this morning to some people who share my blood. A sizable chunk of these individuals are highly conservative and voted to help elect Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States.

Dear family and former family, 

The following is addressed principally to those members of the group that supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election. I doubt that even the people on my side of the political aisle will be in support of my statements here. 

A couple of weeks back, I had a conversation with one of my brothers about the then-upcoming election. I posed to him a question: "After this is all over, even if Hillary Clinton wins this thing, how can I possibly forgive my Trump-supporting family members?" His answer mirrored my own. 

You and I have had political disagreements in the past. In 2004, in the first election in which I voted, I thought many of you exercised terribly bad judgment by voting for Bush. It never went beyond that, never got intensely personal, with anyone aside from Lynda. I was utterly dismayed when Bush won, but I still came to Myrtle Beach, drank beer with you, and occasionally had a good-natured argument with you.  I thought you were wrong and you thought I was. A relatively simple political disagreement is nothing special. 

In 2008 and 2012, I was happy to vote for Barack Obama. I thought you exercised poor judgment by supporting McCain and/or Romney, but again, I did not begrudge you your choice. Had Obama lost to either of them, I would have been very upset, but I would have recognized that I live to fight another day, and that you are not my enemy. 

This time it is different. What you have done is monstrous and unforgivable. I will not bother enumerating the myriad reasons why, because they are and have been obvious and clearly do not matter to you. Whether you justify your actions based on some abstract principles of conservatism, or because you could not see a relevant difference between the candidates, or because you have an irrational hatred of the Clintons... none of it matters to me. 

There is no excuse for what has happened. 

I will not speak to you ever again in any capacity. I will not acknowledge your existence. You are dead to me. I understand that this is likely no great loss for you, but it's not meant to be a punishment anyway. I know that in this time in American history it may be ill-advised to burn bridges, but consider them ashes. 

Do not approach me. Do not talk to me. Do not approach or talk to my son. Emilie [my wife] can obviously speak for herself, but I suspect that she'd be a lot happier if you avoided her as well. Do not bother to email me back, as I will not read it, and I will delete the email like I would any other bit of spam. We are done here. 

Everyone and anyone who supported Hillary and opposed Trump in this election: You are welcome to email me and tell me that I should not despair, or that I am an asshole, or that this message is overkill, or that you agree, or whatever. I love you, and I will gladly read and respond to anything you have to say. Good luck out there. You and I will need it.

Fred Tuesdays 9.13.2016

A blogger writing about reinforcement schedules and their relation to the world at large occasionally goes for very long periods of time between new posts. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Evidently, I have abandoned the practice of posting new Skinner quotes on Fridays. No matter, I will just post new quotes "whenever I feel like it," whatever that means.

I am currently teaching a freshman seminar on the topics of freedom and determinism. My general thoughts on these matters should be obvious, but I try to maintain something approaching a neutral stance when it comes to working with my students. Something that has come up already this semester is in the notion that something important may be lost when we see the (deterministic) mechanisms by which things we call beautiful are revealed. By this view, peeking behind the curtain reveals the trick behind the magic and ruins the illusion.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain... or else lose your autonomy!

This is largely the sort of argument that many proponents of creationism are implicitly making when they deny Darwinian evolution. It's often, though not always, an appeal to a kind of "bugbear" (Dennett, 1984) wherein the truth of an argument takes a backseat to the horror of its being true, and the prescription reveals itself in denial.

I find that the following passage from Beyond Freedom and Dignity rings true.

Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. His achievements in science, government, religion, art, and literature remain as they have always been, to be admired as one admires a storm at sea or autumn foliage or a mountain peak...

Fred Fridays 6.17.2016

We are all controlled by the world in which we live, and part of that world has been and will be constructed by men. The question is this: Are we to be controlled by accident, by tyrants, or by ourselves in effective cultural design?

The danger or the misuse of power is possibly greater than ever. It is not allayed by disguising the facts. We cannot make wise decisions if we continue to pretend that human behavior is not controlled, or if we refuse to engage in control when valuable results might be forthcoming. Such measures weaken only ourselves, leaving the strength of science to others. The first step in a defense against tyranny is the fullest possible exposure of controlling techniques. A second step has already been taken successfully in restricting the use of physical force. Slowly, and as yet imperfectly, we have worked out an ethical and governmental design in which the strong man is not allowed to use the power deriving from his strength to control his fellow men. He is restrained by a superior force created for that purpose - the ethical pressure of the group, or more explicit religious and governmental measures. We tend to distrust superior forces, as we currently hesitate to relinquish sovereignty in order to set up an international police force. But it is only through such counter-control that we have achieved what we call peace - a condition in which men are not permitted to control each other through force. In other words, control itself must be controlled.

From "Freedom and the Control of Men,"(1955)