Dear Leader was elected...twice. Go figure.

Yes, it appears that "thinking" is just too hard to do, these days.

Thanks, understood and I agree

I was making a generalization; of course, there are always individual examples to the contrary, but overall, the current generation has the mentality of a slave - do as told and the master will provide. Whether individuals may re-acquire the ability to think is almost irrelevant as three hundred million people are ready-made slaves and will follow orders of whoever is the leader. It is precisely because of the mentality of individualism and self-reliance that the American Revolution became a reality. Such mentality no longer exists in America (in the mass population).

I have seen many people around me who have lost jobs in this last downturn. Some have sunk into the abyss and live only by getting some minimum wage job or on welfare. I have seen others that I thought incapable of thinking and thus performing anything other than menial labor jobs, rise and become a thinker. One such person now owns a car wash business and has recently opened a second site. This person, and I would stat it, this couple, learned to think after both lost their non-thinking jobs to automation.

I think the percentage that will start to think when forced is higher than zero. I think a person can learn to think as an adult, but I think most will never choose to do so.

In the circle of people I know, or have worked with that hit hard times since 3006 its about 10% that have learned to think from the downturn. That number is not scientific but simply an observation from a group of people I have met while I too had some out of work time.

We are establishing our ages. A time maybe missed?

One thing about Cronkite, that is , and has been lacking for decades is neutrality in the Media. Cronkite by all accounts and by his own words in interviews was an ultra far left liberal, however, when addressing news, you could rarely tell what his personal political views were. He reported the news, fairly, and factually, hense his famous closing statement, "And that's the way is was, MM/DD/YEAR

The quote is phony, apparently first used in the mid-20th century, with an altered version of the "steps" first appearing in 1943. http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html It resurfaced in a different form around 2000. http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/at...

There are grains of truth in many of the "steps", but they don't account for the historical progression, and we are currently in a mixture of the last four. The sequence is profoundly anti-intellectual in its implied claim that "faith" is the foundation of human progress, while leaving out the kind of thinking that is required.

"Faith" was the philosophy of the Dark Ages, and kept it that way for centuries. The return of Aristotelian ideas of individualism and rationality, leading to the Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason, individualism and political freedom made this country and its spectacular success possible. The counter-Enlightenment of irrationalism, collectivism and statism is bringing it down.

The worst of the "complacency" and "apathy" we suffer from is the widespread ignoring of the importance of ideas and principles. Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, self interest, and capitalism is required to turn it all around, but those ideas -- in accordance with the counter-Enlightenment -- are shrilly and hysterically rejected and buried in silence by most kinds of intellectuals, who were supposed to be the defenders of thinking.

"...and we are punished for thought and creativity."

Yep, been there, done that, been punished for it.

Short story: I met the guy who taught Motorola "6-Sigma Process Control." No, Motorola didn't invent it. My friend taught them.

Six Sigma is a method of eliminating VARIABILITY from a process, often a manufacturing or production process.

And it's NOT an end in itself... Until or Unless you can achieve a REPEATABLE PROCESS you will not be able to tweak or tune it to be an efficient, accurate, profitable process, and until then there's no guarantee that the OUTPUT of your process will even be what you want!

But if you can't control it and understand what inputs control changes in output, it's a random walk towards success.

Yes, and I remember shouting at the TV, "Walter, shut the HELL UP" as Cronkite re-described what was happening as humans made the first footprints on the moon...

Excellent write! Much like the book I'd like to write, too. And for some folks who've 'debated me' on the subject, a nice graphic on "The Scientific Method" 30-some pages in...

(and maybe one typo I found and one compound 'word' I would have hyphenated.., but that's MY OCD speaking... :) )

I downloaded a copy, thank you, and will read the rest in the near future.

The ability to think is learned in childhood. If it has not been learned, by adulthood it is too late to acquire this capability. Except for a few who's parents made the special effort to protect their children or an even fever natural geniuses (or close), the rest of the current population is a wasteland. They will function as told, by whoever tells them.

Sadly it is becoming George Orwell's 1984, habitual patterned speech which leads to no-conscious thought.

Just added "Idiocracy" to my Netflix queue in the #2 slot. (I don't stream, I cheapskate snail mail). It has "very long wait" beside it in the queue. Never saw that before with a 2006 (any that old) DVD.

Oh boy, yeah. Only thing worse is AB neg.

I used to have to steal blood from the next day's routine surgery list if I had an emergency crossmatch on someone with B neg or AB neg blood (and then I would order replacement units from the Red X). Sometimes I did not need the replacement units (you always do more crossmatches than there are units actually used), but better safe...

It was one of the reasons I worked graveyard shift for 17 years: I knew what was going on with an individual (as opposed to 'a rack of tubes') and I actually had occasion to think. I became famous for accidentally doing unordered tests that the doctor needed. "Hmmm, nothing abnormal there, Jan. I am going to add an amylase..." "Amylase is 432, doctor. Uh. I did it by accident." "Thanks, Jan."

Not technically correct behavior, but it saved a half hour for the person squirming on the table in the ER.

I agree. SOP's are better than creative thinking in aeronautics, surgery, laboratory medicine and other low-fault tolerance disciplines. When the problem exceeds the limitations of the SOP's, then it is necessary to be able to think creatively. It is like this: any job that can be reduced to a set of SOP's can potentially be better done by a robot than by a person. Until we get robots that capable, we humans have to sub in...with the advantage of being able to take off the 'robot hat' and put on the 'creative human' hat when the situation goes south.

There is nothing wrong with following SOP's but if you want to be able to put on the 'creative human' had you had better understand what the SOP is trying to achieve and the theoretical structure underlying it.

I remember one time in the lab at 2 AM, I was in blood bank and there was a super-STAT crossmatch I was trying to complete. (Crossmatches are rigorously SOP controlled!) The crossmatch was incompatible - in an odd way. In the middle of this emergency, I sat back in my chair for about 10 minutes, closed my eyes, and imagined the antigen-antibody reactions involved...several scenarios of different Ab...After 10 min I opened my eyes, pulled out a new set of reagents and proceeded to do a set of crossmatches under slightly different parameters - which got me to a place that I could find a couple of units of compatible blood. I had reached the limit that the SOP could take me, but because I understood the underlying theory I could figure out what to do de novo (and document it out the wazoo).

Jan

Shakes Magic 8-Ball

Shake shake roll


All signs point to yes

Oh WOW, man! Like; I think I'll go, ya know, like; watch some more TV, man!

Nietzsche was right! I'm turning into an anarchist. We're living in a "devolution revolution."

Or, as another "double plus incorrect" site states, America is "bat feces crazy." I cleaned the expression up a bit...

I'm suing the stork. He brought me to Planet Bedlam. Just when you don't think it could possibly get any stupider, crazier, insane... it exceeds your expectations and produces yet more of the bat substance mentioned elsewhere...

It is slathered. Their job is unique. Every customer is unique and has unique customers. Insurance is not a widget. This program has been pushed for about 3 years but they made too much of it. Originally it was a "Lean" process. That is fine but they turned it into a monster. Our top sales and service agents were forced to adapt standardized behaviors that lessened their numbers, our sales, customer satisfaction and first call resolution numbers are lower. Our agents no longer know the big picture because they are trained just to follow the scripts so they make poor decisions. These standards were designed to help the poor worker but this was only necessary because proper actions to correct their behaviors or move them out the door were executed poorly. I am all for eliminating waste but people need to learn to think for themselves and use common sense.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. ~Henry Ford

I would not call it a GREAT article, but it was pretty good.

Look on Youtube at Ayn Rand with Phil Donohue, as well as Milton Freedman.
Volume 1 Milton Freedman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EwaLys3Z...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvNzi7tmk...

Volume 2 Ayn Rand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rydsea_Y8...

People always ignore the rational part in rational self-interest.