While this old man was getting old, it became apparent time after time that people (“These…..people!” as Daniel Plainview says in ‘There Will Be Blood.’), usually people in high places, cannot seem to remember well established facts and concepts, blundering ahead with actions and policies as if there was no history. Beyond history there are simply many things that ANY FOOL SHOULD KNOW by now. This page is going to collect some of these items, over time, so that non-fools have a place to find many all together. How after all can you ask Lexus/Nexus about some AFSK fact if you do not know it. You cannot conceive it because you don’t know it 1. AFSKnow by now that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. An example: AFSK that past behavior is a better predictor of future behavior than tests, astrology, verbal statement (also behaviors of course), prayer, or promises. That is not to say people cannot change, but not a lot in a short time. Sometimes it seems that people can make significant change quickly; behave very differently after a mystical experience or a profound insight. Looking closer usually reveals that the behavior has merely changed its purpose not the way it comes out. Eric Hoffer, a brilliant self-educated, longshoreman wrote The True Believer in the 1950’s. Perhaps because of the non-linear nature of his self-education he was able to think more freely about things than we who followed the traditional paths. He observed that an extremist will remain an extremist, even when his beliefs change to the opposite. His example: St. Paul was a zealous and effective persecutor and slayer of early Christians. After his conversion he was a zealous and effective proselytizer of Christianity (I always suspected he would have been a very effective bureaucrat.) Hoffer’s ideas have been reinforced empirically by psychologists repeatedly.Most of the East German secret police establishment were made up of ex-Gestapo. If your angry at the world and believe you are treated wrongly, resenting the many who do not measure up for you, get saved! Your spirit (chronic mood) will be lifted and you can judge others freely and self righteously (while proclaiming love, keeping you virtuous) condemn them for their faults, beliefs and sexual orientation. You can even hope for ‘the rapture’ when you will be chosen and those same short-measure people, hopefully, will be tormented before your eyes. Conversion looks like a big change but it’s just the content and does give you permission to feel good.A raging, hostile irresponsible drunk genuinely gives it up. Like pulling the keystone from an arch, a narrow set of behaviors (drinking) that influenced all his other actions, is gone. Subsequently it may be like night and day but to Alcoholics Anonymous and others that is just the start of change.Because too many of us fools seem to keep disregarding this concept, we show ourselves to be very bad judges of character, especially when voting. 2. Generalized civilian bombing fortifies a people’s defiance. It makes them more determined not to surrender.At the beginning of Shock & Awe when many fools who should have known better, started the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfelt said something like, “I like to put myself in the shoes of my enemies and I think [sic shifting pronouns] that they might want to change their side to avoid such bombing.” Keeping #1 above in mind, he could not change his mind and would have been even more resistant were he bombed. During WWII, virtually every man served and many were researchers and thoughtful scholars and they studied peoples reactions to being bombed and the determination of both our enemies and allies (England:we will fight them ….etc.) and golly, they concluded this AFK fact. They wrote it in articles and texts. I even heard of it in seventh grade. “Hmm”, I thought, “that makes a lot of sense.” That was minutes before a protracted period of preoccupation with girls. Most of our generals these days have advanced degrees but somehow they cannot seem to remember this fact, making the bombing mistake again and again. 3. One, no you, cannot conceive of another’s motive without having the thought of that motive yourself. All our beliefs about others is necessarily Projection.We say as much, or more, about ourselves when we talk about others. I get such a kick out of Rush Limbaugh (in lieu of getting to give a kick “SEE”) when he and his Foxy friends make their high schoolish attributions about the motives of their straw enemies (liberals, I guess). Doesn’t Ann Coulter realize the very nature of her hostile attacks betray her internal preoccupations suggesting that it’s pretty scary and angry inside there. I know it’s pretty scary in here so I can imagine what she’s like inside. You see how it works? Every thing I say here reflects on me.A person cannot attribute a motive that has never occurred to him. If a student had never seen, been told of, nor thought of cheating, he will not understand what that kid that keeps looking over at his paper is doing. Of course, the next time he will.The fact that one by experience can surmise the mind of another with some predictive accuracy (keeping #1 in mind) does not necessarily mean that his motives are the same. An FBI profiler is not a killer rapist because his contacts give him understanding. However, his depth of understanding is likely better if he, like an actor, is able to allow himself to identify aspects of the other in himself. That’s why being good at that job can have effects on the agent that are as risky as getting shot. As Peewee Herman put it, “I know you are but what am I.” 4. Human beings are capable of conjecturing or conceiving of anything, anything! Doesn’t Hollywood make this obvious? AFSK this goes way beyond Hollywood (Bollywood, too). Virtually every abstract belief, and many not so abstract, is conjecture and is supported by the consensual conjecture of others. In other words, most beliefs are not supported empirically (so we don’t like to test them) and are arbitrary agreements about their basis. The law, democracy, morality are conjectures. Because these conjectures are easier to share and often have a salutary effect upon our comfort or survival we collectively concur in our preference for such principles. One could conceive (and many do) that killing and maiming as many as one chooses is actually a proper act and tie it to a rationale (suicide and kill bombs for God). Persons with inclinations and/or behaviors that are way out of the norm (David Koresh) can easily conceptualize a rational that becomes a life or death issue.We can murder in warfare, under the law, and a muerte code with fewer personal emotional consequence than conducting a random murder. Dead is dead, the idea that people sitting around doing ceremonies and conjecturing meaningful notions and thinking of abstractions like immortality and honor changes that never fails to bother me. Legitimate killing is just a preference that a group decides on, often for good concrete reasons, but it’s legitimacy is still pure conjecture and is not a law of nature. If you conceive of abortion as murder, the problem is in the concept. If you think of it as a clinical deletion of cells much as our body does by itself constantly, it is another matter. The concepts are opposed and cannot be reconciled empirically. We can try to use The Law, a systematic system of conjecture the purpose of which is to create, develop, and manage conjecture. If ever there were a conjecture machine it would be the law. It is a bit more systematic than its fellow system, religion. All this is not to say that conjectures do not have impact by influencing behavior and sometime becoming less conjectural through empirical examination. Some conjecture influences the behaviors of people significantly positively and negatively so it needs to be regarded. It might do us better to remind ourselves that we can imagine almost anything and act on it. Others do, we do so we need to keep a perspective on ourselves. Of course, a concept itself. Thanks to our growing knowledge of the brain we may be able to find the tangible physical representations of a concept. But that would not keep it from being a nutty idea.