Jon Troyer

There is no such thing as a non-essential person ! Psalm 139:14 "I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

@ClassicLibera12 @Van_Blogodidact @thepalmerworm @CourtenayTurner @corTheory What I'm saying is that individual human agency is impossible to model. It cannot be reduced to mere rationality.

@theRTcafe @Van_Blogodidact @thepalmerworm @CourtenayTurner @corTheory Are you establishing that a burglar is not rationalizing that there are valuables in people’s houses that he can take and then sell for money?

Shall we play a game? Should we? To what ends should we combine Game Theory with the Rule of Law? That's another strange game, in which the only winning move is not to play. But many 'defenders of liberty' are urging us all to play along...🧵

@ClassicLibera12 @Van_Blogodidact @thepalmerworm @CourtenayTurner @corTheory You are assigning rationality to the burglar. It is my experience that many criminals are actually highly irrational. This is why behavioral approaches to law do not succeed, and to paraphrase the great Jim Quinn, "Create the exact opposite of their stated intent."

The burglar (who is unprincipled because he is taking other people’s things) does not rob a home with a large mean dog, not because he realizes the error of his ways or doesn’t want to hurt a dog but because the effort and risk are greater than the reward of robbing a house without a dog. This is not from the orientation of what lead him immorally to become a burglar in the first place.

"The Behaviorists have made it difficult to converse about the less principled and the unprincipled who operate on risk/reward" I would argue that the assumption that such people operate on a "risk/reward" basis is flawed. Since the underlying premise is flawed, all things built upon it are suspect and unstable, no matter what new terminology is invented to try to explain it. Instead, look to Aquinas for his comments on the basis for human law.

See look! Even if we disagree semantically we are aligned (mostly) in the fundamental premise. What do we mean by “incentives”, positive incentives? Negative? Moral realist? Constructivist? Well for us probably the benefit of the doubt is given, that at least in principle we’re both aligned with moral realism. If I do accidentally reference “Game Theory” (which I do try not too)…I’m actually just talking about a clinical observation of how humans operate in risk/reward conditions not its technocratic praxis…(I know, I know theory and praxis can’t be separated). I’m not even sure what to call these human behavioral disciplines considering their manipulative sources…it’s rife with esoteric smuggling. And that’s my point. The Behaviorists have made it difficult to converse about the less principled and the unprincipled who operate on risk/reward…

@ClassicLibera12 @thepalmerworm @Van_Blogodidact @CourtenayTurner @corTheory There is a difference between "incentive structures" that are human institutions and those same structures "governed" by an algorithm.

This is not directed at you in particular but a general statement. I think this is a misrepresentation of his position mainly revolving around the pedantry of the word and history behind “Game Theory”. Fundamentally this about incentive structures and alignments that are objectively true about human nature not about accepting the constructivist grounds of “Game Theory”. Moral Self-governing people do not require gamed external incentive structures. It is mainly the people who lack principles or who are wholly unprincipled, who believe that life means anything they can get away with that are the problem…and it is not an immaterial amount of unprincipled people that impact society. The unprincipled do not operate on moral self-governance, they operate on incentive alignments…the really bad ones who disregard even when incentive structures exist we call criminals or tyrants. Aquinas knew this, the Founders knew this. That’s why the government is arranged as it is with checks and balances. That’s why we have laws and police and a justice system. These have built in incentive structures to account for the unprincipled…this is not constructivist “Game Theory” which exploits incentive structures…incentive structures are real and true aspects of human nature for good or for ill. So everyone has been spinning in metaphysical circles unnecessarily to the point of animosity and assumed bad faith or accusatory collapse into Nominalist thinking. Once the word “Game Theory” was used it was Game Over for dialog… Whatever I guess…whatever is going on goes beyond this particular kerfuffle Manipulative Game Theory is bad, incentive structures to account for the unprincipled is practical. Fin

@allengarvin @StaciBryant133 @loganclarkhall @jetbirdz bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/scho…

@StaciBryant133 @loganclarkhall @jetbirdz Yeah, I don't believe that for a second. Provide the source that it is valid, and preferably also a pass-fail rate. But just any valid sourcing that it's real would be sufficient.

One of the major blackpills is reading letters from soldiers during the Civil War who never received a formal education and realizing they could read and write much better than the vast majority of our society nowadays.

@ClassicLibera12 @thepalmerworm @Van_Blogodidact @CourtenayTurner @corTheory I take it "invective" was merely a typo? The danger in applying game theory to the area of law as advocated in the original post by "Yuri" is the gradual replacement of "human" institutions with constructivist "models." Every human is made in the image of God. No AI is.

What do you call the practical invective structures that are in place to mitigate the impact of the less principled within society? Read very carefully and clearly. Do not staw man. This is not a question about establishing and upholding the primacy of a society aligned with the moral order nor replacing it with incentive structures be they practical or more nefarious.

@Van_Blogodidact @CourtenayTurner @thepalmerworm @corTheory This was my comment in a private chat recently regarding the account to which you refer...

An atheist once complained that it was unfair for Christians and Jews to have recognized holy days while atheists had none. Determined to fight this “discrimination,” he hired a lawyer and took the case to court. The lawyer passionately argued, “Your Honor, Christians have Christmas and Easter, Jews have Passover and Yom Kippur, but my client and other atheists have no such holidays. This is unjust!” The judge listened carefully, then leaned forward and said, “But atheists do have a day of recognition.” Surprised, the lawyer asked, “We do? What day is that?” The judge smiled and said, “April 1st—April Fools’ Day. As Psalm 14:1 says, ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ Case dismissed!” Happy April 1st!

So too for Constitutional Republic Governance - which is why the public’s recognition, articulation and comprehension of reality has been the target for negation in academia and education for so long.

Perhaps this explains it: The Lie (voluntarism) - "Ye shall not surely die" The Temptation (voluntaryism) - "ye shall be as gods" The Trap (enslavement) - "she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat"

I understood most of it but not this part here. The transition from reality determined by the will (voluntarism) to participating in the system (voluntaryism) that is basically contractualism. How does the one set up the framework for the other? Is it because in voluntarism the will is paramount and voluntaryism gives you the illusion of free will? Are you alluding to voluntarism subsuming reality and thus natural rights and this (in turn) allowing for the digital enslavement of the citizen if they don't wish to be exiled from society? All of the above?

In the architecture of human civilization, there has been a long campaign of subjugation and power consolidation over many generations and even eras. The move away from a foundation of Ontology (the study of being, or what a thing inherently is) and toward a constructed projection of Will (the assertion of what we want a thing to become - including, or especially, ourselves!). Across every sector (politics, religion and technology) the same two-step tactic repeats: Step 1 - Sever from Reality (Voluntarism): Truth becomes interpretation, meaning becomes fluid and nature becomes irrelevant (at best) and rejected (at worst). This liquefies the old order. Step 2 - Reground in Choice (Voluntaryism): Once reality is gone, order is rebuilt on constructs of ‘consent’. Obligation becomes optional and legitimacy is reduced to a contract or a ‘transactional consent’. To the unformed mind, driven only by desire and autonomous will, this feels like liberation; freedom, flexibility and empowerment. In reality, it is disintegration. When nothing is fixed and nothing binds unless chosen, the individual is left without a shared, knowable reality to stand upon. You are ‘free’ in this appetite driven Regime only as long as you remain a compliant participant in the system. With ‘truth’ reduced to will-driven interpretation there is no objective floor, no protection against power. Moral law becomes expressive (a way to signal identity) rather than binding regardless of identity and belief. The internal shift of the will toward ‘curated reality’ provides the psychological groundwork for an external shift in how we participate in society through technology and markets - and crucially - how we are incentivized (or penalized) for doing so. Voluntaryism provides the mask; you are told your participation is ‘optional’ because you clicked ‘I agree’. However, The System operates on Voluntarism; The Operators continuously redefine the rules, update policies and restrict access based on their own will, not in accord with and what is binding on all, for They are ‘above & beyond’. ‘They’ now occupy that which transcended and has been rejected by the Consumer Mindset at large. The stakes of this Consumer Mindset are still unrecognized and unacknowledged by most - which ‘They’ continue to fully exploit while that ignorance and wilful blindness persists. Voluntarism and voluntaryism sound very similar - understand their distinction, their symbiosis and their manifestation skin suiting all Politics, movements within Faith, Economic Theories & all Ideologies. Remember that what the American Founders established was prior to all of that, not the product of any of it.

"more welders who can talk intelligently about Aristotle, and more philosophers who can run an even bead" There was a time in America when this was true.

If you haven’t heard, and even if you have, Jimmy Kimmel said this about Markwayne Mullin, former Senator from Oklahoma, and our newest Secretary of Homeland Security: “We have a plumber now protecting us from terrorism.” Apparently, there has been some backlash. Plumbers were offended, obviously, as were parents of plumbers, spouses of plumbers, children of plumbers, and millions of people who have had a plumber show up when they needed one. Comedians were also offended, (the funny ones, anyway,) along with a surprising number of terrorists - especially those with access to hot and cold running water. However, in spite of the ensuing kerfuffle, @jimmykimmel doubled down. “I’m not upset that the head of Homeland Security was a plumber,” he said, “I’m upset that he isn’t still a plumber." He further elucidated by adding, "I wouldn't put a plumber in charge of Homeland Security for the same reason I wouldn't call a five-star general to pull a rat out of my toilet, OK? We all have our areas of expertise.” Being offended is always a choice, and I don’t choose to be offended by a joke, even one that comes at the expense of the skilled tradespeople my foundation tries to elevate. But I am a tad butt hurt by the suggestion that skilled workers should never evolve into something new, and that competence is somehow limited to one vocation. Obviously, expertise and skill are important. If I need a new kidney, I’d prefer a doctor do the surgery, not a late-night talk show host. But if the doctor in question used to host a talk show, why would I hold that against him? Ten years ago, during one of the presidential debates, @MarcoRubio answered a workforce-related question by arguing that America needed to get shop class back into high schools. He concluded by saying, “What our country needs are more welders and fewer philosophers.” A lot of people on this page commented that Rubio and I were singing from the same hymnal, but in fact, we weren’t. At least not entirely. Because I don’t think the current shortage of welders has anything to do with an overabundance of philosophers. In fact, I think it’s a mistake to promote one vocation at the expense of the other. What we really need in this country, are more welders who can talk intelligently about Aristotle, and more philosophers who can run an even bead. More Generals, in other words, who can fix their own toilets, and more plumbers who can hold a powerful government job. This is what Mullin did. He was a private citizen who mastered an essential skill and then turned that skill into a multi-million-dollar company that employed a lot of people and served a lot of customers. That gave him the freedom to do other things with his life, including a career in public service which got him into Congress, where he’s spent the last eleven years doing whatever Congressmen do. Now, he has a very consequential position in the Cabinet of the current administration. Is that not the embodiment of the American Dream? I get that Jimmy Kimmel might have a problem with Mullin’s politics, but what possible objection could he have about the trajectory of his career, or his desire to do more than one thing with his life? The only sensible thing to do in the wake of a moment this tone deaf, is remind America that the skills gap is wide, and getting wider. The shortage of skilled tradespeople is now headline news and closing it is nothing less than a matter of national security. This year, my foundation has set aside $10 million dollars to help train the next generation of plumbers, and lots of other essential workers. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of AI-proof, six figure jobs that don't require a four-year degree, waiting to be filled. The money is currently available to anyone who wants to master a useful skill at mikeroweworks.org. Apply today. As for those of you genuinely offended by Kimmel's comments, consider expressing your disappointment with a modest donation to mikeroweWORKS. Our work ethic scholarship is making a real difference, and your money will be well spent, I promise. The donate button is big and red and hard to miss, at mikeroweworks.org I’d love to chat but I’ve gotta pull a rat out of my toilet…

@thepalmerworm Why should we not expect being "peer-reviewed by reality" in every discipline? Imagine how much better off we would all be.

What Brazier/Sutherland captured is not a just cultural observation either; it is a constraint statement which is operational not sociological, ideological or political. Engineering disciplines survive because they are bound to non-negotiable external reality. Bridges collapse, circuits fail, aircraft crash. You don’t debate error, you don’t dialogue about it to achieve negotiated consensus. You expose error by contact with reality and the clarity to plainly say what is. Currently too few in the public square are prepared to plainly acknowledge and admit that the American Constitutional Republic was designed on that same class of constraint, which is not at all a political preference system. It is a governance architecture predicated upon ontological realities about man, formation and law. This is what I’ve repeatedly articulated through engineering terms: open.substack.com/pub/thepalmerw… open.substack.com/pub/thepalmerw…

@darwintojesus Evidence and reason can bring us to God, faith is what bridges the final gap and restores our relationship with Him.

I think you could write a book going into all the ways this is wrong… but I won’t. I’ll try to be brief. 1. Many atheists like myself, CS Lewis, Lee Strobal and countless others demonstrate that people actually searching for the truth have changed their minds and become Christians. 2. Faith is something that you do after the evidence, Faith is trust. My wife gives me evidence she’s loyal, I have faith in her now. 3. Apologetics is simply a defense of the faith. People like you try to mislead people with bad arguments and rhetoric, the point of apologetics is to correct you, the same way we ought to put out a fire before it spreads. 4. Guilt doesn’t have to do with evidence except that it indicates we know we’ve done wrong. Not really sure why that’s in here. 5. Hell is not a threat it’s a warning, like if you’re smoking and someone says “hey you should stop doing that or you’ll get lung cancer.” We don’t want anyone to go to hell so we try to warn people. Global warming activists do the same thing, do they have no evidence? Careful… 6. Memes are not evidence, they’re entertainment and a great way to make points. But most atheists are terrible at memes so I wouldn’t expect you to understand this. 7. I didn’t say evidence just “gets people to Christianity.” I said IF people cared about evidence they’d become a Christian. The problem is that most people don’t care about evidence because this is just a way to intellectually try to justify their sin to themselves and others.

“They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. And it seems that The Hobbit will be of the same ilk. Tolkien became… devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work.” -- Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien's son and literary executor, expressing his disdain for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film adaptations in a 2012 Le Monde interview.

@thepalmerworm While they start out saying something about how LOTR was "written" they then talk about "seeing" them. So, are they talking about the books, or the movies? I recommend the books, not the movies. There is a difference.

Stunning illiteracy of the Catholic Faith there!!! What an own goal. Has Mr Posobiec ever studied Summa Theologiae or the Nicomachean Ethics (the architectural foundation for LoTR). Does Mr Posobiec understand why Gandalf the Grey descended to battle the Balrog and rose from that as Gandalf the White? Does Mr Posobiec have any awareness of why it is that when Frodo asked Gandalf if he would ever use the Ring, Gandalf gravely responded “No - do not tempt me - I dare not”. Does Mr Posobiec understand the foundational theology of any of that? It seems not, but it also doesn’t surprise me.

@AnthonyEsolen The vast majority of members of the Continental Congress expressed belief in orthodox Christianity with reliance on salvation through Jesus Christ. The number of Deists was probably less than a half dozen.

Americans who point to the most theologically dubious of the Founders, Franklin and Jefferson (because, to be honest, Paine was shouldered out; Paine's "Reason," wrote Adams, was "a whore"), to claim that the nation was founded in religious skepticism, simply do not deal with the culture, and do not even examine with any great sensitivity what those two, their best cases, believed about God, petitionary prayer, the immortality of the soul, the history of the Christian religion, and the person of Christ. This is the same Franklin who was George Whitefield's most energetic promoter in America. It's the same Jefferson who confessed to shedding tears sometimes when he attended services at Monticello and sang the old hymns. I can point to an extremely popular book for boys, circa 1920, written by a Unitarian who would be simply dumbfounded to hear that he was not really a Christian, recalling the churches in his home town in New Hampshire when he was a boy in the 1860's, and Christmastime -- who writes with warm feeling about the death of one of his friends, and the loving Father who would accept him into his kingdom. John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker, and he too was taken up in contemplation of the Father's love, and would also be astonished to hear that he was not a Christian. Now, I'm not going to argue about the theology here, as that's not the point. We are talking about American culture in the 1700's and 1800's. It is not merely accidental that Whittier was the author of a few of our most beloved hymns in English. Jefferson said, thinking of slavery, that he trembled when he considered that God is just. That is not what a deist says. Jefferson tended to be all over the map when he was thinking theoretically, or when he was showing off, but no Epicurean (he once said he was closest in thought to Epicurus and Lucretius) would ascribe either justice or injustice to the gods, who simply are not supposed to have anything to do with us at all. Now that was Jefferson, the best case, other than Paine, for strict deism among the Founders. One thing we can certainly say about the founding generation, is that the leaders at all levels of society were broadly read men who learned from historical precedent, and who took the Christian religion with great seriousness. And I think that was the crucial difference between America and France. The French leaders, rebelling AGAINST the faith and the Church ("Ecrasez l'infame!" cried that humbug Voltaire), were confident of their own righteousness, and ended up soaking their nation in blood. The American leaders, informed by the faith, were by no means confident of their own righteousness, and thus they did not seek to overturn the very nature of human society. They did not dare.

@MrJTroyer @corsaren You need to reexamine Hegel... although, the Strauss Hegel questions were a bit unfair. Otherwise, we have nearly identical results. I wonder why ? . . . 🤔

Need @corsaren to do this lol

"Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change." — Antonin Scalia ...has been replaced by... "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." But what does the Bible say... "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [. . .] And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth." — John 1:1,14 "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." — Hebrews 13:8 "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." — Matthew 7:24-27 I'd choose Scalia over Humpty Dumpty any day. Destroying the meaning of words makes firm foundations impossible. Watch, read, and learn...

14/ My apologies - this video summary of my article which can be read here: open.substack.com/pub/thepalmerw… cuts off for that last few seconds. I’m not sure why and haven’t been able to fix it, but nonetheless, I hope it’s still useful for anyone wanting a brief summary and something to share with others less inclined to read, but prepared to listen/watch.