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Monday, January 07, 2013

Quote of the Day

Any system that has unimaginable complexity can not be centrally planned or directed.

12 comments:

Hey Skipper said...

There's the argument for evolution in one sentence.

Bret said...

True, though I suppose that a deity might have infinite imagination.

Anonymous said...

It's always mordantly amusing to me when militant atheists go about the wonders of evolution as a theory yet cannot imagine it applying to human economics as a system. How can it not be severe cognitive dissonance to be an evolutionist and a statist?

Peter said...

Or religious and a libertarian?

Anonymous said...

No. Didn't God leave it up to Adam and Eve? Doesn't the Catholic Church teach subsidiarity, which blends well in to libertarianism? The idea of letting people find their own path, and not relying on Caeser for has a good basis even in religion.

Bret said...

aog,

That there is no god (according to militant atheists) doesn't imply that if there were a god, He couldn't do better than evolution.

So I don't see any inherent cognitive dissonance.

Peter said...

Didn't God leave it up to Adam and Eve? Doesn't the Catholic Church teach subsidiarity, which blends well in to libertarianism?

AOG, we have to talk. Believe me. the Catholic Church does not preach libertarianism. As to God...

Anonymous said...

Bret;

That's backwards. The cognitive dissonance is thinking "no central controller is needed for an ecosystem, but one is needed for an economy".

Peter;

I didn't claim the Church taught libertarianism, I claimed it taught subsidiarity. It is my personal opinion that subsidiarity leads naturally to libertarianism.

Bret said...

But I don't think there's a "need" either place.

The militant atheist might agree that an economy could muddle forward without government intervention (i.e. it doesn't "need" central planning to perform poorly). It's just that with central planning the economy is oh-so-much-better than it would be without it.

Similar for the ecosystem. There is no central planner, but a really smart deity could do it oh-so-much better than how evolution muddle forward for the last few billion years. It's just that said deity doesn't exist (according to the militant atheist) so muddling forward is the only choice.

Anyway, if I were a militant atheist collectivist statist, that's how I would look at it.

Howard said...

aog,

I like to call such militant atheist statists "closet creationists" with apologies to the religious.

Hey Skipper said...

It's always mordantly amusing to me when militant atheists go about the wonders of evolution as a theory yet cannot imagine it applying to human economics as a system.

Or to humans themselves. See Feminism, et al.

True, though I suppose that a deity might have infinite imagination.

Or the deity could be the universe itself.

And then we could lose ourselves in a recent (unwatchable, IMHO) movie, or Phil 101.

The militant atheist might agree that an economy could muddle forward without government intervention ...

... but a really smart deity could do it oh-so-much better than how evolution muddle forward for the last few billion years. It's just that said deity doesn't exist (according to the militant atheist) so muddling forward is the only choice.


Except that the militant atheist (which should translate into English as anti-theist) would be objectively wrong, just as are collectivists.

No entity this side of a deity can possibly have enough information to make a complex system such as an economy, or evolution, run better than it can on its own.

Bret said...

I agree that centralized direction and design would be less than optimal for both the biosphere and the economy.

I'm just pointing out that while they may be wrong, those who disagree with me don't inherently suffer from cognitive dissonance.