NOTEBOOK

Preliminary Notes on Various Subjects

How does a society become more free? This is a topic worth a book. We observe around us a process in which freedom is gradually but steadily degraded. Every year new laws and regulations are passed, restrictions are increased, violations of the rights of citizens become more common. So we naturally look to a reversal of this process, in which elections produce a more libertarian government that gradually repeals laws and restores rights.

The historical record, however, gives us few if any examples of any such process. Gradual social change, almost invariably, is change in the direction of a stronger State and less individual freedom.

So if we are interested in increasing freedom, we must examine the kinds of historical processes that have done so. Invariably these are (relatively) short sequences in which radical changes are made, and which involve at minimum a credible threat of violence. More commonly there is outright insurrection or revolution, sometimes with civil or international war.

This is certainly not a pleasant way of making changes, nor is it reliable. Most wars and revolutions result in a permanent increase in power of the State; one is lucky if post-war society returns to the baseline of the pre-war period. So our first task is to identify those few events which have resulted in increased freedom, and discover what characteristics distinguished them from the others, in which freedom decreased.

A preliminary list would probably include a series of upheavals in England: the revolt of the barons against King John--and of John against the Pope; the peasant uprising against Richard II; Cromwell's revolution; the Glorious Revolution of 1688; and the American Revolution. In France, 1830, 1848, and 1870 are worth investigating. In Germany, one wonders if the horrendous destruction of the Thirty Years War and the two World Wars might provide examples of the worst way to get more freedom; for it seems that each of these wars ended with Germany more free than it had been. In Russia, the 1905 revolution, and possibly the 1917 March Revolution should be considered. In Japan, the Meiji Restoration should be examined, and of course the post-1945 reconstruction.

A few apparent exceptions should be examined carefully. What about the case of Spain after Franco's death? This shades into the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union around 1990--freedom via breakdown of the statist system, so to speak.

Why does economic history show the kinds of trends it does? Could we not explain this with the simple hypothesis that wealth follows a Pareto distribution? As average wealth increases, "inequality"--the spread between the ends of the distribution--automatically increases (unlike the case with a normal distribution). Note that in poor societies, the Pareto distribution is truncated at the low end because people below that level of wealth lack the resources to survive (or, looked at another way, the part of the curve left of the minimum represents children who die in infancy). This hypothesis also accounts for the population growth in early economic development (as the truncated part of the distribution moves right) and for the "demographic transition" (when everyone has moved out of the truncated segment, population stops growing).

The other day I saw another of what I call "polka-dot car" statistics. These things are increasingly common: "There are 600,000 child prostitutes in America." "One woman out of every four is a rape victim." "Ten percent of all American males are homosexual." And so on.

Suppose I were to assert, "30% of all automobiles in America are painted pink with purple polka dots." How would you respond? Well, you simply wouldn't take it seriously. You not only wouldn't accept that figure, you wouldn't even argue with it or bother to refute it. You wouldn't ask to look at the original data, or investigate the survey methodology. You would know, from your own everyday experience, that the conclusion was off the wall. Why waste any further time on it?

[See also Isaac Asimov's essay, "My Built-In Doubter."]

Recently I have become intrigued with the claims for "near-death experience" (NDE). One thing I have noted, from a personal point of view, is how very much my self-esteem as a scientist (and perhaps as an Objectivist) is tied up with not believing in life after death. It seems that I regard this as sort of the ultimate test of scientific objectivity!

After browsing through a number of books on the subject--most of which are really sludge--I found only a couple that take a scientific attitude toward the subject. One (author & title I forget, though I just today returned it to the library) ends up with a positive conclusion; the second, Susan Blackmore's Dying to Live, is negative. The latter in particular stimulates me to set down some thoughts on the matter.

The key issue, to my mind, is to account for the phenomena with some sort of coherent theory. This is neglected by the pro side, because they are not scientists; and by the con side, because they don't advocate the position.

To begin with, there is something to be explained--the specific phenomena of the NDE, and, more generally, consciousness itself. How is it, after all, that consciousness exists? An analogy may clarify why it is worth considering NDE evidence on this issue. A hundred years or so ago, it was believed that every phenomenon could ultimately be reduced to the activity of two forces--gravity and the electromagnetic force. When radioactivity was discovered, the initial effort was to explain it in these terms. In the end, however, it was necessary to invoke two new, and very peculiar forces (the strong and weak nuclear forces) as explanations. Now, artificial intelligence theorists take a monist and materialist view of consciousness; it is a phenomenon that ultimately can be reduced to the action of the known forces and laws of physics. However, it is also possible that consciousness is a manifestation of a different force of nature.

Now, playing Devil's Advocate, we may construct a hypothesis that could account for NDE phenomena.

Consciousness has its own place in the physical universe, and can exist independently of ordinary matter, just as certain elementary particles can be held together by nuclear forces without the intervention of electromagnetic forces. Human minds develop in bodies; this is necessary and important skills or knowledge are acquired; but at death they are released into pure consciousness and are able to advance to further development. Naturally people who die encounter others who died before them. Upon death, people have to learn a new method of perception. Interaction of detached consciousness with the ordinary physical world is possible but difficult and occurs only in subtle ways. We know very little of the after-death existence and communicate hardly at all with its denizens for the above reasons, but also because if we become too concerned with afterlife we do not attend to the lessons we must learn in this life.

This is a self-consistent hypothesis, which accounts for the phenomena, and makes testable predictions.

Now, when we look at the countervailing argument presented by Blackmore, what we see is an ad hoc collection of explanations:

* Out of body experiences are due to temporal lobe stimulation.

* Observations reported by experiencers while "out of body" are due to reconstruction of the visual context from non-visual cues by the subconscious mind.

* Observations that couldn't be accounted for in this way are due to wishful thinking, selective memory, etc.

* Euphoria and peace experienced by the dying are due to endorphin release and/or to anoxia and hypercarbia.

* Encounters with previously dead are hallucinations.

* The "tunnel" and "light" phenomena are due to random activity in the visual cortex during anoxia.

And so on. Any one of these hypotheses is plausible; but there is a certain lack of elegance in invoking all of them. Furthermore, there seems to be a certain amount of conflict among them. The highly selective activation and deactivation of brain functions is particularly striking. Lower functions such as the visual cortex are assumed to have gone down at the same time that higher functions are actively producing hallucinations or the mind is brilliantly reconstructing the appearance of the furnishings of an operating theatre from a few hints offered by hearing and touch.

There are several specific points that strike me as worth pursuing.

Blackmore gives considerable weight to the hypothesis than NDE phenomena may be explained by anoxia and hypercarbia. This is intriguing. Anoxia is well understood (I remember reading in the Lindberg Wartime Journals about his experiments with high-altitude breathing, for instance) and the effects, as a number of NDE advocates have noted (and contrary to Blackmore's assertions), bear no resemblance to NDE phenomena. However, hypercarbia, Blackmore claims, can produce similar feelings and hallucinations. Is this true? If so, what mechanism would account for a buildup of CO2 in the brain? It is not instantly obvious that this would occur, even under anoxic conditions. Surely it could be measured by direct or indirect means, at least in animal experiments.

One thing that is striking in the NDE literature is that dying is gradual, but coming back is sudden. We get this testimony over and over again. The subject goes through a slow, complex, elaborate series of phenomena--out of body observation, the "tunnel", the "light", encounters with dead relatives, etc. Then the decision is made that his life is not yet over. Suddenly--snap--he's back in his body. No goodbyes, no trip back through the tunnel, no drifting back to the hospital room and slow re-entry into his body; the return is sudden. The afterlife hypothesis predicts this. (Since death involves learning a whole new mode of perception and encounters with new phenomena--like a man born blind suddenly able to see, it would take a while to learn how to interpret new impressions. The return to familiar function would require no learning period; if the man suddenly lost his sight again, he would instantly find himself in the familiar world of blackness.) Blackmore's explanations have trouble with it. The "tunnel" in her interpretation appears due to gradual randomization of visual cortex function. If, as one would expect, the revived subject gradually recovers this function, we would expect him to experience a return trip through the tunnel.

I think, also, Blackmore too facilely dismisses Sabom's work. He compared the accounts NDE subjects gave of their resuscitation with the facts as reported by the medical personnel. He found a good agreement. Admittedly much could be explained by reconstruction from auditory cues. (Though Blackmore should explain how the auditory and spatial organization functions of the brain are working so well when, by her own hypothesis, the brain is suffering from severe anoxia.) But many of Sabom's subjects give accounts that are very hard to explain based on cues from other senses.

For instance, one man described how the surgeon plunged a needle into his heart and "gave me an injection," commenting on how frightening it was to see this. The surgeon reported that he used a syringe to draw air out of the aorta, something the patient might naturally interpret as an "injection." Now, how was this to be reconstructed from non-visual cues? The patient certainly did not hear anyone saying, "Give him an injection," since that's not what was done. Did he feel the needle going into his heart? If he was anaesthetized, he couldn't have; if he wasn't, he surely couldn't have sorted out the slight sting of the needle from the extraordinary agony of having his entire chest opened! Perhaps he heard the surgeon say to the nurse, "syringe," and deduced from that "injection"--but would he naturally assume an injection into his heart? If he said he received an injection into his arm, that would be more in accord with the reconstruction hypothesis. Moreover, this patient accurately described the shape and color of his heart, neither of which were known or expected to him.

In reading quotations from Sabom's patients, I heard the "ring of truth." If their visions of what was done to them in surgery were due to imaginative reconstruction, I would have expected their imagination to produce what they knew and expected. One would find them saying, "I was hovering over the operating table, and it looked just like what I'd seen on Chicago Hope" or "They brought in the machine to resuscitate me, just like they had in Flatliners." But that isn't the sort of thing they say. While giving accurate descriptions--allowing for their lack of technical knowledge--they describe what they saw as hard to understand and not what they expected. "I would never have thought it would look like that" or "it really surprised me that they did that"--these are the kinds of feelings they express. In fact, they sound exactly like any other non-medical personnel who have been allowed to watch what goes on in surgery.

I found Jess Walter's Every Knee Shall Bow a pretty objective-seeming account of the Ruby Ridge tragedy. It would have helped if the book had a little more apparatus attached--better maps and diagrams, references, etc. There is much sloppiness about firearms--Walter frequently uses the term "machine gun" to refer to various automatic and semiautomatic weapons--inexcusable in a book in which guns play such an important role.

The guilt of the government can be attributed ultimately to bureaucratic incompetence and, above all, arrogance. It was not so much that they made mistakes, as that they couldn't bear to admit to a mistake--right from the start--and kept digging themselves in deeper.

What struck me, though, was that the Weavers, for their part, were destroyed by their sex-role deficiencies.

Vicki Weaver from an early age developed into an aggressive, dominating woman. But she was unable either to accept her nature, or to confront it and change it. Instead, she retreated into a simulacrum of femininity, posing as a wife and mother, frantically cooking, canning, and sewing. Her repressed anxiety over her sex role failure broke out into a fanatical religiousity.

Randy Weaver displayed a corresponding outward show, and inward failure, of manhood. He entered the Army and took Green Beret training, but somehow managed to avoid Vietnam. Many men who dealt with him during the standoff got the impression of cowardice. Weaver's response, when his son was being shot at, was to run away. And whatever excuses may be made, he was a man who couldn't hold a job, couldn't support his family--and when he was broke, had no income, and was in trouble with the law, got his wife pregnant.

For all their ardent talk about "family," the Weavers could not function as a pioneer family. A family needs a father and a mother, and the Weavers had neither, for a father must be a man and a mother must be a woman. They could not live alone in the woods, for they needed other people to validate their false images of themselves. But what kind of people could fail to see through their masks? Skinheads and neo-Nazis. Here were associates to whom even the Weavers could feel superior.

There is a self-destructiveness almost amounting to a death wish evident in the Weavers' behavior. Walter seems to ascribe this to their apocalyptic beliefs; but I think their sense of personal sexual deficiency was the root of their behavior.

Not too long ago, flying back to the United States from Paris, I sat beside a young lady who was wearing a nameplate, which I laboriously translated from the French as "Sister -----, Church of Latter-Day Saints." She was a Mormon who had just spent a year in France, serving her church obligation as a missionary. We talked about ethics and theology. Neither of us, of course, converted the other. But I was very impressed how effectively she spoke for her viewpoint. She had been well trained to make converts.

It made me wonder if we Objectivists could learn something from Mormons and other trainers of successful missionaries.

The Left has succeeded in American politics because of a lesson they learned from the Fabians: The fundamental objective is to get your policies implemented, not necessarily to get your people into power.

In 1968, the Left revolted against the Democratic Party leadership. As a result, Humphrey lost; and when the Left ran their own candidate, McGovern, in 1972, they lost again, and badly. And yet: Nixon recognized China, imposed wage and price controls, set up OSHA and EPA, and ordered racial quotas. He governed far to the left of where Humphrey would have. This, as Marxists say, is no accident.

All efforts to deal with software piracy (broadly defined) are futile. The day will come, perhaps soon, when any product that can be expressed in pure information will be, de facto, free.

What this means is that the winners in the new economy will be people who can figure out how to put competitive products into hardware implementations. The only barriers to entry will be the ability to design products in this way and apply manufacturing know-how.

The alternative is general-purpose machines and free software--which means an economy dominated by a few monopolies. We're getting a preview with Wintel.

The other day, listening to a group of divorcees talking about the demise of their marriages, a thought occurred to me. Whatever happened to infatuation?

It used to be that parents worried about young people getting married too early because they had unrealistically high notions of their partners. She worshipped him and admired him above all men, and wanted to do anything to serve him. He thought she was the highest expression of womanhood, and regretted only that he could not find any dragons so he could slay one for her.

Today nobody believes in love, not even the fools. Women get married saying, more or less openly, "Well, I'll give it a try, but if he gets out of line just once I'll hand him back his ring and I'm outa here." And men, of course, have in the back of their minds that maybe they could do better . . .

We wanted realism, and we got--as we so often do--cynicism. There is something to be said for the sheer exuberance of infatuation. Perhaps it very seldom turns into the real thing; but people who don't believe in the real thing, never find it at all.

Thoughts on reading Time's Arrow by Huw Price: A disappointing book that repeatedly overpromises. Half the book is announcements that such-and-such will be considered, or discussed, or proved, but mostly these commitments are never fulfilled.

Price mentions the interesting, not to say extraordinary, case of the neutral kaon, which seems to violate T-symmetry. Rather an important experimental result for a book about the asymmetry of time, one would think. He merely dismisses it as "puzzling." Yup. Isn't that the point?

One idea that he brings out is that phenomena such as the Baseball Diamond Thought Experiment can be interpreted in the sense: Our actions in the present (at, say, time t1) can change the past, provided the affected portion of the past is not known to us as of t1 (though it may be at a later time t2).

Every society must have rules of various sorts--not just laws, but management procedures, and above all customs and manners. But no set of rules, however complex, can handle all the situations that can come up in human society. So rules must always have exceptions.

The effectiveness of a society is determined by how it handles exceptions. If it is too hard to make exceptions, the society becomes rigid, stifling, and ultimately ossified. If, on the other hand, rules are allowed to break down, society dissolves.

The good society grants exceptions generously--but insists that they be acknowledged to be exceptions.

Occasionally I am puzzled by the way a controversial issue can receive intense public debate for months with nobody mentioning important and obvious facts.

A good example is the fuss of restriction of encryption technology. Modern encryption algorithms allow public key encryption, which is enormously useful for commercial applications and routine security. But the method is inherently insecure because it is non-random. The government wants a trap-door into these algorithms, allegedly because they might be used for criminal activities.

What nobody is pointing out is that criminals or terrorists don't need, and if they're smart won't use, these algorithms anyway. Any outlaw with three brain cells working would use a one-time pad method. Formerly this was too clumsy, because it requires a key as long as the message. Computers have made it easy. One can construct a true random-number one-time pad of any length (by doing analog-to-digital conversion on white noise from an electronic device) and store it on disk or on CD-ROM. This

gives totally unbreakable encipherment.

All this is obvious. So it is clear that government cannot really believe that having trap doors into encryption algorithms will be effective against criminals or terrorists. The only reason that they could want this power is to use it against law-abiding citizens. Why isn't anybody saying this?

*The Bell Curve* -- Some Additional Points

Suppose for a moment we reject the hypothesis that interracial IQ differences are genetic in origin. (Which would be perfectly reasonable; note the point made by Thomas Sowell. Among other things, he points out that American blacks of West Indian origin have intelligence equal to or slightly superior to whites. H&M note this but make no attempt to explain it.) Since it is clearly established that interracial differences are not due to socio-economic status, we are left with a cultural explanation. Would this make H&M's opponents happy? I doubt it. It would absolutely refute the whole idea of cultural relativism.

To my mind, a couple of the most interesting implications arise from data that H&M consider more or less peripheral.

In looking at IQ correlations with parenting, H&M find an odd phenomenon. Problems with children--low birth weight, behavioral problems, poor motor and social development--correlate with low IQ of the mother, as expected . . . *except* that the very most intelligent mothers produce children with higher-than-average problems. H&M merely note this as a statistical oddity. They do not mention the obvious explanation: That mothers of the highest intelligence are so wrapped up in intellectual

activities that they neglect their children.

H&M also present, sort of by the way, some time series which, taken together, ought to have immense impact on how we think about the recent history of this country. There is an absolute discontinuity in social pathologies in the U.S.

occurring in the mid- to late-Sixties. For instance:

* Percentage of families below the poverty line dropped linearly from 1940 to 1968; then there is a sudden kink, and progress stopped; the line is flat thereafter.

* High-school graduation rates rose linearly from 1900-1965; then a sudden kink, and the line begins to drop.

* The divorce rate, between 1920 and 1960, rose linearly (with a blip after WWII) from 7% to 9%; then, about 1965, it suddenly started to skyrocket.

* Illegitimacy, same thing--almost flat for decade after decade, then a sudden shift to rapid growth in 1964.

* Welfare caseload, same thing, in 1966.

These graphs, especially taken together, are so striking, so obvious, so blatant, that they compel one to wonder: What went wrong in the Sixties? Whatever we did in that decade, let's undo it!

The *WSJ* editorial page the other day had a copy of the Foster "suicide note." It struck me that it didn't read *at all* like a suicide note. No date; no signature; no mention of suicide; no saying, "I can't go on" or "I've been driven to end it all" or anything like that; no apologies or goodbyes to family and friends; and above all, no organization. It's a set of disjointed sentences that jump from one subject to another.

In fact, it reads very much like a set of preliminary notes for a resignation letter. You know how you do it when you're faced with composing a tricky document. You start by jotting down brief notes of topics you want to cover, in no particular order, just as they occur to you. Later you organize it and connect it up.

The whole incident is very peculiar. Why wasn't the note intact? And if Foster did want to destroy it, why didn't he shred it? Surely he had a shredder in his office--and as a lawyer, accustomed to dealing with confidential documents, to shred an unwanted paper would be instinctive for him. And if for some reason he did tear it up instead, why put the fragments in his briefcase instead of the wastebasket?

The more I see about this incident, the more credence I put in my Machiavellian theory: Foster really did commit suicide. The Clintons knew in advance that he was going to, and were thus in a position to arrange for the Park Police to be in charge. They *deliberately* left some ambiguous and mysterious evidence, perhaps including the "suicide note" fragments, to make the opposition think it might be murder. Why? As a distraction. Because as long as we're thinking that Foster might have been murdered, we're not thinking about *why* Foster would commit suicide.

Interesting Parallels . . .

Hitler, like Clinton, was born into a less-than prosperous family in a rural backwater, and had a very bad relationship with his father. Like Clinton, he was a highly intelligent child and an excellent student when he chose to work, but he was often distracted from his studies by political arguments and a Bohemian lifestyle.

Hitler, like Clinton, was obsessed with politics from an early age and devoted his entire life to his political ambitions, never holding any serious productive job.

Hitler, like Clinton, was a draft dodger. (But, unlike Clinton, he was an unsuccessful one; he served in the German Army in World War I and became a decorated hero.)

Hitler, like Clinton, was relatively young on his accession to power, a representative of a new generation in national politics who called for a change in the old order.

Hitler, like Clinton, came to power with only a plurality at the polls (44% for Hitler; 43% for Clinton). Like Clinton, he ignored the fact that the majority of voters opposed him, and took his election as a mandate to make radical changes in government.

Hitler, like Clinton, owed much of the impetus that brought him to power to the dedication of politically active homosexuals. And, like Clinton, he betrayed these supporters soon after getting into office.

Hitler, like Clinton, benefited at the polls from a huge "gender gap." He was enormously popular among women voters. And, like Clinton, Hitler posed as an advocate for children and gave heavy emphasis to government programs that were supposed to help children.

Hitler, like Clinton, was conceded even by his opponents to be a man of immense personal charm. He inspired intense personal loyalties despite his penchant for occasional towering rages. Like Clinton, he drove his aides to despair with his indecisiveness, inability to delegate, and micromanagement. Like Clinton, he was notorious for his flip-flops on policy positions.

Hitler, like Clinton, detested the military's officer class. Like Clinton, he flattered them obsequiously when he needed their support; but when he thought he could get away with it, he made a point of humiliating and degrading the most respected military officers.

Those who knew too much about Hitler's past, like those who knew too much about Clinton's, had a strange habit of dying under mysterious circumstances. (Note: Even *The Economist*, not exactly a right-wing conspiracy rag, has commented on the high death rate of people connected with Clinton's background.)

The Hitler of the early Thirties, like Clinton, was controversial, more for his personal than his political character. He was dogged by rumors about sexual escapades, commingling of personal and campaign funds, and income-tax evasion. And again like Clinton, he faced a constant stream of scandals due to the unsavory behavior of his chosen colleagues.

Of course, one could also cite many differences between the two men. For instance, Hitler was the most spellbinding orator of his age; Clinton is a soporific speaker. Hitler was a high-school dropout; Clinton a Rhodes Scholar.

But here is the point. We have not really absorbed the lessons of the Nazi era until we understand how Hitler appeared--not to us, with the benefit of hindsight, but to his contemporaries. And the fact is that he played a role in German politics of the Thirties much like the role Clinton plays in modern American politics. There is *not*, repeat *not*, a perfect parallel; history does not repeat itself exactly. And fortunately--very fortunately--the United States still has sufficient constitutional protections that it does not offer the opportunites for dictatorship that the Weimar Republic did. But there are enough similarities that we ought to be stimulated to think about how a creature like Clinton could be elected here; and to ask how historians sixty years from now will evaluate Clinton and the people who voted for him.

What does "sanction" mean in Objectivism? Rand uses sanction in its positive sense (as opposed to, eg, "economic sanctions"), and she makes two key points:

Good must not sanction its enemies.

Good must demand sanction from others.

The crucial principle is that good and evil must be recognized. Silence gives consent to evil.

Sanction of the victim is the process by which a good person accepts moral condemnation. This may be either explicit or implicit. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand illustrates both forms. Explicit sanction is shown by the case of Hank Reardon, and we can see what a devastating effect it has on self-esteem. Implicit santion is embodied in Dagny Taggart. She has no sense of fundamental guilt, but her premises contain contradictions with her moral code.

This brings out the point that sanction is ultimately not moral but epistemological. What is crucial is that truth (in this case, about good and evil) must be openly known and accepted.

In the current environment, the real issue regarding sanction is not the case of libertarians or Kelleyites vs. Peikoffians; it is Objectivism vs. academia.

One of our fetishes in modern America is the denial of limits. "You can do (or become) anything," we say to our children. Feminism in particular wishes to explode any restriction or limits on the sexes.

A word should be said in favor of limits. We need to understand what limits do for us.

When I was studying tae kwon do, as the class practiced basic movements, our instructor, Mr. Park, would let us rest every few minutes. To keep himself warmed up, while we stood there with our tongues hanging out, he would practice side kicks. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Each one millimeter-perfect. You could have attached a jig to his foot and installed him in a factory to stamp out precision parts.

What was it that made him so good? Precisely that fact that he was limited. He could only do a side kick one way--the right way. I could do it all sorts of ways!

Look at anyone who has mastered something, from ballet to ballistics, and you'll see someone with discipline and self-restriction. This is true even of the great innovators; only those who have mastered the rules know how to create by breaking them.

Every choice is a limitation. Who chooses A, chooses not B. The rational person is not afraid to limit himself--or herself. It is the James Taggarts who don't want to accept that "the desire not to be anything, is the desire not to be."

Sciences may be classified by their intellectual difficulty: mathematics > physics > chemistry > biology >> social sciences. They may also be classified by their moral difficulty, that is, how hard it is to believe what is true rather than what one wants to believe in the subject area. In this case, the difficulty is in the reverse order.

Not too long ago, flying back to the United States from Paris, I sat beside a young lady who was wearing a nameplate, which I laboriously translated from the French as "Sister -----, Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints." She was a Mormon who had just spent a year in France, serving her church obligation as a missionary. We talked about ethics and theology. Neither of us, of course, converted the other. But I was very impressed how effectively she spoke for her viewpoint. She was part of an organization that has demonstrated that it knows how to make converts.

I must say, by the way, that what impressed me the most about her was how perceptive this half-educated girl was, compared to the average Objectivist intellectual. I am accustomed to debating with people who work from a single conceptual model--whether it's typical Randian analysis, Branden-style psychology, or academic philosophical jargon. Their methodology is to listen to an opponent, classify his arguments as one of the standard forms, and emit the appropriate standard response. It was a remarkable pleasure to meet someone who could fully comprehend my point of view, even while always speaking from her point of view. I could see how this not only made her more effective in argument, but enhanced her credibility by demonstrating her intellectual self-confidence.

Here is some further reasoning which may be useful for revision of the paper on causality which I just wrote.

There are three possible positions on the Principle of Sufficient Reason:

A. (The PSR) Everything can be explained.

B. (philosophical nihilism) Nothing can be explained.

C. Some things can be explained, and the others cannot.

Now, if Case C is taken to be true, then we may ask whether C (taken as a proposition) can be explained. More generally, we may ask, is there a principle by which one can draw the dividing line between the explainable and the unexplainable? And then, can this principle be explained, or can it not be explained? If such a principle is unexplainable, by what means do we know it? It therefore must be explainable.

Children often recite the mantra "majority rule." And in fact majority rule is appropriate for use by children--for the exact reason that we do not permit children to decide important issues.