Re: Not always joking, it seems

David DeLaney wrote:
> David Friedman <ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Willie.Mookie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>>> I was reflecting on what Skinner said about society being like a big
>>> Skinner machine you cannot escape. The whole of society becomes a
>>> large reinforcement schedule that promises rich rewards throughout
>>> but in reality, takes everything from you that you've got and play
>>> ends when you are broke.
>>>
>>> The more efficient we become along this path, the bleaker things
>>> will be - and in the end, large populations of lucky and unlucky
>>> folk alike will have become desensitized to the messages used to
>>> fleece them - by and large those messages are the fabric that holds
>>> society together. At that point all hell will break loose.
>>
>> How, on this theory, do you explain that by any objective
>> measure--life expectancy, real income, calorie consumption,
>> health--things have been getting generally better in most of the
>> world for the past several centuries? Murder rates have gone up and
>> down, and historical data on crime rates isn't all that good, but it
>> seems clear that murder is much less common than it was five or six
>> hundred years ago.
>
> Semi-relevant URL (20 minutes long, safe for work in general):
>
>
http://roslingsblogger.blogspot.com/2007/06/debunking-myths-about-world.html
>

*snicker*  I like where he "proves" that the Nobel Prize Committee's 
knowledge of world affairs is about on par with that of chimps.  *grin*

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