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3/25/14

How Your Brain Is Hard-Wired: The Trolley Problem

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Here is an old favorite among moral philosophers, a thought experiment that reveals something about human nature. As a thought experiment it is divorced from everyday reality and is designed to illicit the reasons conscious or unconscious as to why people would do certain things. In this case, it is a clever device to make you think in a certain way and to discover your motives for an action. Understand that in a thought experiment you have no other options than those given you. You cannot read into the experiment your own novel twist to solve it, otherwise it would be useless as an intellectual exercise. There are no trick solutions nor any hidden information. Determine what you would do in both illustrations 1 and 2.

Study the two illustrations and think about the consequences of each possible action. Then ask yourself what you would do in each of the two cases. What would be your reason for doing it?

After you are finished, read on.

3/18/14

Richard Halliburton's Personality

"I'm very grateful, because I wouldn't take $1,000,000 for it." Richard Halliburton

In the human scheme of things, some are born lucky, some less lucky, and some unlucky.  None of us chose to be born nor did we choose the circumstances of our birth.  Among many possibilities, we could have come into the world as American, Canadian, Scottish, French, Mexican, Afghan, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, African, or Mongolian.  We could have had wealthy, middle-class, or poor parents.

We are born into chance.

3/11/14

Richard Halliburton, Pancho Barnes and John Wayne

In his life Richard met many unusual people but maybe the most remarkable was Pancho Barnes and she is worthy of note because of her personality and character.  She had two precepts in life: When you have a choice, choose happy, and Nothing exceeds like excess.  She lived on her own terms and cussed like a test pilot. Unable to get a divorce from her minister husband, each Sunday she climbed into her plane, took off, and dove down over his church, buzzing it with the engine’s roar drowning-out morning services.

3/4/14

He Found Freedom His Way

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More than a decade ago, Daniel Suelo closed his bank account and walked away from the economic system that made him a wage slave.  He offers a subversive version of living,