# Unleash the Mind **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 25, 2012, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579 "2012-08-25T04:28:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/1 "2012-08-25T04:28:04Z")
[Unleash the Mind](https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/312376/unleash-mind?pg=1) is a new essay by George Gilder that is a must-read for anyone who supports capitalism and markets. Gilder does a magnificent job of describing capitalism as a system that creates wealth through benevolent creativity. It is a fantastic defense of capitalism and free markets from both practical and moral principles. Even if you’re on the left, you would do well to read this essay, for no other reason than to understand how the other side thinks. I found it to be a very accurate depiction of my own mental model of how capitalism works and why it’s preferable to state intrusion in the economy. Some choice quotes from the piece: > [@](#): > > America’s wealth is not an inventory of goods; it is an organic entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions. To vivisect it for redistribution is to kill it. > > … > > The belief that wealth consists not chiefly in ideas, attitudes, moral codes, and mental disciplines but in definable static things that can be seized and redistributed — that is the materialist superstition. It stultified the works of Marx and other prophets of violence and envy. It betrays every person who seeks to redistribute wealth by coercion. It balks every socialist revolutionary who imagines that by seizing the so-called means of production he can capture the crucial capital of an economy. It baffles nearly every conglomerateur who believes he can safely enter new industries by buying rather than by learning them. It confounds every bureaucrat of science who imagines he can buy or steal the fruits of research and development. > > … > > Capitalism is the supreme expression of human creativity and freedom, an economy of mind overcoming the constraints of material power. It is not simply a practical success, a “worst of all systems except for the rest of them,” a faute de mieux compromise redeemed by charities and regulators and proverbially “saved by the New Deal.” It is dynamic, a force that pushes human enterprise down spirals of declining costs and greater abundance. The cost of capturing technology is mastery of the underlying science. The means of production of entrepreneurs are not land, labor, or capital but minds and hearts. Enduring are only the contributions of mind and morality. > > … > > All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is _surprise_. Creativity is the foundation of wealth. As Princeton economist Albert Hirschman has put it, “creativity always comes as a surprise to us.” If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work. Joseph Schumpeter propounded the basic rule when he declared capitalism “a form of change” that “never can be stationary.” The landscape of capitalism may seem solid and settled and something that can be captured; but capitalism is really a noosphere, a mindscape, as empty in proportion to the nuggets at its nucleus as the expanse of the solar system in relation to the sun. > > Entrepreneurship is the launching of surprises. The process of wealth creation is offensive to levelers and planners because it yields mountains of new wealth in ways that could not possibly be planned. But unpredictability is fundamental to free human enterprise. It defies every econometric model and socialist scheme. It makes no sense to most professors, who attain their positions by the systematic acquisition of credentials pleasing to the establishment above them. Creativity cannot be planned because it is defined by information measured as surprise. > > … > > The distributions of capitalism make sense, but not because of the virtue or greed of entrepreneurs, nor as inevitable by-products of the invisible hand. The reason capitalism works is that the creators of wealth are granted the right and the burden of reinvesting it. They join the knowledge acquired in building wealth with the power to perpetuate and expand it. > > … > > The key issue in economics is not aligning incentives with some putative public good but aligning power with knowledge. Business investments bring both a financial and an epistemic yield. Capitalism catalytically joins the two. Capitalist economies grow because they award wealth to its creators, who have already proven that they can increase it. I’m not sure what there is to debate here, so I’ll call this ‘witnessing’. I just wanted to expose this brilliant essay to as many people as possible. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/2 "2012-08-25T05:10:07Z")
So basically a bunch of purple prose that boils down to “abolish all taxes on billionaires”? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/3 "2012-08-25T05:15:07Z")
Fantastic defense? It is just the same old defense of the equation that lower tax rates bring higher revenues, just old fashion voodoo economics. > **[The Impact of Tax Cuts - FactCheck.org](https://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-impact-of-tax-cuts/)** > > Q: Have tax cuts always resulted in higher tax revenues and more economic growth as many tax cut proponents claim? A: No. In fact, economists say tax cuts do not spark enough growth to pay for themselves. FULL ANSWER This economic theory is... > [@](#): > > Q: Have tax cuts always resulted in higher tax revenues and more economic growth as many tax cut proponents claim? > > A: No. In fact, economists say tax cuts do not spark enough growth to pay for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/4 "2012-08-25T05:19:18Z")
I read it and I feel like I just watched someone masturbate. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/5 "2012-08-25T05:31:36Z")
I think that’s an good defense of why a market-based economy is better than a command economy, but doesn’t do such a good job explaining why the less regulated market economy modern right wing parties prefer is superior to the more regulated market economy the modern left prefers. Most modern leftists (myself included) would agree with about 85% of that essay. The only part that’s really relevant to the modern political discourse is the idea that taxation necessarily uncouples wealth from “entrepreneurial knowledge.” The evidence for this is the old claim that economic activity is directly and inversely related to taxes, which the author claims is a settled point. I would say it is most definitely not. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/6 "2012-08-25T05:53:07Z")
The part that is quoted by **Sam** , I have no argument with. Supply-side economics, I do. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Fantastic defense? It is just the same old defense of the equation that lower tax rates bring higher revenues, just old fashion voodoo economics. > > [The Impact of Tax Cuts - FactCheck.org](http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-impact-of-tax-cuts/) This, however, is also facile. The Fed lowers interest rates to spur the economy. Regardless of whether you lower taxes on investments or lower interest rates on loans, the end result (and goal) is that you are spurring the market to try to grow. Basically, if you believe that the Fed’s big economic-lever is real, then you should believe that lowering taxes on the wealthy is as well. (Though I’ll grant that the amount of money which can be brought in from the wealthy’s income tax is effectively pointless both as a tax and as a spur for economic stimulus.) But in both the case of the Fed and “invigorating the market” in general, I think that the general wisdom will eventually come around to the idea that some investments are stupid and others are wise. If you make investing too easy then you’re just growing an economic bubble and if you make it too difficult then you’re stifling the economy. Ratcheting a lever back and forth makes no sense. Find a good medium point and leave it there. Anything else and regardless of whether you’re doing some good, you’re probably doing an equal or greater evil as well. In either case, market bubbles will still happen and some will be big enough to cause a recession (or even a depression). Encouraging people to just go out and jump on ANY investment opportunities that happen to be present at that moment in time isn’t going to help that. On the other side of things, Keynes solution of lending yourself a bunch of money and paying people to go around breaking and fixing windows until the market comes back on its own, then taxing everyone to hell to get rid of the fake money you created is also rather stupid and has yet to show itself to work. Where Keynes may have been right, however, is that the fundamental issue with a recession is that as demand drops and workers become useless - since there is no demand - people are laid off and that only makes the economy worse, which in turn lowers demand even further. This is then compounded by the fact that those who stay employed, stay on at their old salary and all those who are unemployed would rather come back on at their old salary and are resisting it to be significantly lower - especially when there’s still people making the old salary. In the ideal Keynesian world (despite that I don’t believe that Keynes ever stated it or thought of it), salaries would lower with demand so that the total number of unemployed would not change. In the real world, however, even if you had a way to make all salaries drop proportionately to the national average of demand, the market in which the bubble occurred will have lower demand than the national average and markets which were wholly unrelated will likely have higher demand. So we would expect that unemployment would still rise - but mostly coming out of the bad market - but this would be met by a demand for new workers appearing in more healthy markets which now have disproportionately high demand. Realistically, with lowered demand, keeping everyone employed would amount to paying people to sit around and do nothing. I would also expect that employers would end up performing layoffs simply because there’s still no point in paying a wage - even a proportionately lowered one - to someone when there’s no demand to be met. However, it would probably be less significant than if employees were working at their full wage. The problem is that you can’t simply lower everyone’s wage. Between mortgages, school loans, etc. most people are locked in by contractual obligations to the wage that they are making. They would be strongly opposed to taking a reduced wage, since if they were to do so, they might have to sell their house or otherwise change their lifestyle to match. That is, unless you make it not just wages but _all_ contracted values, salary, loans, mortgages, etc. become proportionate to demand. If you do that, you effectively bring macroeconomics back to Adam Smith’s idealized version of economics - a world where everyone is constantly bartering and re-bartering their wares, minus any [sticky numbers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_(economics)). Granted, we are assuming that the sticky numbers would change to the values that we are assuming they would change to if everyone had the opportunity to renegotiate, which is probably less effective than simply having everyone _really_ go back and renegotiate their numbers, but I suspect that it would be close enough approximation to classical economics that the classical economic belief that a recession will undo itself as things become cheaper can actually become true, with a lot less hassle on the part of all of the actors. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/7 "2012-08-25T13:58:03Z")
Not sure where it is the facile part, most of what you say makes sense as there are nuances there, but writers of the quoted piece I posted do explain that there is indeed a more complex answer, but most economists agree with what the writer said there, they even mention specific exceptions like a corporate tax cuts that can be shown to be good overall for future tax revenue elsewhere, but even countries that are pointed by supporters of the tax cuts as evidence that this voodoo should work like Ireland (the piece is from 2008) are not doing so nicely. Sure, saying just that tax cuts do not spark enough growth to pay for themselves is not a good answer for a complex topic, but it is what the vast majority of economists see is the overall case. > **[Economists Fail Republicans On Laffer Curve](https://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/economists-fail-republicans-laffer-curve)** > > Among the myriad Republican myths about taxes, the most pernicious and demonstrably false - that "tax cuts pay for themselves" - is the mostly deeply held by the GOP faithful. As President George W. Bush famously (and erroneously) put it, "You > [@](#): > > But far more interesting are the results on the question that gets to the heart of Arthur Laffer’s supply-side snake oil which has been Republican orthodoxy ever since Jude Wanniski sketched Laffer’s curve on a cocktail napkin. In a nutshell, not a single one of the economists surveyed agreed that “a cut in federal income tax rates in the US right now would raise taxable income enough so that the annual total tax revenue would be higher within five years than without the tax cut.” > > In his comments, David Autor of MIT pointed out, “Not aware of any evidence in recent history where tax cuts actually raise revenue. Sorry, Laffer.” Former Obama administration economist and current University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee put it this way: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > Moon landing was real. Evolution exists. Tax cuts lose revenue. The research has shown this a thousand times. Enough already. > > > > ``` > > Of course, you don’t have to take Goolsbee’s word for it. Your own eyes will suffice. > > After Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt with his supply-side tax cuts, George W. Bush doubled it again with his own. (Reagan’s performance would have been much worse, had he not raised taxes 11 times to help make up the shocking shortfall.) This chart shows just how dire the tax revenue drought has become. For those Republicans who claim “tax cuts pay themselves,” it’s worth noting that federal revenue did not return to its pre-Bush tax cut level until 2006. (While this graph shows current dollars, the dynamic is unchanged measured in inflation-adjusted, constant 2005 dollars.) > > But that picture tells only part of the story. Measuring taxes and spending as a percentage of the total U.S. economy reveals revenue at historical lows. As the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded last year, “Revenues would be just under 15 percent of GDP; levels that low have not been seen since 1950.” > > As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent, over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus - combined. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/8 "2012-08-25T14:59:59Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > “America’s wealth is not an inventory of goods; it is an organic entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions. To vivisect it for redistribution is to kill it.” Meh. We already redistribute some of America’s wealth (and have redistributed much higher percentages of it in the past), and we haven’t killed it. If we were facing the imposition of a Soviet-style centralized command economy with no market forces allowed to operate, then Mr. Gilder’s patriotic bloviations would be, if not particularly informative, at least relevant and on-target. Or if Mr. Gilder had a specific argument for or against a specific quantitative amount of redistributive taxation, that could be interesting to read. What he’s written in this essay, though, is nothing but a pompously melodramatic general panegyric on the wealthy, with undertones of “AAAGH WATCH OUT THE POOR PEOPLE ARE GETTING RESTLESS WE MUST STOP THEM!!” ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/9 "2012-08-25T15:06:46Z")
It is intriguing to what extent proponents of right-wing capitalism base their faith on the eloquence of certain preachers. The popular pundit David Brooks writes that he was a liberal as undergraduate but had an epiphany when he heard Milton Friedman speak in person. Paul Ryan, intellectual leader of the present-day GOP, names Ayn Rand as his main inspiration: her writings are required reading for Rand’s staff and interns. This all calls to mind a worth-reading [article describing similarities between religious faith and post-rational faith in markets](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/). Rational centrists are not ignorant of the theoretical advantages of capitalism, even in its dog-eat-dog form. There is much truth, or at least half-truth, in the article linked by OP. On the other hand, anyone with a clear perspective on modern America would agree the article’s position is, to put it charitably, exaggerated. And it’s a shame the article had to “poison the well” in its very first paragraph with > [@](#): > > President Obama’s quixotic ecocrats are discovering today [that] government managers of complex systems of wealth soon find they are administering an industrial corpse, a socialized Solyndra. This blanket condemnation of “socialism” will come as a disappointment to employees of NASA … and GM. Rationalists are aware of imperfections of capitalism, e.g [the paradox that an entrepreneur can build a profitable toll-bridge while causing travel times to worsen!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox) In my experience, proponents of dog-eat-dog capitalism are more often allured by the dog-eat-dog than by the capitalism. For example, carbon tax is a straightforward _market-based_ solution if we agree that the true costs of carbon use are not reflected in its market price. The present-day government of China may be at least as rational as the U.S.'s so it is hardly far-fetched to envision a world-wide treaty enforcing a carbon tax. Yet it is those _on the left_ who seek that market-based solution! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/10 "2012-08-25T15:13:55Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Even if you’re on the left, you would do well to read this essay, for no other reason than to understand how the other side thinks. Well, I read it. Apparently, “the other side” thinks that vague simplistic generalizations, and unsupported sweeping assertions about very complicated economic and historical issues, are preferable to careful scrutiny and analysis of quantitative detail. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > I found it to be a very accurate depiction of my own mental model of how capitalism works […] No comment. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/11 "2012-08-25T15:18:07Z")
**Sam** : Is this the same guy who Co-fouinded The Discovery Institute and has tried to advance the idea of Intelligent Design? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/12 "2012-08-25T15:36:18Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > **Sam** : Is this the same guy who Co-fouinded The Discovery Institute and has tried to advance the idea of Intelligent Design? I’m not **Sam** , but yes, that’s George Gilder. His author byline at the end of the linked article: > [@](#): > > Mr. Gilder is the author of 15 books, a venture investor, and a co-founder of the Discovery Institute. This article is adapted from the prologue to his _Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century_ (Regnery). A few additional details from Wikipedia about [some of his other interests](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gilder): > [@](#): > > Gilder states that men are superior to women in the workplace and in creative ventures outside the home, due to inborn, biologically determined differences between men and women. […] He decided [in the 1970s] to make himself into “America’s number-one antifeminist”. > > > [@George Gilder](#): > > > > Religion is primary. Unless a culture is aspiring toward the good, the true, and the beautiful, and wants the good and the true, really worships God, it readily worships Satan. If we turn away from God, our culture becomes dominated by “Real Crime Stories” and rap music and other spew… When the culture becomes corrupt, then the businesses that serve the culture also become corrupt… Secular culture is in general corrupt, and degraded, and depraved. Because I don’t believe in secular culture, I think parochial schools are the only real schools. […] > > > > What the poor really need is morals…The official poor in America have higher incomes and purchasing power than the middle class in the United States in 1955 or the middle class in Japan today. The so-called “poor” are ruined by the overflow of American prosperity. What they need is Christian teaching from the churches…The poverty line in a rich country like the United States is a meaningless standard. We have no poverty problem strictly speaking, we have a desperate problem of family breakdown and moral decay. > > He helped found the Discovery Institute with Bruce Chapman. The organization […] later became the leading think tank of the intelligent design movement, with Gilder writing many articles in favor of ID and opposing the theory of evolution. “How the other side thinks”, indeed. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/13 "2012-08-25T15:55:16Z")
Generally, I’m not a fan of what could be considered an _ad hominem_. But since this is witnessing, I think it’s OK. And, I make an exception to the _ad hominem_ rule when it comes to Creationism. I really don’t think it’s worth wasting my time reading what a Creationist has to say about any topic that requires analytical skills. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/14 "2012-08-25T16:02:55Z")
Darn it **John Mace** , I \*\*did \*\*notice that before but I wanted too see how far the ones supporting that screed would go. [puts away the Discovery Institute creationist cites…] …grumble… grumble… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/15 "2012-08-25T20:31:34Z")
Of course I knew that the people on the left on this board would disapprove of the essay - it’s not you I’m trying to reach. But I do have to say that in no way do I support intelligent design or any of the religious hoo-haw Gilder may believe. I’d never heard of the Discovery Institute, but intelligent design is complete hogwash. However, it has nothing to do with this essay. **John Mace** : Really? The belief in creationism completely invalidates anything a person has to say, even on non-religious subjects? Do you extend that to all religious people? Or is it okay to believe that a jealous God sent his only son to Earth to ‘save’ mankind by exhorting them to love their God lest they be smited and burned in hell by a fallen angel, so long as you don’t also believe in intelligent design? Just where is the John Mace limit that renders a person’s thoughts on any subject completely invalid? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/16 "2012-08-25T20:36:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > **John Mace** : Really? The belief in creationism completely invalidates anything a person has to say, even on non-religious subjects? Do you extend that to all religious people? Or is it okay to believe that a jealous God sent his only son to Earth to ‘save’ mankind by exhorting them to love their God lest they be smited and burned in hell by a fallen angel, so long as you don’t also believe in intelligent design? Just where is the John Mace limit that renders a person’s thoughts on any subject completely invalid? That’s not what I said. You linked to a very long article by someone who actively promotes Creationism over science. What I said is I wouldn’t waste my time reading something that person wrote. I wouldn’t trust him to have done an objective analysis of something as complex as economics. But let me clarify further: the guy could be right. I just don’t want to spend the time it would take to verify if he is or not. He has already proven himself to place religion over science. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/17 "2012-08-25T21:02:25Z")
But you don’t extend the same prejudice to a Catholic who believes in transubstantiation, exorcism, the infallibility of the pope, and the existence of miracles? Do you extend it to Newton, who believed in alchemy at a time when it was already thought to be quackery? People are capable of believing idiotic things in one realm, while being brilliant thinkers in another. Dismissing everything a person has to say because they hold a strange belief in an unrelated area is just prejudice. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/18 "2012-08-25T21:08:01Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But you don’t extend the same prejudice to a Catholic who believes in transubstantiation, exorcism, the infallibility of the pope, and the existence of miracles? Do you extend it to Newton, who believed in alchemy at a time when it was already thought to be quackery? > > People are capable of believing idiotic things in one realm, while being brilliant thinkers in another. Dismissing everything a person has to say because they hold a strange belief in an unrelated area is just prejudice. Catholics generally accept science and reality. In any case, the dude is a dimwit. And you should probably be embarrassed to be nodding along with him. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/19 "2012-08-25T21:35:05Z")
Heck, if you wanna “unchain the mind”, then improve education, dispense with all that creationist crap, and among the millions of children going through school, you’ll improve the percentage that will turn into scientists and engineers, and those will be the ones that allow the entrepreneurs to do their thing. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579/20 "2012-08-25T21:51:13Z")
The American left supports capitalism and markets. Don’t let OP slip that bit past you… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unleash-the-mind/632579.md?page=2)