Agreeing to Disagree

Robert Aumann, a winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Economics, once published a paper in The Annals of Statistics titled “Agreeing to Disagree.” The basic idea of the paper is that two rational people should, by sharing their beliefs with each other, come to a common understanding about what is likely to be true.

The Inadequacy of Our Missionaries

With all the talk about missionaries around here lately, I have again pondered on something that concerned me both while a missionary and afterwards, teaching in the MTC and more generally as a non-full-time-missionary member of the Church. It is about the sheer inadequacy of our missionaries.

The Last Door

We’ve all heard the stories about intrepid missionaries who faced rejection door after door only to be let in at the final house that they contacted.

Mordred had a point…

Among Mormon History nerds, “Camelot” refers to the period of time in the 1970s and early 1980s when Leonard Arrington served as Church Historian. It is traditional to look back on it as a Golden Age that was tragically lost.

Danger Rethunk

I’ve taken down the post titled “The Real Danger?” because it was pointed out to me that its impetus was unnecessarily divisive. This was certainly not my intent and so I considered deleting my first paragraph. Without a statement of that impetus, however, the post simply became a denunciation of pornography, which someone else pointed out was something everyone agrees with and someone else said was old news. Such a denunciation has been done much more effectively in the LDS context by President Monson in the recent General Conference and by President Hinckley in the Priesthood Session of the April 2004 General Conference. If you want to see a Mormon “standing on a wall” preaching against the insufferable evil of pornography, go to those sources. [UPDATE: I have reposted the original in fairness to the commenters and the record.]