Socialists and taxation

People often say it is immoral for Governments to tax people. If people want their money to fund a health service, or to alleviate peoples' poverty etc, then it should be voluntary. So, in the context of funding a health service, someone on facebook said:

"Forcing others to do things, even righteous things, is not morally sound. That is also basic common sense".

But this is confused thinking, perhaps deliberately so. Think of a rich person who is a socialist. He thinks society ought to be a great deal less unequal than it is. He personally could give most of his money away, and for no other rich person to do so. But that won't make much of a dent in alleviating peoples' poverty. All that happens is that he becomes that much poorer, but without really helping anyone else since his wealth spread over millions of impoverished people will not make much difference to any of their lives.

What he wants is for all rich people to give a large percentage of their wealth away, not just him alone since the latter is fairly futile.

Now suppose all rich people felt the same way. In that case the Government is forcing them to do what they want as a collective whole. But, in this sense of "forced", it would be ludicrous to suggest the Government is acting immorally. Indeed, it's quite the converse, the Government would be doing the right moral thing.

Our lives are ultimately mysterious

Our whole lives and all things are pervaded with ultimate mystery. I sometimes feel as if I'm in something akin to a dream. That when I wake up I'll understand everything, perhaps when I die. That at the present time my mind is effectively wading through sludge.

The standard model prohibits an afterlife

Sean Carroll said: 

“Believing in a life after death, to put it mildly requires physics beyond the Standard Model.”  (From an Express article)

I agree.  But so does believing in a "life before death".  "The standard model" does not accommodate consciousness whether disembodied or embodied. 

We believe in an afterlife because we want an afterlife

I think many people are extremely averse to feeling their lives are to no ultimate avail and that the Universe has no purpose and just exists by happenstance. Equally it is repugnant to people and that they will cease to exist forevermore when they die. I agree with atheists/materialists that this is why most of us believe in an afterlife and God. We want it to be true so we believe it, although deep down I feel many of us don't really believe it.

The mistake here though is to imagine that just because someone believes something because it makes them feel better, then it is false. There are compelling arguments and evidence to reject materialism and all that it implies.

Hubbard Hills

Just been walk in Hubbard Hills. Dark. Put torch on mobile on. Interesting to see menacing shapes in the distance that might be dark evil creatures of the night venturing forth from the underworld or a parallel reality, only to coalesce into a bush as I got closer.

Perhaps should put my glasses on.

The Millennium Bug

Just reading the following article: 20 years ago, we were all set for a Y2K disaster that wasn’t

Article says:

Patti Duncan stockpiled enough water, food for herself and her cat, and books she hadn’t read to survive two weeks in her Marysville home. She was sick of hearing about the Y2K bug — a programming flaw that raised fears of computers misreading the year 2000 as 1900 and going haywire. Even so, Duncan told The Herald in December 1999 that she was ready, just in case. Throughout 1999, we were bombarded with warnings of Y2K pandemonium. People were stashing food and cash. Agencies offered assurances — the power would stay on, financial markets wouldn’t collapse, travel wouldn’t be disrupted and life’s necessities would be available. We prepared, because who knew for certain?

Yes, I filled my bath with water and bought loads of tins of food. I didn't think anything particularly untoward would occur, but it was sensible to take necessary precautions. No one else I knew took any precautions at all!

We got computer experts saying that the bug was too deeply imbedded in computers to possibly expect that nothing would happen. They said there will be some disruption, and perhaps considerable disruption. That Governments were being unrealistic and irresponsible in their reassuring messages. Well, these were experts on computers, and I knew virtually nothing about computers at that time. So it was surely sensible to take note of their warnings.

So what happened on 31st December 1999? Bollocks all happened is what! Very disappointing. And this is why people aren't in thrall to "experts"; namely because more often than not their predictions don't pan out. Predictions by economists scarcely perform any betting than flipping a coin. Those that have a track record of successful predictions almost invariably did so by chance (if a million people flip a coin 20 times in a row, there will be 1 person on average who will get 20 heads. But he has no ability to get heads when flipping coins).

4/1/2020 Edited to add: I put the forgoing on facebook, and a certain Steve Hume responded by claiming the reason why the bug didn't manifest itself was because of all the work done by people like himself to prevent it. Moreover, he appears to think this contradicts what I said.

It doesn't. Either the millenium bug:

a) Was a problem that could be largely dealth with before the year 2000 had rolled round,

or

b) The bug was too deeply imbedded in computers and some disruption was inevitable (i.e sufficient disruption to make it to the news).

Before the year 2000 rolled round most acknowledged "experts" were maintaining "b". However, after the year 2000 it transpired that "a" was correct. Hence, the claims that it was too deeply embedded were nonsense.

So Steve Hume's comment didn't actually have any relevance to what I originally said. Pointing this out to him simply elicited a response saying my position is "slightly incoherent and, not a little weird".

The frustrations of trying to explain things to people on the net..

Predictions about autonomous cars

Article says:

Our trust in digital technology companies has become so complete, that when a host of these promised self-driving cars, we believed them. Everyone believed them.

Well, not quite everyone. I didn't. I made a prediction in 2014 that they will become ubiquitous by 2060 and certainly not within a period of 5-20 years as the "experts" were predicting. Why people take note of preposterous predictions from the likes of Elon Musk is beyond me.