John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

A programmer’s satisfaction with himself is measured in the lines of code he has written that worked on the first run. His knowledge of his subject matter is measured in the same way.

No one who has spent any time at a crosswalk in midtown Manhattan during lunchtime has an excuse for believing that a set of laws can be instituted and enforced by human beings that will satisfy the demands of any theory of distributive justice.

It is not the constant suffering that the chronically depressed are certain fills the world that is heartrending, but rather the pathetic vacuity of the things in which they find hope.

Internet, n. The world’s largest soapbox.

When this man hears two people repeat a half-truth, it strikes him as a quarter-truth, but when that man hears them, it strikes him as a three-quarters-truth.

Two other passages from Hayek’s “The Counter-Revolution of Science” that seemed worth quoting, ironically because of their fundamental importance for psychology.

It is that not only those mental entities, such as “concepts” or “ideas,” which are commonly recognized as “abstractions,” but all mental phenomena, sense perceptions and images as well as the more abstract “concepts” and “ideas,” must be regarded as acts of classification performed by the brain.¹

The whole idea of the variability of the human mind is a direct result of the erroneous belief that mind is an object which we observe as we observe physical facts. The sole difference between mind and physical objects, however, which entitles us to speak of mind at all is precisely that wherever we speak of mind we interpret what we observe in terms of categories which we know only because they are the categories in which our own mind operates. There is nothing paradoxical in the claim that all mind must run in terms of certain universal categories of thought, because where we speak of mind this means that we can successfully interpret what we observe by arranging it in these categories. And anything which can be comprehended through our understanding of other minds, anything which we recognize as specifically human, must be comprehensible in terms of these categories.²

1. Friedrich A. Hayek : The Counter-Revolution of Science : Part One, Scientism and the Study of Society : The Objectivism of the Scientistic Approach↩
2. Friedrich A. Hayek : The Counter-Revolution of Science : Part One, Scientism and the Study of Society : The Historicism of the Scientistic Approach↩

Much that today is thought of as a sign of being a “liberated” person would once have rather been considered proof that one is merely “self-willed.”

And so it is that Houellebecq’s books are worth something to our age: they are among the few that explore the ways in which we deceive and betray ourselves as a species by calling abandonment to wantonness and caprice freedom.

The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, the common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds.

When we no longer share these implicit assumptions of ages long past, it is comparatively easy to recognize them. But it is different with regard to the ideas underlying the thought of more recent times. Here we are frequently not yet aware of the common features which the opposing systems of thought shared, ideas which for that very reason often have crept in almost unnoticed and have achieved their dominance without serious examination. This can be very important because, as Bernard Bosanquet once pointed out, “extremes of thought may met in error as well as in truth.” Such errors sometimes become dogmas merely because they were accepted by the different groups who quarreled on all the live issues, and may even continue to provide the tacit foundations of thought when most of the theories are forgotten which divided the thinkers to whom we owe that legacy.

When this is the case, the history of ideas becomes a subject of eminently practical importance. It can help us to become aware of much that governs our own thought without our explicitly knowing it. It may serve the purposes of a psychoanalytical operation by bringing to the surface unconscious elements which determine our reasoning, and perhaps assist us to purge our minds from influences which seriously mislead us on questions of our own day.¹

One of the best reasons why we should read works from antiquity: they help to make clear to us how differently humans once thought about many things. And most of the greatest insights come to us when we question the assumptions we have not previously realized we were making.

1. Friedrich A. Hayek : The Counter-Revolution of Science : Studies on the Abuse of Reason : Part Three, Comte and Hegel↩

I think it is easy for most people to understand why I am usually so disheartened by the popularity of Sex and the City, but for those desiring an explanation I think just a few words suffice: Sex and the City is, far too often, the apotheosis of the coquette.

In the past twenty four hours, I have seen Tom Morello in Iron Man and Air Guitar Nation. I can only say that his radical ideals suddenly seem even more disingenuous than before.