Linky Winky

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There are three reasons to study psychology.

(1) You need some pseudoscience to justify your beliefs,

(2) You like to make fun of the pseudoscience other people use to justify their beliefs.

(3) You want to know why people feel the need to justify their beliefs, why they accept such weak justifications, and why they have such daft beliefs in the first place.

If anyone can suggest a link for (3), I'd be most grateful.

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I've stumbled on some works by and about James Burnham. In my opinion quite a fascinating figure.

He was an American political theorist of the 1930s, an anti-stalinist socialist who became an anti-socialist paleoconservative, and he's best remembered for a string of failed predictions.

He predicted managers (bureaucrats and technicians) would gradually replace capitalists as the ruling class - whereas in face entrepreneurial capitalists were replaced by corporate capitalists. He predicted Japan would become a superpower after allying itself with Russia - whereas Russia became the superpower. He thought Germany would win the second world war and become a third superpower - all quite plausible, but wrong.

But if you dismiss everyone whose predictions mostly turned out wrong...you'll dismiss everyone. That's the nature of prediction in politics.

Here's an aphorism: When shallow people are wrong, it's for shallow reasons. When deep people are wrong, it's for deep reasons.

I feel that Burnham may (or may not) have been wrong when he analysed Dante, debated Trotsky on the dialectic, or declared Liberalism irretrievably contradictory. But either way it's worth finding out why.

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eXile magazine probably soon won't exist anymore. It seems you can't tell the truth by disguising it as humorous cynicism anymore in Moscow. Or by doing it in English.

But in their dying breath they've given me an idea - of how I can become a millionaire. And it's perfectly moral, because it only involves defrauding people richer than me.

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The British Potato Council.
The British Peanut Council.
The other website of the British Potato Council
The Potato Fan Club.
The British Potato Council's website for schools.
20th century history. Not about potatoes. But told by a potato.
Democracy is not a potato.

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I was here today. A few details when I have the strength.

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