Art of War

07/10/2025

Here’s a social media ninja move:

Report on the immoral positions that people in some misguided political movement are generally taking.

When individual people respond, some will deny that they take the position, and they will argue that it is bad. They might even argue that it is not a common view within their movement.

But some other people will say “Yes, that is my position, and there is nothing wrong with it.”

This tactic simultaneously generates debate from two different groups of people who are mistaken about something, and it invites both groups to produce evidence that something about your post was correct. It also sets them up to refute each other.

The result is more activity in the comments section, boosting your post in the algorithm. And they are proving you right.

You don’t need to spend much time in the comments section yourself. Just reply to a couple of the comments by saying, “Thanks for showing that my characterization was accurate.”

See the example below.

06/10/2025

03/10/2025

Here is my secret for not getting banned on FB:

I almost completely avoid posting factual claims about news on FB.

I post opinion and analysis.

It is hard to fact check a statement of opinion.

I broke this rule the other day by mentioning the political alignment of the man who assassinated Lincoln.

My personal profile immediately got a fact check from some leftist organization.

They claimed you cannot prove that John Wilkes Booth ever voted for a Democrat, therefore calling him a Democrat is misinformation.

I got a stern warning and reduced distribution.

Keep this example in mind if you want to try to make a policy of avoiding factual claims.

Not even a claim about history is safe.

02/10/2025

Imagine having a group of people who want to listen to you for an hour every week.

Imagine they lack skill in living well and understanding the world and the details of what it looks like to obey God.

What would you do with that hour?

What does your pastor do?

01/10/2025

Challenge: "I understand your intention of provocation, but I find it hard to expect other people to live by my standards, and I've never found an attack the best way to find a receptive audience for my views."

Rebuttal: You might not really believe in right and wrong.

Look at this in James 4:1-5:

1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?

***

Look how clear James is about right and wrong.

And he writes all this to his own people!

He tells them: "You want to kill people! You are covetous! You have bad motives! You adulterous people!"

I dOnt ThInK ThaTz EffEctive!!

Shut up.

Read your Bible.

Learn how to act like a Christian.

30/09/2025

Beautiful Teaching

Aesthetic beauty is related to comprehensibility.

What makes a painting or a sonata beautiful is the manner in which it conveys complexity in a way that the listener can easily integrate.

All else equal, to the one who has spent time developing musical taste, more complexity while retaining comprehensibility means more aesthetic beauty.

To those who have different levels of comprehension or different levels of study of a genre, different things are more or less beautiful.

That is because comprehensibility or learnability are functions of both the material and the learner (depending on the individual’s past experience, he will be more or less competent to process a specific kind of material).

This theory accounts for objective standards of beauty while also accounting for (and not invalidating) differences in personal taste.

The same principles apply in teaching:

In learning, the more information that can be conveyed by the total package of what is communicated, and the more easily the learner can absorb a high quantity of integrated information, the more “beautiful” the teaching will be, both as a subjective experience and as an objective result.

A good teacher can be many things, depending on which students he is teaching.

The best teacher is the one that makes learning a joy—to the specific students under his care.