Videos

Is anything that Deepak Chopra says remotely logical?

1 Comment

I say “NO”. It’s just happy-clappy jibba-jabba!

Here, look at this post from CARM.

Excerpt:

Logic is the backbone of critical thinking. Logic is extremely useful for uncovering error and establishing truth. There are principles of logic and I would like to introduce you to the first three laws of logic. These are very important.

  1. The Law of Identity
  2. The Law of Non-Contradiction
  3. The Law of Excluded Middle

The law of identity states that A is A. An Apple is an Apple. In other words, something is what it is. If something exists, it has a nature, an essence. For example, a book has a front and back cover with pages. A car has four wheels, seats, doors, windows, etc. A tree has branches, leaves, a trunk, and roots. This also means that anything that exists has characteristics. We recognize what something is by observing its characteristic. You know that a tree is a tree because you see its branches, it’s leads, its trunk, etc.
Furthermore, if something has an identity, it has a single identity. It does not have more than one identity. In other words, if something exists it has a set of attributes that are consistent with its own existence. It does not have a set of attributes that are inconsistent with itself. Therefore we can easily conclude that a cat is not a parachute. An Apple is not a race car. A tree is not a movie.

The law of non-contradiction tells us that A cannot be both A and not A at the same time and in the same sense. In other words, something (a statement) cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same way. We use the law of non-contradiction constantly in discussions and debates because we are naturally able to recognize when someone is contradicting himself. If I were to tell you that yesterday I went shopping and then later I told you that yesterday I did not go shopping, you would be correct in saying there was a contradiction. A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another and yet both are claimed to be true. Since we know that both cannot be true, we see a contradiction. From this principle, we can conclude that truth is not self-contradictory. This is a very important concept. Let me repeat it. Truth is not self-contradictory.

The law of excluded middle says that a statement is either true or false. For example, my hair is brown. It is either true or false that my hair is brown. Another example: I am pregnant. The statement is either true or false. Since I am a male, it is not possible for me to be pregnant. Therefore, the statement is false. If I were a female, it would be possible for me to be pregnant (given normal bodily conditions). A woman is not “kind-of” pregnant. She either is or is not pregnant – there is no middle position. The law of excluded middle is important because it helps us deal in absolutes. This is particularly important in a society where relativism is promoted and truth statements are denied.

Please review these three laws and become familiar with them. They are extremely important when developing critical thinking skills.

Deepak Chopra says what feels good to him. But we have to test his words using the laws of logic. If his words pass that test, then we go on to empirical validation against the external world.

News

How well is government-run health care working out in the UK?

4 Comments

Story here from the UK Telegraph. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:

  • Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
  • Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
  • The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
  • A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
  • Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
  • Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
  • Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.

Death panels! Sarah Palin was right!

In other news, Amazon.com will be charging the credit cards of each American taxpayer for 10% of their gross income! And they’ll use that money to start handing out products to anyone they feel “needs” those products,  especially to “marginalized” special interest groups, and other whiny victims. Ha! Just kidding. Maybe Amazon.com should be in charge of health care.

Commentary

Comparison of budget deficit and GDP under Reagan and Obama

4 Comments

Here’s a nice article from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Democrats have been running Congress for nearly four years, and President Obama has been at the White House for 18 months, so it’s not too soon to ask: How’s that working out? One devastating scorecard came out Friday from the White House, in the form of its own semi-annual budget review.

The message: Tax revenues are smaller, spending is greater, and the deficits are thus larger than the White House has been saying. No wonder it dumped the news on the eve of a sweltering mid-July weekend.

[…]As a share of the economy, the White House now says the deficit in fiscal 2010, which ends on September 30, will be even larger than in 2009: 10%. That’s after a full year of economic growth, given that the recovery began last summer. More remarkable still, the deficit will barely fall in fiscal 2011, declining only to 9.2% of GDP in the second year of a recovery that ought to be gaining steam.

Let’s compare Obama and Reagan.

To put this in historical context, consider the nearby table that compares deficits as a share of GDP under Presidents Reagan and Obama. The 1981-82 recession was comparable in severity to the one Mr. Obama inherited and reached similar heights of unemployment. The deficits that resulted from that recession were the source of huge political consternation, with Democrats, the press corps and even some senior Reagan aides insisting that only a huge tax increase could save the country from ruin.

Yet as the table shows, the Reagan deficits never reached more than 6% of GDP, and that happened only in 1983, the first year of economic recovery. As the 1980s expansion continued, the deficits fell, especially as the pace of spending slowed in the latter part of Reagan’s second term.

[…]The Obama deficits are double that, and more than one-third higher than even the Gipper’s worst year. What explains this? Part of it is that Democrats are simply spending much more, sending outlays as a share of GDP above 25% for the first time since World War II. The White House now says outlays will be higher in 2011, at 25.1% of GDP, than at the height of the stimulus in 2009 and 2010.

[…]The other explanation for the record Obama deficits is that revenues have been so anemic, thanks to the lackluster economic recovery. In the Reagan years, revenues as a share of GDP never fell lower than 17.3%, despite (or we would say because of) his pro-growth tax cuts. In 2010, by contrast, the White House now says tax revenues will hit an astonishing low of 14.5% of GDP, rising only to 15.8% in 2011, even with the huge tax increase that hits on January 1, 2011.

Tax cuts worked, and government spending failed. Next time, let’s do what works – not what feels good.