Critical Thinking

In order to bring clairy and understanding to where we are today, we must envoke a strong ability to thinking critically. Today's society has grown increasingly complex and we are often bombarded everday by numbers, statisics and reports on new technologies. This is not a bad thing, but it can often lead to a misinterpretation of events. We must maintain our focus on the facts and have a healthy perspective that allows us to see the true problem. Let's borrow an analaogy from World War II history where Abraham Wald arguably gave birth to the field of statistical sequential analysis.

Imagine that your in charge of armoring United States Air Force planes as they perform routine missions to Germany. You obviously want to keep the pilots and the planes safe as they go on these missions. As the planes are in production, you decide to armor the planes with a uniform thickness and weight.



After a few months, you get some results of your planes returning. The data represented below is what you find:



Now, what would you do with this data? Seriously... think about it...

Clearly the armoring in the planes does not need to be uniform. In fact, there are some areas that could be armored more. But, where are these areas? Before you jump at your answer, consider a critical piece of data that is not necessarily given to you: what about the planes that DIDN'T return? Wouldn't it make sense then to fortify the armor in the areas where there is no data?

Voter Apathy

Do you feel like voting is a big responsibility with little pay-out?

One of the basic claims that results from public choice theory is that good government policies in a democracy are an underprovided public good, because of the rational ignorance of the voters. Each voter is faced with a tiny probability that his vote will change the result of the elections, while gathering the relevant information necessary for a well-informed voting decision requires substantial time and effort. Therefore, the rational decision for each voter is to be generally ignorant of politics and perhaps even abstain from voting. Rational choice theorists claim that this explains the gross ignorance of most citizens in modern democracies as well as low voter turnout. Rational abstention does, however, create the "paradox of voting" whereby strict costs benefit analysis implies that nobody should vote (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice)

Here are some resources to help point you in a direction of uncovering the truth in as few steps as possible

Chris Martenson
Movie Trailer for "IOUSA"
Blog on an alternative to the left-right paradigm
David Walker Part 1
David Walker Part 2
Fiscal Wake-up Tour