Peterson Syndrome

I won't get into my reasoning and thoughts about predestination. That's a subject that I wouldn't discuss with someone unless they were a fairly accomplished Bible scholar and over the age of 30 and it would help even more if they had children.  I only mention that to say this: I am very blessed that I did not start college until I was almost 26 years old.  I had been orphaned at 13 and lived at the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch. I had intellect, but no wisdom, and no one to help me or make me realize that good academic scores would realize a big payoff in the future.  After graduating high school, it would be straight into the work world.  Before beginning college I would have had at least six very different jobs.  One of them involved digging in the hot sun to install phone cable with a guy who had a Ph.d.  in some liberal arts field that I don't even remember.  By the time I was 20, I was THE store manager for an auto parts chain. I would go on to more things, and all of that experience gave me some wisdom.

Don't ever confuse knowledge with wisdom.  You can know a lot of crap that is factual and not have "a lick of sense," or wisdom.  You can spend a lot of your time and intellectual power to learn a lot of facts and information that is very useful, or stuff that won't make a pile of dirt worth of difference to your well-being.

My hard won wisdom borne of experience was with me when I started taking the requisite classes for my associate of arts degree.  So, when I had to sit in a college classroom and listen to some instructor pontificate on a subject, my BS meter would go off like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. I was nothing like the teenagers fresh out of high school who sat there listening to every word that came out of the instructor's mouth as if it was all beyond question.  I had many "lively discussions" with many of my professors, to the shock and disbelief of surrounding students, especially when I made them admit their errors and biases.  It was a couple of years into my college work and also teaching Creation/Biblical apologetics that I discovered what the problem was in academe.  Which brings us to the following quote by Joe Huffman regarding his naming of the condition that we conservatives encounter in people on the left:  Peterson Syndrome; named for Jan Peterson who advocates for the Brady Campaign.  [Hat tip to Kevin at The Smallest Minority]

She is frequently incoherent. She cannot distinguish the difference between intentions and results. If she is a liar she would not repeatedly make these kind of mistakes. Or if she is a liar then she is very very smart and skilled to consistently use the same sort of tool without ever slipping up.

I claim it is not necessarily and in fact probably isn't stupidity. If this were stupidity then this sort of faulty thinking would not continually show up throughout human history even with people that are exceedingly well respected. Every age and society has stupid people in it and they are easily recognized and the instances of them being well respected are exceedingly rare. This is some other type of mental disorder.

This mental disorder can be, and has been, easily detected. Ask the question, "What is the process by which you determine truth from falsity?" People suffering from this mental disorder not only won't be able to supply an answer but frequently cannot even understand the question. The question is nonsensical to them. They are lacking a thinking process. Hence, by necessity, they fail to process information. Asking them to supply a process when they are totally unaware of the existence of such a concept results in the same sort of difficulty as asking a person blind since birth what color the walls are. They have no common basis with the questioner such that they can even understanding the question. This is the same sort of response we get from her. She cannot understand concepts that to us are intuitively, blindingly, demonstrably, obvious. It is nearly impossible for us to believe that she does not understand what we are saying. But if she were blind you would not claim she was stupid or a liar if she did not know the color of the wall.

Joe describes the condition, but does not offer a cause.  This is what I would like to rectify.

The problem begins when the philosophy of education shifts from teaching students HOW to think to just teaching them WHAT to think.  I wondered how we got to this model of education in the United States and most of the western world. In my own autodidactic studies, and teaching of apologetics, I saw the need to demonstrate to my students how important it was to use logic to determine truth.  I had known that in the past, even high schools had debating classes and competitions, but this had become passé.  That's where the breakdown of education had begun.  Having to learn how to reach a conclusion and then articulately defend it is the real measure of knowledge.  With rare exception, such learning is now missing from all "higher" education past the twelfth grade.  When that which is supposed to pass for education has been reduced to merely memorizing facts and information with no understanding of how the information should be usefully applied, society is heading for disaster.

History bores the snot out of kids in the public government school indoctrination centers because it has been stripped of the information that makes it relevant in the name of "separation of Church and State."  Math is boring because it isn't coupled to history and the significance of what each discovery in the field did to improve the human condition. Science is boring to many students for the same reason.  I've always loved science and thought it was fun, but it had nothing to do with what I learned in school.  It was because I was always finding stuff on my own and doing my own experiments.

How many people understand syllogism?  Far too many people cannot recognize a false premise to start with.  This is what creates the famous GIGO condition that software engineers and other scientists in the hard sciences are painfully familiar with (Garbage In, Garbage Out).  If the basic facts or information is flawed, no amount of wishful thinking is going to create a better outcome.  Not within the confines of this space/time continuum.  That is the first lesson of logic.

This will be my first essay on understanding the Peterson Syndrome.  If you'd like to contribute your thoughts on the matter, email me at:  moses5768@yahoo.com.

Okay, I'll Play

This particular questionnaire has shown up on several of the blogs that I read, so I've thought about it and decided I would go ahead and answer them.  I tried to answer them by leaving a comment on this woman's blog doing so, but I couldn't even get to question 12 out of the 20 before I exceeded the character limit.

Her list of 20 questions resembles a "push" poll. Perhaps you've experienced such things. A political operative calls you on the phone to ostensibly get your answers to a series of yes or no questions. Each question lays out a scenario or seems to report some bit of information as true, or states a theory as if it were fact and then expects you to agree with it.

I like most of the answers I found on a Texas Law Enforcement Officer's blog. I suggest you go read his answers as well.  Then go back to the main page and read his further answers to others.  Now, here are the questions and my answers:

1. Do you believe that criminals and domestic abusers should be able to buy guns without background checks?    A:  Your question is silly. It doesn't have anything to do with what you think is a problem. Criminals, and that includes "domestic abusers," don't use legal or legitimate means to obtain firearms. They steal them or purchase them on the black market.  That's like asking if I agree that we should have background checks for buying heroin.
2. What is your proposal for keeping guns away from criminals, domestic abusers, terrorists and dangerously mentally ill people?   A:  Outside of non-violent criminals, those who have committed capital murder, child molestation,  and rape  should be executed. Foreign terrorists should be hunted down and summarily executed after any valuable intelligence has been obtained.  Criminals with a proven history of violence and the dangerously mentally ill, should be confined to an appropriate facility.
3. Do you believe that a background check infringes on your constitutional right to "keep and bear arms"?  A: Yes. And if we followed the answer to question #2 we wouldn't need background checks, just as we did not need them for the first 150 or so years of this country's history. Furthermore as answered in question #1, background checks have done nothing to reduce gun violence in cities with the most restrictive gun laws.
4. Do you believe that I and people with whom I work intend to ban your guns?   A: Yes.
5. If yes to #4, how do you think that could happen ( I mean the physical action)?    A: Banning something just means passing a law.  Kind of like demanding background checks.  See answers to questions 1 - 3.  If you mean "confiscation," I'm not going to give you any helpful suggestions.
6. What do you think are the "second amendment remedies" that the tea party GOP candidate for Senate in Nevada( Sharron Angle) has proposed?    A: You would have to ask her.
7. Do you believe in the notion that if you don't like what someone is doing or saying, second amendment remedies should be applied?    A:  Perhaps you don't get the fact that the reason there is a second amendment is because there was already a first amendment.  If someone is "doing" something to take away my God given rights, then according to the laws of nature and the God who created them, I not only have a right but a duty to stop it.  But under our Constitution people have the right to free speech as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others.
8. Do you believe it is O.K. to call people with whom you disagree liars and demeaning names?   A:  If someone is lying, then the appellation is correct and should be applied.  But your obvious implication is that the people you are aiming this questionnaire at engage in such behavior. Please cite any specific examples.
9. If yes to #8, would you do it in a public place to the person's face?     A: If you purposely hide facts, distort facts, or assert things that are not true; oh yes, I will proclaim it in public, to your face, and let you have the opportunity to correct the record.
10. Do you believe that any gun law will take away your constitutional rights?    A:  The men who wrote the Constitution were brilliant, well educated men, with tremendous command of the English language.  They specifically wrote the words "shall not be infringed." to convey that ANY restriction was prohibited.  They understood that once you started down that slippery slope we would end up in the mess we are in today. 
11.  Do you believe in current gun laws? Do you think they are being enforced? If not, explain.   A:  You have two completely different questions there, Sparky.  See answers 1, 2, 3, and 10.  There are too many different gun laws across the country and they are enforced at different levels.  Are we talking about Chicago, IL, or Kennesaw, GA?   You are the one who needs to explain.
12. Do you believe that all law-abiding citizens are careful with their guns and would never shoot anybody?    A:  Do you mean shoot an innocent person, or a criminal who needs to be stopped?    
13. Do you believe that people who commit suicide with a gun should be included in the gun statistics?     A:  What do you mean by "included?"  I think you mean to include every person shot by anybody, including law enforcement in order to push your propaganda.  Just like you include ages of gang-bangers up to the age of 25 as "children."  If all data on gun deaths were broken down into all the relevant categories, the push for more gun control would be seen for the illogical nonsense that it is.
14. Do you believe that accidental gun deaths should "count" in the total numbers?    A:  See my answer to #13.
15. Do you believe that sometimes guns, in careless use or an accident, can shoot a bullet without the owner or holder of the gun pulling the trigger?          A:  All modern firearms designed since circa 1900 have passive safeties that make it physically impossible to discharge a bullet unless the trigger is pulled.  I challenge you to demonstrate or cite a single instance that disproves this.
16. Do you believe that 30,000 gun deaths a year is too many?        A:    Compared to what?  45,000 deaths in vehicle accidents?  Influenza and Pneumonia kill over 50,000.  Septicemia: 34,000.  Heart disease over 540,000.  But out of the 30,000 gun deaths, how many were drug deals gone bad; gang related; Law enforcement action?  Inanimate objects do not indiscriminately kill people.  They require someone to use them.  Whether or not 50 people were killed via firearm is not nearly as important as WHY they were killed.
17. How will you help to prevent more shootings in this country?    A:  Prevent which shootings?  See my answer to #16.
18. Do you believe the articles that I have posted about actual shootings or do you think I am making them up or that human interest stories about events that have happened should not count when I blog about gun injuries and deaths?      A:  Anecdotes are not the same thing as data.  I can use stories about overzealous and out of control government and law enforcement officials as reason for protecting our second amendment rights.  Confusing anecdotes with data does not help your case.
19. There has been some discussion of the role of the ATF here. Do you believe the ATF wants your guns and wants to harass you personally? If so, provide examples ( some have written a few that need to be further examined).       A:  Do you mean like the ATF sniper who shot and killed Vicki Weaver while she held her baby at Ruby Ridge?  The raid on the Branch Davidian compound that was promptly bulldozed and there were no weapons shown as evidence?  The West Point graduate who had a legal concealed carry permit who was gunned down outside a Costco store?
20. Will you continue a reasonable discussion towards an end that might lead somewhere or is this an exercise in futility?        A:  The key word here is reasonable.  The discussion will require that both parties understand logic and reasoning.  Feelings and emotion lead to illogical and irrational conclusions that won't help anyone.  If either of the parties cannot recognize a false premise or a faulty syllogism, then it will indeed be an exercise in futility.