Prologue

I have to admit that to me, the 21st century has been a bit of a disappointment thus far. In place of the moon bases, mile high cities, and SST's we were promised growing up in the 1960's, I live in a country where a substantial portion of the population believes the earth is 6000 years old or who feels that the only part of the Constitution worth saving is the Second Amendment . Science is mistrusted and mysticism of any kind revered. I used to lament that our future looked a lot more like Blade Runner and a lot less like Star Trek with each passing day, but now even that would seem to be an improvement – at least Blade Runner was a high tech spacefaring society. We seem headed for a world that is some combination of 1984, The Crucible, and Mad Max. Eternal optimist that I am, I refuse to give up hope quite yet. This is my very tiny voice in the static of the Internet, a place of wondrous information adrift in an expansive sea of nonsense, disinformation and outright lies. America is a land rife with ignorance but while stupidity is a terminal affliction, ignorance can sometimes be cured with a little help from our friends. In this place I'm going to try and grow a kernel of debate that depends upon facts and figures and hopefully less drama. My vocation of the last 25 years has lead me deep into the realm of decision theory and cognitive bias. I am going to try and apply some of that here. So, what is this place going to try to be? Simply a place for conversations about shared problems where critical thinking and cause and effect rule. With your help at least... If this works, I'll end up learning a lot from you. I'll try to get the conversation underway, and if enough people join in, we can share the burden of presenting the premise for discussion. No opinions will be censored though I would hope that as adults we could keep the vitriol to a minimum.