The "gay" folk (unlike morose ones like me) consider "marriage" as something they must have. As if it were a forbidden fruit.

I've made it clear that it is inappropriate for such folk to want to get "married". They can sign contracts and do other such things, but not marriage. But marriage is a term with long-determined meaning. The idea of changing the very meaning of a word to suit some people is undesirable.

The terms marriage, विवाह, nikah, etc., are not terms of convenience.

Like the precision attributable to the term liberty, these terms connote a precise meaning: in this case a valid union between man and woman with its many rights and obligations. It is just the way it is defined. For thousands of years, the precise nature of this institution has been worked out. It stands for certain things.

No offence meant to "gays" (and I have NOTHING against "gays" or the morose), but you can't really change definitions of words.

A rose must be called a rose, and a tiger, a tiger. And so on. Just because someone like Amartya Sen starts ascribing to liberty the exact opposite meaning of what it originally meant, doesn't make this new definition valid. In DOF I've tried to explain that liberty is purely – in modern jargon – negative liberty. Not positive liberty (of the sort that Amartya Sen wants). Original meanings matter.

The key message is: let's not tinker with words and meanings. That will confound everything. 

I understand that "gay" people want to be "regularised" by society.  Sure. That's perfectly OK. I've got NOTHING against any "gay" or non-gay person. As adults people can voluntarily trade/contract, subject to not harming any other person (that's crucial).

So if you are gay you are most welcome to prepare and sign a contract that "regularises" your relationship. I'm happy to be a witness. We can all celebrate.

All that is fine. That's part of the concept of liberty.

But the idea that this relationship should be called marriage is nonsense on stilts. Only an Obama could have thought of such a thing. 

Note also that this contractual relationship can't demand any right to adopt or produce technology-created children. Children DON'T enter the equation in this relationship. They are simply out of question.

To dispel any confusion on what I stand for, here's a simple table:

Feature	Marriage	Gay couple living together
Relationship that is either contractual or a sacrament (sanctified by religion in the eyes of God)	Some are contractual. Most are sacraments in the eyes of God. The state MAY recognise (its role is irrelevant; marriage being PERSONAL law). The implicit common law contract is fully contestable in court.	PURELY contractual, with property rights protected by the state.
Institution developed and guarded by thousands of years of tradition – in all religions and societies	Yes	No
Right (but not obligation) to bear children	Yes	No
Right to rear children	Yes	No

I'm unable to respond to the many comments I'm getting on this topic. Commentators are often asuming things I did not say nor imply. I have contested the role of the state in marriage. They don't seem to know that. They have not read my writings on marriage. I'd encourage them to read Online Notes to BFN.

Also, the commentators need to tone down some of their absurd claims, e.g. "And as long as marriage is recognized as a legal contract between 2 consenting adults". It is NOT.

Marriage is NOT any ordinary contract between any two consenting adults. 

Marriage is a PARTICULAR type of contract, and in most societies, a sacrament.

It has a spiritual basis in the minds of most people. Regardless of whether there is a God or not, people deserve their beliefs to be treated with some respect, so long as they are not harming anyone.

By trying to get "married" the gays are entirely upturning the meaning of marriage. That's an inappropriate ambition. Such ambition has NOTHING to do with liberty or the "regularisation" of the "rights" of "gays" to pursue happiness.

There are ways to be free (and happy) without disrupting the entire society, AND nature!

Above all let's respect the laws of biology and of nature. 

I've sided with first past the post (FPTP) electoral system (of the type that prevails in India, or a modified version that prevails in Australia) for a long time, despite its apparent weaknesses.

The alleged weaknesses of FPTP are easily overcome by one overwhelming advantage: that it allows decisions to be made. By making more likely the possibility of majority governments, FPTP prevents paralysis in decision making, a problem that is usually worse than making bad decisions.

Bad decisions can lead to a change in government. Paralysis leads to confusion. Or worse.

Here are a few extracts from Greg Sheridan's article today on a separate subject (EU) in which he expresses views similar to mine:

The collapse of European democracy points up the overwhelming superiority of the Westminister electoral and political system. This is because the Westminster system is designed to deliver legislative authority to the executive government. Westminster system nations have been notably reluctant to give up national sovereignty and national currencies. Few choose their main house of parliament through proportional representation.

Most European nations use proportional representation, which almost guarantees minority governments. It is an irony of the present situation that the two greatest exemplars of Westminster democracy, Britain and Australia, have minority governments. But this is an anomaly for both countries, and both are more poorly governed because of their minority governments.

The best-run nation in the West today is Canada. Its government moved from minority to majority status by campaigning against a carbon tax.

Thanks to Catalaxy files, came across this pictorial documentation of the total transformation of East Germany from a socialist to (predominantly) capitalist nation.

I can guarantee that India will be a most amazing and beautiful sight after it becomes a capitalist nation.

Before

After

Before

After:

Before:

After:

Many more pictures of this sort. Click here.

Listen to what Obama has to say about the market system – the same market system that CREATED USA's wealth:

“The market will take care of everything,” they tell us…. But here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory."

—President Barack Obama, Osawatomie, Kansas, December 6, 2011

I thought I'll extract from a few of my recent comments re: human knowledge.

We are the only form of intelligence in this universe

I'm by no means suggesting that any individual human being is particularly intelligent (we are not, being largely controlled by impulse and a latent brain that Kahneman calls System 1), but our System2 (rational brain) is the ULTIMATE form of intelligence in this universe.

Man is the ONLY intelligent being in this universe – based on all knowledge accumulated so far. There is no evidence of any other intelligent being. [Source] (Addendum: While this doesn't mean other forms don't exist: the inductive method can never guarantee that, one can be fairly confident of this fact: not just on the basis of observation but also on the basis of theory)

Our knowledge is rapidly approaching infinity

Our knowledge of the universe is now very close to complete. There are some things that we cannot yet penetrate (e.g. before the Big Bang) but plenty of theories based on the laws of nature (physics) do that.

I can’t say PRECISELY when man will gain FULL knowledge of the universe. It may never happen. But it is DEFINITELY going to happen.

I’m not saying we’ll easily get to 100 per cent, but we are now many times the level of knowledge we had just 300 years ago. Perhaps by an order of 5000 times. In every field of inquiry, man is now pushing frontiers.

You are probably aware of the asymptote. We can perhaps never get to the actual infinity (of knowledge) but we are now approaching it VERY RAPIDLY. The speed of approach may reduce as infinity gets closer but currently man’s knowledge is speeding up, not slowing down.

Life is entirely understandable (and therefore creatable)

I have absolutely NO DOUBT that the time is not very far away when man will create life, not just bacterial life but advanced life, human life, IN LABORATORIES. There are no mysteries beyond ANY point. All knowledge is purely material and 100 per cent knowable by man.

Anyway, that’s what has been the trend so far. In just one generation we now know many times what the previous generation knew (and more accurately). If this rate of growth of knowledge continues (there is no reason to believe it won’t), man will have mastered fusion within two to three generations (leading to the availability of virtually INFINITE energy). That would also create sufficient power to reproduce the environment for the creation of life.

Life is a particular combination of molecules that fights entropy. Once created, it (figuratively) can’t be destroyed since it has the ability to reproduce. I have no doubt that life is entirely knowable.

Addendum

1) I'm NOT saying that we are nearing the end of our journey. Another 100 years later we will be much closer. That's all I'm saying.

2) I'm NOT saying that just because we are intelligent we will learn to live together in peace.

3) I'm NOT saying that just because we know how good societies must be run (through principles of liberty) that we'll necessarily do so.

Our instinct is (often) in opposition to our reason. That will be the main barrier to our reaching perfection in our lives.

A wide range of privacy-related laws are now being imposed in the West. For instance, laws in Australia prevent people from taking photographs of colleagues at work without their prior permission. So now if you have a workplace tea party you can't snap pictures to print and put on the notice board – something that was typically done in the past to enhance work culture.

Now, in essence, this is law is not enforceable. If someone REALLY wants to snap a person's picture, he can use gadgets that James Bond would have salivated for, just 50 years ago. Small pens now carry cameras which can take pictures while you pretend to write. And you can take videos of others while pretending to check your Iphone (someone actually did this to me – to show me the powerful features of Iphones, so I speak from experience).

And Western tourists to developing countries don't take permission from people whose picture they take. So why this double standard? What's the rationale or benefit of such laws anyway?

It is time we analyse the issue of privacy to avoid runaway laws that merely impose totally unnecessary burdens on good people without preventing bad people from doing the things they want.

I don't see liberty being compromised by reduced privacy – so long as  government is not empowered to capture our records in one place. Decentralisation and diffusion of our records is the key.

On a practical level, privacy in the modern world is a myth. 

Imagine a day in the life of an ordinary worker. He disembarks from a train with security cameras, walks through a platform with security cameras. His movement is further captured by a 'smart card' ticketing system which has recorded his name, address, and payment details. While walking through a busy sidewalk his movement is recorded by security cameras attached to the front entrance of tens of private shops. At work, his whereabouts are known each time he swipes his identity card at each security door. Each time he sends an e-mail or downloads a web page, his actions are instantly and permanently recorded. And each time he makes a call on a phone or mobile.

There may be somewhat more privacy within one's home, but that is deceptive, as well. Detailed telephone and mobile phone records, internet access records, records of online purchases made from home and records of delivery of these purchases by couriers, makes it easy to track down our whereabouts should such tracking become necessary.

Should you and I be afraid of this routine "tracking"?

No, so long as this is being done by thousands of private businesses in their personal self-interest (i.e. not deliberately intended to track particular persons).

Such tracking can be USEFUL in many ways. Most importantly, such tracking does not limit our liberty. True, it limits our ability to commit crimes. But there was no liberty to harm others, anyway.

It can be easily shown that Instead of harming our liberty, this "loss of privacy" actually enhances it.

a) Reduction of crime

If someone attacks us the availability of this data is very useful. The criminal can be readily traced by the police by getting access to such private records through the courts.

When such tracking was not available, solving a crime required gymnastics that only a Sherlock Holmes was capable of. Most criminals therefore escaped punishment. Worse, innocents were convicted. Today, the detection of crime has significantly increased. It now takes an IQ of well over 150 and significant knowledge of technology to have a chance of committing a serious crime – and escaping.  

b) Reduction of conviction of the innocent

But most importantly for all of us, those who are innocent can readily prove their whereabouts and avoid being convicted by incomplete, "circumstantial" data. If we have done no wrong, we are now far more likely to remain free.

A proviso

I did suggest above, and this is perhaps the most important point – that government should NOT have access to the thousands of privately maintained records about us without prior permission of the courts.

It is Big Brother that is dangerous, not Petty Shopkeepers. So long as our data is scattered widely, in private archives, we have nothing to fear.

My earlier blog posts on privacy

http://sabhlokcity.com/2011/07/why-privacy-is-often-irrelevant-liberty-being-the-substantive-issue/

http://sabhlokcity.com/2011/07/liberty-transparency-decency-privacy-security-secrecy-crime-and-paranoia/

Medication errors are among the top 10 killers of people across the world.

At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented, according to estimates from two major studies.  Even using the lower estimate, preventable medical errors in hospitals exceed attributable deaths to such feared threats as motor-vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS. [Source: Institute of Medicine, November 1999]

In addition,

WHO puts medical errors as among the top 10 killers in the world.  [Source] [Sanjeev: I have not been able to verify this information on the WHO website, but since this has been published both on Times of India and ABC, I'm giving it some credence.]

We hear about rock concerts against AIDS. Has anyone heard of a rock concert against negligent deaths caused by doctors (and nurses)? Clearly, its scale is far greater than breast cancer deaths, for instance. Something should be done to reduce this major cause of death.

Well, the good news is that:  

a) doctors are being taught to wash their hands after seeing EACH patient [see my blog post, and read Superfreakonomics],

b) nurses are being empowered to demand that doctors prove they've followed a strict checklist [see my blog post on this topic], and

c) patients are being issued bar codes around their wrist [Source]

Note I'm NOT blaming doctors for these accidental deaths. And I'm not even remotely suggesting that these actions are deliberate.

Doctors are only human and they will make errors, sometimes fatal. But to the extent these deaths and injuries are caused by negligence, lack of professionalism, over-optimism, and arrogance, doctors MUST be held to account.

The reputation of the medical fraternity can increase (at least with me) if the profession becomes more TRUTH-ABIDING and human, and less monopolistic in its behaviour.

Speak the truth, dear doctor. Admit your failings. And keep learning. Then you will rise to become a scientist – an intellectual status far greater than a doctor's. And who knows, you might even rise ultimately to become a philosopher (lover of wisdom). 

Why is J S Mill's work so valuable? I suggest that it is so at least in part because he was a practitioner of governance. That experience, missing in the likes of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, von Mises, Hayek and most academic economists, makes it necessary, at times, to filter out their day-dreams from an otherwise excellent argument.

Mill was an India bureaucrat, an East India Company bureaucrat. "Beginning as a junior clerk in 1823, John Stuart Mill spent thirty-five years as an administrator in India House, the London headquarters of the East India Company".  (Details of his career here.)

He entered not through merit but through nepotism. "In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for the next thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's obtaining for me an appointment from the East India Company. . . immediately under himself."  [Source]

His Indian experience was crucial. Thus "Mill altered his general social and political views as a result of the British experience in India and that his mature views of radical reform in Ireland and Great Britain owed much to the years that he spent as an imperial administrator." [Source].

All his India writings are now found online:

John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXX – Writings on India, ed. John M. Robson, Martin Moir, and Zawahir Moir (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1990). These writings include:

Trade With India 1828

Minute On the Black Act 1836

Penal Code For India 1838  [Sanjeev: this must be linked with Macaulay's work]

The East India Company’s Charter 1852

The Petition of the East-india Company 1858

Memorandum of the Improvements In the Administration of India During the Last Thirty Years 1858

Report to the General Court of Proprietors, Drawing Attention to the Two Bills Now Before Parliament Relating to the Government of India 1858

A Constitutional View of the India Question 1858

Observations On the Proposed Council of India 1858

Practical Observations On the First Two of the Proposed Resolutions On the Government of India 1858

The Moral of the India Debate 1858

A President In Council the Best Government For India 1858

Letter From the East India Company to the President of the Board of Control 1858

Maine On Village Communities 1871

Not all his views on India are compatible with what he promoted: liberty. In DOF I've disagreed with his view that liberty was not yet applicable to the India of his times. He wrote, "Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion".  I don't agree with this idea. There is no such stage. All humans (adults) are innately capable of liberty. They might need education, but liberty is their birthright.  

Mill also defended the East India Company's role (just as it was going to be abolished by the British government). Since India was going from the frying pan (company) into the fire (crown), I'm unable to comment positively on either option.

Mill clearly failed to rise above his times in this area of liberty. In that sense, Adam Smith was ahead of Mill in demanding full representation of the American colonies as long ago as in 1776.

NOTE:

This is a research blog post which I'll keep editing over time. I'd also like to invite you to send me links/ comments that will help me understand this topic better.

SOME RESOURCES

Journal articles:

John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company by Abram L. Harris, The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 1964), pp. 185-202, http://www.jstor.org/stable/139555

Books and other resources

J.S. Mill's Encounter with India By Martin I. Moir, Douglas M. Peers, Lynn Zastoupil.

John Stuart Mill and India. by Lynn Zastoupil

A critical analysis

http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s051802.html

I'm trying to establish a set of questions to determine suitability of potential applicants to FTI. Neither this idea of establishing such questions, nor the questions themselves have yet been discussed or agreed by FTI.

So this is purely experimental. I've used bits and pieces of the World's Smallest Political Quiz.

The first step – before I put in more effort – is to check whether this works and whether the questions are appropriate.  Once that is done, we could debate this on FTI. Even if FTI rejects it, it may still be a useful thing for me to provide on my blog. 

So please try this out and let me have your feedback. It would take not more than10 minutes. 13 short questions.

Parents of autistic children have perhaps known about Temple Grandin for decades.

I, unfortunately, only found out about her in my plane flight from Melbourne to Delhi when I selected a documentary on autism. I have rarely watched TV for many years, and almost no movie. So, unless something comes to me via the internet (or, at most the headlines in newspapers), I am ignorant of the outside world.

I've searched for the precise documentary that I watched on the plane, and haven't found it, but in its place I found these three excellent youtube videos. [Here's a movie on her. And here's the real Grandin's personal website!]

For anyone with an autistic child, or for anyone who knows of people with autism, this is a must watch. For all  of us who are interested in the human mind,  this is an amazing piece of information. I wish I had time to learn more. 

The main take home message to me is this: that autistic people can contribute to the world if we understand their mind better.