The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool.

Cargo Cult Science, 1974
Richard Feynman

In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9 per cent per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.

Stephen Hawking, Physicist

I do not pretend to give such a deed; I only lend it to you. When you […] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.

The concept was rediscovered and described by Benjamin Franklin,
in a letter to Benjamin Webb dated April 25, 1784

In On Liberty Mill is not only concerned with freedom from government interference, from legislation and prohibition. Just as important is the freedom to develop culturally and intellectually, to become the type of autonomous and original individual that Mill admired. He feared that this freedom was under threat, that:

… the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of public opinion, should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice. Autobiography ch.7

The greatest impediment to human progress is, borrowing a phrase from de Tocqueville, the ‘tyranny of the majority’: Continue reading →