Disqus - Latest Comments for Matt Frost

Re: Fashion Forward Future Farmers

Matt Frost — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:16:45 -0000

I'd be careful if I were you. The fabric is woven with strands of sincerium, a compound that ignites upon contact with irony.

Re: Sunstein on Rights

Matt Frost — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:29:22 -0000

"DeSoto is saying that there are often de facto property rights, despite the state. The superior forms of legal structure that states sometimes provide do not create the basic rights; it codifies them, and by doing so it creates the possibility for new, more intricate and abstract levels of economic definition and exchange."

I'd argue (based on DeSoto's books) that the state's codified property rights are often specifically intended to contravene - even to spite - the system of rights and rules that a population has voluntarily agreed to. So not only is state coercion not a necessary condition for property rights - it can be the means by which institutionalized property rights are deprived in the interests of the legal elite.

Re: Fashion Forward Future Farmers

Matt Frost — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:24:02 -0000

Yeah, man. They started putting that stuff in shiny T-shirt iron-ons a few years ago, and we lost a lot of good record store clerks.

Then there was the thrift store disaster of '02, which I still can't talk about.

Re: Rope Merchants

Matt Frost — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:37:59 -0000

"The market may gratify anti-market preferences by selling products that affirm and entrench classic anti-market tropes, thus cementing or even sharpening anti-market preferences. These preferences, expressed electorally, are bad for the market."

But hasn't the political market already responded to this need for narrative self-coherence? Isn't that what part and parcel of bobo liberalism? Think about parents who send their kids to private schools and then vote to maintain the public school system as a patronage device and full employment program.

In this case, the market is working to catch up with politics. After all, white bourgeois liberals have been around longer than Whole Foods has.

Re: Rope Merchants

Matt Frost — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:40:49 -0000

Oops. Read as "Isn't that part and parcel of bobo liberalism?"

Re: Rich in Love

Matt Frost — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:03:43 -0000

"Does that mean mean Mormons are the happiest people in the world?"

Maybe it explains why they suffer that tithe...

" Maybe the majority of people in the survey are happier because they have genuine relationships with other people that happen to result in having more sex and the less happy people who spend more time making money are so because they are simply more isolated."

Bingo.

Re: What Kind of Seriousness is This?

Matt Frost — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:57:01 -0000

Hey Rob- if you wanted to build a better nerve gas to kill badguys, but the "authoritarian sophists" prevented you, would that make you angry? Yes, it would.

So shitcan all your pansy talk about "wiiiiisdom" and "right way of liiiife." Wake up and smell the Spockery, man.

Re: If God is Dead, Everything is Permitted . . .

Matt Frost — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 20:08:39 -0000

You suffer a certain failure of imagination. There are some among us who would be more than happy to step over corpses every day, provided the dead were from the right tribe, or religious group, or social class.

The current lack of bodies on your DC sidewalk is not to be taken for granted, nor is it to be attributed to the innate self-correcting properties of the human conscience.

Would that it were the case.

Re: If God is Dead, Everything is Permitted . . .

Matt Frost — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 03:15:06 -0000

...and I should add- the lack of corpses isn't attributable to theism, either. I'm not out to make that case.

Re: Speak the Truth, as Long as You Don’t Think It’s Persuasive

Matt Frost — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 08:59:08 -0000

Heh. Everyone's waking up and starting to realize that the foaming, partisan opponents to so-called "reform" were right all along, and that when it comes down to it, money really does equal speech.

Re: Losing the Argument? Then Follow the Money!

Matt Frost — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 05:55:44 -0000

"[By the way, I do not, in fact, have any desire to kick Alterman's ass.]"

Sure, but now that you're in a fundraising mood, maybe there could be a new PayPal link on the right column...

As for the funding of political debate, the liberals themselves count on a steady flow of money from like-minded sugar daddies. Jack Shafer handled this question pretty nicely in Slate last month:

"Stein and Lapham would have you believe that conservative foundations both outweigh liberal foundations and suppress the liberal message with their big spending. But that's not the case. Stein estimates assets of $2 billion for the eight major conservative family foundations in 2001, which sounds gargantuan. But that's chump change compared to the holdings of liberal foundations. Writing in the American Prospect in 1998, Karen Paget notes that none of these conservative foundations rank in the top 10 American foundations measured by assets, and most don't even break into the top 50.

The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy (assets of $60 million in 2002) gave money to liberal media organizations in 2003 at rates that would make a Scaife faint. The group's federal Form 990 records it giving $4.3 million away to TomPaine.com/the Florence Fund ($2 million), Sojourners magazine ($500,000), an investigative fund for Salon.com ($277,785), the Nation Institute ($115,000), and various radio, film, and magazine projects (the Washington Monthly and the American Prospect got piddly amounts). It also paid Bill Moyers, host of PBS's Now, $200,000 to serve as its president. "

Re: West-ward, Ho!

Matt Frost — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:30:11 -0000

I've wondered what that book was doing in the sidebar. Nice article.

Re: Who Likes Leisure?

Matt Frost — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 06:54:52 -0000

Chuck's comment about health care has nailed it. As long as health coverage is linked to full-time employment, workers can't pursue the range of options that they might otherwise, such as freelance or part-time work.

If we can find a way to disengage health insurance from part-time work, the social and economic ramifications will be tremendous. Just imagine the breadth of choices that individuals would come up with if the labor market allowed this kind of flexibility. As a parent of two small kids whose wife is a school administrator/teacher, I know that if I could work part-time and keep health care coverage, it would be utterly fantastic from a domestic standpoint.

Chuck is right- linking health care to employment is a fundamentally illiberal flaw in the market that some intrepid libertarian think tanker ought to find us a way out of.

Re: Baseball Economics

Matt Frost — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 04:45:30 -0000

Indeed, strapping a hungry Michael Moore to his booth at a Denny's would be akin to having an old-growth forest nearby. Someone just needs to prepare a "highly readable" paper to quantify the comparison.

Re: What are Philosophers Good For?

Matt Frost — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:18:55 -0000

I see philosophy as something both circumscribed by the extent of our empirical knowledge, which was expanding, last time I checked. In other words , the more we know, the more questions we have for our philosophical counsellors.

Perhaps the idea that philosophy has run its course is a form of nostalgia for a golden past -- one in which philosophers filled in the gaps in everyone's empirical awareness of the natural world, and the discipline's explanatory power seemed limitless. Now that the biochemists and physicists can explain in baffling detail the workings of the natural world, maybe some philosophers feel crowded out of the "explain-the-universe" business, and they're stuck instead in the "explain-your-specialty" ghetto of academia.

Re: Faith-Based Mental Health

Matt Frost — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:43:06 -0000

Gee, thanks for opening another front in the culture wars, Will.

Tomasi's question obliges the state to draw a line between "organic" ailments, the treatment of which can be subsidized only when performed by accepted medical professionals, and "noetic" afflictions, which anybody with a funny hat and/or a nonprofit can get government funding to cure.

Re: Tyler Cowen’s Inevitability Argument

Matt Frost — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:48:12 -0000

It's not just the supposed political consensus that there ought to be a safety net for the old and unfortunate (or irresponsible, depending on which websites you read).

Tyler mentions that none of us knows how old we may live to be, and it's therefore difficult to save accordingly. It's harder still for the state to force people to save accordingly.

Re: Tyler Cowen’s Inevitability Argument

Matt Frost — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:55:04 -0000

Micha-
I like the idea of the "reverse dead pool." I tend to see insurance (aka "gambling) as a least-bad solution to lots of things like this, that involve risk that's only apparent to the most cautious-minded people.

Re: The Achievement Gap

Matt Frost — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 04:18:34 -0000

I think this rhetorical and philosophical difference is exactly why Republicans win elections in spite of the factors that the anonymous poster mentions above. As Will pointed out a few posts ago, the Republicans have put together an identity narrative that appeals to some distinctly American sensibilities, and not just the applique-sweater-wearing, megachurch-worshipping, Left-Behind-reading, fag-bashing kind.

When Democrats lament the long-gone factory jobs that every American is entitled to and they will somehow conjure up with the right government program, it turns people off. When the Democrats start to categorize every voter according to what type of victim he or she is, it is an affront to some very American principles. This is what Sullivan is talking about.

Similarly, the whole question of "moral values" involves more than just the Christian Right and its political influence. Lots of Americans might believe in both the separation of church and state and the social benefits of private and public virtue. Republicans have become the party that argues for the cohesive benefits of a moral consensus (and the smart, libertarian-minded ones know that it ought not necessarily carry the force of law), while Democrats argue for social permissiveness and protection of the individual from the oppressive effects of the moral consensus. The Clinton impeachment was a good example of this. The Democrats argued that a president's job was to keep the economy ticking, and his private business was his own problem. The Republicans, on the other hand, thought that leadership ought not be entrusted to someone who can't keep his hands off the help.

Whatever the merits of either argument, Americans want their grand narrative to include the idea of civic virtue. I think this is where the "moral values" poll response comes in. When some of us hear "moral values" in a political context we think George Washington, not Pat Robertson.

Re: The Achievement Gap

Matt Frost — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:05:03 -0000

"How the Democratic Party expects to win the favor of 'King Normal Average' while publicly professing its love for the 'Anti-Normal-Average' crowd is beyond me."

Those on the political fringe often purport to speak for what the lumpen would want if they could just get shed that darned false conscousness.

Re: The Believer

Matt Frost — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 05:36:32 -0000

I was pretty smitten with The Believer at first, but I've come to realize that it's basically a fanzine. The interviews range all the way from obsequious to fawning to fellatory. Two of the worst are those with Sylvia Benso and Slavoj Žižek. Imagine an academic equivalent to Sean Hannity interviewing President Bush.

As I recall, the response to the Checkpoint review was a letter to the editors, and it basically stomped all around, calling Wieseltier's review a politically-motivated hatchet job that took no account for the book's artistic value.

Re: Public Reason in Bad Faith

Matt Frost — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 06:26:36 -0000

I think "bad faith" is often in the eye of the beholder.

Let's suppose I think abortion is wrong, and my religious views inform that opinion. When it comes time to argue the point in public, I can get with the program and argue my point in strictly non-religious terms. Would Matt say I'm arguing in bad faith just because I also espouse comprehensive religious views? Would my public arguments become valid (to Matt) if I later repudiated my religious beliefs but not my opposition to abortion?

What about those "bad faith" arguments that Matt might find more tolerable, like religiously-rooted opposition to the death penalty? Presumably, Matt also has "little incentive" to listen to any empirical or secular arguments from that quarter, since their benighted comprehensive views disqualify them from discourse.

Somebody tell Matt that if you don't want to listen to what the other side says because you think they are a bunch of atavistic, witch-burning troglodytes, you can just ignore them. No need for all the sophistry.

Re: Getting Serious About Getting Serious

Matt Frost — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 04:20:56 -0000

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? Micha does!

Your interlocutor (McClain) knows that he likes calling himself a libertarian, but nothing else. Your admirable patience is apparently wasted.

But he has got me thinking about the idea of international libertarian solidarity - we could even have a theme song, like "The Internationale." And if the US Libertarian Party is full of crackpots and nutcases, just imagine what McClain's friends in the Iraqi chapter are like.

Re: Getting Serious About Getting Serious

Matt Frost — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:32:28 -0000

Micha's excerpt from Justin's article:
"How is it that ... the total aggrandizement and wielding of power by one's own state in the international sphere is an unmitigated good?"

Who said it was an unmitigated good?

Justin has taken this whole argument and run it into an absolutist rathole, which is perhaps inevitable given the subject. Seeing as how libertarianism has very little to offer when it comes to the prudential decisions of foreign policy, each side is left trying to cram libertarian rhetoric into whatever prudential arguments they believe, all for the sake of maintaining narrative coherence.

But back to Justin's rhetorical question - I could argue that domestic liberty is best enhanced by vigorous projection of power, since it ensures that our own security remains the responsibility of our own elected government. Why not?

Re: Philosophers Join the Fray

Matt Frost — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 05:49:44 -0000

Wow. Much worse than expected. Looks like our nation's preeminent philosophers have reached the groundbreaking conclusion that driving an SUV demonstrates moral turpitude.

Re: Philosophers Join the Fray

Matt Frost — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:24:39 -0000

These folks have proven that it's better to remain silent and be thought an out-of-touch, effete, lefty academic than to start a blog and remove all doubt.

Re: Would Vouchers Endanger Science and Liberal Order?!

Matt Frost — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 03:20:58 -0000

Jeff-
Private schools are homogenous primarily because of their cost. Using vouchers (or another method) to broaden public school enrollment would mean that a more diverse pool of parents could send their children to participating private schools.

Re: Would Vouchers Endanger Science and Liberal Order?!

Matt Frost — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 03:35:28 -0000

Oops- I should mention that self-selection plays a big role in the homogeneity of private schools.

There will still be schools like your daughter's, where parents who'd rather play hackysack than lock up the homeless will still send their kids. Meanwhile, warmongering, knuckle-dragging creationists will still prefer the local evangelical madrassa.

Also, people being what they are, some schools will find ways to only accept the "right kinds" of students.

The most exciting part of vouchers is their potential for generating creative responses on the supply side of things - there will be a sudden surge of new private school customers who are looking for a quality school that their voucher ticket can cover, and I believe that educational entrepreneurs will meet the demand by opening "blue-collar" private schools.

Re: Would Vouchers Endanger Science and Liberal Order?!

Matt Frost — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 04:07:44 -0000

Matt-I know all the talking points - you're preaching to the converted here.

When I say that a private school is "expensive," I mean to the customer. Even $2,000 annual tuition is still $2,000 more than a public school costs. Ease up. I'm on your side.

Re: Mary Warnock and the Culture of Life

Matt Frost — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 04:42:58 -0000

There's a lot of middle ground left between euthanasia (which I abhor) and not prolonging life. We could reduce the amount of near-death suffering (and, yes, expense) by emphasizing palliative care and being more frank with patients and their families about the benefits (or lack thereof) of continued care.

On the subject of life and its value, Warnock just sounds like a batshit old crank to me. She's obviously carried away with the unsentimental shock value of her arguments. If "spirituality and sentimentality" are what it takes to preserve a codified reverence for life as such, then bring it on.

But this part I like very much:
Her regret is that too many teachers avoid hard moral lessons: “They find it easier to tell children about the rainforest than about right and wrong. Yet little children aren’t very tempted to cut down rainforests.”

In a perfect world, kids would learn the message early on that tough moral choices aren't just for other people - some difficult test of character could be lurking around the next corner. It's why I'm eternally grateful to my high school government teacher for showing us The Perils of Obedience in class.

Re: Mary Warnock and the Culture of Life

Matt Frost — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:07:18 -0000

Palliative care is the opposite of "[spending] tens of thousands of dollars to extend my life a couple extremely miserable months" - in fact, it often hastens the onset of death.

In your view, does palliative care presuppose that life has an unconditional value, and is therefore always an unacceptable alternative to euthanasia once a patient in pain has been declared terminal? And is that presupposition sentimental in nature?

I understand your objection to palliative care if it prolongs a miserable existence, but definitionally, such care would not be "palliative." What I mean by the term is any care that's intended to provide comfort once a patient has been declared terminal, and after all life-sustaining intervention has been withdrawn.

The important thing is to encourage greater awareness on the part of physicians, caregivers, and patients of when that point ought to be declared. There's a lot of good to be done on this count that will vastly improve the lives of the dying and their families, even without broaching the subject of euthanasia.

Maybe I'll print bumper stickers: "Die Sooner! Just not right away."

Re: Mary Warnock and the Culture of Life

Matt Frost — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:41:37 -0000

Luka-
In certain circumstances - and not obscure exceptions, either - I would agree with you that a patient could grant meaningful consent to be actively killed. Those are the heartbreaking cases that militate most strongly in favor of doctor-assisted suicide, euthanasia, whatever.

But isn't that in itself an argument of compassion, i.e., a sentimental argument? Granted, there are gruesome and not-so-gruesome functional reasons in favor of mercy killing, but those aren't what drive your assertion that it is ethically sound, even advisable. So Ms Warnock's "send 'em out to starve" arguments notwithstanding, most of its proponents view legalized mercy killing as a act of social and legal compassion.

But sometimes, the slope really is slippery. Compassion on an individual scale could (and I think would) become callous indifference on a social scale. I think that even if my personal convictions allow me to view certain mercy killings as ethically sound, society needs to view life as intrinsically valuable because there is no way to competently legislate when it is okay to kill someone. Sentimentality is the only friction on the slope, as I see it.

For instance, assuming that mercy killings ought to be permitted for the terminally ill, at what point should an Alzheimer's victim be considered "terminally ill?" Do you trust your congressman to decide?

I know this rather sounds like your grade school principal's argument of "sure, it's okay if you do something, but what if everyone else did it?" I'm working on that...

Re: Mary Warnock and the Culture of Life

Matt Frost — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:48:01 -0000

"there is no way to competently legislate when it is okay to kill someone"

Oops - I don't mean to open a can of worms with this assertion. Let's narrow the scope of that statement to "there is no way to competently legislate when someone's quality of life has reached a terminally miserable point."

Re: What is Big Government?

Matt Frost — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:08:09 -0000

I think "big" is understood as meaning "ambitious."

A "big" government wants and tries to influence its citizenry more than a "smaller" one. So you're right - it's possible to imagine a small government that churns through an enormous amount of revenue but only serves an ornamental purpose. In the real world, however, taxes are a good indicator of government ambition.

Re: Are Libertarians Cheerier?

Matt Frost — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:00:40 -0000

"It's more likely that you just aren't trying to win, and it's a lot more fun to jeer from the sidelines...."

That sounds like a cry for help to me. I read it as "you don't have a cadre of shiny-faced, glad-handing hacks reminding you of who really runs things."

Re: PosnerBlogging: Take One

Matt Frost — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 08:58:57 -0000

Joanna-
Your comment upstream about the "spiritual experience" being a biochemical function is a diversion. Very few religious believers ever get a buzz off of worship - it's not what most devotees are in it for. Whether someone adopts a religious ontology or not has little to do with their biological predisposition toward "happy juice" or the lack thereof.

I'll grant that some devotional environments are explicitly designed to induce a sort of temporary euphoria, but those are the exceptions, and they don't account for the prevalence of religious identification.

Re: Contractarian Functionalism - PosnerBlogging: Take Two

Matt Frost — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:32:36 -0000

Dan - I think what's Will's saying is that the liberal order is neutral in regard to how its operating principles are originally derived.
Just because some social conventions are irrational or groundless, they can still be valid in that they provide the consensual regularities that support the order.

Re: Contractarian Functionalism - PosnerBlogging: Take Two

Matt Frost — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:33:46 -0000

...and I apologize if I mistakenly abbreviated dannaruca to "Dan."

Re: Munger on Democracy

Matt Frost — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 06:15:56 -0000

Note the approving citation of Fareed Zakaria:

After all, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany via free elections.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

Matt Frost — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 01:08:04 -0000

Kipp:
If you think there's something so very ironic (and why does irony always have to be "delicious," anyway?) about a "bookish, metrosexual man with interests in poetry and art museums speaking as the mouthpiece of masculinity," that says more about the narrowness of your own gender notions than about Will or his argument. Who, by your standard, is allowed to speak on the subject of masculinity? Only macho meatheads? Robert frigging Bly?

Just because Will or anyone else likes art museums doesn't mean he has to then forsake all claim to masculinity and its various social, moral, sexual, and aesthetic implications.

Quick show of hands here: who among the commenters has kids? Just curious.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

Matt Frost — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:35:18 -0000

The question about who among the commenters are parents wasn't meant to imply anything about fatherhood and masculinity, though it was taken as such. Sorry.

I'm asking because part of the fun of the ongoing science project that is parenthood is watching other parents freak out over gender roles, thinking through one's own hangups, and speculating on which characteristics of a child are conditioned vs. innate.

That's all I meant.

Re: Shuffle Game

Matt Frost — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 11:19:56 -0000

Re: UN Millenium Project

Matt Frost — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:46:23 -0000

The very point of this UN recommendation is that development aid ought to be a massive, unified, centrally directed effort, which invites a "thums up/thumbs down" vote on it. That's the very trouble with Sach's vision.

Whenever someone starts talking about a "New Marshall Plan," it's time to holler "check, please."

Re: I’d Like to See More . . .

Matt Frost — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 09:46:21 -0000

Keelay's right.
Someone should do a comic book about a philosophy grad student, climbing on the ceiling with suction cups and somersaulting between laser beams outside the secret vaults at Nike and Coke headquarters, all in search of the innocuous gray notebooks containing behavioral truths TOO HORRIBLE TO REVEAL...

Re: Meta-atheism, Death by Accident, and the Mysteries of Religious Experience

Matt Frost — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 17:36:32 -0000

At least you can take some comfort that you're making the same mistake as George Orwell.

Most observant believers don't adhere to the religious moral imperative out of belief in the hereafter - Judaism has a pretty vague notion of the afterlife, without much sense of desert, if I'm correct.

Instead, the religious moral code is based on the idea that there is an inherent order to the cosmos that doesn't correspond to the default nature of the human will. Devotional life is the process of retraining one's will -- wrestling it into harmony with the divine order. This applies to all sorts of religious doctrines, regardless of how much speculative carrot-and-stick they involve.

None of us knows how much time is allotted to us for this work, so we tend to guard life and limb about as vigilantly as the rest of y'all (not that I wouldn't like to see the accident mortality survey that you speculate about...).

Re: Meta-atheism, Death by Accident, and the Mysteries of Religious Experience

Matt Frost — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 05:11:14 -0000

Sure - if you're a Christian, you ought to believe in the eternal reward and behave accordingly. And I admit that I'm quite "self-conscious about putting myself on." Frankly, it feels weird and counterintuitive, which is why I have a hard time with your assertion that I actually just beleive that I beleive. Because in fact, I don't even believe that I believe correctly, dig?

But look at the different things that have to be in place to really yield the kind of Christian that you and Orwell imagine:

1) Total belief in the reward of heaven and corresponding punishment of damnation, or at least enough certainty to think of it as the best bet

2) Precise understanding of the behavior required to attain that reward

3) Comprehensive self-scrutiny and self-awareness

4) The self-discipline required to implement all of #2 in light of #3

I understand your point to be that, given #1, there ought to be no self-discipline required, since the apparent reward is so great. In Orwell's words, "If he really felt that adultery is mortal sin, he would stop committing it."

But the "nuance and backsliding" that Ross is talking about are our failures to attain all four of the above criteria. I don't have to be filled with a cringing self-loathing to view those things as difficult, and I really don't see "meta-atheism" as explaining anything that can't be accounted for by the limits of human discernment, prudence, and will.

Re: Meta-atheism, Death by Accident, and the Mysteries of Religious Experience

Matt Frost — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 07:34:25 -0000

In your red button example, can I feel and smell the hot coals over which I'll have to walk while listening to "We Built This City?" In other words, is the threat of punishment as credible as the apparent short-term reward?

By your definition, I don't truly believe in eternal reward or punishment. In spite of myself and my religious inclinations, my own belief in the hereafter isn't concrete enough to really influence my behavior in the here and now.

Your vision of the frustrated believer demands that I concoct layers of meta-belief in order to come to terms with my incomplete faith in the hereafter. Instead, I admit that it's not strong enough to dictate my actions.

I think we both draw the same conclusions about the behavior we could predict out of someone who truly and completely believes in eternal reward. After all, plenty of such people provide an example as they blow themselves up in Iraq every week.

The rest of us make do with what we admit to be an incomplete faith in the hereafter. That's not so complicated, but not as simplistic as the red button.

Re: Meta-atheism, Death by Accident, and the Mysteries of Religious Experience

Matt Frost — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 08:10:22 -0000

Will -
Why do you have to assume that every believer is 100% certain of the afterlife? As I said above - we agree on the kind of behavior that one could predict from someone like that.

If the concept of religious doubt is really all this new to you, those Mormons you grew up with must have really kept their eyes on the prize better than I do.

Re: Arms Races, Happiness, and other Goods

Matt Frost — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 05:38:39 -0000

Mr. Wilkinson-
Your post has revealed a profound injustice in the world of popular urban entertainment, where the "arms race" has reached truly catastrophic levels. Today I plan to file a class action suit on behalf of all sucker MCs who can demonstrate that the microphone skills of their rivals have caused them to be "frozen," "crushed," "knocked out," "paralyzed," "murdered," no longer able to "touch the mic," or otherwise subjected to emotional duress due to their rivals' lyrical flow. If you or your readers think you may been harmed due to someone else's irresponsible microphone skills, please contact my office.

-Lionel Hutz, Attorney

Re: Fight, Fight, Fight!

Matt Frost — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 21:49:40 -0000

Yeah, I agree. It's like watching the glass blowers and dry-stane-dykers sharing a plate o' haggis.

Re: The State as Parent

Matt Frost — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:40:33 -0000

A parental vision of the state probably tracks closely with the pernicious things you mention, since becoming a metaphoric "child" is a really effective way to put one's moral responsibility into government escrow.

Not to get all chicken-and-egg about it, but, I'd be even more interested to see if societies with brittle, imperiled family structures have greater tendencies toward seeing the state as a metaphorical parent. If you're a strung-out, glue-sniffing, AK-toting orphan at age 10, you might be inclined to seek a surrogate family wherever you can find it. I wonder if the same phenomenon scales up to the societal level.

Re: Republicans are Happier

Matt Frost — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 13:37:33 -0000

Those of delicate sensibilities please forgive the following ill-considered and sweeping generalization:

I think that churchgoing conservatives are more or less content with the order of the cosmos, and don't see a great many opportunities for humans to improve on the inherent nature of things. The left, on the other hand, attracts folks who believe that through human effort, we can redress the fundamental unfairness of the universe, or the market, or the weather, or whatever. That idea carries an inherent sense of discontent.

I'd like to see how happiness reports compare to the old "is the country headed in the right direction" question. Can people maintain happiness even while they think the nation (or world) is going to hell in a handbasket? I'd have to assume so, since that's a prevalent conservative sensibility (though not one I share).

Re: Bad Marriages

Matt Frost — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 16:11:36 -0000

Amen. I've been bitching about this for a while now, and have come to believe that no matter how badly you implemented this change, and no matter how many negative externalities you introduced, you'd still have a net benefit.

The freedom to choose your neighborhood without regard to its public school and the freedom to choose your work without regard for its health care plan are the two biggest political prizes that might actually be in reach of our generation.

Re: Shew Fly, Shew

Matt Frost — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 17:54:05 -0000

It means wash your bottle out after drinking CarnoMaxx - the new energy beverage that tastes just like raw meat.

Re: Cosmopolitan Universalism vs. the Left

Matt Frost — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 20:01:32 -0000

Frank's right on both counts - those are Bertram's scare quotes around "decent," intended to identify a particular crowd of hawkish liberal internationalists, and there's no reason I can see to claim that they are all worked up over self-determination, as opposed to liberal democracy. The whole back-and-forth is a muddle of misplaced accusations and counter-accusations.

Re: Snap!

Matt Frost — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:56:25 -0000

Hey, nice "auto-shill" popup links. I personally never click through to an Amazon link, so I tend to miss half the conversation.

Re: A Vow

Matt Frost — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:56:54 -0000

What about those of us who were duped into smoking a pack of short Luckies a day because we thought the filters were bad for you? What about us? Is there no justice?

Re: The Status of the Politics of Status

Matt Frost — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:16:22 -0000

Congratulations on the aldaily.com link. Talk about status unrelated to income...