28 August 2022

End of the Englightenment?

 I've seen this come up a few times lately.

Somebody synthesized perfluorocubane recently.  ("fluorinated esters as starting materials with dissolved fluorine gas in a perfluorinated solvent at low temperatures".)  Methodological naturalism is fine.  The philosophical framework of a knowable universe is fine, too.

A whole bunch of other things are not at all fine, but all of those come down to something simple that has nothing at all to do with social collapse or mysterious moral enervations.

Greed is a sin.

That's it.  All the rationalizations about how some particular flavour of greed is virtue, really it is, are how we get the things not being fine.  Greed is still a sin.

That's all.  There's nothing more to it.  Try to avoid having the mammonite propaganda get to you.

2 comments:

JReynolds said...

An amusing (for some values of amusing) thing on the CBC news this morning. An Angus Reid poll that states solemnly that Canadian health care is producing worse outcomes than that of the US. Presented without analysis.

More fodder for the "privatize! privatize! privatize!" crew, rather than "We should spend more on healthcare. Even if it means (gasp!) taxing the wealthy at a fair rate".

In other news, one of my nephews came down with COVID on Sunday. My brother tested positive for it yesterday. No news about the other three people in his household yet, but I have the feeling they're going to go like dominoes.

Fortunately, they're quadruple jabbed, and both of them are describing their symptoms as a bad, but short-lasting, cold.

2022-09-07

Graydon said...

+JReynolds

Sorry to hear about the COVUD, and I hope they're well on the way to recovery.

Please remind them that the severity of the acute phase is NOT predictive of either Long COVID or PACS outcomes. Good idea to get a physical at 3 and 6 months if the logistics can be managed.

Once people decide it's OK to kill people to increase profits, there isn't any expectation that they're going to feel constrained by habits of quantitative analysis.