The Brain's Concept Of The World Versus The Real World

/

The real world — It’s full of complexities, ambiguities, unknowns, trade-offs, risks, and evils that we would prefer not to acknowledge. Perfection can be sought and approached, but nothing close to perfection can be achieved.

And then there’s the world that we can imagine in our minds. In that world, we can ignore the complexities and ambiguities and the rest. Achieving perfection can be imagined as just a matter of overcoming a few simple obstacles. I often write about the musings of people who conjure in their minds imaginary scenarios of perfection that are inconsistent with anything that can be achieved in the real world. The most important example is a socialist economic system of perfect justice and fairness. Another example is an energy system that produces always-available electricity in infinite amounts from the intermittent wind and sun.

Consider now another example: the crime found in fiction versus the crime found in the real world.

Read More

Two Tragic Deaths, And Some Useful Lessons

/
Two Tragic Deaths, And Some Useful Lessons

  • It’s been a very sad few weeks, first with the tragic and senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska on a train in North Carolina on August 22, and now with the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah on September 10.

  • These two killings have suddenly focused the attention of a lot of previously complacent people, and provided some very useful education about the kind of world we live in. But what are the lessons to take away?

  • One possible lesson is that the world is just irretrievably filled with anger and hate, to the extent that the best that sensible people can do is withdraw into their bunker, keep out of blue states and away from people who follow leftist and woke ideology, stick to a limited circle of family and friends, and avoid dealing with the broader world to the maximum extent possible.

  • I do not subscribe to that approach.

Read More

Understanding Crime In America -- The Phenomenon Of Concentration

/

  • Readers here frequently express some combination of amazement or sympathy to me about my living in Manhattan.

  • The news is filled with reports of spiking crime in our major cities, most especially in New York. Am I not in constant danger? How do I dare to go outside, particularly at night?

  • What rural and suburban readers may be missing is an understanding of the extent to which serious and violent crime is concentrated in a handful of quite small areas.

Read More

Race And Murder In Chicago

/
Race And Murder In Chicago

  • In Chicago on Tuesday, current Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election.

  • In a race where only the top two finishers would advance to the final round, Lightfoot finished third, with 17.1% of the vote. Of nine total candidates, the top two vote-getters were Paul Vallas (33.7% of the vote) and Brandon Johnson (20.3%). Those two will now compete in a runoff in April.

  • The New York Times, which provided those voting data, described Lightfoot in its February 28 report as someone “whose outsider status and promises to enact sweeping reforms propelled her to office four years ago,” but who “saw her popularity plunge as homicides reached generational highs and as Chicago struggled to rebound from the pandemic.”

  • It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

Read More

As Bill de Blasio Prepares To Leave Office, Part III -- Crime

/
As Bill de Blasio Prepares To Leave Office, Part III -- Crime

  • At this writing on January 2, de Blasio is finally gone from office. Whether the new guy (Eric Adams) proves to be any better remains to be seen.

  • Before leaving the topic of de Blasio’s legacy to New York, I would be remiss not to include a post on the subject of crime.

  • The bottom line for crime, as for every other major issue of public policy, was that the progressive de Blasio ruined everything he touched. Outcomes worsened across the board, and the decline was the clear result of the progressive policies that de Blasio either implemented or advocated.

Read More

Distinguishing Respect From Patronizing Condescension In Matters Of Race

/

  • In our current national moment, distinguishing respectful conduct or language toward others from patronizing condescension in matters of race is of great importance. You might think that making this distinction would be easy, but I suggest that in many circumstances it is not easy at all.

  • Recently, many things that have become the latest fashion in what practitioners think is heightened respect appear to me to be exactly the opposite — condescension. That can be the case even where the respect-that-is-really-condescension is demanded by the recipient. And I am not the only one noticing this phenomenon.

  • Let’s consider a few examples.

Read More